Writing about Caucasia, from Britain, is not that exotic; I know. But this is an issue that I was planning to write a few things about for some time.
I am sure most of you have already heard about Armenian Genocide, that was commited during the last years of Ottoman Empire (1915-1916) upon orders of a clique of generals who were running the state at the time. The estimates about lives lost, in general, vary between half a million to a million. Of course, this was not an isolated incident during World War I. Upon the loss of extensive territories in Balkan Peninsula, forced migration and massacre of several hundreds of thousands Muslims of any kind (Turks, Pomaks - Bulgarian speaking Muslims-, Bosnians, Albanians, Macedonians) whose numbers amounted to 1.5 million before Turkish-Russian War of 1878; a panic took hold of the Ottoman Palace: Possible loss of whole Anatolia under the pressure of Western powers . This panic was further amplified by Armenian gangs acting as guerillas inside Turkish borders and attacking villages as front-troops of Russian army. Palace was not entirely wrong in its guess, as proven in Treaty Sevres (1920) that it was forced to sign in the aftermath of WW1: Turks were given of Anatolia nothing but a small circle around the centre of the peninsula, with no exit whatsoever to Mediterrenean and Aegean Seas. For those who want to have a look at; here is the designed "yellow" land for Turks at the time, and rest of country being partitioned among Armenia, Greece, Britain, France and Italy. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/TreatyOfSevres_(corrected).PNG
Long story short; just like British say "Cometh the hour, cometh the man". Another Ottoman General called M. Kemal (later named Ataturk) who never got along well with those who ran the country during WW1; with the support of other nationalist generals in army, summoned a parliament in Ankara, and defied the Treaty of Sevres. With limited arms and logistics but with smart battlefield tactics, in 3 years time he and his comrades pushed the invasion off, and established a new republic (1923). The new republic, under M. Kemal's leadership, aimed to build a nation-state from the remnants of Ottomans Empire, and for that reason, agreed on a huge population exchange with Greece. Thousands of Greeks left Anatolia in exchange for Turks leaving Greek Peninsula.
Going back to story of ethnic massacre of Armenians in Anatolia, the military clique that was responsible of death of millions of Armenians, had been tried in Ottoman courts in the aftermath of war, some of them were executed. Some of them, who made it to Europe somehow, had been assasinated by Armenian freelancers; and got no punishment whatsoever from any European justice system for doing so. M. Kemal many times cursed those who were responsible of the bloody acts against Armenians, but remarked that "It was a crime commited by Ottoman Empire, not by the new Republic." In fact, he enlisted two Armenians as MPs from his own party in elections.
As I have pointed out earlier, Armenian genocide was not the only ethnic cleansing that happened during the timeline that led to WW1. There was, for example, "vaporization" of nearly 2 million Muslim Caucasians by Russian Empire (Circassians, Cheveneburi - Georgian speaking Muslims-, Abhazians, Turks again) from their native lands between 1870-1915.
The disastrous events for Muslims in Caucasia starts with the surrender of famous Imam Shamil in 1859. In following years, Russian Tsar Alexandr II Nicolaevich ordered his new muslim subjects either to convert to Orthodox Christianity, or to leave, or to face the "consequences". Under the advantageous terms of Treaty of Kucuk Kaynarca, Russia has accelerated ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Caucasia, and never ever received any kind of warning or critic form any Western power.
I am sure most you have not even heard about that, have you? Well I did. Mainly from my grandmothers, one of them being a Cheveneburi, the other being a Circassian. Their grandparents were either murdered or forced to flee their home land, only to die on the way because of starvation and disease. In many ways very similar to what happened to Armenians under Ottoman rule. Many Russian intellectuals of the time, including famous writer of "Father and Sons", Turgeniev, were publishing articles advocating cleanse of Russia from Muslim plague.
Similar bloodshed occurred during the 1877-1878 Turco-Russian War, in Balkans. Supported by Russian army, Orthodox Bulgarian and Serbian gangs launched strikes on Muslim villages and cleaned half a million of Muslims (most of them being Turks and Bosnians) in a few months. I am sure you have not heard about that either. But then why have not people heard about these dark stains in human history as much as they heard about Armenian Genocide?
That brings me to my central discussion: Are some human beings murdered are simply more "human" than the others, so we are reminded of their murders? The Muslims murdered during the events I mentioned, were not human so that we do not remember of them? How about 1 million of Ukrainians murdered by Soviet Government between 1932-1933? How about Algerian Genocide committed by France between 1954-1962? I am sure you have not heard much about these either. Or much recently, Serbs and Bosnians killed by Croatia during Yugoslavian War? Everybody blames the Serbs because it is easy and it is obvious. But have you heard about anybody asking Croatia to face its crimes (google Gospic massacre and Ahmici massacre)? Not only nobody asks Croatia anything about these, the country is on a fast-track to EU accession at the moment. Irony.
As long as the dark stains of humanity will not be collectively confessed and and faced, as long as some people will use the blood of their ancestors as political capital in the marketing process of their identity, as long as some countries will use history as a political weapon on other countries; as long as we will not simply realize that the blood that spilled throughout ages, whichever ethnic background it belonged to, was indeed my blood and your blood; humanity will never have peace.
John Donne said a long time ago what I would like to write as a conclusion, in his "Meditation XVII: Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" (1623), later quoted in the preface of Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls?": "No man is an island, entire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the continent, a part of the maine; if a cloud be washed away by the sea, europe is lesse, as well as if a promontorie were, as well as if a mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."
