Trouble with Turkey in ISIS fight

Reap what you sow.  I guess the Turkish air force bombed the Kurds in Turkey because numerous suicide bombings in Turkey have taken place by Kurdish rebels who want an independent state. Because ISIS fights the Kurds also, USA is having a hard time getting the Turks to fight with us against ISIS.  The Assyrian Christians who are being massacred by ISIS say that the Kurds were the original persecutors of Christians on the Ninevah plain. Thus, US should not see the Kurds as any kind of allies, nor the Turks. It’s a little confused over there!

But let me see if I remember history. The Ottoman Turks conquered Asia Minor and with it came large minorities of Greek and Armenian Christians.  Ottomans went on to establish their empire over the Balkans.  Among their policies was to demand the first born males of all Christians, who were castrated and made eunuchs, forced converted to Islam and put into service of the government as slaves and soldiers.  This practice and many other abuses were, shall we say, poorly received by the indigent Christian population.  The horrors and atrocities of Turkish terrorism warfare were sometimes matched and countered by resistance leaders like Vlad of Wallacia, famous for impaling captives on spikes.  Eventually the Ottoman empire declined due to an economy that depended on slaves and subjugation, and the Christians of Europe began to win all the wars with the Turks.  Russians came over the Caucasus Mountains to attack the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians began to mop up the Balkans.  In 1877-78, the Russo-Turkish war ended in Russia claiming Caucasian Armenia.  In further conflicts in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia in 1895, many Muslims were forced to retreat to Turkey after they lost their lands in the Balkans.  Turks, who were used to treating Christians within their realm as dogs, really resented the Muslim Balkan refugees and began to think that Anatolia—Central Turkey--was their stronghold.  Trouble was, there were so many Armenians there.  When WW I broke out, the Ottomans saw the Christians as doubly subversive.  There were a group of Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul (Constantinople) who were rounded up and sent to eastern Asia Minor to the Armenian homeland and most were killed.  However, Christians weren’t the only minority in Anatolia.  There were also Kurds. 

The Ottomans decided they’d be better off if they were rid of the Armenians.  3 pashas (governors) of the eastern provinces were given a free hand to kill and take property.  And the Kurds were told they could do the same at will.  From 1915 to 1922 (there was a Turkish war of independence after WW I) about 1.5 million Armenians were massacred.  A common method was to march a village into the Syrian desert to the south and leave them to starve.  There was a governor of Allepo, a Muslim who was appalled at the genocide and he tried to save and alleviate the suffering with supplies.  To him it seemed illogical that a country would want to kill off its manpower.  Other Armenians were rounded up and shot and buried in mass graves.  Others were crucified.  Women were often made sex slaves in harems.  Children were sometimes force converted or sold into slavery throughout the empire.  Germans and Austrians on the scene, who were allied to the Ottomans during the war wrote about the horror but were mostly powerless to stop anything. Europe after the war, made a half-hearted attempt to prosecute the 3 pashas but couldn’t find enough paper-trail evidence to bring them to trial. Many Armenians who managed to survive through this holocaust have relocated to USA.

Because of Europe turning a blind eye to the Armenians, Hitler concluded he could do something similar to Jews.

Turkey in 1900 was 20% Christian.  Now it’s less than 1%. Fundamentalist Islam is growing. The country has steadfastly refused to acknowledge that there was ever an Armenian holocaust despite enormous evidence.

The Kurds, enlisted to do much of the dirty work, inherited much of what belonged to the Armenians in eastern Turkey.

Now the Turks have a problem with violent Kurds who want to secede.

It’s threatening the nice tourism and emigration business the Turks have with Europe.

Why is it so hard for me to say the Turks don’t deserve this?