Djemal Ahmed Quotes

The Byzantine emissary had pointed out that Mehmed’s predecessors had signed a treaty agreeing to “consult” with Constantinople before building any fortified structure in the area surrounding Constantinople. Mehmed was only 19 years old at this time. His intention f building a fort was to have a platform from which to attack and capture Constantinople itself which he did 2 years later. Earlier, the Eastern Roman Empire was much stronger and the Ottoman sultans were more cautious in dealing with them. However, the various Christian factions were all feuding with each other, and Mehmed II, despite his youth, was much better organized and was a better leader than his predecessors.

He conquered Korea in an act of blatant aggression, but got bogged down in a complicated occupation. He died before the Chinese part of the plan could be carried out. However, ever since China, Korea and other Asian countries have distrusted Japan and her aggressive intentions and history. The horrible Japanese record of aggression and atrocities of WWII solidified that anti Japanese sentiment which still exists to some extent.

A large part of the Middle East and the now “Arab” states used to be a very large Jewish State. Jews had lived in the Palestinian area and expanded from there, also using conquest as all other nations had and even occasionally, forced conversion, to establish the Jewish State. This was destroyed by the Romans and the Jews have not had a state until 1948 when the UN voted to create Israel.

At its largest, the Ottoman Turkish Empire included all of the Middle East, most of North Africa, much of Russia, and Europe right up to the walls of Vienna.

He conquered Korea in an act of blatant aggression, but got bogged down in a complicated occupation. He died before the Chinese part of the plan could be carried out. However, ever since China, Korea and other Asian countries have distrusted Japan and her aggressive intentions and history. The horrible Japanese record of aggression and atrocities of WWII solidified that anti-Japanese sentiment which still exists to some extent.

This newspaper was an English language organ published by General Allenby’s British and Allied forces in the Middle East. Prior to the war, the Middle East was all part of the Ottoman Empire. However, the Ottoman Turks sided with Germany in WWI and their Middle East dominions were targets for the allied military strategy.

The Ottoman Turks had just conquered the city of Constantinople including the Eastern Roman Empire in their domain. They would be the dominant power in the area until the First World War when they made the mistake of siding with the Germans and the Ottoman Empire was broken up in the Treaty of Versailles.

This quotation illustrates that the Muslim conquest and attempt to destroy and desecrate the symbols of other religions was not limited to Christianity—it was ALL other religions. In that sense, Christianity and Islam of the period were very similar at the time—intolerance to the point of murder and destruction of any “heathen” religion.

Ottoman Turkish Sultan Mehmed II Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini. 6 years earlier, the Ottoman Turks, had captured Byzantium (Constantinople, later Istanbul), the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Pope had called together the rulers and leaders of Christendom to organize a common defense in this war of civilizations. This was the period where Christian Islamophobia began. The Muslims had a religious duty to convert the rest of the world to Islam and adopt Islamic law (Sharia). However, so did the Christians. Sultan Mehmed II, when he conquered Byzantium, did not require the conversion of the Christians in the great city. He took the greatest churches, but by and large left the Christians to worship in their own Churches. The Muslims at the time were far more tolerant of Christians (and Jews) than the Christians were of Muslims (and Jews). Like in the 21st century, there was much Islamic doctrine and reality to be worried about, but not all the Muslims were as rabid and extreme as Eastern paranoia suggested in the 15th century or the 21st.

Greece had always coveted Anatolia which was a part of the Ottoman Empire but had been in antiquity a Greek dominated area. Further, people of Greek ethnicity and culture, who hundreds of years ago use to be the vast majority were after the hundreds of years of Ottoman rule and migration were then the largest minority in Anatolia. After the Turks lost the First World War as a consequence of their allying with Germany, and had been stripped of its Arab territories and was determined to keep the territories that they still had. Also, Turkey had just undergone a revolution and the old order was displaced. Venizelos and the Greeks saw this as an opportunity to get back Anatolia and sent a military invasion force to land at Smyrna (Ismir to the Turks), the largest city of Anatolia where despite the Greek minority in all of Anatolia, Greeks were a small majority in Smyrna and many of the ethnic Greeks not only aided the Greeks once they had landed but participated in atrocities against the minority of Turkish Muslims of Smyrna. The Ambassador was then trying to rationalize the heavy hand with which the Turks dealt with the indigenous Greeks many of whom were guilty and many of whom were not.

1st Viscount Milner

The neo-conservative expectation of the American invasion of Iraq almost a century later was essentially the same, and the false expectation led to the same kind of failure as the George W. Bush debacle of the early 21st century.

She is a leading American Arab who is a Syrian expatriate. The examples she gives in the beginning of the quotations are relatively recent atrocities where Muslims have attacked and brutally murdered other Muslims. She articulates one of the theories to explain the Islamic propensity to brutality and violence that the religion itself, when taught literally which it so often is, actually produces an inclination and glorification of brutal violence and develops a tolerance and acceptance of Islamic violence.

Earl of Cromer

In contrast to Queen Victoria and the Conservative Government before him, Gladstone opposed most colonial expansionism. However, in a policy analysis that in later years would come to be called “the Domino Theory,” Gladstone felt compelled to put down the revolt.

the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

At the time, Palestine was technically Turkish territory. Turkey was one of the defeated axis powers in World War I. England, as part of the World War I peace treaties, had control over Palestine as well as most of the rest of the Middle East.

The culture of Iraq and the Desert tribes made raiding and looting of other villages or travelers or caravans a way of life. The British occupiers were determined to put an end to it and Harris, a young officer, developed the retaliation of bombing the village of the raiders and their warlords. This appears to be the beginning of destroying of houses in the Middle East as a method of retaliation and punishment which would be adopted so well by the Israelis as a humane method and they often quoted Harris saying: “we put them to the maximum amount of inconvenience, without physical hurt, and they soon stopped their raiding and looting.”

“Lebensraum” was a German expansionist concept of the time which has no good English translation. Literally, it means “living room”. The Germans had this notion that the German race and nation had to have more land to accommodate the growth of the German people. And because the Germans were a superior race, they were entitled to the land surrounding Germany in which to have Germans grow and thrive. The “inferior” peoples who lived on the land could be exterminated so that Germany would have this expansion room. The “Death’s Head units” were special German elite troops who used the Death’s Head as a symbol on their uniforms. Some of the Generals were concerned that the rest of the world would condemn Germany and possibly interfere if they exterminated the Poles. Hitler pointed to the example of the Turks who had killed most of the Armenians in the Armenian Genocide in the early 20th century. They got away with it with no outside interference, and there were no international consequences for Turkey. Hitler, convinced that the Armenian genocide was the precedent, thought Germany could easily get away with murdering the Gypsies, seriously handicapped, homosexuals, Russians, Poles and Jews. For other quotations on the Armenian Genocide, see {51838}, {638251}, {620602}, {620603}, {620604}, {620605}, {620600}, and {620606}