Turkey's No Longer Best-Kept Secret: Islamized Christians

by Vasileios Meichanetsidis • January 12, 2020 at 5:00 am

"The Turkish persecution of Pontian Greeks and other Christian peoples began after the fall of Trabzon, starting slowly at first and gradually becoming more widespread and terrifying... Many Christians reluctantly converted to Islam to avoid oppression... and merely to survive. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, approximately 250,000 Pontian Greeks were forced to convert.... and speak Turkish." — The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, 2014.
The conquests by Turks resulted in the violent and destructive Islamization of the Byzantine civilization.
The Turkish people need to learn the truth about the history of both the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. Only the truth can liberate the people of Turkey from the past that haunts them to this day.

The final blow in the long and tragic process of Islamization and Turkification of the Ottoman Greek population was delivered during the 1913-1923 Greek Genocide, in which many Greeks -- especially women and children -- were forced to convert to Islam. Those who refused were killed or exiled. Pictured: A march in Thessaloniki, Greece on May 19, 2019 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the massacre of some 353,000 ethnic Pontian Greeks by Ottoman forces in Turkey. (Photo by Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP via Getty Images)

A recent statement by a Turkish mayor belonging to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was particularly noteworthy in the wake of the US Senate's December 12 resolution to "commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance."

Mayor Hayrettin Güngör of Kahramanmaraş was caught on camera telling a woman from Trabzon, "We made you Muslim."

He seems to have been referring to the fact that Trabzon, as other provinces in the Black Sea region, used to be a Greek Orthodox Christian city, which is now Muslim -- in spite of the thousands of people in the area who still speak the Pontic Greek dialect.

After an angry public response to the statement, Güngör phoned the mayor of Trabzon to apologize. As offensive as his claim may have been, however, he was actually revealing a tragic truth: that many Turkish citizens are descendants of forcibly Islamized Christians.

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The General's Death Upsets Iran's Plan

by Amir Taheri • January 12, 2020 at 4:00 am

Soleimani had his own network of lobbyists in many Arab countries and some Western democracies. Hundreds of Iranian and Arab militants have enrolled in Western universities with scholarships from the Quds Force.
Soleimani, who loved making and publishing "selfies" showing himself close to battlegrounds in the Middle East, was never present anywhere near a battle but was always to come after the dust had settled, to take "selfies" and claim the credit.
Some analysts in Tehran believe that Khamenei was planning to promote Soleimani further by making him President of the Islamic Republic in 2021. An image-building campaign started last year as Soleimani was marketed as "the Sufi commander".... A committee of exiled Iranians in Florida also started campaigning to draft Soleimani as president. If that was Khamenei's game plan, there is no doubt that Soleimani's demise will lead to more uncertainty regarding the future course of Iranian politics.

Qassem Soleimani, who was Iran's most hyped general, loved publishing "selfies" showing himself close to battlegrounds in the Middle East. He was never present anywhere near a battle but was always to come after the dust had settled, to take "selfies" and claim the credit. (Photo by Mehdi Ghasemi/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images)

While analysts and policymakers are busy speculating on ways that Tehran's ruling mullahs might avenge the killing of their most hyped general, the real question that needs considering may be elsewhere.

The question is: what effect Soleimani's death might have on the power struggle that, though currently put on hold, is certain to resume with greater vigor in Tehran.

Tehran's propaganda tries to sell Soleimani as a kind of superman who, almost single-handedly, brought Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and parts of Afghanistan and Yemen under Iranian control while driving Americans out of the Middle East and crushing ISIS's so-called Caliphate which tried to rival the Islamic Republic in Tehran. Soleimani himself did a lot to promote that image and, doing that, received much help from Western, especially American, and Israeli media that bought the bundle of goods from Tehran.

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