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At the time of this writing,
National Geographic Magazine has an Armenian on board its editorial staff.
When it's time to do a piece on Armenia, the old propaganda, like 1.5 million
victims, mysteriously surfaces. Let's see what the magazine wrote in the
"old days."
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Oct..1909 – P.146: … is inhabited largely by Kuzzilbash
Kurds, who are neither good Mohammedans, good Christians, nor good pagans. Nominally they
belong to the Shiah sect of Mohammedans, who are looked upon with great aversion by
orthodox Sunni Mohammedans, such as the Turks. In practice the Kuzzilbash are very
cosmopolitan in their religious observances. When away from home they readily join in the
prayers at either Shiah or a Sunni mosque. If they happen to be in an Armenian village
where there are no Turks, they often go in and join in the Christian service, kneeling and
bowing with congregation. At home they are said not to pray except when led by one of
their sayids, or holy men, who are supposed to be descendants of Mohammed. As a matter of
fact they, like the rest of the Kuzzilbash, are probably descended, in part at least, from
Armenians whose conversion to Mohammedanism was not exactly a matter of conviction. One of
the most peculiar customs of the Kuzzilbash is an ancient rite which is apparently of
Christian origin. No European has seen it, but according to trustworthy Armenians, the
Kuzzilbash men gather at the mosque on solemn feast days and one by one they advance to
the front of the sacred building — on their knees, it is said by some. As each man comes
forward a sayid takes a bit of meat, dips it in wine, and puts it in the man’s mouth.
Such ceremony can scarcely be anything but a relic of Christianity.
In many places Turks, Kurds, Armenians all reverence the same shrines — places which
have probably been sacred since the far-off days of the pagans who fought with the
Assyrians or opposed the march of Xenopohon. One of the most notable of such places is
located in Mushar Dagh, Mushar Mountain, inside the point of sharp bend to the to the
westward made by Euphrates River.
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Jan.
1912 – P.53 – "The Young Turk" by
Colby Chester.
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The great educational system is founded by these
Americans ... comprises at present more than 300 common schools in the Empire. 44
high schools, 8 colleges, 1 normal school and 5 divinity schools. This scholastic
work is spread out all over this former "garden spot of the world" and has
leavened the masses with high ideals of living, knowledge of free institutions, and
longing for better government. Such an authority as Gladstone has placed upon record
a statement that "American missionaries in Turkey have done more good to the
inhabitants of that country than has all Europe combined". And Mr. James Bryce,
the British Ambassador to Washington, goes even further and states: "I cannot
mention the American missionaries without a tribute to the admirable work they have
done. They have been only good influence that has worked from abroad upon the
Turkish Empire". The people of Turkey as body have long since passed from the
pale of the "unspeakable Turk" and many of them stand out as peers of any
people in the world in general intelligence, character, and all qualities that go to
make good citizens; but of course as yet they are wanting in sufficient experience
to guide without assistance the ship of state to the high plane at which they are
aiming. During my stay among these people I have found men of sterling character and
unswerving integrity, men well fitted to lead their country through crises similar
to those through which our own nation passed in its struggle for birth.
While we Americans have done much toward the enlightenment of the Turk, I should say
in all fairness to them that they have earnestly sought education through following
the percepts of the Koran (their Bible). A short selection, reads:
"The duty of every Mussulman is to acquire science. Science is the life of the
heart. The learned shine in the world like stars in the sky. Knowledge is the
immortal soul of man."
And that the Turks are apt scholars no one can doubt who has lived among them. One
of the younger classmen of the Beirut American University, presented me, when I was
there with a copy of a speech made by Dr. Bliss, its president, on the
responsibilities of popular government, which this young student had taken down
stenographically and typewritten himself. This young man, a Syrian by birth, spoke
English well, and more than a dozen other languages. Yet he was but an average
scholar in the college. At Constantinople on more than one occasion I have witnessed
the presentation of some of Shakespeare’s play by the young men of the American
College for Girls that would compare with any similar representation in my own
country. The Turkish people are reaching out to other civilizations for help to
recover from the tyranny and stagnation that has bound them so long in slavery. They
look to America particularly as the one nation of the West that has no political
ambition to subserve in its action toward…
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| Oct. 1915 – P.329 : "Armenia and the Armenians" By Hester Donaldson
Jenkins. |
Armenia is a word that has widely different connotation for different peoples. To us,
Americans, it means a vague territory somewhere in Asia Minor: to the makers of modern
maps it means nothing: there is no such place; to the Turk of a few years ago, it was a
forbidden name; smacking of treason and likely to bring up that bugaboo
"nationalism" than which Abdul Hamid II feared nothing more, unless it were
"liberty"; but to nearly two millions of Russian, Persian and Turkish subjects,
it is a word filled with emotion, one that sends the hand to the heart and calls up both
pride and sorrow. Armenia is not easy to bound at any period of history, but roughly, it
is the tableland extending from the Caspian Sea nearly to the Mediterranean Sea. Its
limits have become utterly fluid; the waves of conquering Persians and Byzantines, Arabs
and Romans, Russians and Turks have flowed and ebbed on its shores until all lines are
obliterated. Armenia is not a State, not even a geographic unity, but merely a term for
the region anywhere the Armenians live.
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Lord
Bryce |
P.330: The Armenians export silk and
cotton, hides and leather, wine, dried fruits, raisins, tobacco, drugs and dyestuff.
In minerals too the country is rich. Coal, silver, copper, iron and other minerals
lie beneath the surface, but the Turkish government has not allowed them to be
exploited. James Bryce thus speaks of the land: "Here is a country blest with
every gift of Nature; a fertile soil, possessing every variety of exposure and
situation; a mild and equable climate; mines of iron, copper, silver and coal in the
mountains; a land of exquisite beauty, which was once studded with flourishing
cities and filled by an industrious population. But now from the Euphrates to the
Bosphorus all is silence, poverty, despair. There is hardly a sail on the sea,
hardly a village on the shores, hardly a road which commerce can pass into the
interior. You ask the cause and receive from every one the same answer —
misgovernment or rather no government; the existence of a power which does nothing
for its subjects, but stands in the way when there is a chance of their doing
something for themselves. The mines, for instance, cannot be worked without a
concession from Constantinople".
Armenian feels behind him this vast antiquity, giving him personal dignity and great
national pride. They begin their history with the Garden of Eden, which they claim
was in Armenia, basing the claim on the naïve statement that the land is beautiful
enough to have included Paradise, and also laughingly asserting that the apples of
Armenia were worthy to tempt a most Epicurean Eve. Their first recorded ancestors
they find in the book of Genesis.
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P.347: The Ottoman Empire was organized into
millets, a religious division. There being an Orthodox millet, and a Gregorian
millet, a Catholic millet, and in the nineteenth century a Protestant millet. Each
of these millets has its head, who is its representative or ambassador at the Porte.
This is not a purely ecclesiastical position, like that of the Catholicos, but is
really a diplomatic and political office, and the demands intellectual rather than
spiritual qualification. Therefore that patriarch of the Armenians is not
necessarily nor by any means always a religious man, although an occasional
patriarch like Ismirlian, is worth of great reverence.
It is in this entanglement with politics, and its ancient ritual in dead language
that lie the dangers to the Gregorian church, namely formality and lack of
application to daily living. One of the best things that Protestant missionaries
have accomplished in Turkey is rectifying this ancient and noble institution. It
will be readily seen that when an Armenian leaves the Gregorian to join a Catholic
or Protestant Church, he in some sense loses touch with his nation, for nation or
millet and church are practically one in Turkey. For this reason, if no other, all
missionary work within the church is better than that done outside. Turkey governed
very well, as governments went, in the first centuries of her rule, and Armenians
were not unhappy. They were not admitted to the army, but paid a head tax instead;
but many of their men, cleverer than the Turk in finance, became advisers to
royalty. The Armenians formed a body of industrious farmers in Asia Minor and were
useful business men in the coast cities, where they won respect and envy. There is
little, if any, racial antagonism between Armenian and Turks, Had religion and
politics never come to antagonize them, they could live together in essential
harmony.
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The above comes courtesy of Sukru
S. Aya.
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