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As the decades have passed, Kemal’s former opponents in the CUP, all dead by 1930, were resuscitated as heroes in the Turkish national consciousness. As a first step, on March 31, 1923, Turkey declared a general amnesty for all those accused of pla
After Ataturk’s death, the Kemalist bias against Christian minorities continued. In 1942, a special “wealth tax,” the Varlik Vergisi, was enacted by Ataturk’s successor, Erdal Inonu. It was “a form of state racketeering that found a particularly easy target in the vulnerable religious minorities.”2 The tax, never enforced against Muslims, was ruinous for any Christian or Jew who had somehow managed to hang on to property or a business in Turkey. Those who would not or could not pay the tax were literally packed off in chains to concentration camps in the mountains. There they spent their days breaking rocks. Even the historian Bernard Lewis, who has taken a stand against using the term “genocide” when describing the events of 1915 and 1916,3 has stated, “It soon became apparent that the really important data determining a taxpayer’s assessment were his religion and nationality.”4
The Turkish public accepted this brutal treatment of minorities because anti-Semitism and anger over war profiteering were trumpeted nonstop in the Turkish press. From an opinion piece:
If you don’t believe it, stop by a bazaar, a covered market. [A consignment of] wool arrived. You would order a sweater for your daughter but the shop owner tells you “All out!” Our Jewish compatriot has purchased it. Some printed linen has arrived. You would like to have a bathrobe made for your daughter-in-law, but the shop owner tells you “All out!” Our Jewish compatriot has purchased it. Rouge has arrived. There’s none left. Our Jewish compatriot has purchased it. Some powder has arrived. There’s none left. Our Jewish compatriot has purchased it. Socks have arrived. They’re all gone. Our Jewish compatriot has purchased them.5
Newspapers ran political cartoons featuring scowling hook-nosed Jews and Armenians licking their chops over obscene profits extracted from poor Muslims. Later, when middle-aged businessmen were sent to the labor camps, they were depicted in cartoons boasting of their skill at stacking rocks because they were so good at stacking gold.
Over a thousand men were arrested and sent to hard labor. Many died. At its peak in 1943, the program attracted the attention of foreign diplomats and press. According to a British embassy report: “Thirty-two wealthy Istanbul non-Moslems were deported to East Anatolia January 27 for hard outdoor labor as punishment for non-payment of individual assessments of the recent Turkish capital levy.… These 32 average over fifty-five years of age, although the legal age limit for deportees is fifty-five. They include 15 Jews, 8 Armenians, 9 Greeks and no Turks. The deportation was marked by the maximum psychological torture.”6 Scrutiny by the United States and Great Britain embarrassed Turkey into rescinding the law in late 1943. Turkish officials later denied that it had ever existed in the first place, painting a new layer of secrecy over the old.
When World War II ended, Soviet Armenians lobbied Moscow to reconsider its abrogation of pro-Armenia treaties with Turkey. (During World War I, Russia had occupied eastern Anatolia, land that the Armenians considered rightfully theirs. After World War I, the USSR relinquished this territory to Turkey.) Victorious against the Nazis, Armenians saw no reason why Soviet Armenia should not now reclaim these eastern Turkish territories. As Russia massed its troops along the Turkish-Armenian SSR border, preparing to reoccupy the “Armenian homelands” of Turkey, President Harry S. Truman interceded in a way that would fundamentally alter the world’s political landscape. Fearing that a Russian invasion of Turkey would destabilize the Middle East (read: threaten the oil supply) while furthering the spread of communism, Truman a
The era of the “Truman Doctrine” had begun. It bound Turkey and the United States into a strategic partnership. Though this bond has been strained at times, it has served the United States well and provided Turkey with a vast source of arms and funding. Not long after the doctrine was initiated, the United States began to pump money into the Republic of Turkey, with totals eventually rising to hundreds of millions of dollars a
After the war, as relations with the United States grew warmer, the harassment and destruction of non-Muslim communities continued. On the night of September 6–7, 1955, state-organized riots against Greek homes and businesses in Istanbul (triggered by an alleged terrorist bombing of Ataturk’s ancestral home in Salonika) brought a total end to the Greek presence in Turkey. “In relatively few hours, forty-five Greek communities in the greater Istanbul area had been savagely attacked by extensive arson and vandalism, and the larger Greek community lay ruined in its homes, shops and businesses, churches, cemeteries, medical clinics, schools and newspapers.”7 Following the attacks, many Greeks remaining in Turkey departed. The few Armenians living in Istanbul were also viciously attacked during these riots. The eradication of a Christian business presence in Turkey was complete.8
Though the actions of Nemesis committed during the 1920s had been far from legal, the ARF found ways to advertise its clandestine activities. Tehlirian’s autobiography, written in Armenian with Vahan Minakhorian (a Tashnag minister of education who had been among those chased out of Soviet Armenia in the 1920s) was published in Cairo in 1953. Soon other memoirs and interviews would follow. These remained part of underground lore but could not compensate for the fact that there had yet to be any real recognition of the genocide in any official capacity. Armenians everywhere feared that the memory of this colossal tragedy might be buried altogether by the Turkish government’s concerted disinformation effort.