Rembetiko, Music of My Heart

Pictured Above: Semsis, Eskenazi and Tomboulis

One of my favorite musical genres is Rembetiko, the soulful, inventive music of the Greeks of Anatolia (Asia Minor). This style is rich with Ottoman, Persian and Arabic influences, both musical and cultural and many of its great performers were Ottoman Jews and Armenians. A study of the Ottoman Empire highlights the wonderful and destructive power of multiculturalism and diversity. On one hand the incredibly rich mix of cultures, races, religions and languages produced some of the most amazing music, architecture, poetry and cuisine that has graced the world. On the other hand, it bred conflict, instability and the first Genocide of the century, ultimately leading Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria to undertake a massive population exchange, with the goal of creating more homogeneous, stable and peaceful nations. If I had to derive a one line line lesson from the Ottoman Experience for the United States, it would be as follows: enjoy the cultural blessings that diversity bring, but tread carefully, for human beings are flawed creatures of conflict. Here is a wonderful song performed in 1929 by Andonis Dalgas and one performed by the prodigious Roza Eskenazi.

ERDOĞAN TO WORLD: “AFEDERSİNİZ, BEN BİR BÜYÜK EŞEĞİM...”

Or, literally "pardon me, I am a big jackass...I cannot control the idiotic things I say and do."

During my time in office I have:

Threatened to send the Turkish Navy to Gaza,

Led the world in the imprisonment of journalists.

Accepted funds from Iran for my re-election campaign.

Eroded Turkey's secular foundation.

Threatened to demolish a Turkish - Armenian Friendship Statue.

Note from author - I am still very fond of the majority of Turkish people and Turkish culture.

Why the Pope should call for the return of the Hagia Sophia

I wish I could say that I was the author of this very thoughtful article. He discusses the lack of cultural confidence of (large segments of) the west, which is increasingly leading to an asymmetrical relationship, in which we are (justifiably) apologetic for our colonial transgressions, while we do not demand that the Islamic world address their past and (more importantly) present abuse of their Christian and Jewish minorities. Owing to widespread historical illiteracy of the current generation of Americans and Western Europeans this article will probably not resonate with many readers. Such individuals are unaware that while the Crusades were filled with much bloodshed, it was in response to an ongoing jihad that has seized vast stretches of territory that formed the spiritual and economic heartland of Christendom. And for over a thousand years at the heart of this land was the magnificent Hagia Sophia that was forcibly converted into a mosque by the Ottoman Turks, along with 100's of other churches. After a long lull, this process accelerated during the Genocide of Armenians in 1915, in which hundreds of historical monasteries and churches were converted or razed to thee ground. The fact that so few westerners are concerned, let alone aware of the ongoing destruction of Jews and Christians in the middle east is a testament to an erosion of culture and identity. Read, enjoy and learn!

December 7, 2007


Holy Wisdom
Why the Pope should call for the return of the Hagia Sophia.

by Bruce S. Thornton

Many in the West are congratulating Pope Benedict XVI’s recent trip to Turkey, where in the Blue Mosque he prayed facing Mecca and made other gestures meant to salve the wounds raised by his references to Islam’s history of violence. Personally, I found the whole scene a depressing exhibit of the West’s terminal failure of nerve, one particularly distressing given this Pope’s documented understanding that what we call the “war on terror” is in fact the latest episode in the centuries-long struggle with a militant Islam.

In the Pope’s visit and the media response to it, we once again witnessed the one-way street of “religious tolerance” and “respect.” In other words, the West is supposed to respect and tolerate Muslims and Islam, all the while that no such respect is afforded to Christians and Jews. The West is supposed to feel guilty and obsess over its putative crimes against Islam, all the while that the longer chronicle of Islamic assault against the West is forgotten. Hence the ridiculous ignorance of those who think the Crusades were “holy wars” akin to jihadic aggression. Somehow it’s forgotten that the Holy Land was Greco-Roman and Hebraic and Christian for centuries before the armies of Allah destroyed that cultural continuity and imposed a new culture and religion at the point of a sword.

This double standard was particularly obvious given the backdrop of the Pope’s visit –– the city of Istanbul. Once known as Constantinople, this was one of the great cities of Classical and Christian culture, home to one of Christendom’s most magnificent churches, Hagia Sophia, the church of the Holy Wisdom. On May 29, 1453, Constantinople ceased to exist, falling to the armies of the Sultan Mehmet II: “By noon,” John Julius Norwich writes, “the streets were running red with blood. Houses were ransacked, women and children raped or impaled, churches razed, icons wrenched from their golden frames, books ripped from their silver bindings. . . . In the church of St. Saviour in Chora the mosaics and frescoes were miraculously spared, but the Empire’s holiest icon, the Virgin Hodegetria, said to have been painted by St. Luke himself, was hacked into four pieces and destroyed. The most hideous scenes of all, however, were enacted in the church of the Holy Wisdom. Matins were already in progress when the berserk conquerors were heard approaching. Immediately the great bronze doors were closed; but the Turks soon smashed their way in. The poorer and more unattractive of the congregation were massacred on the spot; the remainder were lashed together and led off to the Turkish camps, for their captors to do with as they liked. As for the officiating priests, they continued with the Mass as long as they could before being killed at the high altar.”

Ancient history, you say, irrelevant to the present? But do not the Muslims repeatedly invoke the historical crimes of the West to justify terrorism? Are not the sins of colonialism and imperialism continually cited, even though France and England’s 150 years in the Middle East and North Africa are dwarfed by Islam’s several centuries in Spain and the Balkans and the cradle of the West, Greece? Is there some statute of limitations on conquest and the transfer of territory that attends it, so that the conquests of Islam are legitimized by time, while those of the West can never be?

Why do we accept this double standard? Why are the continuing persecution of Christians today, despicable anti-Semitic slanders, and the desecration of temples and churches in Muslim lands shrugged away in the West, while trivial cartoons and mere statements of historical fact are met with hysteria, violence, and threats? Why are churches disappearing throughout the lands of Christianity’s birth and growth, while huge mosques are going up in London and Milan? Why are Christians and Jews forbidden entry into Saudi Arabia, while Muslims in Europe demand special privileges and recognition of their faith?

Nowhere is this insane, groveling capitulation of the West more obvious than in its treatment of Israel. By all rights, when Israel recaptured Jerusalem from Jordan –– in a defensive war Israel did not want, a war Israel literally begged Jordan to stay out of –– Israel could have razed the Aqsa mosque and rebuilt the temple on the site it had stood on for centuries before Islam even existed. Instead, the Temple Mount is still controlled by Muslims, who are free to worship in the mosque all the while they allow the children of Allah to throw stones on the Jews who come to worship at the few scraps of the temple wall, all that is left to them of their holiest site. Meanwhile the countries of the West decry the “illegal occupation” of Jerusalem and Judea and Galilee, refuse to put their embassies in the capital of Israel, and continually demand more and more concessions to a people who have made it clear that their conquest of Jerusalem is legitimate, that Israelis, not they, are the interloper in the Jews’ historical homeland, and that violence against innocents is justified to undo a history deemed to violate Allah’s will.

When will we learn that this forbearance is not a testimony to our strength but rather a sign of our cultural sickness? Would that the Pope had stood in Hagia Sophia and asked the Turks to restore this Christian monument to the Orthodox Church, as a sign that Turkey is sincere about entering the modern world and accepting its canons of reciprocal tolerance, not to mention showing the sort of regret for its ancestors’ crimes that the West is continually dunned to show. What do you think the reaction would have been? How many Christians would have died in the ensuing riots by the adherents of the “religion of peace”? And how many Western commentators would have scourged the Pope for his blinkered intolerance and insensitivity?

No, the enemy knows that what we pretend to be “tolerance” and “respect” are merely the camouflage of spiritual exhaustion and fear. We have fewer and fewer men like those who created the West in the teeth of Islamic aggression, men like the Byzantine Greek Lucas Notaras. After the sack of Constantinople, the Sultan demanded Notaras’s beautiful 14-year-old son for the royal harem: “When Notaras still defied the Sultan,” Steven Runciman writes, “orders were given for him and the two boys [his son and son-in-law] to be decapitated on the spot. Notaras merely asked that they should be slain before him, lest the sight of his death should make them waver. When they had both perished, he bared his neck to the executioner.” As Nestor says in the Iliad, “Men like those I have not seen again, nor ever will.”

©2006 Bruce Thornton

The Turkish Two Step

In the last decade, Turkey has moved forward with significant political and economic reforms. But, at times it seems as if they are doing the a dance which I call the "Turkish Two Step," in which Turkey moves two steps forward and then two (and sometimes) three steps back. This is especially true with issues involving minorities. This was highlighted in a recent ruling by the Turkish Supreme Court that usurped a substantial portion of Mor Gabrield Monastary to the Turkish State. Founded in 397 AD, Mor Gabriel is one of the oldest monasteries in Christendom. Beyond that, it is a cultural remnant of the once great Syriac Christian presence in South Eastern Anatolia that was substantially reduced during the Assyrian Genocide. We hope that international pressure and more importantly the growing democratization of large segments of Turkish Society will help avert the disappearance of the 5,000 year Assyrian Presence.

MARCH 7, 2009.Defending the Faith

Battle Over a Christian Monastery Tests Turkey's Tolerance of Minorities.

By ANDREW HIGGINS
KARTMIN, TURKEY -- Christians have lived in these parts since the dawn of their faith. But they have had a rough couple of millennia, preyed on by Persian, Arab, Mongol, Kurdish and Turkish armies. Each group tramped through the rocky highlands that now comprise Turkey's southeastern border with Iraq and Syria.

The current menace is less bellicose but is deemed a threat nonetheless. A group of state land surveyors and Muslim villagers are intent on shrinking the boundaries of an ancient monastery by more than half. The monastery, called Mor Gabriel, is revered by the Syriac Orthodox Church.

Battling to hang on to the monastic lands, Bishop Timotheus Samuel Aktas is fortifying his defenses. He's hired two Turkish lawyers -- one Muslim, one Christian -- and mobilized support from foreign diplomats, clergy and politicians.

Also giving a helping hand, says the bishop, is Saint Gabriel, a predecessor as abbot who died in the seventh century: "We still have four of his fingers." Locked away for safekeeping, the sacred digits are treasured as relics from the past -- and a hex on enemies in the present.

A Syriac Christian monk walks to attend a service at Mor Gabriel. The monastery is fighting over land it says it's had since the 4th century.

The outcome of the land dispute is now in the hands of a Turkish court. Seated below a bust of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey's secular founding father, a robed judge on Wednesday told the feuding parties that he would issue a ruling after he visits the disputed territory himself next month.

The trial comes at a critical stage in Turkey's 22-year drive to join the European Union. When it first came to power in 2002, the ruling AK party, led by observant Muslims, pushed to accelerate legal and other changes demanded by Europe for admittance into its largely Christian club. But much of the momentum has since slowed. France has made clear it doesn't want Turkey in the EU no matter what, while Turkey has seemed to have second thoughts.

A big obstacle is Turkey's continuing tensions with its ethnic minorities, notably the Kurds, who account for more than 15% of the population and are battling for greater autonomy. Also fraught, but more under the radar, is the situation confronting members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, one of the world's oldest and most beleaguered Christian communities. The group's fate is now seen as a test of Turkey's ability to accommodate groups at odds with "Turkishness," a legal concept of national identity that has at times been used to suppress minority groups.

Bishop Timotheus Samuel Aktas says Turkey's claim to Mor Gabriel's land is an attempt to rid the country of Syriac Christians entirely.

.The dispute over Mor Gabriel is being closely watched here and abroad. The EU and several embassies in Ankara sent observers to a court hearing in February, and a Swedish diplomat attended this week's session. Protection of minority rights is a condition for entry into the EU.

Founded in 397, Mor Gabriel is one of the world's oldest functioning monasteries. Viewed by Syriacs as a "second Jerusalem," it sits atop a hill overlooking now solidly Muslim lands. It has just three monks and 14 nuns. It also has 12,000 ancient corpses buried in a basement crypt.

The bishop's local flock numbers only 3,000. Mor Gabriel's influence, however, reaches far beyond its fortress-like walls, inspiring and binding a community of Christians scattered by persecution and emigration. There are hundreds of thousands more Syriac Christians across the frontier in Iraq and Syria and in Europe. They speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ.

"The monastery is all we have left," says Attiya Tunc, who left for Holland as a child and returned this February to find her family's village near here reduced to ruins and overrun with sheep, since most of the villagers abandoned it. Ms. Tunc says she came in response to telephone call from Bishop Aktas appealing to former residents to come back and show their support in the land battle.
Historical Claims

Turkish officials say they have no desire to uproot Christianity. They point to new roads and other services provided to small settlements of Syriac Christians who have returned in recent years from abroad.

Mustafa Yilmaz, the state's senior administrator in the area, says Turkey wants to clarify blurred property boundaries as part of a national land survey, something long demanded by the EU. He says the monastery could lose around 100 acres of land currently enclosed within a high wall, meaning a loss of about 60% of its core property. Some of that could be reclassified as a state-owned forest, with the rest claimed by the Treasury on the grounds that it's not being used as intended for farming or other purposes.

Mr. Yilmaz says none of this would affect the monastery's operations as the land targeted isn't being used by monks or nuns, and he notes that the court could yet side in part with the monastery. He says the government has no desire to hurt a monastery he describes as a "very special place" that, among other things, helps boost the region's economy by bringing in throngs of pilgrims and tourists.

Christian activists, says Mr. Yilmaz, have "blown up" a mundane muddle into a religious issue. "Look, everyone wants to have more land," he says.

Syriac Christians see a more sinister purpose. They say the Turkish state and Muslim villagers want to grab Christian land and force the non-Muslims to leave. "There is no place for Christians here" until Turkey changes in fundamental ways, says Ms. Tunc.

The dispute has spurred some Muslims in neighboring villages to launch complaints against the monastery. Mahmut Duz, a Muslim who lives near Mor Gabriel, lodged a protest last year to the state prosecutor in Midyat, a nearby town. Mr. Duz alleged that the bishop and his monks are "engaged in illegal religious and reactionary missionary activities."

Mr. Duz urged Turkish authorities to remember Mehmed the Conqueror, a 15th-century Ottoman ruler who routed Christian forces and conquered the city now called Istanbul for Islam. He said Turkish officials should recall a vow by the Conqueror to " 'cut off the head of anybody who cuts down even a branch from my forest.' " Bishops and priests, Mr. Duz told the prosecutor, can keep their heads, but "you must stop the occupation and plunder" of Muslim land by the monastery.

No one at the monastery has been prosecuted for the crimes alleged by Mr. Duz and other villagers. The monastery says these claims are ludicrous. It says it tutors 35 Syriac Christian school boys in Aramaic and religion but conducts no missionary activities.

Syriac Christians take an even longer view than Mr. Duz. They deride local Muslims as newcomers, saying Mor Gabriel was built two centuries before Islam was founded. "Mohammed did not exist. The Ottoman Empire did not exist. Turkey did not exist," says Issa Garis, the monastery's archdeacon.

A Long List of Raids

Syriac Christians have indeed been living -- and often suffering -- here for a very long time. Mor Gabriel's history is a "long list of raids, wars, droughts, famines, plagues and persecutions," says British scholar Andrew Palmer. "Time and again, they've had to start again from nothing."

In the eighth century, plague swept through the area and took the lives of many of Mor Gabriel's monks. Survivors dug up the body of Saint Gabriel, the monastery's seventh-century abbot, and propped him up in church to pray for help. The plague, according to tradition, passed.

When disease later ravaged a Christian center to the north, Saint Gabriel's right hand was cut off and sent there to help. One of the fingers was then removed and dispatched to avert another crisis elsewhere. The finger is now missing.

As Islam extended its reach, the monastery shut down repeatedly, but always reopened. It was attacked by Kurds, Turks and then Kurds again. In the 14th century, Mongol invaders seized the monastery and killed 40 monks and 400 other Christians hiding in a cave. Perhaps the biggest blow of all came in the modern era, when Turkey's slaughter of Christian Armenians during World War I led to massacres of Syriac Christians, too. The patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church later decamped to Syria.

Ms. Tunc, the woman now living in Holland, grew up with stories of massacred relatives. Her father "told us never to trust Turks or Kurds," and ordered her to master Dutch ways "because we could never go back."

Her family and many others left Turkey in the 1980s during a brutal conflict between Turkish soldiers and Kurdish guerrillas. Syriac Christians, viewed with suspicion by both sides, frequently got caught in the crossfire.

The exodus drained towns and villages of Christians, including Midyat, the town where the court is reviewing the land dispute. Midyat used to be almost entirely Christian but now has just 120 non-Muslim families out of a population of 60,000. The town has seven churches, but just one preacher.

Running a Tight Ship

As Christians fled, Bishop Aktas took charge of Mor Gabriel. He'd earlier studied in New York but found the U.S. too permissive. "I didn't like America. It is not for monks like me," he says.

By some accounts, he ran a very tight ship. Aydin Aslan, a student there from 1978 until 1983, says discipline was extremely strict, each day devoted to study and prayer. "It was like a prison," recalls Mr. Aslan, who emigrated to Belgium.

Alarmed by a spate of thefts and determined to keep Muslim neighbors from encroaching, Bishop Aktas started building a high wall around his land. When Muslims from the village of Kartmin planted crops and grazed livestock near a well on monastic property, monks and school boys filled the well with stones to keep them away.
Since 2000, Syriac Christian émigrés have poured money into rebuilding churches and putting up summer homes like those at top.

Muslim resentment grew against the monastery, which was being bolstered thanks to funds from abroad. Following a drop-off in fighting between the Turkish military and Kurdish guerrillas after 2000, Syriac Christian émigrés seized on the relative calm. They poured money in to rebuild old churches, expand the monastery compound and build summer homes.

A few decided to move back for good. Jacob Demir returned from Switzerland with his family to a new villa on the outskirts of Midyat. "They thought we would go to Europe and melt away," says Mr. Demir. Instead, he says, exile only made him more aware and assertive of his Syriac identity. (His older children are less enthusiastic: A daughter stayed behind in Europe and a son who came back to Turkey left when he discovered how low local salaries are.)

The return to Turkey of relatively prosperous Christians helped the economy and provided jobs in construction. But it also needled some Muslims, especially when returnees began to claim abandoned property occupied by Muslims.

Turmoil in neighboring Iraq added to the unease. After the 2003 U.S. invasion, hundreds of thousands of Syriac Christians in Iraq fled mainly to Syria and Jordan as security collapsed and Muslims turned on their neighbors. Iraq's most prominent Syriac Christian, Saddam Hussein's foreign minister Tariq Aziz, was arrested by the U.S. Acquitted this week in the first of three cases against him, he remains in jail on other charges relating to the massacre of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s.

As uncertainty mounted about the future of the Syriac church, officials in Midyat were ordered to survey all land in their area not yet officially registered. Surveyors, armed with old maps and aerial photographs, began fanning out through villages trying to work out who owned what.

Last summer, officials informed the monastery that big chunks of territory it considered its own were actually state-owned forest land. The monastery wall was declared illegal. Surveyors also redrew village borders, expanding the territory of three Muslim villages with which the monastery had long feuded.

The monastery went to court to challenge the decisions. Three village chiefs filed a complaint against the monastery with the Midyat prosecutor. Bishop Aktas, they complained, had destroyed "an atmosphere of peace and tolerance" and should be investigated.

The monastery's émigré lobby swung into action. Late last year and again in January, Syriac activists organized street demonstrations in Sweden and Germany. Yilmaz Kerimo, a Syriac Christian member of the Swedish parliament, protested to Turkey's Ministry of Interior, demanding an end to "unlawful acts and brutalities" at odds with Turkey's desire to join the EU.

Ismail Erkal, the village head here in Kartmin, one of the three settlements involved in the dispute, blames Bishop Aktas for stirring tempers. "This bishop is a difficult person," says Mr. Erkal. Standing on the roof of his mud-and-brick house. Looking out towards the monastery, he points to swathes of monastic land which he says should belong to Kartmin. His village used to have a church but, with no Christians left, it is now a stable. Next door is a new mosque.

Mr. Erkel says Islam "does not allow oppression," and denies any plan to get the last Christians in the area to leave.

Bishop Aktas says the message is clear: "They want to make us all go away."

Write to Andrew Higgins at andrew.higgins@wsj.com

Arkadaşlarım, Türkiye Bitti!

In Turkish this phrase means "My friends, Turkey is through!"

This is an overstatement; it would be more proper to say that Turkey's role as an ally of Israel is over. Unfortunately Turkey's strong sentiments against Israel are not confined to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; they are quite wide spread.

In the popular program, Ayrılık (Farewell) Israeli soldiers are portrayed as savages who take pleasure in murdering Arab babies and raping Arab women.

The action film, Kurtlar Vadisi: Irak (Valley of the Wolves: Iraq), features a Jewish doctor who removes and sells organs from injured civilians. FYI, the doctor is played by Garey Busey, who is now on my sh*t head list.

And the upcoming film, Kurtlar Vadisi: Filistin (Valley of the Wolves: Palestine) has a scene in which a Turkish commando kills the Israeli Ambassador.

And more menacing is the growth of political Islam in Turkey, which has only been held in check by pressure from Turkey's staunchly secular military establishment...stay tuned for more bad news.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOZjMAl_0Ns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayrilik

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_the_Wolves:_Palestine

Details, Details, Details...

It's sad how few of Israel's critics are unwilling to take even a few minutes of their time to investigate the background of the ongoing conflict. In the case of the unfortunate deaths of several Turkish militants on the Mavi Marmara, video footage show a very violent mob clubbing Israeli soldiers with metal bars, stabbing them with knives and throwing them overboard, before the Israeli's soldiers responded with live fire. Details, details, details, the sworn enemy of fascists, fanatics and the simple minded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LulDJh4fWI&playnext_from=TL&videos=I6ELZwrUBXs

A Prelude to Violence at Sea

Very few of those who condemn Israel for the violent clash of the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara chose to investigate the full details of what transpired and even fewer sought to explore the background of the organizations involved. I came across a troubling video filmed before the clash that shows the members of the flotilla chanting a song that called for the death of Jews. For those unfamiliar with Islamic history, Khaibar was a battle that transpired in Arabia, in which a Jewish tribe was defeated by the forces of Muhammad, it's male members massacred and it's female members distributed as war booty. In addition, one of the flotilla members declared that they faced "one of two happy endings: either martyrdom or reaching Gaza."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3L7OV414Kk&playnext_from=TL&videos=zy-Fi7Onw4M

The CFF Salutes: Taner Akçam

Taner Akçam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taner_Akcam) is part of a small but growing number of Turkish intellectuals who recognize the Armenian Genocide. For this Mr. Akçam has faced death threats and constant harassment. In the following clip he discusses "A Shameful Act", which is an clear and well cited exploration of the cultural, political and historic forces that led to the Armenian Genocide:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL3WF7f1WWA&feature=related

Armenian Genocide

Today (April 24, 1915) was the 95th Anniversary of the commencement of the Armenian Genocide.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide). On this day 240 of the leading cultural and commercial figures of the Armenian community were arrested in the city of Constantinople, most whom were later massacred. From there, at least 1,000,000 Armenians died from massacres, hunger and thirst in the cold mountains of Anatolia and the burning deserts of Syria. Countless women and children were kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam. Since then the Turkish government has destroyed 100's if not 1000's of monasteries, churches and architectural treasures that attest to the 3,000 year Armenian presence in Anatolia.(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdJhTgT0xqw)

As a Jew who lost countless members of my family in the Holocaust, my heart goes out to the Armenian Community. An added element to the Armenian tragedy is that the Turkish government and majority of Turkish people do not recognize the genocide. I can only imagine the rage I would feel if the German government and people denied the holocaust. In addition, several world governments have failed to publicly recognize the Armenian Genocide. Most shamefully, the United States and Israel fall under this category. While I understand the strategic value of Turkey, this flight from moral responsibility is incomprehensible, especially in the case of Israel. Thankfully most Israeli historians and intellectuals do not share their government's position (http://www.armenianweekly.com/2010/04/20/sassounian/).

Take Me Back to Constantinople

With over 140 military bases across the world America, contrary to the wise advice of the founding fathers has become an empire. The only thing worse than an empire isone that is poorly run. Edward Luttwak wrote a very interesting article on the lessons that the American Empire can learn from the Byzantine Empire. To our misfortune, Bush and now Obama have ignored many of these lessons. I have presented the most relevant excerpts, but to view the full article, click on the following link:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/19/take_me_back_to_constantinople


Take Me Back to Constantinople

How Byzantium, not Rome, can help preserve Pax Americana.

BY EDWARD LUTTWAK NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009

Economic crisis, mounting national debt, excessive foreign commitments -- this is no way to run an empire. America needs serious strategic counseling. And fast. It has never been Rome, and to adopt its strategies no -- its ruthless expansion of empire, domination of foreign peoples, and bone-crushing brand of total war -- would only hasten America's decline. Better instead to look to the empire's eastern incarnation: Byzantium, which outlasted its Roman predecessor by eight centuries. It is the lessons of Byzantine grand strategy that America must rediscover today.

I've spent the past two decades poring over these texts to compile a study of Byzantine grand strategy. The United States would do well to heed the following seven lessons if it wishes to remain a great power:

I. Avoid war by every possible means, in all possible circumstances, but always act as if war might start at any time. Train intensively and be ready for battle at all times -- but do not be eager to fight. The highest purpose of combat readiness is to reduce the probability of having to fight.

III. Campaign vigorously, both offensively and defensively, but avoid battles, especially large-scale battles, except in very favorable circumstances. Don't think like the Romans, who viewed persuasion as just an adjunct to force. Instead, employ force in the smallest possible doses to help persuade the persuadable and harm those not yet amenable to persuasion.

IV. Replace the battle of attrition and occupation of countries with maneuver warfare -- lightning strikes and offensive raids to disrupt enemies, followed by rapid withdrawals. The object is not to destroy your enemies, because they can become tomorrow's allies. A multiplicity of enemies can be less of a threat than just one, so long as they can be persuaded to attack one another.

V. Strive to end wars successfully by recruiting allies to change the balance of power. Diplomacy is even more important during war than peace. Reject, as the Byzantines did, the foolish aphorism that when the guns speak, diplomats fall silent. The most useful allies are those nearest to the enemy, for they know how best to fight his forces.

VI. Subversion is the cheapest path to victory. So cheap, in fact, as compared with the costs and risks of battle, that it must always be attempted, even with the most seemingly irreconcilable enemies. Remember: Even religious fanatics can be bribed, as the Byzantines were some of the first to discover, because zealots can be quite creative in inventing religious justifications for betraying their own cause ("since the ultimate victory of Islam is inevitable anyway …").

Lessons from the Ottoman Empire

I have always been fascinated by Turkey and the Ottoman Empire, which was a fascinating nexus of Islamic, Christian and Jewish civilization. Ottoman music, cuisine, art and architecture represented a fascinating amalgamation of the diverse groups which made up the empire, which included: Turks, Tatars, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Arabs, Assyrians, Albanians, Kurds, Bulgarians and many more. And of course the Ottoman Turkish culture left a linguistic and cultural mark on the said groups.

But, as someone well versed in Ottoman history, I am painfully aware of the downside of diversity. The experience of the Ottomans shows that ruling diverse populations is only possible with a strong, centralized and undemocratic state. As the empire came to include diverse populations that lacked common interests, values and visions, the heavy hand of the state became increasingly necessary. Routinely inter-communal conflicts were suppressed by the Ottomans, such as blood libels issued by Greeks Christians against their Jewish neighbors.

Endemic tension between ethno-religious groups contributed to the revolution of 1908, which led to a more democratic and representative state. Unfortunately, democratization did not lead to a decrease in inter communal tension, but a marked increase. In the remaining European territory of the Ottoman Empire, not only did the Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Macedonians and Albanians battle the Ottoman State, but also against each other. Ultimately inter-communal tensions led to the death and displacement of millions of individuals in Anatolia and the Balkans.

Sadly, it was determined that the only way to create lasting peace by Greece and Turkey was to institute a population exchange in 1923 via the Treaty of Laussane. This treaty stipulated that 1.4 million Orthodox Christians of Turkey would be exchanged for 0.4 million Muslims of Greece. In addition, a three way population exchange occurred between Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria. And within the Turkish Republic, as the unifying Ottoman-Muslim identity was supplanted by individual Turkish and Kurdish identities, violent uprisings erupted that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals. Similar outbreaks of violence occurred in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Iraq and other nations, as shared identities and interests were cast off and individual ethno-religious identities were reaffirmed. In all of the cases we learned that only a heavy handed government was able to hold diverse groups together and accordingly democracy heralded disorder and conflict.

So, I am understandably skeptical when Americans promote policies that increase diversity and philosophies that highlight it, while eschewing integration and our shared identity. When I hear our academic, political and corporate elites extolling us to "celebrate diversity" my response is that they should temper their positive optimism with a better understanding of history. This is increasingly true as the American government seeks to redistribute wealth and employment along ethnic lines, as seen in affirmative action. Even the most tolerant individuals become chauvinists when you touch their wallets.

The underlying problem is that we take it for granted that we have maintained a diverse society that is free, peaceful and prosperous, when it is the exception to the historical rule. This does not mean that individuals and groups shouldn't be free to determine and express their identities. It merely means that we as a society must be optimistic, while also being cautious and skeptical about claims based in utopian visions rather than the real experience of empires that came before us.

Lovely Turkish Music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHI6qFGxx68