False Historical Dogmas to Destroy Peace in Europe

By: Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

[ Posted On: 2008-01-26 ]

Due to an article published 2 weeks ago under the title “Turkey as Birthplace of the European Identity, and Mr. Markus Soeder's Historical Ignorance” (http://www.buzzle.com/articles/turkey-as-birthplace-of-the-european-identity-and-mr-markus-soeder-historical-ignorance.html), I had the opportunity to receive extensive feedback from various readers; one comment was published online (http://www.buzzle.com/comments/171892-1.html) and is truly enlightening; not in the sense that it supports my analysis but due to the fanatic defense of a false version of pseudo-History, which – discriminatory and absolutely inaccurate – is totally detrimental for those who believe it.

I will republish the comment integrally, and then refute the historical inaccuracies and misconceptions therein attested; numbers inserted in the text correspond to the points of my commentary.

Pseudo-historical Comment

“This is typical of the Turkish attempts 1 to cover up their origins 2 and misdeeds 3. While the writer conveniently recalls the geographical origins 4 of the various pre-European cultures 5, he conveniently forgets to mention that all those achievements had nothing to do with "Turkey" 6 or the people of Turkish origin 7. The original inhabitants of what is now called Turkey were decimated 8 and destroyed by the barbarous 9 Turkish tribes 10 that invaded the whole area and reached to the gates of Vienna 11.

Obviously, philosophy, faith and the expansion of Christianity were not the result of the geographic location but the fruits of the people inhabiting the region 12. Therefore to claim that the Origins of Europe is in Turkey 13 is a fallacy and distortion of historical truths” 14.

Commentary and Refutation

1. History writing has nothing to do with state historiography, as it is – and must be – the search for the historical truth. ‘Turkish attempts’ means official state historiography, and I do not represent this group – if any. I publish historical syntheses, investigations, and interpretations, based on selected, combined and re-adjusted academic methods of critical analysis. I do not participate in orchestrated “attempts”.

2. There have never been “attempts” to “cover up” the role played by people of Central Asiatic - Turkish origins in the History of 2nd millennium Anatolia and Balkan peninsula. On the contrary, one group of Modern Turkish Academics and Intellectuals overstressed that point.

By overstressing the central Asiatic – Turkish component in the formation of 2nd millennium Anatolia and Balkan peninsula in the 1910s (in the last decade of the Ottoman Empire), 1920s and 1930s helped create a relatively confused idea about the identity of Modern Turkey as Anatolian emanation, but however there was reaction to this since the very first days of the Turkish Republic. There have actually been two tendencies in 1930s Turkey to oppose the Central Asiatic dimension: the Hittite – Anatolian current, and the Mesopotamian – Anatolian movement. Their impact was great in the Turkish society, culture and academic life, but however the Central Asiatic trend prevailed for long; it is precisely opposite of what the comment author suggests.

3. “Turkish misdeeds”: this is not a historic term, it is an aberration. If one wants to have a moralist approach to the World History, it would be understandable, but then one should point out the “Greek misdeeds”, the “Russian misdeeds”, the “French misdeeds”, the “English misdeeds”, the “Hebrew / Jewish misdeeds”, the “Babylonian misdeeds”, the “Egyptian misdeeds” and so on.

According to a moralist approach to the World History, all peoples and all nations have their own black pages, their bad moments of History, they all committed crimes and injustices, and they were all engaged in wars, disregarding peace when some material profits were thought as possibly within reach.

Through a moralist viewpoint, all nations throughout History behaved as wild animals of the jungle, and there cannot be any exception in this regard. One can accept or reject this approach, and this is a matter of debate in the Philosophy of History.

However, this is not the intention of the comment’s author. He hints at supposed “Turkish misdeeds”, as if the other nations were all ‘innocent’ and the Turks ‘guilty’. This is precisely the face of the Historical Racism, the epitome of Discrimination. When one places a nation apart, and holds the entire nation as responsible for ‘misdeeds’ that are either unreal or extremely exaggerated or related to a specific totalitarian elite / regime, then we enter in the field of the discrimination.

As a matter of fact, the supposed ‘Turkish misdeeds” are purely discriminatory of nature and context. If the comment’s author hints at the so-called ‘Armenian Genocide’ story, then it would be necessary to underscore that the Modern Turkish establishment may be the successor to the 600-year long Ottoman Empire, but it cannot be held as responsible for deeds performed before its inception by those whom precisely the rising Turkish establishment overthrew!

Holding the Turkish establishment responsible for the – real – massacres of the Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire would be similar to

a. Accusing the Soviet establishment for the Slavery practiced at the times of Tsarist Russia,

b. Reproaching the Bundesrepublik Deutschland for the Jewish Genocide conceived and executed at the times of the Third Reich,

c. Putting the blame for Antiochus Epiphanes’ Anti-Semitic policies on Alexander the Great, and

d. Criticizing today’s Italy for Mussolini’s policies and strategies.

4. There is mo such a thing as “geographical origin of a culture”; the comment’s author means “geographical location” of the cultures he refers to.

5. The term “various pre-European cultures” shows that he failed to understand my text. There is no term as “pre-European cultures” (or pre-Asiatic, pre-African, cultures); I referred to civilizations that formed the European civilizations, the Thracians, the Macedonians, the Illyrians, the various peoples collectively named ‘Greeks’ (Ionians, Aeolians, Achaeans and Dorians), the Cimmerians, the Celts, the Etruscans, and the Romans, to name a few.

6. This is the Achilles’ heel of every nationalist, chauvinist, and racist; all these currents of thought represent in fact a sick and rotten social ‘egotism’, a counterfeit national egoism. As such, they are discriminatory from their inception because they reflect structures of devious thought that promotes biased preference of one nation’s past and history. To this biased preference – that violates fair judgment – all the rest is due: the falsification of History, the deprecation of the ‘Other’, the paranoid favoritism of the ‘ego’, i.e. the nation to which the fraudulent theoretician belongs.

Yes, it is true, as the comment’s author says, “all those achievements had nothing to do with Turkey”; of course, the Ionian philosophers, Homer, Herodotus, the Hittite High priests and erudite men who composed the epic Illuyankas, the great ideologists of the Commagene kingdom, and all the other great men who lived in the past did not perform, having Modern Turkey in mind! As a matter of fact, I never said something like that. It is precisely the opposite: Turkey has something to do with “all those achievements”.

Today’s Turkey consists in the repository, the heir, and the ark of all the cultural, material and spiritual achievements conceptualized and carried out on today’s Turkish territory; Turkey is their representative in our world, and Turkey should be considered as successful ambassador of the locally developed past cultures and civilizations, only if the governments of Turkey incorporate them plainly in the educational system and enable them to be embedded in today’s modern Turkish culture.

It is the same for all countries of the world. The success is demonstrated by the degree of the correct perception of the past cultures and their integration among modern societies. As it can be easily deduced, culture has nothing to do with ‘people’ in this respect. Perhaps today’s Germans are better heirs of the Roman Empire, more authentic heirs I should say, than modern Italians. It is a never closing bet.

7. The “people of Turkish origin” means today people born in Turkey or people whose parents were born in Turkey. The comment’s author confuses this with another term: “Turkic origin Turks” which describes citizens of Turkey (or Balkan Turks) whose origin can be retraced to (Central Asiatic) Turkic tribes that came to Anatolia through Iran and the Caucasus region. As such, this term would refer to the Seljuk, the Kizilbash, the Osmanlis, and various other Turks who came to the West. However, thanks to modern science, research and study of combined sources, namely Eastern Roman, Persian, Aramaean, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Latin, Seljuk and Ottoman chronicle writers and historiographers, we know that the population of the various Turkic tribes, who from the 11th until the 15th century moved westwards and arrived in Anatolia, was small. Every tribe did not exceed a few thousands of people, men and women, children and elders.

Consequently, as they amalgamated with the indigenous populations, in today’s Turkey, they represent only a small portion of the population; some physical traits are obviously characteristic but, as the language and the culture are absolutely the same with that of all the rest, there is no point in secluding or separating them. Only in terms of anthropology (not social anthropology) they differ from the rest.

8. This is an absolute lie; the various Turkic tribes that arrived from the East were most welcome in most of the provinces of Anatolia which constituted the backbone of the Eastern Roman Empire, then named Romania or to Eoon Kratos – the Oriental State (in Medieval Greek). We know this from all sorts of historical sources. The reason for this – widely unknown – reality is simple: the various populations of the Anatolian plateau adhered in their outright majority to various ideological, philosophical, theological and social movements that were considered by the Constantinopolitan Orthodoxy as heretic, and succeeded one to another, namely the Eikonomachoi (icon-fighters), the Paulicians, and all those generically called as ‘Manicheans’ by the Eastern Roman historiographers.

There were certainly battles between the arriving tribes and the soldiers of the Eastern Roman emperor; the most famous was that of Manzikert (Malazgirt) where Romanos Diogenes II was captured prisoner (1071) by the victorious armies of Alp Arslan. There were no massacres and the indigenous populations were not decimated but they enthusiastically accepted the Seljuk Islamic political rule without changing their religion. This was quite reasonable because this was the way they would get rid of Constantinople and the heavy taxation imposed on them by the loathsome Eastern Roman Emperors, and their Orthodox priests whose beliefs these populations had rejected and were therefore oppressed and reprimanded. Quite indicatively, the first sultanate established in Anatolia was named Rum Sultanate, Roman Sultanate, because the quasi-totality of the local population were Romans, Eastern Romans. If the few Seljuk immigrants had decimated them, they would have named their own Islamic state ‘Roman Sultanate’. Only this shows how terribly forged are the historical dogmas that currently prevail in parts of the supposedly academically advanced Europe.

The following is an indicative passage from the Romanos Diogenes II entry in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanos_IV) that reflects correctly the details of the defeated in Manzikert Roman emperor:

“After initial successes in his campaign, Romanos IV fought in the Battle of Manzikert on August 26, 1071. He became isolated from the bulk of his army, which turned to flight, believing that the emperor had been killed. The disorderly withdrawal of the Byzantine army allowed the Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan to capture Romanos IV and inflict a disastrous defeat on his forces. Most chroniclers of the period and the battle agree that Romanos IV was treated with respect by his captor, who at first had difficulty believing the dusty and tattered warrior brought before him was the Roman Emperor (see, Norwich, "Byzantium: The Apogee"). But then he treated him with extreme kindness, never saying a cruel word to him in the Emperor's eight-day stay in his camp, and who then released him in exchange for a treaty and the promise of a hefty ransom”.

9. Another point of ignorance and historical forgery diffused in Europe is the assumption that the Seljuk Turks were ‘barbarous’; they were highly civilized – and by this I mean they were highly civilized already before the battle at Malazgirt. They accepted Islam in Central Asia and Iran while advancing westwards; and Central Asia was a highly civilized circumference where numerous peoples interacted for many millennia before Islam, Christianity, and Alexander the Great. Nestorian Christianity, Manichaeism, Mithraism, Buddhism, and Islam were the five major religious – philosophical systems of early 2nd millennium Central Asia. Various Turks were brilliant scholars in the epicenters of academic knowledge and erudition of those days, Samarqand, Bukhara, Khiva, etc.

The commentator’s ignorance of these historical facts demonstrates how corrupt the European and American educational systems are, how false the imposed historical dogmas have been, and what great dangers for nationalistic wars still exist in our days.

10. Various Turkic – not Turkish – tribes. However, this point is irrelevant because Turkic tribes arrived in Iran, Anatolia (Eastern Roman Empire), Syria, Egypt, India, but certainly not to the Gates of Vienna.

11. Regular Ottoman army arrived to the Gates of Vienna; it was a clash between two heirs of the Roman Empire, as the Ottoman Caliphate absorbed in all its aspects the nature and the characteristics of the Eastern Roman Empire, whereas the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, being a reconstitution of the Western Roman Empire, pretended, as Christian, to be the sole continuation of the Roman Empire – a false claim.

This claim was totally irrelevant because following the Schism there was no recognition between the Eastern (Orthodox) and the Western (Catholic) parts of the Roman Empire. Even worse for the Frankish falsifiers of the Roman History, the choice between the Sultan and the Pope was a crucial matter of debate within the ailing Eastern Roman Empire; and we have a vast documentation on the subject. Particularly after the barbaric Latin invasion and occupation of Constantinople (Fourth Crusade - 1204), the break was total. And a great number of Eastern Roman scholars, magistrates, noblesse, administrators, generals, and priests adhered to the Ottoman Empire and to Islam, thus giving the Ottoman Empire the exclusive authenticity to the Rome’s Inheritance.

We have an abundance of documents testifying to these historical realities that have been disastrously for the Western Europeans kept secret by their bogus-academic elites. When the Ottoman armies besieged Vienna in 1529, the part that represented Civilization best was the Ottoman. Copernicus was alive by then, but to become the great scholar he truly was, he had to study translations of the world’s top authority in Sciences and Astronomy, Ulugh Beg, a grandson of Tamerlane.

12. Through the aforementioned, it is clear that the indigenous peoples and the Turkic immigrants contributed to another layer of civilization that was attested in the 15th and 16th century Ottoman Empire. Modern Turkey is the depository of this and all the earlier layers of civilization – as far as Turkish territory is concerned.

13. At this point, I want to clarify a critical issue; the comment’s author attributes to me the claim that the Origins of Europe are in Turkey. In fact, this is half true. The origins of the European Civilization are to be found in Anatolia (Turkey), Mesopotamia, Phoenicia (or rather Canaan, as it includes Ancient Israel), Egypt and the Northern African coast.

One should read carefully the first part of the title of the article criticized by the author of this comment; I put it as “Turkey as Birthplace of the European Identity” (and not as “Turkey as the Birthplace of the European Identity”), precisely because Turkey’s territory is not the only birthplace of the European Civilization.

14. Through the aforementioned, it becomes clear that further this approach is cultivated, greater the integration problems will become for Europe, the Europeans and the Muslim immigrants.

Before accusing the Muslim immigrants of anything (I don’t say they are all well versed into History or that they represent a correct version and interpretation of Islam – on the contrary), Europeans must understand this reality once forever: their official dogma of History is false, totally and dangerously false, geared to reproduce discrimination and racism.

To avoid a clash of religions (there is no clash of civilizations), one must have access to True History, not the Frankish falsification that by and in itself is a grave problem.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis - is Orientalist, Assyriologist, Egyptologist, Iranologist, Islamologist, Historian and Political Scientist. Dr. Megalommatis, 51, is the author of 12 books, dozens of scholarly articles, hundreds of encyclopedia entries, and thousands of articles. He speaks, reads and writes more than 15, modern and ancient, languages.

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