Armenia: A Tortured Land, a Crucified People

 Armenia is under military attack, again by their neighbor, Azerbaijan.  Few other countries  have been tortured as much as Armenia has.  The Ottoman Turks conquered Armenia in the 15th Century and held it until the end of World War I, then the Soviet Union seized it.  Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Azerbaijanis have taken up the task of brutalizing Armenia with constant armed conflict.  All this while the world just looks on.  In Bob Dylan's classic song, Blowing in the Wind, he starts the song with this lament:  "How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail Before she sleeps in the sand?"

Most of the world recognizes the Turkish Armenian Genocide of 1915.  Turkey does not to this day. Fearing the anger of Turkey, a Nato ally, the United States was reluctant to recognize the genocide until October 2019.  It is a sad tale that the world knows very little of these tortured people.  Click here for a fine piece on the Armenian Genocide in a 2015 article in the magazine, First Things.  The genocide was repeated seven years later, in 1922, in the ancient city of Smyrna, now called Izmir. Two books have recently been published detailing what happened in Smyrna in 1922:  The Great Fire by Lou Ureneck and Paradise Lost by Giles Milton.  These two books are well researched and brilliantly written. Highly recommended reading.  

The Turks, led by the brilliant military commander, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who later became the father of modern Turkey, after routing Greek forces, attacked and destroyed Smyrna and murdered at least 200,000 Christians, among them, Greeks and Armenians.  They were particularly brutal in the massacre in Smyrna; the Greek Bishop of Smyrna, was tortured to death in front of a cheering crowd.  Turkish soldiers went on rampages, looting, raping and killing women at will; with no one stopping them.  People desperate to escape the carnage were trapped in the Smyrna harbor and not allowed to escape; many drowned in the bay trying to escape the fire that was coming toward them. European ships anchored in the bay refused to help them.  Click here for a related story. The two books mentioned earlier go into great detail on the brutality. At the end of the rampage they set the city of Smyrna on fire and burned it to the ground.

It is estimated that as many as 1.5 million Armenian Christians were murdered by the Ottoman Turks in the 1915 Armenian Genocide.  Historians believe that the Turks blamed their decline on the Christians, and that was a contributing factor in the genocide.  History shows that the Ottomans were in decline for the prior century.  The brutality of the Turks had no bounds; it was an example of man's inhumanity to man;  The two books mentioned earlier go into great detail on how Armenian Christians were marched into the desert on forced marches without food or water.  Many died of exhaustion and others were simply shot by soldiers along the way.

Religion is the glaring thread in this Armenian Genocide.  Muslims, in general, did not keep it a secret that their goal was to eliminate all the "infidels."  From the start, in the seventh century after Mohammed, the Ottomans made it their goal to conquer the world for Islam.  A quick perusal of history will back this up.  In the Middle Ages, we had the conquest of the Byzantine Empire with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, followed by many battles against the "infidels" such as the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571, and the two sieges of Vienna, Austria in 1529 and the last one in 1683.  These wars have never really finished.  Today we have different actors such as the 9/11 terrorists, Isis, al Qaeda and the like.  The wars continue.

Another common thread is the passivity of the rest of the world, namely, the Europeans.  After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the eastern part of the Roman Empire continued under the name of the Byzantine Empire which lasted another thousand years.  During this last thousand years, the European Christian brothers watched and sat on their hands while the Byzantines were chewed up piece by piece.  Toward the end, prior to the fall of Constantinople, the Europeans denied the fervent pleas of their Byzantine brothers, preferring not to help.  One exception was a private military commander from Genoa, Giovanni Giustiniani, who collected a mercenary force of about 700 men and helped the Byzantines fight in the final battle for Constantinople in 1453.  After the fall of the Byzantines, the Ottomans went after the rest of Europe as pointed out earlier in the battles of Lepanto and the sieges of Vienna.  For the Europeans, it was see no evil, hear no evil. As the Spanish philosopher George Santayana once said, those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it.  And the beat goes on.

A House Divided Cannot Stand: The Struggle Between Islam and Christianity

Islam has been on the march against Christianity since the death of Mohamed in 632 AD.  Two of the main goals of Mohammed's followers were to convert all infidels (non-Muslims), and conquer the world, not only to gain land but to win everybody else to Islam.  The Middle East and North Africa were the first areas to fall to the forces of Islam.  Once North Africa was taken, the Muslims set their sights on Europe.  They started with the conquest of Spain in 711 AD when the governor of Tangiers, Tariq ibn Ziyad landed in Gibraltar with 10,000 troops.  Within months the Muslims had taken most of the Iberian Peninsula.  It was not until the 11th century that the Spaniards started to drive the Muslims back, starting in Northern Spain and pushing south.  The final battle was won in 1492 when the Muslims were completely driven out of Spain by the forces of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

In 740 AD Sicily fell to the forces of Islam after a long struggle with the Byzantine Empire.  The Normans, led by a brilliant military commander, Roger de Houteville, drove out the Muslims from Sicily for good in 1071. De Houteville became Roger I, the first king of Sicily. If you go to the seacoast resort of Cefalù you will find a Cathedral there built by Roger II, the son of Roger I.

The Muslims became dominant, not only in the Middle East, but in Southern Europe. The Ottoman Turks created one of the greatest empires since Rome.  By the 15th century the Ottomans had conquered the eastern Roman Empire in 1453, known then, as the Byzantine Empire (modern day Turkey), with its capital in Constantinople.   Constantinople was then considered the center of Christianity.  The Byzantines made many pleas to fellow Christian nations around them but no one responded to help them. The Republic of Venice promised ships but none ever appeared. One exception was a private army of 7,000 troops led by the brilliant commander, Giovanni Giustiniani who was from Genoa. Giustiniani and his men fought bravely but were overwhelmed by the superior Turkish forces.   Click here for a map of Ottoman Empire at this time.  The Ottoman Empire reached from the Middle East, North Africa, the former Yugoslavia, Greece and the Balkan states.  A fine book on the history of the Byzantine Empire is Lost to the West by Lars Brownworth.

The Ottomans never stopped trying to conquer Europe by military force.  After the defeat of the Byzantine Empire, they set their eyes on the rest of Europe.  Soon, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and the Balkan countries fell to the Ottoman onslaught.  The Ottomans had the best trained, the most efficient, army in the world.  Brutality was their calling card.  The Ottoman Army had two sets of special forces which specialized in brutal tactics and sow fear in their enemies, the Tartars and the Janissaries. They spread fear everywhere they went. These troops fought to the death because they knew that if they failed they would suffer a brutal death themselves at the hands of their leaders.  On approaching a location, they would ask the people to surrender.  If they failed to surrender they would kill every man, woman, child and animal and then burn any city or village to the ground.  After slaughtering the locals, they would cut off the heads of the men and stick them up on poles along the road to sow fear among the rest of the territory who failed to surrender.  This is described in great detail in a book about the Ottoman siege of Vienna of 1683, titled, Enemy at the Gates by Andrew Wheatcroft, Most of what I describe here related to the Ottoman military is from this book.

Enemy at the Gates, chronicles the final siege of Vienna in 1683.  The Ottomans first attempted to conquer Vienna in 1521.  They were driven back and Europe was spared.  Between 1521 and 1683, the Ottomans constantly attacked Europe.  They had many successes and many defeats.  The Ottomans reached as far north as Poland and Russia before being driven back.  By 1683, the Ottomans had Vienna in their eye again.  They figured that if Vienna fell then the rest of Europe would be theirs.  They put all their resources to accomplishing this goal.  At the time Vienna was part of the Habsburg Empire, later called Austria-Hungary Empire. World War I started here, in the Austria-Hungary Empire.

The Ottomans were feared all over Europe.  Their wars were a combination of religious fervor and desire to dominate the world for Islam.  The Christians also saw this as a religious war on them.  Although most Europeans were Christian, they rarely ever cooperated or supported other European Christians under attack by the Muslim Ottomans.  When they did cooperate, as when they created a coalition with the Holy League, Venice, Sicily, Sardinia, Spain and the Papal States for the purpose of stopping the Turks from attacking them.  On October 7, 1571 this coalition defeated an Ottoman fleet at Lepanto, in southern Greece.


The fact that the Christians failed to help each other had disastrous consequences.  The list is endless:  Byzantine Empire defeated in 1453; Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Armenia, to name a few all fell to the onslaught of the Ottoman Turks while their fellow Christians sat on their hands.  The Turks were so confident of success that in 1683 they attempted to conquer Vienna for the second time.  The Habsburg Empire was on their own. After months of a fierce siege, the Ottomans were close to victory when their neighbors, led by the king of Poland, John Sobieski  organized a relief army.  After gathering his forces Sobieski arrived just in time to save the exhausted and nearly beaten Viennese.  Without this help, most of Europe would have been Muslim then, and perhaps today.

The Ottoman army, led by a brilliant military commander, Kara Mustafa, performed incredibly well and the Habsburg troops fought brilliantly with heavy losses, however, they also inflicted very heavy casualties on the Turks.  After the Habsburgs were relieved by the coalition led by the King of Poland the Ottomans were finally defeated.  When the defeated Ottomans returned home, their commander was called in and told he had been condemned to death.  Wheatcroft, describes what happened:  "Kara Mustafa met his death with stoic Ottoman calm, as befitting a Koprulu.  First he removed his rich-trimmed robe, then his turban, then, with practiced ease, his executions flipped the soft cord over his head and tightened it around his neck, pulling steadily with all their strength." After his death they cut off his head. They continued to brutalize his body in detail that I'd rather leave off, because of its gruesomeness.  A man who had dedicated his life and talent to his country and was defeated through no fault of his own was rewarded by being executed like a common criminal.