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Hello, all.
Dear people...
...welcome to another HISTORY TALKING show.
If you recall, two weeks ago...
...it was the 91th anniversary of the Gallipoli War...
...so we talked about Gallipoli. And beginning from last week...
...we started discussing the not very well known fronts of WW1...
...and talked about the reasons of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
As you recall, to the end of my last conversation...
...I mentioned that there were two important reasons...
...why the Ottomans were defeated in WW1.
We lost this war at the last year of the war...
...and due to the developments after February.
Dear audience, it wasn't clear...
...who would win this war till the last year.
The both fronts had equal odds in winning the war.
Russia, who was one of our opponents...
...and who was a very important state of the opposite front...
...was out of the picture...
...due to the revolution.
Lenin took the power...
...and as a result of that, Russia got out of the war.
This was a new chance for the Ottomans.
The Ottomans and not the Russia but...
...Soviet Union which took place of the collapsed Russia...
...signed the Brest Litovsk Treaty.
And Lenin...
...declared that they were going to leave the occupied Anatolia...
...and ended the war.
And this was a factor in our odds.
But however, the fact is...
...USA filled in this front which Russia left...
...as we will discuss later on.
USA entered the war in 1917...
...and dominated the front which Russia emptied...
...and the odds became against us once more.
And the Ottoman armies who had been fighting...
...in 7 fronts for 4 years...
...kept resisting until the very last moments with everything they got.
There were two factors why the resistance was broken.
Considering the fact that we lost the war...
...because of the last minute developments...
...we can say that these two reasons had a major role...
...in the Ottomans defeat. One of the reasons is...
...both the Moslem and the non-Moslem populations of the Ottomans...
...chose their sides against the Ottoman state...
...and supported the opposite front.
Lets name it properly.
Unfortunately, those nations who now have...
...their own state with their own name...
...were a part of the Ottoman population back then.
And they rebelled against their own country.
There was an Ottoman Padishah leading us...
...and he was also the Caliph.
Therefore, he was the Caliph of them, too...
...but his position as a Caliph didn't really work at that point...
...and even though the Caliph called for help...
...called for Cihad...
...those Moslem populations with the Arabic dominance...
...did not support their own state and their own Caliph...
...which she needed desperately.
Obviously, these rebellions had an important role...
...in losing the war.
How would it not?
When we lost Palestine, when we lost Mecca and Medine...
...when we lost the sacred lands...
...we disposed the Anatolian youth in those deserts...
...for the sake of protecting the sacred lands...
...to avoid English - or the Christian feet stepping on those lands.
All the saplings, the Anatolian youth were broken in those deserts.
But in spite of this...
...they were those so called Moslem nations...
...who supported the Christian forces back then...
...and they made a deal with the Englishmen.
They claim that they did this to get their independence.
This is their reasoning.
But as the consequence of this, the Empire collapsed...
...or at least, this one was an important reason in the collapse...
...and this means the loss of 6 millions km² of land.
The cost is too big.
Was it only the Moslems who rebelled? No.
As we said, another Christian population also rebelled...
...opposing us in the same way.
We are talking about the Armenians.
Today, we will discuss about this topic.
I don't refer to our own Armenian people living in Turkey today...
...who share these lands with us.
This is not our topic, anyway.
But as we will see in details...
...the Armenian issue is the biggest international problem...
...Turkish Republic faces today. And it roots back those years.
As if losing the Empire is not enough...
...the unison of the Turkish Republic is wanted to be shaken...
...with this issue.
It seems like the Lausanne Treaty is forced to become controversial.
There are some nationwide and international summits are held...
...as if redesigning the Lausanne Treaty which cost us...
...thousands of martyrs would be more righteous.
And there are some developments against us.
This is the reason why we want to discuss the Armenian issue.
We should of course investigate this issue.
And we will.
So, we started discussing WW1 in recent weeks...
...talked about how we entered the war...
...and the early developments.
We discussed the Gallipoli war, at the west front last week...
...and today we will discuss what was going on in the east.
While the defense of Dardanelles which cost us in total of...
...253000 martyrs and crippled veterans...
...was going on through the year 1915 from March 18...
...or even from February in western Anatolia...
...there was an Armenian issue going on in eastern Anatolia.
This not only the Sarýkamis Incident.
Sarýkamis is of course one of the catastrophes...
...we encountered those days...
...but it is not only about that.
Therefore we need to discuss behind the curtains of the Sarikamis incident.
We will of course discuss the affects of the Armenian issue...
...on this catastrophic Sarýkamis Incident.