The world was just treated to a bit of outlandish projection by Turkey’s president and self-styled sultan, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. During a recent council held in Ankara, he said, “The West’s progress, built on blood, tears, massacres, and exploitation, has temporarily overtaken the human-centered civilization of the East.”
To anyone even vaguely familiar with the history of Western/Muslim interaction, Erdogan’s assertion is the perfect antithesis of reality. Nothing is “built on blood, tears, massacres, and exploitation” more than Islam’s “progress.”
To anyone even vaguely familiar with the history of Western/Muslim interaction, Erdoğan’s assertion is the perfect antithesis of reality.
Islam, which was born in the seventh century in the Arabian Peninsula, spread to and conquered by the sword what is today called the “Muslim world.” Most of the lands it conquered, including the entire Middle East and North Africa, were previously Christian. Both Muslim and non-Muslim sources make unequivocally clear that Islam’s conquests were bloody, savage, and sadistic. Over the centuries, many millions of non-Muslims were slaughtered or enslaved; thousands of churches and non-Muslim temples were destroyed or turned into mosques.
One need only look to the nation that Erdogan rules over — Turkey (Asia Minor) — for confirmation. Once an ancient bastion of Christianity (and recipient of many of St. Paul’s epistles), Erdogan’s Turkic ancestors began conquering it in the eleventh century AD.
Turks Take Armenia
Thus, in 1019, “the first appearance of the bloodthirsty beasts … the savage nation of Turks entered Armenia … and mercilessly slaughtered the Christian faithful with the sword,” writes Matthew of Edessa (d.1144). In 1049, the Turks reached the unwalled city of Arzden and “put the whole town to the sword, causing severe slaughter, as many as one hundred and fifty thousand persons.” Another Greek eyewitness, Aristakes, notes that “without mercy, they [Turks] incinerated those who had hidden themselves in houses and churches.” Eight hundred oxen and 40 camels were required to cart out the vast plunder, mostly taken from Arzden’s churches — all of which were torched.
Once inside, the Turks — reportedly armed with two knives in each hand and an extra in their mouths — “began to mercilessly slaughter the inhabitants of the entire city … and piling up their bodies one on top of the other.”
During the Turkish siege of Sebastia (modern-day Sivas) in 1060, 600 churches were destroyed and “many [more] maidens, brides, and ladies were led into captivity.” Another raid on Armenian territory saw “many and innumerable people who were burned [to death].”
Between 1064 and 1065, Sultan Muhammad bin Dawud Chaghri — known to posterity as Alp Arslan, one of Erdogan’s personal heroes — besieged Ani, the capital of Armenia. Once inside, the Turks — reportedly armed with two knives in each hand and an extra in their mouths — “began to mercilessly slaughter the inhabitants of the entire city … and piling up their bodies one on top of the other…. Innumerable and countless boys with bright faces and pretty girls were carried off together with their mothers.”
Not only do several Christian sources document the sack of Armenia’s capital (one contemporary succinctly notes that Muhammad “rendered Ani a desert by massacres and fire”), but so do Muslim sources, often in apocalyptic terms: “I wanted to enter the city and see it with my own eyes,” one Arab explained. “I tried to find a street without having to walk over the corpses. But that was impossible.”
Goal: Destroy Christianity
Nor was there much doubt concerning what fueled the Muslim Turks’ animus: “This nation of infidels comes against us because of our Christian faith and they are intent on destroying the ordinances of the worshippers of the cross and on exterminating the Christian faithful,” one David, head of an Armenian region, explained to his countrymen. Therefore, “it is fitting and right for all the faithful to go forth with their swords and to die for the Christian faith.” Many were of the same mind; the sources tell of monks and priests, fathers, wives, and children, all shabbily armed but zealous to protect their way of life, coming out to face the invaders — to no avail.
As the Turks moved further westward into Asia Minor, they began to do the same to the Greeks of the Eastern Roman (or “Byzantine”) Empire. “Far and wide they [Turks] ravaged cities and castles together with their settlements,” wrote a Frankish eyewitness. “Churches were razed down to the ground. Of the clergymen and monks whom they captured, some were slaughtered while others were with unspeakable wickedness given up, priests and all, to their dire dominion, and nuns — alas for the sorrow of it! — were subjected to their lusts.”
Emperor Alexios I Komnenos elaborated in a letter to Count Robert of Flanders:
Don’t Know Much About History
Indeed, there is no dearth of contemporary writings documenting the atrocities Eastern Christians suffered as the Turks ushered in Islam to Asia Minor. Whether an anonymous Georgian chronicler tells of how “holy churches served as stables for their horses,” the “priests were immolated during the Holy Communion itself,” the “virgins defiled, the youths circumcised, and the infants taken away,” or whether the princess at Constantinople tells of how “cities were obliterated, lands were plundered, and the whole of Rhomaioi [Anatolia] was stained with Christian blood” — it was the same scandalous tale of woe.
Yet here is Erdogan, the heir of the Turks who committed these atrocities, complaining that “the West’s progress, built on blood, tears, massacres, and exploitation, has temporarily overtaken the human-centered civilization of the East.”
How can one ever reason with such topsy-turvy mentalities?
