(Note from TB: This post is by longtime contributor, Rev. David Wegener.)
Evil is real. It is in our hearts and families, our churches and synagogues, our city councils and state houses the world over. We’d like to pretend it doesn’t exist, but it still appears in all its horror from time to time, in ways we cannot ignore. Our attention is drawn to it when we read about …
This year, I read a book about evil. Peter Balakian, an Armenian-American historian, has written about the genocide committed by the Turks against the Armenians prior to, during and after World War I in The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response. 24 April 2015 marked the 100th anniversary of the massacre. On that date in 1915, the Turks killed hundreds of Armenian leaders (poets and writers and priests and politicians and teachers).
Sadly, talking about this massacre is difficult today since the Turkish government will still not admit that the massacres occurred...
But, these are all lies. Historical scholarship, like that represented by Balakian’s book (and not from his work alone), shows clearly that …
(1) the massacres did occur; (2) they were not in response to any rebellions by the Armenians; (3) the massacres were carried out as part of government policy; (4) the Armenians were targeted because of their status as an ethnic minority and their Christianity; (5) it is appropriate to use the word, “genocide,” when talking about the actions of the Turkish government.
If you affirm any of the facts above, and if your voice matters at all, the Turkish government will oppose you and do everything they can to silence you.
There are not two sides to this question. To say that there are dignifies the denials of the Turkish government and pretends that there is some kind of scholarly debate on this question. There is no such thing. Present day Turkish denials are not a reinterpretation of history, but “the final stage of the genocide … an attempt to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators” (p.xix). The massacres were clustered around three different time periods: 1894-96, 1908-09 and 1914-16.
In the later 1800s, the problem of Christian minorities and their treatment in the Ottoman Empire was very significant. The Ottoman leader, Sultan Abdul Hamid II, agreed to reforms under pressure from the three great powers of the day: Britain, France, and Russia. The reforms stated that minorities within his Empire would be treated as equals with the Muslim majority. However, although the Sultan agreed to this on paper, the reforms were never implemented.
In 1890, he created a paramilitary order (made up of Kurds) and gave them the task of dealing with the Armenians “as they saw fit.” The Armenians were over-taxed having to pay the Ottoman Turks and the Kurds and this provoked them and then the Kurds carried out the massacres. Somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 were killed from 1894-96. In response, the American Congress passed a resolution condemning the sultan for the massacres. There was never any question as to who was really behind the massacres. Interestingly, the Kurds have admitted their complicity in these massacres (known as the Hamidian massacres).
In 1908, several groups were formed to oppose the rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. They were called the Young Turks (that’s where we get the expression). After the Sultan stepped down, in the back and forth of internal Turkish politics, anger and resentment was turned against the Armenians in the city of Adana (and surrounding villages).
Around 25,000 Armenians were killed in 1909, while government officials did nothing, though they knew exactly what government soldiers were doing in slaughtering a people group. The British Vice-Consul tried to do everything in his power to stop the massacres, to no avail. So did a few American Protestant missionaries (two of whom were killed for their efforts) and several Jesuits.
An alliance was made between Germany and the Turks before WWI. The leading Sunni Muslim cleric declared a jihad against Christians, except for those of German background, and this fanned “the flames of Turkish nationalism” (p.170). Only Muslims would have a place in the new Turkey, and this meant the Armenian question had to be solved, once and for all. How did the massacres proceed?
A number of Armenians had become wealthy. A form of the “Protestant work ethic” had taken root amongst them and this caused resentment on the part of their Turkish and Kurdish neighbors. Their homes and stores were looted when they were sent away on these forced marches. Churches were ransacked, priests beaten, and altars were desecrated. Some of the Turks descended on the departing Armenians to purchase their clothes and furniture and jewelry for a pittance, rejoicing in the tragedy of their neighbors. Other Turks were horrified and would not touch the loot, believing it was forbidden and would bring a curse.
“Nearly all the merchants, bankers, doctors, dentists, lawyers, teachers, carpenters, brick-layers, tile-makers, tinsmiths, bakers, tailors, shoe-makers, and other artisans so essential to the life of the people were Armenians … By one stroke … the country was to be set back a century” (p.236). The famine that came in 1916 was entirely predictable.
The methods of torture were chosen to cause the greatest possible suffering and despair, showing man’s inhumanity to man. The records of the Spanish Inquisition were consulted to find “new” methods of torture, and some of these were adopted.
It is hard to read this material and not come away with a hatred for the Turkish people. My father grew up in a church where there were a number of families who suffered at the hands of the Turks. The Turks were the only people about whom I ever heard him speak nothing but evil. Now I understand why.
As it always is, these horrors caused some to fight for the oppressed and others to betray them. America had a mixed record in how they have dealt with the Genocide.
Yet politics intervened and President Wilson, who was very sympathetic to the Armenian cause, failed to take any action on their behalf and no one would hold the Turks to account. Since then, the historical record comes down decidedly on the side of American cowardice. Here are a few snippets of that record.
Recent American presidents and senators and representatives have played a largely cowardly role in kowtowing to the Turkish government.
Lots more details could be given but let me bring this post to a close. How should we respond to this kind of evil? When we think about the suffering of our fellow human beings, many of whom were our brothers and sisters in Christ, we can begin to question the goodness and even the reality of God. However, certain passages of Scripture speak into our despair. The second Psalm is one of them.
Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, ‘let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us’ (verses 1-3).
This is indeed what happened in the Armenian genocide. Is it by mere chance that the Turks who committed the genocide were Muslims and that most of their victims were Christians? There seemed to have been an irrational hatred of the Armenians by the Sultan and the young Turks and so they took counsel together to wipe out the nation’s Christian minority. They can’t justify their actions by saying they did what was best for the nation. Indeed, it set Turkey back decades because of the key roles the Armenians played in Turkish society. As you study history (and your own heart), you will find that evil often has this irrational character to it.
But what about the Lord’s response? Did He not hear the cries of His people as they were tortured and killed? Of course he did.
He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision (verse 4).
The Lord heard the cries of His people and knew them. And He holds the perpetrators of the evil in derision. He scorns and hates the Turks, just as He does the jihadis of ISIS today. And it is no contradiction to say that He also loved the Turks and loves the jihadis of today, and yearns for them to repent and forsake their evil. For Him to exhibit hatred and compassion (and patience!) toward the same persons is hard to understand but God is infinitely complex.
Yes, you might say, this is fine, but … what about the present situation of God’s people? Is God unconcerned about His people, His church, the body of His Son? It can seem so, but that is not the case.
He has sent His Son to punish evil and redeem His church. At His first coming, He came to save. At His second, He will come for judgment. The nations will be His “heritage,” His “possession” (verse 8). He will pour out His wrath on those who have persecuted His people. We see some evidence of His wrath even now, but one day He will “break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” (verse 9). That will be a terrible day for the unrepentant, but it is a day to which believers look forward. As C.S. Lewis once wrote in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe …
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
The conclusion of this Psalm (verses 10-12) shows that it is meant to terrify and warn the rulers of the earth who might do harm to the people of God. They will not escape, whatever it might seem like at the present. And it is written to all of us, that we might take refuge in His Son lest God direct His anger toward us and we perish.