Arkan Quotes

He was a brutal, sadistic war criminal who was assassinated by one of his many enemies in 2000 before he could be brought to trial.

He was a brutal, sadistic war criminal who was assassinated by one of his many enemies in 2000 before he could be brought to trial. This statement was typical of his outlook and behavior. He tortured and murdered Croation and Muslim prisoners. His reference to the “slaughterhouse” was to the Second World War in which the Croats were allies of Nazi Germany and created their own concentration and extermination camps where hundreds of thousands of Serbs were murdered. In the eternal memory of the cycle of revenge in the Balkans, Arkan, tried to retaliate against the Croats who had never been called to account for their crimes and even the leadership of Croatia after the Camp David accords celebrated the Fascist times when they were dominant and were able to settle accounts with the Serbs.

He was a brutal, sadistic war criminal who was assassinated by one of his many enemies in 2000 before he could be brought to trial.

Turkey, under the control of the triumvirate of the 3 Young Turks had massacred almost all of the Armenian population in the area claimed by Turkey. At the end of WWI, there were many demands that those who ordered the policy of a Turkish genocide and those who carried it out by brought to justice—tried and punished. The Sultan had done little if anything to stop the slaughters although he was very weak, Turkey under the Young Turks had also picked the wrong side and allied with the Germans. The Sultan and his Grand Vizier were trying to pick up the pieces and maintain the Ottoman Empire as best they could despite they the fact that they lost control of much of their vast territory. At the Paris Peace Conference, the Grand Vizier virtually admitted the crimes and committed the Turkish government to determining the guilty and bringing them to justice. He actually had 50 of the worst offenders arrested (See {620595}.). However, there were a few tried and one governor of a province was hanged and a few others received short jail sentences. Talaat, the worst of The Young Turks regarding the genocide, escaped to Germany. But he was tracked by a surviving Armenian who assassinated Talaat. The assassin was acquitted by a sympathetic German court which ruled that the extermination of the assassin’s family had been so traumatic that temporary insanity relieved the assassin of criminal responsibility.

This manual was still in force during the Iraq war 50 years later.

Referring to the Serbian atrocities in Bosnia:

The speech is traditionally written by the government.

The Serbs were in a conflict with the Ottoman Muslims almost 1000 years ago. However, they have never seen that war as having ended. When the Albanian Muslims were breaking from the weakened Ottoman Empire, the Serbs not only wanted to dominate Albania, but also to extract vengeance for alleged wrongs committed by Ottoman Muslims hundreds of years earlier. This attitude existed through and after the Serbian war and the Kosovo Albanian population would not live under Serbian control given the Serb war crimes and atrocities perpetrated on Muslims—not only in the historical past but even in the Serbian War. Tucovic was one of the very few Serbs who not only argued that the Serbian policy of oppression of the Muslims was not only morally wrong but counter productive from the Serbian point of view. For many Serbs, Tucovic was considered a traitor.

Mehmet Talaat Pasha was one of the national leaders who adopted the policy of extermination of the Armenians. The Christian Armenians, a minority in Turkey and its lands, were discriminated against like other non-Muslim minorities in the Ottoman Empire. But during the Turkish War with Russia, some Armenians defected and served on the Russian side. Many Turkish citizens took revenge on Armenians by means of murder and torture. Soon, the extermination of the Armenians became the official “Young Turk” government policy.

Germany had invaded and occupied much of Europe. These two fronts accounted for the majority of the German casualties. The Germans not only violated the Geneva Convention and the Laws of War repeatedly, but as you can see from this quotation, it was deliberate policy. Keitel was tried and hanged after the war. See {621438} .

In 1936, Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia in an effort to obtain an African colony like other European Countries had. Over 50 nations had promised aid to Ethiopia if attacked but then the Italian attacks came, it was not just soldiers with some small artillery and vehicles. Instead it was a full modern army with not only heavy artillery and tanks, but extensive use of air power against villages and towns which generally hardly had rifles. The airplane carnage of civilian populations was a shock to the world. However, the tactics were studied by the Italian German Fascist allies who further developed air power use against unarmed towns and cities in the Spanish Civil war. The aid promised to Christian Ethiopia never materialized because there was a worldwide depression and the great powers would have had to commit to major war—not just send some arms and ammunition. The Ethiopians mostly fought with spears and knives. The Fascists were thus emboldened for the invasion of Europe a few years later.

This was part of the continual conflict between the Muslims and the Eastern Orthodox Christians. The Greeks ended up doubling their territory.

Greece had always coveted Anatolia which was a part of the Ottoman Empire but had been in antiquity a Greek dominated area. Further, people of Greek ethnicity and culture, who hundreds of years ago used to be the vast majority were, after the hundreds of years of Ottoman rule and migration, were then the largest minority in Anatolia. The Turks lost the First World War as a consequence of their allying with Germany, and had been stripped of their vast Arab territories. Also, Turkey had just undergone a revolution and the old order was displaced. Greek Nationalist Prime Minister Venizelos saw this as an opportunity to get back Anatolia and sent a military invasion force to land at Smyrna (Ismir to the Turks), the largest city of Anatolia where despite the Greek minority in all of Anatolia, Greeks were a small majority in Smyrna. The invasion was initially successful but was then repulsed by the Turk revolutionists lead by their great patriot Ataturk who counterattacked and defeated the Greek forces handily despite the fact that they were hastily organized, untrained together, and much more poorly equipped than the Greeks. However, the Greeks in their retreat, followed a scorched earth policy and as this quotation shows, committed many atrocities against the Turkish civilian villages.