Ibrahim Kurtulus writes US State Department, shares thoughts on Rayburn's The Greatest Disaster

A Turkish-American, Ibrahim Kurtulus, has shared his thoughts on the 2002 thesis titled “The Greatest Disaster: The Failure of Great Britain’s Ottoman Empire Policy, 1914″ and which was later released as a book.

While expressing his thoughts in the letter addressed to Joel D. Rayburn, Special Representative for Syria Engagement Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. State Department, on Wednesday December 2, 2020, Kurtulus noted that the book was a well-researched work.

Below is a copy of the letter written by Kurtulus.

Dear Mr. Rayburn,

Warm Greetings. I ran into your 2002 thesis (The Greatest Disaster: The Failure of Great Britain’s Ottoman Empire Policy, 1914, which was later released as a book), and we wished to share our thoughts; then we want to wind up with a ‘big point’,” the letters begins.

This was well-researched work, and you are to be commended. How interesting to learn there was a Briton of honor named Limpus whose efforts to strengthen the Dardanelles ironically thwarted his own nation’s invasion efforts. Also, to our knowledge, the Germans gifted the Goeben and Breslau battleships, yet you interestingly wrote they were sold.

Not that this subject is on your mind at this stage of your life, yet as a matter of interest, since you wrote about the “assumption that the Ottoman Empire’s partition was foreordained,” while you pointed out the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907 — which sealed Turkey’s fate of being sent “bag and baggage” to the hell from where Turks came, the three Entente Powers had engaged in March 1915’s secret Treaty of London in order to divvy up the geography. The later secret agreement of St. Jean de Maurienne included Italy as another land-robber.

The Rebirth Of Turkey by Clair Price, 1923, made note of such details, and your bibliography was sparse regarding such even-handed works.”

The reason why we are contacting you is because although you come across as a fair man, you were not able to escape the deep “Terrible Turk” prejudice that has been ingrained in many Westerners for centuries.

The Turk in America: The Creation of an Enduring Prejudice (2010), by Prof. Justin McCarthy, provides a clearer understanding; from p. 8: “The minds of the missionaries were formed by the universally negative image of Turks and Islam prevalent in America. The missionaries in turn widened and deepened the prejudice of Americans. For most of the nineteenth-century missionaries were virtually the only Americans who lived in the Ottoman Empire and reported on it to Americans back home”

While mentioning Gladstone, you failed to give the picture that at the root of British actions lay “The fanatical hatred towards the Moslem shown by a large section of the Christian community in England” as British Captain C. B. Norman explained in Armenia and the Campaign of 1877 (London, 1880).

“Of course there were exceptions (as Limpus), but many Britons came to regard Turks as unfit for the human race. (The prejudice is shockingly as alive as ever in the West, as shown by the hysterical reaction last year to Turkey’s intervention in Northern Syria, where Bernie Sanders and CNN’s Carl Bernstein felt the idea was “slaughter,” and Mayor Pete opined “genocide,” reinforcing the “Terrible Turk” stereotype.)

It was almost comical when you wrote about the ‘surrealism’ that resulted after the suspended capitulations, regarding how ‘the European embassies in Constantinople… took the extraordinary step of sending a collective protest.’ That was because Turks were not regarded as equal human beings; the usual rules did not apply to these barbarians, and still do not apply.

Before moving on to our bigger point, a few examples of how your prejudices were on display. Simply from that prior line, you wouldn’t call Muhammad Ali “Cassius Clay”; the name of that city was changed after its conquest 500 years prior, and while the West was in denial over the loss of this Christian symbol and rudely kept calling it “Constantinople,” there you were, in 2002, still refusing to call the city by what the owners called it.

It was not that you were unaware of this anti-Turkish prejudice; you even used the word “Turcophobia” once (and just once, while applying it only to “Gladstone and his morally minded followers”), but notice how in one of the few instances where you referred to this deeply-rooted hatefulness when you wrote “Lowther and Fitzmaurice also displayed a degree of racialism toward the Young Turks,” your example was “Gabriel Effendi, the Ottoman Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1912,” whom the Britons criticized as a cowardly Armenian.

That was remarkable; you indicated Britons were racists not because they insulted Turks, but you were bothered only in this rare instance when they insulted a more precious human, that is, an Armenian. (Gabriel Nouradungian continued in this role, the high-ranking equivalent of our secretary of state — at a time when a Catholic could barely be elected as a dog catcher in our country ¬— until 1913, with WWI beginning in 1914. Since the “Armenian genocide” is most popularly said to have been perpetrated because of racial hatred against Armenians, isn’t it interesting how such an intense hatred could have developed overnight? Not incidentally, Gabriel would go on to betray his country, as with almost every other traitorous Dashnak-following Ottoman-Armenian who engaged in a rebellion that was widespread.)

Meanwhile, the Europeans treated the Turks as dirt, and then when the Turks finally (after exercising decades-long patience) started calling them out, you wrote, “Displaying a certain degree of xenophobia, the C.U.P. intended eventually to push the Europeans out of the empire.” So you made racists out of the Turks.

You referred to the “Armenian massacres” of the 1890s (without mentioning Armenian crimes from that time; here is what was really going on) as though the central government targeted Armenians for implied extermination (which is what the later “Armenian genocide” is about), while there is absolutely no evidence for “intent” (and in fact, the factual evidence makes the idea out to be impossible); if you had reason to explore the “genocide” from “1915,” the odds are you would have similarly not wasted a syllable on what was the real systematic extermination campaign perpetrated during those dark years of WWI, when Armenians systematically did away with over half-a-million, between 1914-20 and beyond. (You likely would have missed, among so many other reliable references, the 1919 report of Niles and Sutherland, two Turk-contemptuous Americans sent by the Near East Relief to help the West’s preferred people.)

In regard to “Bulgarian Horrors” hokum such as his provided examples of cartloads of human heads and crowds of women burnt in a barn, Istanbul Ambassador Sir Layard cabled in 1877 to Foreign Secretary Lord Derby: “There are… I grieve to say, Englishmen, who boast that they invented these stories with the object of ‘writing down’ Turkey.”

It appears you also missed the 1916 booklet (The Armenians) of another honorable Briton, C. F. Dixon-Johnson, where he exposed what you gave credence to in pages 21 and 68-69, the Gladstonian idea that Terrible Turks couldn’t stop their compulsion to kill innocents (without mention, of course, of murders the Bulgarians perpetrated when they rebelled).

Speaking of Bulgarians, Prof. Justin McCarthy states: “What happened to the Turks in the Balkans was one of the worst things that has ever happened to human beings; it’s one of the greatest disasters that has ever been — and yet no one knows about it.”

(According to his Death and Exile from 1995, which was available at the time you wrote your thesis, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro eliminated 600,000+ and chased 800,000+ more from homes inhabited for centuries.) While bringing up the 1912-13 First Balkan War several times, is it not interesting, Mr. Rayburn, that while you made a point of referring to “Bulgarian atrocities” and “Armenian massacres” elsewhere in your thesis, the many victims of the Bulgarians and the Armenians meant nothing to you.

On p. 122, you wrote about how Talat Pasha was “self-serving” and “happy to relieve (himself) of culpability by claiming (he) had been forced into joining the Central Powers,” by referring to the same source (his memoirs), you contradicted yourself on p. 94 by revealing how Talat felt the C.U.P. “had its own interests in mind, and were not simply the German puppets.” (Interesting usage of “culpability,” by the way; what exactly was he culpable of, trying to save his nation from being wiped off the face of the earth?) (Of interest: British intelligence may have been behind Talat’s assassination.)

By a similar token, you wrote, “the Young Turks were, above all, Ottoman nationalists who were desperate to save their Empire.” Was that not their duty, given how they were their nation’s leaders? Note the double-standard; when Japan attacked and FDR declared war, our WWII era president would not be labeled as a crazed, flag-waving “nationalist.”

You may see how your anti-Turkish prejudices surfaced throughout your thesis, even though you attempted fairness. This prejudice is embedded; even those who would not consider themselves as “racist” feel this bigotry.

You are an ex-military man. We are including for you a detailed letter that was composed for Naval Postgraduate School, criticizing how the U.S. military is affirming the unproven and hatred-affirming “Armenian genocide.” As pointed out in this letter, Turkey has been our country’s staunchest ally for decades. (As the most dramatic example, Turkey saved our regiments from getting wiped out in Korea, while suffering severe casualties; none of our other allies have done anything close, not Britain, and certainly not Israel.) Finally, there was one time Turkey refused to obsequiously lend us a hand, by not joining our illegal war in Iraq, and since then, whatever tiny goodwill there was toward Turkey has vanished. It has been “open season” on Turkey, ever since.

For the personnel of the U.S. military to paint Turkey as a villain is so highly dishonorable. Yet why should the people of our armed forces be any less prejudiced than everybody else?
This was the bigger point of why we wished to contact you, Mr. Rayburn. We are including for you an analysis of the “Armenian genocide” resolutions which passed last year by bigoted legislators who blindly signed what the Armenian lobbies prepared for them. In addition is a recent letter to Joe Biden, who, along with Kamala Harris, are the greatest “race preferrers” while they portray themselves as “anti-racists.” (Making them far more influential than card-carrying racists.)

The main purpose of the mythical “Armenian genocide” is to perpetuate hatred against Turks, both past and present. As you will discover, the world of genocide causes tangible damage to society. (Can you imagine schools being recruited to teach the worst of blacks and Jews?) Since you come across as an honorable man, we want you to learn about this subject. If you come to agree the charge is a farce, we hope you will do whatever you can in the high circles you are involved in to expose what is nothing less than a latter-day example of McCarthyism.

We wish you the best, especially should the new administration determine for you not to continue in your current role.

Sincerely,

Ibrahim Kurtulus