Nagorno-Karabakh

Nagorno Karabakh, or Artsakh, is a disputed territory in the southern Caucasus. While officially part of Azerbaijan, it has self-governed since 1994. Its ethnic Armenian population contest Azerbaijani rule. In October 2020 Azerbaijan mobilized to retake the region. Neighbouring Armenia supports Nagorno-Karabakh while Turkey supports Azerbaijan. The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War is the first international conflict of the 2020s.

Nestled in the Caucasus Mountains, between Russia and the Middle East, Nagorno-Karabakh is a green and mountainous land home to over 4,000 ancient monasteries and forts. Its name roughly means ‘Upper Karabakh. While Christian Armenians have the oldest presence in the region, Arabs, Persians, Turks, Azeris and Russians have also ruled. Both Azerbaijan and Armenia claim it as their own.

Timeline:

• < 180: Indigenous states
• 180 – 387: Great Armenia
• 387 – 600s: Sassanian Empire (Persian)
• 600s – 821: Arab Caliphates
• 821 – 1261: Kingdom of Artsakh (Armenian)
• 1261 – 1500s: Principality of Khachen (Armenian)
• 1500s – 1806: Five Melikdoms (Armenian governors ruling under Persian and Turkic overlords)
• 1806 – 1918: Russian Empire
• 1918 – 1991: Soviet Union
• 1991 – 1994: Disputed between Azerbaijan and Armenia
• 1994: Republic of Artsakh (de facto)

The Soviets ended fighting between Armenians and Azeris in Nagorno-Karabakh when they took over in the 1920s. To divide-and-rule, they made Nagorno-Karabakh a part of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. By 1991 Nagorno-Karabakh was 25% Azeri and 75% Armenian. 

In 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh voted to join Armenia, then still a part of the Soviet Union. Both Azerbaijan and the Soviet Union rejected the move and when the latter collapsed in 1991 both Azerbaijan and separatists took arms. Armenia backed the rebels and a bloody war ensued. Both sides committed atrocities and over 40,000 died. In 1994 they called a ceasefire. Azerbaijani forces withdrew from Nagorno-Karabakh, leaving it under rebel control but officially Azerbaijani. Low-level conflict continued for the next 25 years.

On September 27th 2020 Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev launched a surprise rocket attack on Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia retaliated and immediately called the draft. President Erdogan of Turkey promised to aid Azerbaijan by whatever means necessary. For the past nine days, Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh exchanged rocket fire with Azerbaijan. Civilians have been the main victims and both sides have used cluster bombs, which international law prohibits.

Armenia is not without allies of its own. As a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), Russia is its greatest ally. Said nation has pushed for a peace settlement but has allegedly deployed mercenaries to Armenia’s aide. Russia does not recognize Nagorno-Karabakh however and therefore will likely only intervene if Armenia itself is attacked.

Turkey is already engaged in proxy conflicts with Russia in Syria and Libya and is pushing territorial claims against Greece and Cyprus. They have deployed Syrian Jihadi mercenaries to Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkey shares an old rivalry with Russia and a bitter relationship with Armenia ever since the genocide of 1916. Kurdish militias in Iraq and Syria have also rallied to Armenia’s side. Israel supplies weapons to Azerbaijan, including high-tech ‘kamikaze drones’.

Iran is pulled by both sides. On one hand, Iran has 2 million Azeri citizens and Azerbaijan is a fellow Shia Muslim country while Armenia is Christian. On the other hand, Iran and Armenia have long been close while ally Russia backs Armenia and rivals Turkey and Israel back Azerbaijan. At worst, this conflict could spin out of control and put regional powers Turkey and Russia into direct confrontation. 

No countries officially recognize Nagorno-Karabakh’s statehood except the fellow Caucasian disputed territories of Abkhazia, South Transnistria and North Ossetia. It shares close ties to Armenia and animosity with Azerbaijan.

Karabakh Armenians plead their right to self-determination. Azerbaijanis, meanwhile view Artsakh as an illegitimate rebel state who unlawfully displaced its Azeri inhabitants in the 1990s. As the international community sees Nagorno-Karabakh as an Azerbaijani province, they have every right to take it back. While this may be a repeat of the first Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, both sides now have stronger militaries and regional politics are far more fraught.

Sources: Ahval News, BBC, Lonely Planet, Mountainous Karabakh, The Nation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

See Also:

• Disputed Territories:
  • Taiwan
  • Kosovo
  • Rojava
• Armenian Genocoide

Hagia Sophia

The Hagia Sophia, meaning ancient wisdom in Greek, is a historic place of worship in Istanbul, Turkey. A Christian basilica for over a thousand years, it became a mosque, then a museum and, as of July 2020, a mosque once more.

Emperor Justinian built the Hagia Sophia in 532, when Istanbul was Constantinople and capital of the Byzantine Empire. Built of marble, concrete, porphyry and stucco, it contained the largest dome and was the largest church for 1,000 years. Hagia Sophia is the crowning achievement of Byzantine architecture. Referencing the old temple in Jerusalem, Justinian allegedly said ‘Solomon, I have outdone thee’. He and his successors filled the basilica with mosaics depicting Byzantine emperors and empresses and Orthodox saints, priceless artifacts today. Byzantine domes as represented in Hagia Sophia became a staple of Islamic architecture.

In 1453, Sultan Mehmet of the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople. Rather than destroy or maintain Hagia Sophia, he converted it into a mosque. As Islam prohibits religious icons, he replaced some mosaics with Arabic calligraphy and concealed others. The Ottomans added four minarets to the structure and buried five of their sultans in Hagia Sophia. Orthodox Christians, who form the majority in Greece and many Eastern European countries, mourned the conversion of their holy site.

The Ottoman Empire fell in 1918. By 1922, Kemal Ataturk founded the Republic of Turkey. A devoted secularist, Ataturk officially closed the Hagia Sophia to worship in 1934. He opened it instead as a museum; a monument to Istanbul’s multicultural heritage and a gallery of its intricate artwork. He commissioned John Whittlemore, an an American archaeologist to restore the damaged mosaics. By doing so, Ataturk hoped to heal old wounds and invoke the image of a new and secular Turkey in place of the theocratic Ottoman Empire. UNESCO named it a world heritage site in 1984, proclaiming its ‘Outstanding Universal Value’. As of 2020, Hagia Sophia receives 37 million visitors a year.

Enter 2020. Tayyip Erdogan, a longtime president popular with conservative Turkish Muslims, loses his political hold on Istanbul in a landslide. On 10th July the Turkish court ratifies his decision to annul Hagia Sophia’s museum status and make it a mosque once again. It will be open to all religions and nationalities outside of prayer times, during which its mosaics will be covered up. 

Critics accuse Erdogan of firing up his base in the face of a looming election and reversing his souring popularity. Patriarch Bartholomew (right), the Istanbul based Orthodox leader called the decision ‘disappointing’, the World Council of Churches expressed ‘grief and dismay’, Patriarch Kiril of Moscow called it a ‘threat to Christian civilization’. UNESCO mentioned the move was done without their consent and could breach the 1972 World Heritage Convention. Erdogan stated it was in his rights as the site falls under Turkish national authority. Reactions within the country were mixed.

Turkey sits on the crossroads of east and west. Ataturk sought to make it a secular country but since Erdogan took power, Turkey is pulling away from its founding principles to Erdogan’s blend of conservative authoritarianism. Having so dismayed its members, particularly Greece, Turkey is unlikely to join the EU under his rule.

Sources: Al Jazeera, BBC, Greek Reporter, UNESCO, Washington Post

Operation Nemesis and the Trial of Sogohmon Tehlirian

Operation Nemesis was the plot to assassinate the masterminds of the Armenian Genocide. Between 1920 and 1922, the Armenian Revolutionary Army killed eight former Turkish officials and three ‘traitors’ in four different countries. The mission’s name comes from Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution and it proved one of the most efficient assassination plots in modern history.

Between 1915 and 1922 the Ottoman Empire’s Young Turk regime deported its Armenian population to Syria where over a million died. After their defeat in WW1, the genocide’s architects fled overseas and were sentenced to death in absentia.

With no one held accountable, a tight-knit group of survivors assumed the duty of revenge. Each member of Operation Nemesis had lost family members in the genocide. One, a 24-year-old engineering student named Soghomon Tehlirian, had lost 85. He would be their leading assassin.

Led by Shahan Natalie, the conspirators drew up a black-list of the two hundred Turkish officials and Armenian informants responsible for the genocide. Chief among them were the ‘Three Pashas’ who led Turkey in WW1 and oversaw the deportation and murder of its Christian minorities. Pasha is a title, not a surname.

As governor of wartime Syria, Djemal ‘the Butcher’ Pasha (above) brutally suppressed the Arab Revolt and oversaw the massacres of Armenians and Assyrians. Three Armenians shot him in Baku, Azerbaijan on July 21st, 1920.

Enver Pasha (above) was the leader of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution and commander-in-chief of the Ottoman army in WW1. He organised the death squads who perpetrated the genocide. After the war, Enver fled to Central Asia, where he helped lead Turkic rebels against the Soviets. On August 5th, 1922 Red Army cavalry commanded by Hagop Melkumov of Operation Nemesis assailed Pasha’s position. Enver Pasha lost the ensuing fight and died by Melkumov’s hand.

Talat Pasha was the ‘number one” target. As minister of the interior, it was he who issued the resettlement order and proclaimed that for Turkey to prevail, the Armenians had to go. In 1920 he was living in Berlin under a different name.

Shahan Natalie told Tehlirian:

“You blow up the skull of the Number One nation-murderer and you don’t try to flee. You stand there, your foot on the corpse and surrender to the police, who will come and handcuff you.”

The plan was to make the trial publicise Talat’s crimes.

On March 21st, 1921 Tehlirian did as ordered. He approached Pasha in broad daylight, declared ‘this is for my mother’ and shot him dead. The police arrived immediately and arrested Tehlirian without resistance. When the judge asked if Tehlirian felt remorse, the accused replied:

“I do not consider myself guilty because my conscience is clear.  I have killed a man, but I am not a murderer.”

The trial explored whether Talat was responsible for the destruction of innocent Armenians as Tehlirian claimed. German officers present in Turkey during the war testified on his behalf. Tehlirian made a convincing case and within one hour the jury agreed. They acquitted him on grounds of temporary insanity.

Enter Raphael Lemkin. A Polish-Jewish lawyer, he had studied historical atrocities and found their perpetrators were seldom punished. The case of Soghomon Tehlirian fascinated and inspired him. Lemkin coined the term ‘genocide’ in 1943 as his own family perished in the Holocaust.

In his view, Tehlirian’s actions were justified.  “Why is a man punished when he kills another man?” he asked. “Why is the killing of a million a lesser crime than the killing of a single individual?” In 1948, genocide made international law and was declared a crime against humanity.

Sources: Armenian Genocide.org, Beyond Genocide, First World War.com, Milwaukee Armenians, New York Times (1922), Operation Nemesis

See Also:

• Eric Bogosian – Operation Nemesis. On my to-read list.
• Interview with Tehlirian’s son
• The Armenian Genocide
• Turanism

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide is the second most studied after the Holocaust. From 1915 – 1923, the Ottoman Empire murdered 1.5 million of its Armenian subjects and destroyed their 3,000-year-old presence in eastern Turkey. The Assyrian and Greek Genocides happened at the same time, claiming the lives of a further 350,000 Greeks and 300,000 Assyrians. Today (April 24th 2020) marks its 105th anniversary.

The Armenian people are indigenous to the mountains of eastern Anatolia and the lower Caucasus. When the Ottoman Empire took over, the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks, clung to their Christian faith. Though this put them at odds with the Muslim Ottomans, relations were largely peaceful until the 19th century. A smaller part of Armenia fell under Persian, then Russian rule.

In 1908 a clique of ultranationalist, European educated officers called the Young Turks overthrew the Ottoman government and established a new regime. They sought to modernise the empire, restore its former glory and create an ethnically and religiously homogenous state. Under the new regime, the sultan was a figurehead and a junta called the ‘Three Pashas’ held power. Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha (right) engineered the genocide.

By World War One, the Ottoman Empire was crumbling. Starting with the European Greeks in 1830, many of its subject people had already gained independence and the Armenians were demanding greater rights and representation. Ottoman Armenia was on the border with arch-rival Russia and when WW1 started, the regime feared they would back their neighbour. Stirring ethnic hatred also deflected criticism towards the new regime

In 1914, the Ottoman army transferred all its Armenian soldiers into forced labour battalions. The genocide officially began on April 24th 1915, when they arrested and executed 250 Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul.  Ottoman authorities then evicted the Armenian population from their homes, seized their property and forced them on a 2,000-kilometre march into the Syrian Desert.

The Assyrian Genocide happened at the same time. Turkish and Kurdish militias pillaged Assyrian villages, killing the men and kidnapping women and children. In 1915, they crossed the Persian border and repeated the process. Those who survived were made to join the Syrian death march. Assyrians call the events of 1915 Seyfo, meaning ‘Year of the Sword’.

The Young Turk regime formed a ‘Special Organisation’ of freed convicts to escort the refugees into the desert and left them without food or water. The Special Organisation and Kurdish brigands killed as they pleased. Armenian and Assyrian women were raped, forcibly converted and sold as slaves in neighbouring towns.

In the city of Trebizond, the governor loaded 50,000 Armenian women and children onto boats and drowned them in the Black Sea.

Two million Armenians lived in Turkey in 1914. By 1923, there they had virtually disappeared. Survivors – mainly children – fled to Greece, Russia, Syria and the United States with the help of Near East Relief. The modern country of Armenia consists of the smaller Russian territory, only 10% of their former homeland.

Armenian orphans in 1918

The word genocide was coined in 1943 to describe the events of 1915-1923 and, five years later, the Holocaust. It means the deliberate attempt to annihilate a specific ethnic group. However, the modern Turkish government has repeatedly denied  the events were genocide, refused to aplogise and urged other countries to do the same.

Arguments against classification as genocide are usually the following:

• • The word genocide had not been invented in 1915. Therefore Armenian massacres were not genocide.
  • Genocide requires intent to wipe out a people. The Young Turks only sought to relocate the Armenians.
  • Atrocities against Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks did happen, but the numbers are grossly inflated.
  • Armenians killed Turks too.
  • The Armenian genocide is a conspiracy designed to undermine Turkish sovereignty

In 1919, the Turkish government convicted the Three Pashas with ‘the massacre and destruction of the Armenians’. By then, however, they had escaped the country, and ultimately no one was held accountable.

Green – countries that officially recognise the events as genocide

Today most nations refuse to recognise the genocide in order to stay in Turkey’s good books. Though the western powers condemned the genocide when it happened, during the Cold War they changed their tune. Turkey is a major power in the Middle East and a leading member of NATO. The United States did not recognise the genocide until 2019 when, despite President Trump’s objection, the Senate voted unanimously to do so. Other western countries like Britain, Australia and New Zealand still do not. The events of 1915 might count as atrocities, ethnic cleansing, a tragedy even, but not genocide.

Turkish activists who condemn the genocide receive death threats and sometimes criminal prosecution. The majority of Kurdish political organisations, such as Rojava, Iraqi Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Workers Party, have recognised and apologised for the Kurdish role in the massacres of Armenians and Assyrians.

Denial is the eighth and final stage of a genocide.

Sources: Armenian Genocide.org, Combat Genocide.org,  Greek Genocide.net, NPR, Raymond Ibrahim, University of Minnesota

See Also: 

• Photos of the Armenian Genocide
• Turanism
• Operation Nemesis
• Rojava

Rojava

Rojava (2016-) is the unrecognised Kurdish state in Syria. Officially ‘the autonomous confederation of North and East Syria’, it governs 3 million Kurds and 2 million Arabs, Assyrians, Syriac Christians, Circassians, Turkmen and Armenians. Rojava spans a third of Syria and is a key player in the Syrian Civil War. Abandoned by its US allies last weekend, it currently faces a Turkish invasion.

The Kurds are a Western Iranian people living in the highlands of the Middle East. The breakup of the Ottoman Empire in 1918-23 divided their homeland between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. They have struggled for independence ever since. Kurds are 20% of Turkey and 10% of Syria. Most are Sunni Muslims.

Rojava’s ideology follows the teachings of Abdullah Öcalan, founder of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), a Kurdish rebel group based in Turkey. Their Social Contract advocates a secular, decentralised system, governed by democratic assemblies, that enshrines women’s and minority rights. Their libertarian socialist experiment puts them at odds with both Syria’s Baathist dictatorship and the Islamists fighting it.

In 2012 overextended Syrian troops withdrew from the country’s northeast, letting Kurdish militias fill the vacuum. In 2014 ISIS seized the Kurdish city of Kobani. The Kurds retaliated with help from the PKK. With American air support, they spearheaded the fight against ISIS and in 2016 established Rojava across Kurdish and Arab lands that include Syria’s oilfields.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is Rojava’s army. It encompasses a Kurdish core and allied Arab militias. As US allies, the SDF proved better organised and more reliable than the ‘moderate’ rebels previously supported. Volunteers from around the world flocked to their banners like the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. Their female fighters terrified ISIS, who believe they will not go to heaven if killed by a woman. In March 2019 the SDF destroyed the last ISIS stronghold in Syria. Thousands of prisoners fell into their hands.

Turkey, though allied with the US, considers Rojava a terrorist entity. This is due to their ties with the PKK, whom Turkey and the USA deem terrorists. A Kurdish state at Turkey’s borders will embolden the PKK and possibly support their 40-year struggle. Turkey dared not strike Rojava while US troops were stationed there, however allied Syrian rebels fight on its behalf.

In October 2019 Donald Trump announced full American withdrawal from Syria. Their objective – to destroy ISIS – was complete. As soon as they left, Turkish troops invaded. Turkey seeks to establish a ‘safe zone’ along the border in which to resettle two million Syrian refugees and separate Rojava from the PKK. That safe zone contains much of the Kurdish population and key cities the SDF pledges to defend.

Rojava stands no chance on its own. Despite their experience and drive, SDF foot soldiers are no match for NATO’s second-largest military, fully equipped with aircraft and tanks. Since Sunday, 104 fighters and 60 civilians have died, with casualties mounting. With the US gone, their only hope is to ally with the Syrian regime, the same one that has denied Kurds civil rights for decades. Should their 12,000 prisoners of war escape, ISIS will rise again.

Mazlam Abdi, SDF commander-in-chief:

“We know that we would have to make painful compromises with Moscow and Bashar al-Assad if we go down the road of working with them. But if we have to choose between compromises and the genocide of our people, we will surely choose life for our people.”

Sources: Associated Press, Al Jazeera, BBC, Democracy Now, The Economist, Foreign Policy

See Also:

• The World’s Strongest Militant Groups
• White Helmets
• 2018: Western Powers Bomb Syria
• Stormclouds over Idlib
• The 2010s

Turanism

Turanism asserts a common Inner Asian identity with racial overtones. Born in the 1800s, it was Hungary and Turkey’s answer to pan-Slavic and German nationalism. Turanism assigns racial identity to the (now debunked) Ural-Altaic language family, as Aryanism did Indo-European. At best it promotes exploring cultural and linguistic ties between varied peoples, at worst genocide and hate. Though long fallen from grace, Turanist thought still lives in the far-right corners of Turkish and Hungarian politics.

Turanism was born in Europe’s nationalist zeitgeist. In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, old empires and principalities were redrawn along ethnic and linguistic lines. Prussia and Russia emphasised pan-Germanic and Slavic heritage respectively and the discovery of the Indo-European language family led to a supposed ‘Aryan race’. Hungarian, however, is not an Indo-European tongue; its speakers descend from the Eurasian Magyars. Slavic nationalism threatened Hungary’s hold on Eastern Europe and promoted worrying ties with rival Russia. As ethnic kinship came to supersede religious ties, Hungary needed new friends.

Herman Vambarry, Hungarian orientalist and the Ottoman Sultan’s former advisor, drew on the work of Finnish linguists to propose Hungarians and Turks shared a ‘Turanian’ origin – a master race heritage of their own – and therefore Hungary should look east, not west, in its alliances. The notion gained steam after 1918 when the western powers stripped Hungary of 72% of its territory and far-right thought took hold. Turanians comprise of not only Magyars and Turks, but all others supposedly descended from Central Asian conquerors. These include:

• Turks (both Turkish and Central Asian)
• Hungarians
• Bulgarians (considered ‘Slavicised Turanians’)
• Finns
• Estonians
• Japanese
• Koreans
• Mongols
• Tatars
• Manchus
• Sami
• Indigenous Siberians

Turkey had its national awakening in the end days of the Ottoman Empire. Reformers stressed ethnic identity over religious: Turks were distinct from, even superior to, the Arabs, Kurds, Greeks and Armenians which they ruled.

Though pan-Turkism promoted solidarity with the Tartars and Central Asian Turks under Russian rule, Turanism went further. For Hungarian and Turkish nationalists, it provided a uniting ideology to counter the European powers, particularly Russia.

Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire fought on the same side in WW1, as did Hungary, Bulgaria, Finland and Japan in WW2. Both the Young Turks, who took over in 1908 and perpetrated the Armenian genocide, and Hungary’s Arrow Cross, who murdered 10,000 Jews and Roma in WW2, were committed Turanists.

Japanese Turanists advocated cooperation with Hungary and the takeover of Manchuria and eastern Russia.  The High Command disbanded Turanist societies after 1941 however, to pursue a pan-Asian stance instead.

Turanists believe their race is superior. Like the Nazis, they twist science and history to suit their needs. 20th century Turanists claimed:

• Ancient Rome, Egypt, Greece and Sumeria were Turanian
• Prophet Muhammad was a Turk, not an Arab
• Native Americans are Turkic descended
• A Turanian Empire once stretched across Inner Asia and should be recreated

‘Turan’ is the old Persian term for Central Asia. In Iranian literature, the Turanians were fearsome warriors and the nemeses of Persian heroes. They were likely Iranic Scythians, however, not the Turks who migrated later.

After WW2, Turanism died out in Finland and Communist Hungary. Modern Turanism, however, is an ideological staple of the Grey Wolves, a Turkish ultranationalist group, and far-right Jobbik, Hungary’s second-largest party.

Sources: American Political Science Review, Armenian Genocide.org, The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies, Hurriyet Daily News, Jobbik.com

See Also:

• Hungary
• Falangism
• Turkic Migrations
  • Crimean Tatars
• Steppe People
  • The Xiongnu
  • Attila the Hun
• The Armenian Genocide

Turkic Migrations

The Turkic Migrations were the greatest population movement before Colombus.  Throughout the Middle Ages, Turkic speaking nomads conquered and settled across Central Asia and Anatolia – assimilating some, replacing others. Once slave-soldiers, they came to rule the Muslim world.

Today there are seven Turkic nations, ordered by population:

• Turkey
• Azerbaijan
• Uzbekistan
• Kazakhstan
• Turkmenistan
• Kyrgyzstan

Significant minorities also live in Russia and China.

The Turks originated in the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia. Their name comes from the Chinese Tujue, meaning combat helmet, after a hill where they once lived. The early Turks were horse nomads and raiders who wrote in a runic script, worshipped the sky and worked iron.

The Gokturk Khaganate (Celestial Turks) ruled the Asian Steppe from 552-744. Under the Gokturks a common Turkic identity was born and when the confederation fell, Turkic peoples migrated in all directions, intermarrying with and absorbing native peoples where they went. Accordingly, the wider Turkic ethnicity encompasses a range of peoples and appearances.

Their migratory waves are reflected through language.

Speakers of the Oghur branch were the first Turks to migrate west (unless counting the Huns, who may have been Turkic). They included the Khazars, Bulgars and Chuvash. The Khazars, who converted to Judaism, ruled Ukraine from 648 – 1048. The Bulgars forged an empire in the Balkans, became Orthodox Christians and assimilated with their Slavic subjects. Only Chuvash in Russia is still spoken. In the Oghur languages, the common ‘z’ suffix becomes ‘r’: both ‘Oghur’ and ‘Oghuz’ mean tribe.

The Kipchak Branch is named after the Kipchak Confederation (1067-1271) of southern Russia. They fought against, then for the Mongols when they invaded, from whom many descend. Most were Muslim by the 1300s and, of all the Turks, stayed nomads the longest. They include the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tatars and Bashkirs.

The Siberian Branch migrated northward before the rise of the Gokturks and mingled with the indigenous forest people. They traditionally herded reindeer and bred cattle and ponies to withstand Siberian winters. Today they mix Turkic shamanism with ‘modern’ religions – Christianity for the Yakuts and Buddhism for the Tuvans.  

The Southeastern Branch includes Uzbek and Uyghur.  The Uyghurs of Mongolia overthrew the eastern Gokturks and in the 800s, migrated to western China. They settled down, adopted agriculture, a written script and Manichaeism. They were Buddhist for a time then Muslim.  The Uzbeks settled the oasis cities of Central Asia as soldiers in the Mongol Horde, ruling until the Russians came.

The Oghuz of Central Asia were heirs to the Gokturks. After converting to Islam, Oghuz Turks served as slaves, mercenaries and bodyguards for Persian and Arab lords. So reliant did the caliph in Baghdad become on his Turkic generals, that by the 900s, the Seljuk tribe was the power behind the throne.

In 1071 a Seljuk army defeated the Byzantines at Manzikert and seized Anatolia.  Turkic tribes flooded the region and over time native Greeks and Armenians adopted Islam and the Turkish language. The remainder were killed or expelled in the early 20^th century. The modern Turkish are genetically closer to Greeks and Armenians than other Turkic people: only 15-20% of their ancestry being Central Asian. Azeri, Turkish and Turkmen belong to the Oghuz Branch.

Turkic migrations. Sakha – Yakut, Cuman- Kipchak.

Sources: The Diplomat, Khazaria.com, Science on the Web, Wikipedia

See Also:

• Science on the Web – The Proto-Turkic Urheimat & The Early Migrations of Turkic Peoples
• Wikipedia – List of Turkic dynasties and countries
• Steppe People
• Crimean Tatars
• Turanism
• Manichaeism
• Other Migrations
  • The Southern Dispersal
  • Southeast Asian Migrations
  • Polynesian Migrations

Stormclouds over Idlib

 Bashar Al-Assad and his Russian allies have begun their assault on Idlib, Syria’s last rebel stronghold. The days ahead are going to be bloody; likely the final chapter in a war that’s raged for 7 years.

Tahrir Al-Sham, an Al Qaeda affiliated coalition, is the dominant force in Idlib. Then known as the Al-Nusra Front, the jihadist group seized the province from government forces in March 2015.  They imposed Sharia law and, in response to Assad’s growing power, united Idlib’s jihadists under a common banner. Tahrir Al-Sham has 3,000 fighters and controls 60% of the province, including the city of Idlib itself. Since 2016 they have been the Assad regime’s toughest and best-organised opponent.

The Turkish backed ‘National Front for Liberation’ control the rest of the province. Both Jihadist and ‘moderate’ factions number in their ranks.

Assad has been winning since 2016. While his myriad opponents, which once included pro-democracy forces, ISIS and other jihadists, bicker amongst themselves, Assad reasserts his rule province by province.

Assad’s strategy is simple. First, his regime sets its sight on a defiant city or neighbourhood and besieges it, cutting inhabitants off from outside aid. Then Russian jets bomb it to oblivion. When the enemy’s back is broken and its citizenry is starving, regime forces and Iranian militias march in and crush any remaining opposition. One by one the rebel strongholds of Aleppo (2016), Eastern Ghouta and Daraa (2018) fell this way. The strategy is effective, but leaves of thousands of dead citizens every time.

Idlib is home to 3 million people. A third is children and more than half are refugees from elsewhere in Syria.

Turkey has closed its borders. Syria’s northern neighbour already houses 3.5 million refugees and the fears the destabilization a further influx would bring. When the battle for Idlib starts its people will have nowhere to run.  Given the regime and its allies’ tendency for war crimes, a humanitarian catastrophe of potentially unprecedented scale now looms.

On Monday President Trump warned Assad “hundreds of thousands of people could be killed” if he attacks Idlib. He’s right, but a tweet won’t deter Bashar Al-Assad or Vladimir Putin. Turkey and the UN issued similar statements to little avail. Assad, Putin and Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan will meet in Iran on Friday to discuss the issue.

If Idlib falls, as it likely will, the Syrian Civil War will be over.  While the northwest belongs to the Kurdish ‘Republic of Rojava’, they have maintained an uneasy truce with Damascus throughout the war, and will hopefully reach a peaceful settlement.

For now, Russian planes are already taking the first casualties.

Sources: Al Jazeera, BBC, Foreign Policy, Gulf News, IRIN News, New York Times 

See Also:

• 2018: Western Powers Bomb Syria
• Rojava

The Excavation of Troy

It is the spring of 1873 and beneath the warm Turkish sun workmen labour at a mound of earth and stone. Standing guard over the shimmering blue waters of the Dardanelles, the causeway between Europe and Asia, lie the ruins of not one but nine overlapping cities each built, centuries apart, upon the ruins of the former.

The lead excavator, an eccentric German with too much time and money on his hands, has spent the last two years digging through the centuries in search of a fairy-tale city he is convinced lies buried at the bottom. As the sun reaches its apex and the workers scratch the surface of the penultimate layer, a woman’s voice pierces the air. It is the boss’s wife, a striking Greek lady 30 years her husband’s junior. In honour of Mr Schliemann’s birthday, she informs the team that their work for the day is done.

Confused, but glad to finish early on a full day’s salary, the workers return to their tents. Heinrich and Sofia Schliemann remain. He really turned 61 in January: the shrewd businessman simply does not trust his employees with what he is about to uncover. Submerged three thousand years beneath eight layers of ruin lies what he was searching for all along; the treasures of Ancient Troy.

Unlike Howard Carter or Arthur Evans, Schliemann was not a trained archaeologist. His father could not afford schooling, so at 14 Schliemann joined an Amsterdam trading firm and started his own at 25. Based out of Saint Petersburg, he worked as an indigo trader, a speculator in the California Gold Rush and a military contractor in the Crimean War. His gift for languages, risky investments and financial knack paid off; Schliemann retired with a fortune at 36.

Heinrich Schliemann was socially awkward, secretive and suspicious of everyone around him, preferring the company of books to people. Since a boyhood dream of a burning Troy he was obsessed with the works of Homer, naming his son Agamemnon, and carrying a copy of the Iliad wherever he traveled. Ignoring the wisdom of the time Schliemann believed the cities of Homer were real places; the story of the Trojan War rooted not in a blind bard’s imagination but historical fact.

A typical East Mediterranean tell

The Mediterranean Coast is dotted with giant mounds or tells that mark the ruins of ancient cities. The Iliad placed Troy on Anatolia’s eastern coast, and Schliemann spent years unearthing various tells in the area to no avail. It was not until he met Frank Calvert, a British Archaeologist on a similar quest, that Schliemann began digging at Hisarlik. Richer by far, the German tycoon seized control of the excavation, side-lined Calvert and took full credit for their discoveries.

Sophia Schliemann, wearing the Jewels of Helen

That day in 1873 Schliemann uncovered no less than 8,000 artefacts. Diadems, rings and necklaces of gold and silver, copper cauldrons, goblets, knives and axe heads filled the halls of King Priam.

Most valuable of all were the ‘Jewels of Helen’, an illustrious diadem made of 16,353 gold pieces. Bribing his Turkish supervisor, Schliemann smuggled the treasure to Germany and donated it to the Royal Museum in Berlin. Here it remained until Soviet troops stormed the city in 1945 and spirited the riches away to Moscow.

Taking the broken walls, and charred remains as evidence of Greek invasion, Schliemann proclaimed he had discovered the Troy of Legend.

 “I have proved that in a remote antiquity there was in the plain of Troy a large city, destroyed of old by a fearful catastrophe, which had on the hill of Hisarlık only its Acropolis with its temples and a few other large edifices, southerly, and westerly direction on the site of the later Ilium; and that, consequently, this city answers perfectly to the Homeric description of the sacred site of Ilios.”

The Nine Layers of Hisarlik

• Troy IX: 85 BC – 500 AD (Roman,)
• Troy VIII: 700 – 85 BC (Greek, destroyed by Gaius Fimbria)
• Troy VII: 1300-1190 (historical Troy, Late Bronze Age, destroyed by Greek invaders)
• Troy VI: 1800 – 1400 BC (destroyed by earthquake)
• Troy V: 1800 – 1600 BC (fate unknown)
• Troy IV: 2100 – 1950 BC
• Troy III: 2250-2100 BC
• Troy II: 2600 – 2250 BC (Schliemann’s Troy, Early Bronze Age)
• Troy I: 3000– 2600 BC)

He had discovered Ancient Troy, it turned out, but it was not the layer he presumed. Troy II predated the Greek Bronze Age by a thousand years. The Homeric Troy, was most likely Troy VII one of the less impressive ruins Schliemann had decimated in his quest for something greater. What lost civilization had built the second citadel at Hisarlik, or crafted the so called Treasures of King Priam remains a mystery to this day.

Sources:

• Maitland Armstrong Edey, Lost World of the Aegean
• Archaeology.org