Turks Quotes
More Turks Quotes
I like the Albanians much; they are not all Turks; some tribes are Christians. But their religion makes little difference in their manner or conduct. They are esteemed the best troops in the Turkish service.
— Lord Byron (1830), Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, page 161
Some Englishmen, of whom Kitchener was chief, believed that a rebellion of Arabs against Turks would enable England, while fighting Germany, simultaneously to defeat Turkey. Their knowledge of the nature and power and country of the Arabic-speaking peoples made them think that the issue of such a rebellion would be happy: and indicated its character and method. So they allowed it to begin...
thomas edward ("t. e.") lawrence— Introduction: Foundations of Revolt
…had been its Greek populace, the Turks massacred as many Greeks there as possible, to so1ve that ethnological problem by genocide, a term a later and more delicate…
— Clarence Pendleton Lee, Athenian Adventure: With Alarums & Excursions, p.110
With us it is not a question of Bolshevism or democracy, but of life or death. A decision in favor of a Soviet could not be opposed by the Young Turks.
ahmed djemal— Quoted in "Djemal Pasha In Moscow" - New York Times - June 17, 1920
Armenia was always a minority nation. The Armenians were annihilated by the Russians and then by the Turks.
ernst kaltenbrunner— To Leon Goldensohn, about the Armenian Genocide, 6/6/46, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
Russia demanded Armenian territories, very cleverly using long-standing, bitter fights between Armenians and Turks.
ernst kaltenbrunner— To Leon Goldensohn, about the Armenian Genocide, 6/6/46, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
My father was an atheist and he always described himself as a Serb. OK, maybe we were Muslim for 250 years, but we were orthodox before that and deep down we were always Serbs, religion cannot change that. We only became Muslims to survive the Turks.
emir kusturica— The Guardian (4 March 2005)
The European policy is invariably the maintenance of the status quo, and you will do nothing for the subject races unless we, by taking initiative, make you realize that helping us against the Turks is the lesser of the evils.
eleftherios venizelos— Bagger, 1922, p. 67 and Gibbons, 1920, p. 27
— Venizelos' answer to the question "Why don't you trust us implicitly?", made by British naval officer during the Cretan revolt in 1897. After the answer the Englishman replied "Damn it, the beggar is right!" and continued, "and I hope we shan't have to shoot him!"
The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and proximity to the animal stage. Other persons who accept the status of slave do so as a means of attaining high rank, or power, or wealth, as is the case with the Mameluke Turks in the East and with those Franks and Galicians who enter the service of the state [in Spain].
— Ibn Khaldun as quoted in Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam, Harper and Row, 1970, quote on page 38. The brackets are displayed by Lewis.
The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and proximity to the animal stage. Other persons who accept the status of slave do so as a means of attaining high rank, or power, or wealth, as is the case with the Mameluke Turks in the East and with those Franks and Galicians who enter the service of the state [in Spain].
— Ibn Khaldun as quoted in Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam, Harper and Row, 1970, quote on page 38. The brackets are displayed by Lewis.
Uyghurs are the best among Turks. Their language is called Hakaniye Turkchesi (King's Turkish).
— Kashgarli Mehmud, Divanü Lügat-it-Türk (The Dictionary of Turkic Languages), 1072
[Turks] one and all, bag and baggage, shall I hope clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned.
— William Gladstone, speech (May 7, 1877).
Your Majesty may think me an impatient sick man, and that the Turks are even sicker.
— Voltaire to Catherine II. In the Rundschau (April, 1878).
In Macedonia there are Greeks, Bulgarians and Turks.
— Petko Karavelov, former Prime Minister of Bulgaria, in the Greek newspaper "Empros", in the paper of 19th December of 1897.
When the Turks and the Bulgarians left, Macedonia remained a purely Greek region.
— Henry Morgenthau, "I was sent to Athens", Doubleday, Doran & Company, inc (1929)
In the genocide of various minority nationalities that followed, the Turks massacred over 350000 Greeks.
— David Levinson, Encyclopaedia of World Cultures-Ethnology, p.141
These genocides not only involved the Holocaust and the killing of the Armenians, the best known of this century's genocides, but also the lesser known genocide of Gypsies by the Nazis and of Greeks by the Turks
— R. J. Rummel, The Holocaust in Comparative and Historical Perspective, 1998, Idea Journal of Social Issues, Vol.3 no.2
The genocidal quality of the murderous campaigns against Greeks and Assyrians is obvious. Historians who realize that the Young Turks’ population and extermination policies have to be analysed together and understood as an entity are therefore often tempted to speak of a “Christian genocide.” This approach, however, is insofar inadequate as it ignores the Young Turks’ massive violence against non-Christians.
— Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer, Late Ottoman genocides: the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish population and extermination policies - introduction, Journal of Genocide Research, 10:1, 7 - 14
The Turks had used genocide against the Greeks and Armenians but did not have enough time to finish them off completely. The Kurds revolted in 1925, demanding independence or autonomy.
— E. G. Vallianatos - The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of Istanbul (review) - Mediterranean Quarterly 17:1 (2006) 133-140
It should be borne in mind, however, that it was not until after the declaration of the constitution that the idea "Turkey for the Turks" took definite shape and developed into the scheme of accomplishing its purpose by the final extinction of all the Christian populations of that blood-soaked land...
— George Horton in The Blight of Asia (1926). Horton was the American General Consul in Smyrna from 1911 until 1917, then again after the war until 1922 - and was a direct eyewitness to the city's destruction and the massacreing of the city's Greeks and Armenians by the forces of Kemal Ataturk
The Turks were now making a thorough and systematic job of killing Armenian men. The squads of soldiers...were chiefly engaged in hunting down and killing Armenians.
— George Horton in The Blight of Asia (1926).
The Turks have embarked upon the total extermination of the Armenians in Transcaucasia, also (May 1918)... On the basisof all reports and news comming to me here in Tbilissi [Georgia] there hardly can be any doubt that the Turks systematically are aiming at the... extermination of the few hundred thousand Armenians whom they have left alive until now.
— Otto von Lossow, Major General, German Military Plenipotentiary in Turkey and German Representative at Batum Conference in May, 1918 - 11 July 1918 - German Foreign Ministry Archives
The deprotation and destruction of the Armenians was decided by the Young Turks Committee in Constantinople.
— Colonel Stange, Commander of the 8th Regiment consisting mostly of convicts released from Turkish prisons to join the killer bands of the Special Organization - German Foreign Ministry Archives.
It can no longer be denied that the Turks... have undertaken the extermination of the Armenians race and it appears that they have largely succeeded in it. With certain air of gleefulness Talaat recently told me that in Erzerum, for example, there should be remaining not a single Armenian... Turkey today is under a maniacal spell due to the realization that she carried out the extermination of the Armenian race with impunity.
— Karl Count zu Trautmansdorff-Weinsberg, Temporary Ambassador to Turkey, (30 September 1915) Austrian Foriegn Ministry Archives
Until recently, in fact at the beginning of this year, the Armenians were regarded as the most reliable element, indeed the only reliable people within the Christian elements in Turkey. One could read it in all the newspapers and the important Turkish dignitaries confirmed this on every occasion, which presented itself...Since March, an about-turn has taken place which is as general and consequent as if the Turks had never known up until now what dangerous people had been living within their midst.
— von Tysza, German journalist in Ottoman Turkey, from German Archives - (1915-10-01-DE-001)
The Turks are vigorously carrying through their cruel intention, to exterminate the Armenian people,
— Carl Wandel, (3 July 1915); as reported by Robert Fisk in The Independent (20 May 2006)
The Turkish denial [of the Armenian Genocide] is probably the foremost example of historical perversion. With a mix of academic sophistication and diplomatic thuggery -- of which we at Macquarie University have been targets -- the Turks have put both memory and history into reverse gear."
— Prof. Colin Tatz, Director, Centre for Comparative Genocide Studies, quoted in Pravda
My whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks and Mohammed, when I see this intolerable raging of the Devil. Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my cry is heard in heaven.
— Martin Luther while being confined to residence at Coburg, as quoted in History of the Christian Church, (1910) by Philip Schaff, Vol. VII : Modern Christianity : The German Reformation, § 123. Luther at the Coburg; though it mentions Muhammad, this remark might actually be directed at those responsible for his confinement, as he makes allusions to dwelling in the "empire of birds" and his location as a "Sinai" and regularly uses other uncomplimentary comparisons of those involved in suppressing his ideas to figures unpopular to himself and his contemporaries.
