False promises of a more pluralistic era go back centuries in the Middle East. Crowds in London in the era of the Crimean War held up posters showing the Ottoman Sultan, Napoleon Bonaparte III, and Queen Victoria as the “three saviours of civilization.” Viscount Palmerston maintained that the “integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire are necessary to the maintenance of the tranquility, the liberty, and the balance of power” of the world. The newspapers said that Britain was fighting against Russia as “the personification of Despotism,” and that “God wills the liberty and happiness of mankind,” so Britain was “doing God’s work in fighting for liberty….” Freedom for all was at hand. Historians of the late Ottoman Empire describe a dynamic of catastrophe, in which attempts to limit Ottoman conquests resulted in massacres of local civilians, threatened humanitarian interventions, paper promises of equality among Ottoman subjects in the future, and renewed conflict years later. The Russians did not believe in the Ottoman pledge to protect the rights of Orthodox Christians, which had been trampled consistently. In the Crimean War, the British and Austro-Hungarians supported the Ottomans against the Russians, with the result that “Russia was compelled to demolish her fortresses on the Black Sea” and to keep her warships out of the seas adjoining the western Ottoman coasts, while “Turkey made promises (on paper) that Christians should be admitted to equal rights with Mussulmans in her European dominions.” Britain insisted on the “independence and territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire,” eventually signing a pact to defend it against Russian attempts to liberate the Ottoman Christians. The British heavily financed the late Ottoman military machine. Censorship, ignorance, and indifference about Turkey’s history and the nature of its government contributed to policies that may destroy Iraq and Syria. Poorly-planned interventionism, chaotic regime change, alliances with bad actors, and the weaponization of refugee camps have magnified localized strife into religious genocides. Politicians should study the lessons of how the British Empire broke its paper promises to the Ottoman Christians after the Crimean War, after which Ottoman Christian communities were lost. New promises of a pluralistic and democratic Iraq and Syria ring hollow in light of history. Click link to read greatly informative article: armenianweekly/2014/10/23/travis/
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 20:23:57 +0000
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