Slanders On Muslims In History

Wellington House Influence in the US

During WWI, the British deep state cut the telegram cable that linked Germany to the US. For this reason, the American public was getting all its news from British sources and through a British filter. Similarly, the British heavily censored the accounts of the American journalists in Europe. Even though the American administration was partly aware of the censoring, the American people were completely unaware that all of this was a part of British deep state propaganda effort. The propaganda bolstered by such methods lent serious support to the deep state.

This is how Sir Gilbert Parker, the head of the propaganda campaign, explains the effects of his efforts:

We have an organisation extraordinarily widespread in the United States, but which does not know it is an organisation. It is worked entirely by personal association and inspired by voluntary effort, which has grown more enthusiastic and pronounced with the passage of time... Finally it should be noticed that no attack has been made upon us in any quarter of the United States, and that in the eyes of the American people the quiet and subterranean nature of our work has the appearance of a purely private patriotism and enterprise...²⁸³

Clearly, the deceitful -as much as deep- propaganda of the British deep state created the desired effect on the American public. Well-meaning Americans failed to see the nefarious plans behind the propaganda and were guided in the direction shown by the British deep state.

Viscount Bryce's reports, one of the co-authors of the notorious The Blue Book, was prepared with the specific purpose of creating an anti-Turkish sentiment in the American public. Here are some of the outrageous remarks of Bryce against Turks in the Bryce Report:

Turkish government has been the very worst which has afflicted humanity during the last fifteen centuries. The Turks have always been what a distinguished European historian of the last generation called them—"nothing better than a band of robbers encamped in territories which they had conquered and devastated." They have never become civilized, they have never imbibed or tried to apply any of the principles on which civilized government must be conducted. So far from progressing with the progress of the years, they have gone from bad to worse. Savages they were when they descended into Western Asia from the plains of Turkistan, savages they were when Edmund Burke [British statesman and author] so described them one hundred and thirty years ago, and their government still retains its savage and merciless character.²⁸⁴

Bryce then penned a book entitled The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and continued his defamation campaign through this book. Historian McCarthy explained that the real author of the book was Toynbee. According to McCarthy, all the techniques visible in the said Armenian report were identical to the later falsified report that detailed the German violence in Belgium. This report also included anonymous information gathered from unreliable sources but there was no conclusive evidence that the people mentioned in the report had really said or written those things.²⁸⁵

In time, it was revealed that none of the accounts of violence that Bryce's report on Germans included were true. This is what author H. C. Peterson writes about the said report:

His [Bryce's] report is one of the most extreme examples of the definition of propaganda as "assassination by word." It was in itself one of the worst atrocities of the war.²⁸⁶

The very same method was used against the Turks; the very same black propaganda campaign was directed at them using the same methods by the same people. Germany years later received an apology from Britain for the injustice done, but Turks still had to deal with the same defamation campaign.

The British deep state sent highlights from the Bryce Report to American newspapers for publication. This is what McCarthy writes about it:

Gilbert Parker reported "The New York Times, Philadelphia Public Ledger, and the Chicago Herald … devoted much space to the advance sheets of 'these Armenian horror stories'." Current History a monthly magazine feature of the New York Times made the Bryce Report the centerpiece of a series on anti-Turkish articles, quoting the entire lengthy introduction of the Bryce Report and summarizing supposedly the most ghastly portions of the book. The New York Times itself devoted three pages to extracts from the Bryce Report. The New Republic praised Bryce on his selection of sources and evidence, without mentioning that most of the sources were anonymous, then went on to summarize the material and condemn the Turks. Other papers and magazines did the same, summarizing or quoting directly from the report.²⁸⁷

In other words, no sources were provided in the British deep state publications, and the Turks were unfairly targeted as these fake allegations were blindly served to the American public. It must be remembered that the true target of the British deep state propaganda was the masses that were unaware of the truths about WWI and the Middle East. Almost all news reports read by the American and British public during those days were penned by the British deep state propagandists. British and American people were deceived with these untrue accounts. This is how the American historian McCarthy, who exposed the unfair treatment of Turks, expresses his astonishment that the said deceitful propaganda continues today:

More astonishing is the fact that British propaganda against the Turks has been ignored in scholarly publications on wartime propaganda. Every serious scholarly study of British propaganda during World War I rightly labels British propaganda against the Germans as a carefully constructed attack on the truth in the interests of victory. The same studies do not even consider British propaganda against the Turks, except when it also was an attack on the Germans. What British propagandists did to the Germans they also did to the Turks, yet no one has seemed to care. Propaganda against the Germans has been condemned while the calumnies against the Turks live on. The infamous Bryce Report on the Armenians is republished and quoted … It has acquired a patina of respectability as an "Accepted and Reliable Source," while the Bryce Report against the Germans properly lies unread on dusty library shelves. Annotated bibliographies on World War I or on genocide as a topic prominently feature the Report and other British propaganda publications directed against Turks, without any identification of them for what they were. The common rules of historical criticism, which include verification of sources, have not been applied. In fact, the Bryce Report on the Ottoman Armenians should be consigned to the same historical dustbin as the Bryce Report on the Germans. It is only a reliable source on the history of propaganda, not on the history of the Middle East.²⁸⁸

A Propaganda War: World War II

As in the case of WWI, the propaganda skills of the British deep state had a huge impact on the course of WWII. Such efforts made the greatest contribution to Britain's success. The deep British media, particularly its extensions in the BBC, played their part skillfully during and after the war. Interestingly enough, the BBC still continues its task today almost as a propaganda machine of the British deep state.

Even the German Nazi Party, that set up a propaganda ministry and effectively used propaganda methods laden with lies, couldn't come close to matching the British deep state's skills in black propaganda. Joseph Goebbels, who was the propaganda minister of Hitler, described Prime Minister Churchill, an important member of the deep state of the time, with the following words in his article 'Churchill's Lie Factory':

The astonishing thing is that Mr. Churchill … holds to his lies, and in fact repeats them until he himself believes them. … They made good use of the trick during the World War, with the difference that world opinion believed it then, which cannot be said today.… The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.²⁸⁹

Needless to say, it is important to keep the public morale high during wartimes. However, the effective propaganda policy and the manipulation of the press by the British deep state during the First and Second World Wars is important in that it shows how it is able to control the media and present lies as facts, whenever it deems fit. As a matter of fact, even after the war ended, the British deep state influence on the media persisted, especially with respect to vilification of certain countries. As a result, unrest, civil wars, and coups took place in many independent countries.

The British deep state thus managed to establish its influence over other countries, and mainly due to this black propaganda policy, many countries' administrations became indebted to deep structures. The propaganda weapon, which was the main contributing factor to Britain's last minute victory in WWII, has been and still is one of the most prominent and destructive forces of the British deep state.

The Ugly Propaganda Continues

British deep state propaganda, which reached its peak during the world wars, continues, albeit through different methods. The effects of Wellington House propaganda haven't been limited to that period but rather persist even today. Propaganda publications of Wellington House during WWI were systematically reprinted, and many books and researches referred to them for citations. Many of those books were posted on the Internet and spread around the world.

Today, Wellington House books are still suggested as textbooks for history classes in American and European colleges and universities. The issue of Turkey and Armenia has been a topic of particular interest to Wellington House and its many publications, including those of Toynbee and El-Ghusein (an imaginary person), are used by many historians and certain Armenian scientists as basic historical reference books. New editions of deceitful propaganda material from WWI, like The Blue Book, are printed and distributed around the world as if they are historical facts. The sinister British deep state propaganda continues as if nothing has happened, as if its plots were never revealed. The goal is trying to deceive those that haven't heard and are not aware of this black propaganda.

A major part of world public is currently brainwashed with these made-up stories. Everything that the people learn from these sources is not fact, but what the propaganda office of the British deep state likes them to believe.

The breadth of the British deep state's lies and defamation during that time was so extensive, even some British figures rose in protest:

British Foreign Minister Chamberlain admitted in his speech at House of Commons in December 1925 that all of those were propaganda lies. Four years after the war, the Belgians announced that all the claims in the said publications were untrue. British MP Arthur Ponsonby gave a detailed account of false news reports prepared by the British propaganda offices during WWI… In 1938, British author and diplomat Harold Nicolson said the following during his speech at the Parliament: 'We lied damnably during the war'.²⁹⁰

Most information in The Blue Book came from Henry Morgenthau, who had stayed only 26 months in Istanbul during WWI as the American ambassador. In his book, Morgenthau told the lie that Ottomans were persecuting Armenians. Years later, the Associated Press declared these claims in Morgenthau's book untrue. American Professor Heath W. Lowry said the book was a record of "crude half-truths and outright falsehoods".²⁹¹

I
The Occupation of Istanbul

The Importance of Istanbul

The first book ever written by the British deep state on their plans regarding the Ottoman and Turkish lands was William Ewart Gladstone's Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, published on September 5, 1876. This book was particularly important because its author had served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom four separate times, for a period of 15 years in total. That wasn't Gladstone's only notable position though. He also acted as a member of the Privy Council -one of the key institutions under the influence of the British deep state operating as a body of advisers to the Queen- and spent 57 years in that position. Lord Curzon, Lloyd George and Horace Rumbold, about whom more will be told in the following chapters, were also members of this Council. In his notorious 64-page book, Gladstone laid out his plan to break the Ottoman Empire into pieces and presented his plan with the pretense of examining "the Question of the East".

In his book, Gladstone provided secret tactics to disintegrate empires from within. Indeed, shortly after the book was published, British politicians developed a sudden fondness for the minorities living under Ottoman rule. Supporting those with independence ambitions, they provoked the minorities against the Ottoman rule. Gladstone sided with the Bulgarians, Lloyd George with the Greeks and the Armenians, Lord Curzon with the Kurds and Winston Churchill sided with the Arabs. It should be noted that there is nothing wrong with politicians and leaders forming friendly relations with ethnical groups. On the contrary, this forms a desirable picture. Regrettably, however, these new friendships were not real and were only intended to further British interests and break apart the Ottoman Empire. Unsurprisingly, as soon as British interests ceased to exist, so did those so-called friendships.

Gladstone's book was the epitome of black propaganda (the honorable Turkish Nation is above all the ill-natured remarks made by Gladstone). In this book, he referred to Turks as 'the one great anti-human specimen of humanity' and hoped that they would clear out from the lands they ruled. Gladstone didn't refrain from defaming Turks and said, 'No Government ever has so sinned; none has so proved itself so incorrigible in sin, or which is the same, so impotent in reformation'.²⁹² The only reason behind all this defamation and slander was that Gladstone was one of the most powerful names in the British deep state, which wished to dismember the Ottoman Empire completely.

The Deep Plan that Began with the Battle of Gallipoli

The British deep state considered the Gallipoli campaign as the final stage of its plan to break apart the Ottoman Empire. However, the battle that took place in Gallipoli went down in history as an epic example of true heroism. The army of the Ottoman Empire, which the Europeans dismissed as 'the sick man', bravely defended the Gallipoli Strait at the expense of their lives, despite the full-fledged attack of the Allied Powers. As a result, the Allied Forces, which consisted of Anzacs, British, North Africans, Indians and French, had to retreat amid a humiliating defeat. This incredible military feat forced the British deep state to postpone its plans for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire until 1918, when the Armistice of Mudros was signed.

This military success was particularly important because only four years previously, the armies of the Balkan states, which were previously the Ottoman Empire's, had heavily defeated the Empire. Indeed, had it not been for typhoid fever and the cholera epidemic, the Bulgarian army would have occupied Istanbul. Naturally, the Allied armies were confident that their success would be quick and easy in Gallipoli. However, the Turkish army, by the valor of her 250,000 martyrs, did not open the doors of Gallipoli. Military school students from Istanbul volunteered to join the fight, willingly accepting the prospect of martyrdom. Indeed, in the years 1915 and 1916, the Galatasaray High School didn't have any graduates because each and every student had been martyred in the battlefield. In 1917, there were only 5 students to graduate. 50 students of the Istanbul High School had been martyred in just one battle, which took place on May 19, 1915. Vefa High School and Çapa Teaching School for Boys also didn't have any graduates during those same years. Balıkesir High School and Balıkesir Teaching School for Boys had only 2 graduates from 1914 to 1918. Students in many schools in Thrace, after previously having their fathers martyred in the Balkan wars, didn't hesitate to volunteer to fight in the Battle of Gallipoli and become martyrs themselves. Even schools from distant cities such as Sivas, Trabzon, Konya, Erzurum and Kastamonu lost their 1916-1917 graduates as honorable and noble martyrs of Gallipoli. The effects of the loss of this educated generation would be severely felt both during the Turkish War of Independence and the first years of the Republic. Yet, it had been the bravery and the blood of those martyred innocent Turkish youngsters no older than 18 that thwarted the sinister plans of the British deep state. Today, the situation is not very different. Once again, due to the terrorist PKK, we have many martyrs that had been soldiers, officers, police, and teachers. God blessed our country with many martyrs; Anatolia is our homeland because its soil is soaked with the blood of our honorable martyrs.

The Armistice of Mudros that was signed following WWI ended the war for the Ottoman Empire. This Armistice also enabled the British deep state to put its dismemberment plans into motion. Using the clause 'The Allies to have the right to occupy any strategic points in the event of any situation arising which threatens the security of the Allies' as a pretense, they started implementing their dismemberment plan, which the British dubbed as the 'solution to the Question of the East'. The most important target in the plan was the occupation of Istanbul. Not surprisingly, only Istanbul amongst the capitals of the defeated Central Powers was occupied after the WWI. And it was Lord Curzon's idea.²⁹³

Istanbul's Occupation Would Mean Achievement of Multiple Goals for the British Deep State

Turkish bravery during the Battle of Gallipoli completely humiliated the British deep state in the international arena. They were convinced that if they occupied the capital of the Islamic world, they would have taken their revenge. The truth is, all the politicians involved in the planning, declaration and implementation of the Gallipoli campaign, were following the orders of the British deep state and naturally, after the defeat, they fell from grace with the public. They hoped that the occupation would gain them their lost influence and power. This had been their main goal.

Istanbul was not only the capital of the Ottoman Empire, but also the capital of the Islamic world. It was a city where the Caliph of the Muslims lived. To the British deep state, an occupied capital would be a tour de force of British prowess, especially in terms of influencing the Muslims living under British rule, most notably in India. They hoped that the occupation would stem any potential anti-British sentiment or independence movements, as well as preventing Muslims from uniting under a single flag, and that British rule would be further cemented.

The decision to occupy Istanbul involved the control of two straits, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. The British navy anchored in the Bosphorus Strait supervised exits from Marmara, and the Dardanelles Strait was also kept under the control of the British. In other words, the British had the control of the entrance and the exit to the Marmara Sea, and consequently to the Black Sea. Thus, they could keep the Russian warships under control and impose taxes on Russian trade. This meant having the upper hand of the newly established Bolshevik Russia. St. Petersburg, or Leningrad as it was known during Soviet times, was the only Russian port close to Europe. It was frozen for 6 months of the year and lacked the geographical or strategic infrastructure wanted by the Russian navy. The Russians always wanted to have access to warmer waters. Although the Black Sea was under Russian control, any state that controlled the Straits could easily override that control. The British, through the occupation of Istanbul and the Straits, also wanted to keep post-revolution Russia under control.

The British deep state was anxiously watching the growing affinity between the Bolsheviks and the Turkish independence movement. They feared the Russians could get stronger again and pursue an imperialist policy and believed that if it could control the Straits and Istanbul, it would be able to prevent such an expansion.

Another objective of the British occupation of Istanbul was undermining the authority of the Caliph over British colonies to give the impression that British rule had now taken the place of the Sultan; the Caliph and the entire Ottoman Empire was now under British control. The British hoped they could dishearten the Muslim subjects and intimidate the regional tribal leaders, religious leaders and minority leaders. They wanted to give a clear message to everyone that there is no coming back for the Ottoman Empire. The occupation marked the peak of the British Empire. Through occupation, they wished to suppress the Islamic awakening and find new prospective colonies.

The most important symbolic message of the Istanbul occupation was the removal of the Turks from Europe, whereby the Ottoman Empire would no longer be considered a part of Europe. Istanbul had always been the 'Eastern Capital' of Europe. Ancient Greeks, Venetians, Romans, Genoese and Byzantines had chosen this beautiful city as their home. The 600-year Ottoman rule in Istanbul made the Ottoman Empire European. An occupation would, therefore, mean the removal of the Turks from Europe.

The British public considered the Ottoman alliance with Germany in WWI as a betrayal and wanted this 'betrayal' to be punished. However, as reviewed in the previous pages, this alliance was somehow forced by the British deep state, but various circles voiced that this so-called betrayal should not be left unpunished. The British deep state was convinced that the occupation of Istanbul would give the Ottoman Empire the harshest punishment and would make the Turks pay the heavy price of betrayal. Indeed, many believed that Istanbul being taken from the Turks would be the surest sign of their defeat and the Islamic world would stop viewing the Turks as the 'victorious soldiers of Islam'. According to the British deep state, this occupation had to be extremely humiliating and conclusive so that everyone would be convinced that the Turks were irreversibly defeated. The British deep state believed that this was essential for the purposes of its domination policy, yet another display of its twisted mentality regarding the Ottoman Empire.

However, the British plans wouldn't work because they didn't take Anatolian people into account. The Anatolian independence movement led by Mustafa Kemal and his colleagues reminded the whole world once again why the Turks were considered the victorious soldiers of Islam. Over the next three years, the victors of the WWI completely retreated from Ottoman lands, having suffered a humiliating defeat. French, Italians, Greeks and British, one by one, conceded defeat, signed peace treaties and sent their troops back home.

Istanbul: The Center that Unraveled the Deep

European Plots

The British deep state knew that Istanbul was an important center that effectively disturbed balances in Europe. They also believed that as long as the Turks controlled it, they would continue to disrupt their plans, and so they wanted to remove Istanbul, the Straits and Thrace from the possession of the Turks. They were convinced that the Turkish administration without Istanbul would no longer have a say in matters concerning Europe.

However, the British deep state has always chosen to hide its plans to dismember the Ottoman Empire behind various disguises. During WWI, the pretense this imperialist project used was the supposed goal of protecting minority rights. They spread the wrong notion to the British public that the Ottoman Empire was being ruthless to its Christian subjects, and that Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and Christian Arabs in the Ottoman lands were under threat. They built these claims on the false allegations that Christians were the real owners of Anatolia and that the Turks had taken it by force. For instance, a member of Parliament Viscount James Bryce said during a speech at the House of Lords, "Asia Minor, Syria, Armenia, and Arabia—have been the homes of ancient civilisations; some of them enjoyed under the Governments which they lead a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago a real national life and prosperity, and had a sense of their place and mission in the world which they have lost under the desolating tyranny that has brooded over them for the last six centuries." Very conveniently, he maintained that Britain should extend help to those ancient civilizations so that they could regain their freedom. The British deep state claimed that once Istanbul was occupied, the so-called 'unjust' policies would come to an end. British newspapers kept claiming that Istanbul wasn't the national capital of the Turks and that a majority of the population was non-Muslim. However, according to the census of 1919, 67% of the residents of Istanbul were Muslims. The number had been higher, but most Muslims had already been martyred in the Balkan wars and WWI that closely followed it.

Contrary to the rumors the British deep state sought to spread, minority policies of the Ottoman Empire were impressively liberal and generous. The Ottoman Empire had protected minority rights for 600 years and minorities lived as important parts of the Ottoman nation. As a matter of fact, the members of the minority communities had no trouble ascending the social ladder to achieve administrative positions. Most were engaged in art and commerce and had lived relatively affluent lives in the most beautiful parts of Istanbul and the Ottoman lands in general, and they enjoyed robust support from the Ottoman government. Even after the breakup of the Empire, they continued their presence in Turkey and offered their support for the new Turkish state. The rumors that were spread regarding the minorities were nothing other than black propaganda. Even some of the British spies that came to Istanbul during those years to gather intelligence later admitted that Turkish minority policies were admirable.

Nevertheless, the British deep state continued to spread its black propaganda using the minorities as it was convinced that false claims of 'persecuted groups, faiths' would be an effective leverage for influence. They were right. The occupation policies of the British deep state found support in some minority representatives. The Greek Patriarch of Istanbul stated in a letter sent to the Paris Peace Conference that the Question of the East (the plan to break apart the Ottoman Empire) would never be solved until Istanbul was Greek again.

Similarly, the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire like the Copts in Egypt, Maronites in Lebanon and Christian Assyrians in Syria, considered Istanbul's occupation as a step towards their independence and backed the plan. Only the Jews amongst the Ottoman subjects, most notably the Chief Rabbi Nahum Effendi, stood with the Turks against the greedy European occupiers.