{"id":7161,"date":"2014-03-27T10:42:38","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T17:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7161"},"modified":"2014-03-27T10:42:38","modified_gmt":"2014-03-27T17:42:38","slug":"turkeys-latest-jihad-on-christian-armenians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/turkeys-latest-jihad-on-christian-armenians\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey’s Latest Jihad on Christian Armenians"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Far from being repentant of the\u00a0Armenian Genocide<\/a>, Turkey, under the leadership of Prime Minister Erdogan, is again targeting Armenians; is again causing their<\/p>\n

\"Turkey-sponsored
Turkey-sponsored jihadis pose with Islamic flag in conquered Christian Armenian town of Kessab<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

death and dislocation.<\/p>\n

In the early morning hours of March 21, al-Qaeda linked Islamic jihadis crossed into Syrian territory from the Turkish border and\u00a0launched a jihad<\/a>\u00a0on the Christian\/Armenian town of Kessab.\u00a0\u00a0 Among other thing, \u201cSnipers targeted the civilian population and launched mortar attacks on the town and the surrounding villages.\u201d\u00a0 Reportedly eighty people were killed.<\/p>\n

The jihadis later made a\u00a0video<\/a>\u00a0touring the devastated town.\u00a0 No translation is needed, as the main phrase shouted throughout is Islam\u2019s triumphant war cry, \u201cAllahu Akbar\u201d (or,\u00a0according to Sen. John McCain<\/a>\u2019s translation, \u201cthank God\u201d).<\/p>\n

Eyewitnesses say the jihadis crossed the Turkish border into Syria, \u201copenly passing through Turkish military barracks. According to Turkish media reports, the attackers carried their injured back to Turkey for treatment in the town of Yayladagi.\u201d<\/p>\n

About two-thousand Armenians were evacuated to safer areas in neighboring Basit and Latakia. \u00a0Several of these families are currently living inside the churches of these towns. Ten to fifteen families with members too elderly to flee remained in Kessab, their fate currently unknown.<\/p>\n

Syrian troops launched a counteroffensive, but al-Qaeda linked jihadis \u201conce again entered the town of Kessab, took the remaining Armenian families hostage, desecrated the town\u2019s three Armenian churches, pillaging local residences and occupying the town and surrounding villages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reports further\u00a0indicate<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cthe attacks of the al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra organization and the Islamic Front was supported with artillery fire from Turkish artillery units.\u00a0 A Syrian MIG-23 war plane which attended to the operation towards the terror groups was shot down by Turkish Air Forces on 23 March.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bashar al-Assad naturally denounced before the United Nations Turkey\u2019s support for terrorists\u2014even as some European leaders, such as\u00a0Denmark\u2019s Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt<\/a>, were praising Turkey for its supposedly increased democracy and human rights, \u00a0and supporting the Islamic nation\u2019s inclusion into the European Union, indifferent to the fact that Erdogan banned Twitter in Turkey after tweets exposed his government\u2019s corruptions.<\/p>\n

Nor are Armenians and others missing the significance of Turkey\u2019s role.\u00a0 In a written statement, the Armenian National Committee-International condemned Turkey\u2019s active role in aiding and abetting Christian persecuting jihadi groups:<\/p>\n

For months, we have warned the international community of\u00a0the imminent threat posed by extremist foreign fighters against the Christian minority population in Syria<\/strong>.\u00a0 These vicious and unprompted attacks against the Armenian-populated town and villages of Kessab are the latest examples of this violence,actively encouraged by neighboring Turkey<\/strong>. We call upon all states with any influence in the Syrian conflict to use all available means to stop these attacks against the peaceful civilian population of Kessab, to allow them to return to their homes in safety and security.\u00a0In the last one hundred years, this is the third time that the Armenians are being forced to leave Kessab and in all three cases, Turkey is the aggressor or on the side of the aggressors<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>[emphasis added].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On March 24,\u00a0 Samvel Farmanyan, a member of the Armenian National Assembly, traveled to Syria to meet with Kessab\u2019s dislocated Armenians: \u201cI should say\u00a0the impression was shocking<\/a>,\u201d he said. \u00a0\u201cThe situation is like the one we have read about in textbooks and literature about the Armenian Genocide, in the memories of Genocide survivors\u2026.\u00a0 These are tragic events, which cannot but bring forth obvious parallels with the events of 100 years ago\u2014the Armenian Genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Video interviews<\/a>\u00a0with the recently dislocated Armenians of Syria further document this sentiment.\u00a0 \u00a0One elderly man says \u201cWe\u2019ve been here 97 years since they slaughtered us in Turkey.\u00a0 These al-Qaeda \u2018rebel\u2019 groups are the grandsons of Abdul Hamid\u201d (the Ottoman sultan who committed the first\u00a0systematic genocide of Armenians<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Nor were these early massacres limited to Armenians but rather targeted Christians in general.\u00a0 As one Syrian-American woman points out in writing to me just now: \u201cThe Hamidian Massacres (1894-1896) led to the mass exodus of Christians from the Levant to the USA. My grandfather was one of those who fled persecution. His father was shot, by an Ottoman Turk, in front of their ancestral home. Seven children were left fatherless. My grandfather, the eldest son, left Syria, and traveled as an indentured man, through Mexico, to find freedom and safety in the USA. The entire family eventually joined him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such is the continuity and interconnectivity of history.\u00a0 A century ago, Armenians fled to Kessab to avoid being massacred by Turkey. Today, their descendants are fleeing from Kessab to avoid being massacred by terrorists supported by Turkey.<\/p>\n

Years, decades, and centuries go by; narratives and rhetoric change; utopian ideals and materialistic rationalizations become ubiquitous.\u00a0 Yet the same story, the same enmity\u2014Turkish to Armenian, or more distilled yet, Muslim to Christian\u2014lives on, even if in different contexts and formats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com\u00a0 Far from being repentant of the\u00a0Armenian Genocide, Turkey, under the leadership of Prime Minister Erdogan, is again targeting Armenians; is again causing their death and dislocation. In the early morning hours of March 21, al-Qaeda linked Islamic jihadis crossed into Syrian territory from the Turkish border and\u00a0launched a jihad\u00a0on the Christian\/Armenian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[123,225,59,227,230],"tags":[161,1017,1061,1041,1038,478],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Rv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6973,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/al-qaeda-the-defender-of-christians\/","url_meta":{"origin":7161,"position":0},"title":"Al Qaeda: The Defender of Christians?","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com\u00a0 Muslim persecution of Christians is the \u201cAchilles Heel\u201d of the global Islamic movement\u2019s image\u2014the surest way of exposing its supremacist and intolerant elements and one of the main reasons the major media and establishment rarely report or address it. 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