By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 24, 2005

For 50 years, historians, diplomats and state department officials have touted Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as a great secular leader in a predominantly Muslim region, whose policies modernized and democratized Turkey, shaping it into a Western-style state. But Ataturk was western only insofar as he implemented the Turkification of Gobineau, wherein he substituted the Turks for the Aryans, whose ideology had terrible results in the rise of European Nazism. Regardless, in 1955, barely 17 years after the dictator’s death, a little-known pogrom, driven primarily by Islamic fanaticism, targeted the Greek population of Istanbul, with the intent of driving non-Muslims from Turkey.

From 1950 to 1960 Turkey experienced a profound reawakening of Islam, which the government and Demokrat Parti (DP) of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes both exploited and encouraged. Today, the policies Turkey set in motion in that pogrom remain in sway.

According to Speros Vryonis Jr.’s landmark new study, The Mechanism of Catastrophe, the September 1955 government-orchestrated pogrom against the Greek Orthodox community “included the systematic destruction of the majority of its churches” monasteries and cemeteries. Published this month by Greekworks.com, the work subtitled The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul shows that riots which destroyed 4,500 Greek homes, 3,500 businesses, 90 religious institutions and 36 schools in 45 distinct communities, resulted not only from “fervid chauvinism, or even [from] the economic resentment of many impoverished rioters, but [from] the profound religious fanaticism in many segments of Turkish society.”

American, British and Greek diplomats all agreed that the violence was “indicative of religious fanaticism,” a fact with which even some Turkish commentators concurred.

A towering intellect and scholar of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, as well as modern Turkey, Vryonis witnessed reactions to the pogrom in 1955, after beginning his dissertation work at Harvard’s Byzantine center at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington D.C. Newspapers reported violence targeting the Greek community of Istanbul and suggested the state department was pleased at “how the Turkish government had taken it in hand very quickly and restored order,” Vryonis recalled at a recent New York City lecture to introduce the book. He recoiled at the table talk of British and American scholars at Dumbarton Oaks, expressing the view that the Greeks had gotten what they deserved.

Vryonis questioned how riots could erupt so suddenly and violently as to destroy a whole community. Furthermore, at nearby St. Sophia Cathedral, the Greek archbishop described tens of thousands of people with no homes, no clothes and no food. The diametrically opposite perspectives concerned one and the same event. Vryonis, however, trained in chemistry, physics and Greek and Latin classics, “put it aside. I was not ready. [Studying this] demanded a knowledge of Turkish. It demanded a good knowledge of Islam, it demanded a familiarization with modern Greek history.” Fifty years later, at 76, he has written the definitive work on the events. The work has the power to alter official U.S. positions on Turkey, if only policymakers will read it. Continue reading “Turkey’s Forgotten Islamist Pogrom” →

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By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 2, 2005

April 24, 2005 marked the 90th “anniversary” of the Armenian genocide. With the purpose of decapitating the Armenian community, on April 24, 1915, Turkish Interior Minister Mehmed Talaat ordered the arrest of all Armenian political and community leaders suspected of opposing the Ittihad (“Young Turk”) government, or favoring Armenian nationalism. In Istanbul alone, 2,345 seized leaders were incarcerated, and most were subsequently executed. None were nationalists, political or charged with sabotage, espionage, or any other crime. None were even tried.1 According to Turkish author Taner Akcam, systematic plunder, raids, and murders of Armenians were already occurring daily, under the pretexts of “searching for arms, of collecting war levies, or tracking down deserters…” 2 Within a month, the final, definitive mass deportations of the Armenian genocide would begin.3

In recognition of that anniversary, I interviewed Vahakn Dadrian, the world’s preeminent scholar of the Armenian genocide. The author of Warrant for Genocide and The History of the Armenian Genocide in March and April alone received two lifetime achievement awards—from the Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, and from the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

Dadrian studied mathematics, history and international law at the Universities of Berlin, Vienna and Zurich before earning his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. He has been a Research Fellow at Harvard University, a guest professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a visiting professor at Duke University, received two large National Science Foundation grants and for years headed a genocide study project for the H. F. Guggenheim Foundation. From 1970 to 1991, he taught sociology at the State University of New York. In 1998, he received the Khorenatsi Medal, Armenia’s highest cultural award. He currently heads Genocide Research at the Zoryan Institute. Continue reading “Armenia’s Tears” →

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By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 25, 2005

“There is a new blacklist across the country which is having a chilling effect on campuses everywhere,” exclaimed Monique Dols, a student of Columbia University professor Joseph Massad at a April 13 “public service” session at New York City’s Cooper Union. Sponsored by the appropriately named group “Censoring Thought” the event was a perfect example of how simply paying attention to the abuses of academia has been turned upside down into “censorship.”

Flanked by Massad and radical pundit Tariq Ali, Campus Anti-War Network “activist” Dols offered living proof of indoctrination at Columbia. Launching a tirade against the racist “new McCarthyism today,” orchestrated by “Washington and Tel Aviv” and directed against Middle Eastern professors, according to Dols, these two omnipotent governments are “afraid” of “a real debate that allows people to make up their own mind when confronted with occupation and dispossession. And today they want to reach in to regulate the terms of the debate in the university.” Dols is also a willing participant in Massad’s dark fantasies of conspiracy and persecution: Massad is the target of a “systematic attack at Columbia university,” she declares, in which “spy rings” infiltrate his classroom—the same spies who hope to decommission Middle East studies everywhere.

When he speaks, Massad unveils more details of the sinister conspiracy. According to him, “right-wing forces” with Zionist “ideological positions” have hijacked “political power and political discourse in this country.” Meanwhile, true “scholarship is de-legitimized as ideology” by these “witch hunters.” Massad rues that “students with political agendas” began “bringing unannounced, unregistered guests with them to class”; worse, one student soon began circulating a petition to get him fired “on the recommendation of people from outside the university.” These upstart students were joined by “two major traditional propagandists, Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer, who after failing in U.S. academia, excelled as thought policemen.” This comment produced much knowing laughter from the appreciative audience.

According to Massad, Columbia’s Middle East studies classes are threatened by a vast right-wing campaign cleverly “engineered to cancel out” freedom of thought. Moreover, at the center of recent attacks on those who disagree with U.S. and Israeli foreign policies lies not a concern for truth or classroom decorum and balance, but academic freedom—and specifically scholarship on Palestine.” These witch hunters, Massad says, want us to “live the life of servitude to the state power, as technocrats and as ideologues.” Continue reading “Columbia’s Anti-Jewish Conspiracy Theorist” →

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By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 11, 2005

Review: The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats non-Muslims, Edited by Robert Spencer, Prometheus Books (2005)

“A thing without a name escapes understanding,” warns preeminent Islamic scholar Bat Ye’or of jihad and dhimmitude—the Islamic institutions of, respectively, war and perpetual servitude imposed on conquered non-Muslim peoples. Both, Ye’or notes in an essay entitled “Historical Amnesia,” are in the process of globalization.

This is not the benign economic globalization that most Westerners laud. Islamic jihad and dhimmitude trade in every available means—military, political, technological and intellectual. And if the towering collection of 63 essays (including Ye’or’s) contained in the new book The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims is to be believed, these specific Islamic processes are globalizing at a disturbingly rapid pace. The book, courageously assembled by JihadWatch director and FrontPage columnist Robert Spencer, provides historical and contemporary profiles of jihad and dhimmitude.

In six sections, the book delineates how Islamic ideology has affected non-Muslims both historically and in the contemporary world. The first three sections cover the myth vs. historical realities and Islamic law and practice regarding non-Muslims. The last three sections cover how the myth of Islamic tolerance has affected contemporary geopolitics, power politics at the United Nations and, finally, academic and public discourse. It is Ibn Warraq’s forward and the latter 400 pages in which this book really shines. He explains:

Islam is a totalitarian ideology that aims to control the religious, social and political life of mankind in all its aspects; the life of its followers without qualification; and the life of those who follow the so-called tolerated religions to a degree that prevents their activities from getting in the way of Islam in any way. And I mean Islam, I do not accept some spurious distinction between Islam and ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ or Islamic terrorism’. Continue reading “And Dhimmitude For All” →

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By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 16, 2005

Given the oil-for-food and peace-keepers-for-sex scandals in the United Nations of late, one might expect the press corps covering that international body to conduct their own business in the most scrupulous manner. But recent reports and complaints suggest that even the United Nations Correspondents Association is not whistle-clean.

From the outside, the UNCA and the doings of its officers may seem insignificant. The group has no more than 180 members, and its annual dues — after a 30 percent increase to $65 — will generate little more than $11,000 in 2005, according to several members. Donations from outside organizations bring the total annual budget to some $30,000, they say. In short, the UNCA hardly compares — in size or import — to, say, the National Press Club.

The UNCA is a not-for-profit membership organization, insiders say, whose associates represent most major U.S. and international newspapers and, of course, broadcast networks. Journalists centered at the United Nations are presumably assigned to cover the General Assembly, Security Council and all ancillary U.N. departments and organizations with an impartial eye.

“Journalists lynch every public official caught in any impropriety, so we should hold ourselves to the highest of standards,” says one UNCA member, explaining his benchmark for professional conduct. “At our paper, if you accept work or free trips [from sources], you’re fired.”

The UNCA leadership and some of its members, on the other hand, seem mired in such conflicts of interest. The group fails to censure members who work for the United Nations or member states. Its members go on all-expense-paid junkets. The group takes funding from from political activists and outside organizations that could also affect UN coverage. And in perhaps the biggest blunder of all, the UNCA hired as its “office administrator” one member who just happened to lack appropriate U.S. working papers. Continue reading “Another U.N. Scandal” →

All Articles, Poems & Commentaries Copyright © 1971-2021 Alyssa A. Lappen
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Printing is allowed for personal use only | Commercial usage (For Profit) is a copyright violation and written permission must be granted first.