Slanders On Muslims In History

George Francis Milne

George Milne, a senior British army officer, was made the commander in charge of the occupation of Istanbul. He said the following of the Caucasian people and the Turks:

I am fully aware that the withdrawal of the British troops would probably lead to anarchy but I cannot see that the world would lose much if the whole of the inhabitants of the country cut each other's throats. They are certainly not worth the life of one British soldier. The Georgians are merely disguised Bolsheviks …. The Armenians are what the Armenians have always been, a despicable race. The best are the inhabitants of Azerbaijan, though they are in reality uncivilized.³²⁵ (All the peoples mentioned here are above these remarks)

George Milne was extremely uncomfortable with the nationalist movement Mustafa Kemal started in Anatolia and wrote to the Ottoman Ministry of War on June 6, 1919 asking the authorities to call him back to Istanbul:

I consider the presence of General Kemal Pasha and his Staff in the provinces to be undesirable. It is unsettling to public opinion at this juncture that a distinguished General and Staff should be traveling about in the country, and I see no necessity for their labours from a military point of view. I request that you will order the immediate return to Constantinople of General Kemal Pasha and his Staff.³²⁶

Mustafa Kemal was indignant at Milne's condescending tone towards the Turkish people and Istanbul government, and the desperate answers of the Ministry of Defense. He explained his feelings with the following words:

… yet this does not seem to wound the pride of the Minister of War, who, in all his transactions with the national organisation, is ever referring to questions of self-respect and scarcely every mentions the dignity of the Government who accepted the responsibility of safeguarding the independence of the Ottoman Empire. They will not allow that their dignity is already assailed and the independence of the State jeopardised. They do not even protest against this attack; they do not even venture to assert that they decline to make themselves the instrument for this blow against our independence.³²⁷

The truth is, the quoted disdainful statements are only a small part of those individuals' remarks against Turks. Their hearts were full of hatred and a grudge for the Turkish people and didn't refrain from clearly displaying this hatred before and after the Turkish War of Independence. They took every opportunity to crush and humiliate the Ottoman nations, which, in their own feeble mind, were inferior races. Today, the same mentality lives on. Some people, who wrongly believe that they can find friendship or a future in an alliance with the deep states, would do well to remember that.