FACT SHEET
The Historical Record on Turkey
Recent proclamations submitted to state and local government officials commemorating
"Turkish Independence Day", the "Turkish Zafer Holiday", and "Turkish Republic Day"
perpetuate a number of inaccuracies, omissions and historically revisionist statements
surrounding the fall of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, and Turkey's current role in
international affairs. The following information aims to set the record straight on a number of
these mythologies. As it appears that a concerted campaign is being waged by Turkish
Americans, instigated we believe by the Turkish government, to revise history and current
realities through these proclamations, please review and refer to the information provided below
in the event that you are confronted with a similar proclamation.
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
The events of 1915-1923 were not caused by civilians. It was the Turkish military, under
the direction of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, that caused these atrocities. Recognition of the
Turkish atrocities is crucial in helping to prevent their repetition. Unfortunately,
Turkey continues similar conduct these past decades against its Kurdish minority and
in Cyprus.

During World War I and the subsequent collapse of the Ottoman Empire, millions of
Armenian and Greek citizens of Turkey died at the hands of the Turkish military. The
occurrence of an Armenian Genocide and a Greek Pontian Genocide have been
disputed by the Turkish government. However, the historical facts stand as follows:
(a) The "millions" died primarily from the actions of the Turkish military. They were
primarily Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians, and not ethnic Turkish civilians. The
Armenia Genocide is often cited as the first Holocaust of the 20th century, and laid the
foundations for Adolph Hitler's killing of 11 million innocent victims in his concentration
camps, six million of which were European Jews.
(b) The "forced migration" was carried out by the Turkish military. It involved primarily the
Armenian, Greek and Assyrian communities with the goal of ethnically cleansing Turkey
of non-Turkish minorities.
(c) The Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923 by the Turkish military is well-documented by
historians and American officials including Ambassador Henry Morgenthau and
American missionaries who testified to the atrocities committed by the Turkish
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government. (See Morgenthau's book Ambassador Morgenthau's Story. Full text and
photos
available
online
at
http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~libsite/wwiwww/morgenthau/MorgenTC.htm).

Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, has been lionized as a pioneer of
democracy in Turkey. In fact, the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is a stain upon
western democratic principles and American values:
(a) Ataturk established a dictatorship on October 29, 1923, not a democracy.
(b) Ataturk led the assault against the Christians in Turkey and was responsible for his army
sacking and burning Smyrna (Izmir) in 1922 and the slaughter of more than 100,000
Greeks and 30,000 Armenian civilians. (See Marjorie Housepian Dobkin's book Smyrna
1922: The Destruction of a City.)
(c) In the 1930s, Turkey under its dictator Ataturk, committed genocide against its Pontian
Greek citizens.
(d) Ataturk also initiated in the 1930’s the human rights abuses against Turkey's Kurdish
citizens. For the past two decades, the Turkish military has committed ethnic cleansing,
crimes against humanity and genocide against its 12 million Kurdish minority. Since
1984, the Turkish military has killed 35,000 innocent civilian Kurds, assassinated 17,000
and destroyed 2,500 Kurdish villages, creating more than 2.5 million Kurdish refugees.
(See the former French Ambassador Eric Rouleau's article in Foreign Affairs,
November/December 2000, titled "Turkey's Dream of Democracy")
(e) In 1955, the Turkish government organized a pogrom of horrendous proportions against
its 100,000 Greek citizens in Istanbul which resulted in the destruction of over 4,000
Greek and Armenian shops, 700 homes and severely damaged 80 Greek churches. (See
New York Times; Sept. 16, 1995; p.1, col. 6). Today there are less than 3,000 Greek
citizens living in Istanbul.

While recent proclamations have promoted Turkey as a guarantor of stability and
democracy in its region, the following facts bear witness to a different reality:
(a) Turkish history in the 20th century includes a long list of well-documented atrocities,
crimes and genocide against its Armenian and Greek Christian populations and abuses
against its Jewish population, as well as more recent ethnic cleansing, crimes against
humanity and genocide against its 20 percent minority Kurdish population.
(b) Turkey's actions in the region have not and do not serve the cause of stability -- for
example, the occupation of Cyprus, the challenge to the legal status of Greece's
sovereignty in the Aegean and the economic blockade of Armenia.
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(c) Turkey's illegal invasion of Cyprus in 1974 with the illegal use of American-supplied
arms violated U.S. laws, the UN Charter, the NATO Charter and international law.
Turkey's continuing illegal occupation of 37.3 percent of Cyprus these past 27 years with
35,000 troops and 300 tanks is a stain on the honor and credibility of the U.S. and NATO.
(d) Most recently, Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit was quoted in the Turkish daily
newspaper Milliyet (November 11, 2001) as making the following threat if the Republic
of Cyprus is accepted into the European Union (EU) prior to a political settlement on the
problem:
“Two paths could be followed for Turkey´s integration with the TRNC. There are two
methods for this: (1) Total annexation, and (2) Autonomous status."
(e) Even though a member of the Council of Europe, Turkey has been found guilty of major
violations of the European Convention on Human Rights (i.e. Loizidou Case and
Interstate Application by Cyprus). The European Court of Human Rights in its decision
of May 10, 2001 in the case of Cyprus v. Turkey found Turkey in violation of 14 human
rights provisions of the Convention in its continuing occupation of Cyprus.
(f) Turkey does not allow full religious freedom for Christians including the Ecumenical
Patriarchate of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church. In 1971, Turkey illegally closed
the Halki Theological School of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and it has remained closed
ever since.
(g) Turkey is the cause of problems in the region, not the solution.

Turkey is often promoted as the only secular democracy in the Muslim world. However
the facts are otherwise:
(a) Turkey is not a western-style democracy. Under the Turkish constitution, the military
controls foreign affairs and national security policy, not civilians, and dominates
domestic affairs. The Turkish military are not under civilian control. No western
democratic state has such an arrangement.
(b) Turkey's actions in the region do not serve the cause of stability -- for example, the
occupation of Cyprus, the challenge to the legal status quo and Greece's sovereignty in
the Aegean and the economic blockade of Armenia.

Turkey has often been promoted as a staunch ally of the U.S. in every major conflict
since the Korean War. The facts are otherwise regarding Turkey's record from World
War I to the present, and also demonstrate Turkey's active support of the Soviet
military during the Cold War.
(a) Turkey fought against the U.S. and its allies in World War I.
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(b) Turkey broke its agreements with Britain, France and Greece to come to their assistance
and proclaimed "neutrality" in World War II during which she aided Nazi Germany by
providing Hitler with chromium needed for the production of armaments. This chromium
aid to Hitler prolonged World War II by seven months. (See Albert Speer Inside the
Third Reich.)
(c) The Korean War was fought under UN auspices and a number of countries sent token
forces of 5,000 troops.
(d) During the Cold War, Turkey was an unreliable ally who aided the Soviet military. As
long ago as 1974, strategic analyst Edward Luttwak wrote:
"No longer presenting a direct threat to the integrity of Turkish national
territory, and no longer demanding formal revision of the Straits
navigation regime, the Soviet Union has nevertheless successfully
exercised armed suasion over Turkey, even while maintaining a fairly
benevolent stance, which includes significant aid flows. Faced with a
sharp relative increase in Russian strategic and naval power, and eager to
normalize relations with their formidable neighbor, the Turks have chosen
to conciliate the Russians, and have been able to do so at little or no direct
cost to themselves. It is only in respect to strategic transit that Turkey is of
primary importance to the Soviet Union, and this is the area where the
concessions have been made. Examples of such deflection, where the
Russians are conciliated at the expense of western rather than specifically
Turkish interests, include the overland traffic agreement (unimpeded
Russian transit to Iraq and Syria by road), the generous Turkish
interpretation of the Montreux Convention, which regulates ship
movements in the Straits, and above all, the overflight permissions
accorded to Russian civilian and military aircraft across Turkish air space.
The alliance relationship in NATO and with the United States no doubt
retains a measure of validity in Turkish eyes, but it is apparent that its
supportive effect is not enough to counteract Russian suasion, especially
since the coercion is latent and packaged in a benevolent, diplomatic
stance." (E. Luttwak, the Political Uses of Sea Power 60-61, 1974)
The following are several examples of Turkey's unreliability as an ally for U.S. strategic
purposes:

During the 1973 Mid-East War, predating the Turkish invasion of Cyprus by one
year, Turkey refused the U.S. military overflight rights to resupply Israel and granted
the USSR overland military convoy rights to resupply Syria and Iraq, and military
overflight permission to resupply Egypt. See E. Luttwak, The Political Uses of Sea
Power 60-61 (1974). A member of the Turkish Foreign Policy Institute in Ankara
wrote:
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"During the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, Moscow's overflights of Turkish
airspace were tolerated. On the other hand, during the same Middle
East conflict, Turkey refused to allow the U.S. refueling and
reconnaissance facilities during the American airlift to Israel."
Karaosmanoglu, "Turkey's Security and the Middle East," Foreign
Affairs 157, 163 (Fall 1983).

In the 1977-1978 conflict in Ethiopia, Turkey granted the Soviets military overflight
rights to supply the pro-Soviet Ethiopian communists under Col. Mengistu, who
eventually prevailed. C. Meyer, Facing Reality -- From World Federalism to the CIA,
276-80 (1980).

Over NATO objections, Turkey allowed three Soviet aircraft carriers, the Kiev on
July 18, 1976, the Minsk on Feb. 25, 1979 and the Novorosiisk on May 16, 1983,
passage rights through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits into the Mediterranean
in violation of the Montreux Convention of 1936. See generally Wash. Post, July 19,
1976, at A16, col. 1; New York Times, Feb. 26, 1979, at A13, col. 1. The Soviet ships
posed a formidable threat to the U.S. Sixth Fleet.

In 1979, Turkey refused to allow the U.S. to send 69 marines and six helicopters to
American military facilities at Incirlik in Turkey for possible use in evacuating
Americans from Iran. New York Times, Feb. 13, 1979, at A8, col. 3.

Again, in 1979 Turkey refused to allow the U.S. request to allow U-2 intelligence
flights (for Salt II verification) over Turkish airspace "unless Moscow agreed." New
York Times, May 15, 1979, at A1, col. 3. This position was voiced over a period of
months by Turkish officials, the opposition party and the military Chief of Staff, Gen.
Kenan Evren. See id.

In May, 1989, Turkey rejected and American request to inspect an advanced MIG-29
Soviet fighter plane, flown by a Soviet defector to Turkey. New York Times, May 28,
1989, at A12, col. 1.

The Turkish government refused repeated American requests for the installation of
antennas in Turkey concerning 11 transmitters whose broadcasts would have been
directed primarily to the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. The
initiative by the United States Department of State sought to improve reception of
programs broadcast by Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and the Voice of America.

Turkey further damaged NATO by vetoing NATO's effort to put military bases on
various Greek islands in the Aegean for defensive purposes against the Soviet navy.
(e) In 1973, Turkey lifted unilaterally the ban on the cultivation of opium and is a major
trafficker of drugs to the U.S.
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(f) Turkey did not join the U.S.-led Coalition in the Persian Gulf War.
(g) Even though a member of the Council of Europe, Turkey has been found guilty of major
violations of the European Convention on Human Rights (i.e. Loizidou Case and
Interstate Application by Cyprus). The European Court of Human Rights in its decision
of May 10, 2001 in the case of Cyprus v. Turkey found Turkey in violation of 14 human
rights provisions of the Convention in its continuing occupation of Cyprus. Turkey has
refused to pay Ms. Loizidou the judgement for damages decreed by the European
Commission.
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