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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Armenia and Kurdistan: The Rebel Land, March 23, 2010
This review is from: Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town (Hardcover)
After reading a review of Rebel Land in the International Herald Tribune, I was intrigued enough to buy the book. The author it seemed had moved to Turkey as a young journalist and had rather literally gone native. He had written an historical essay, which triggered a venomous response from an Armenian professor. Subsequently and somewhat remorsefully he undertook this investigative book to learn the sordid details of the region in Eastern Turkey where the `cleansings' took place and where today Kurds live under continuing pressure from the Turkish government. Given the subject and the desire of American and European parliaments to pass judgement on this history, the topic is obviously still relevant. The book is very well written; the author's perspective now clearly neutral and objective.
Parts of the narrative are, despite the tragic subject matter, quite poetic. Let me just note a few examples:
* The Great Monastery of Surp Karapet, the sum of fifteen centuries of labour, accretions, modification and repair, has been reduced to its separate parts. Black stone smoothed by the centuries, ...
* The fractures running through this society mean that dramatically different versions of history are being recounted in neighbouring villages... Vartolus use the past to acquit their ancestors and string up their enemies.
* I got a new impression of the past as a chaotic series of emotions, of outrage and guilt, scornful of chronology and often founded on gossip or hagiography.
* ...the mass graves are planted with trees, a pleasant park grows over the bones.
The author has recounted the history of this region from the late nineteenth century when the Ottoman Empire came unravelled until the present. As the empire tried to hold on against the historical trends and encroaching powers, they effectively `cleansed' the area of Christian Armenians through genocide and forced resettlements. The Kurds moved into the vacuum and became the majority of the population. Today the Kurds themselves are under cultural pressure to accept an identity as Turkish nationals and to give up any dream of a Kurdish nation. The history is presented, but it is depicted in the author's on-site research through discussions with current residents and later generations of Armenian refugees. In many ways the book reads as a non-fiction novel.
I have already commended the author for his objective neutrality. However, I wish to qualify that and to offer one brief critique. There is one very beautiful passage which introduces the chapter, "The Siege of Varto." That passage poignantly captures the tragedy of mass murder. But the passage also reveals the author's own belief system. He approaches a truly neutral perspective on the world, but then lapses into a romantic acceptance of ethnicity as though it were a substantive thing and not merely ephemeral. The modern world, just as the author relates, has followed a tragic path from a period of empires with broad regions of various subject peoples to today's `myths' of national identity, where minorities are eliminated, suppressed or acculturated and absorbed. While Turkey is in the news once again regarding the Armenian genocide, they are not the only nation to have employed such nation-building tactics. Americans `cleared' North America of its Indian tribes and Israel is presently suppressing Palestinians. No nation is free of guilt. And yet every group that chooses death for the sake of culture, language or religion has made a tragic choice. There is no reason to do so other than for the vain preservation of ancestral traditions. There must be a better path to the future.
Unfortunately the tragedy of contemporary politics is that there is no political process available to pursue an alternative path. Essentially the UN recognizes present national boundaries, while respecting minority rights and the sovereignty of national governments at the same time. The contradictions are evident but not addressed. The UN is powerless and resolution of minority problems reduces very simply to a question of which power, be it the USA, Russia or China, believes it has a right to intervene to defend its interests. For someone of the author's diverse background and obvious sensitivities I would have hoped that he might delve just that bit deeper.
David Hillstrom, Author
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32 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fine Investigative Reporting, March 13, 2010
This review is from: Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town (Hardcover)
Christopher de Belliague is a respected British journalist who lived for almost thirteen years as an expatriate foreign correspondent for The Economist and The New York Review Of Books and other papers in Iran and Turkey. He spoke the languages. He knew the customs He obviously loved the area. He appears to have been the ideal reporter- honest, articulate, knowledgeable skillful, observant and, above all, non-judgmental.
In 2001 he had written an article for the New York Review of Books in which he mentioned the alleged killings of Armenians in Anatolia (Eastern Turkey) in 1915 and was immediately besieged by letters saying he had missed the fact that it was more than that - it was Genocide with a capital G and it was carried out by the Turkish Government. So, being the investigative reporter that he is, he decided to look for himself; and over the course of a couple of years and in four extended visits to the village of Varto in the Province of Mus in Turkey he interviewed, lived with, got to know the people who were either there in 1915 or whose families were there or who knew by experience or tradition what had happened. This is the story of what he saw and heard; and it is particularly relevant because as this is written there is pending in the United States Congress a controversial Resolution condemning the Turkish Government for Genocide in the 1915 events.
Before you read this book, however - and I do recommend it to you if you are interested either in this history or this area - there are two things which need to be said.
First, get a map and see the area where the alleged Genocide took place. Varto is closer as the bird flies to Teheran and Baghdad than it is to Istanbul; it's 500 miles from Ankara, 125 miles from Yerevan the capital of he modern state of Armenia and in a somewhat lonely corner of the world that most of us in the West know nothing about - where a lot of killing could happen in 1915 and never be known to the historical record. Yes, the event could have been covered up.
Second, I will ask you to be the judge as you read this book. Was there a policy of killing the Armenians? Or was it just the fact that generational hatreds between Kurd and Turk and Armenian who had lived in the same inflammable territory for hundreds of years were suddenly put to the torch with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1914-15 and, out of control, the Turks wanted the Armenians out of the country they had called their home for generations. To this day the Turks deny having anything to do with what happened - and they contend that not much happened. (Parenthetically: Those of the generation of this writer - b. 4.27.17 - know that something happened. Every one of us was told as a child to "finish your cereal. Just think of the starving Armenians".) The Armenians contend that the pogrom killed 1,500,000 of their brothers and sisters and they want - what? And here is a question I found myself asking as I read the book. Just what do the Armenians want; and what good would it do today if they got it? Wouldn't it only serve to continue to irritate the festering wounds of the past?
The book has so much evidence of generational hatred, blood feud, historical anger, hate and violence over hundreds of years by so many people and so many tribes against so many other people and so many other tribes that, were I a Judge here hearing the evidence to determine whether or not there was the Genocide as claimed I would have interrupted counsel about half way through the case and after hearing witness after witness repeat his or her particularly slanted story of events and would have said "Counsel, I've heard enough. .I'm sure that further testimony along this line would only be repetitious. I'll take the case under submission and let you know my decision after I've thought about it for a while". Right or wrong that's what I did as the reader. I couldn't finish the book. It was just too much - the same story after story of hate and violence and blood. And the verdict? Apart from finding that thousands upon thousands of Armenians were killed fleeing out of the country in 1915 I don't think anyone can ever say with that certitude of decision which is so necessary in a matter like this that there was a Turkish policy of extermination. Nor does the author. But you should read the book and make your own judgment. It's a good book if for no other reason than, read as a travel book, it takes the 21st century reader back in time to a way of life that exists today the same as it did 200 years ago.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
many disturbing and unanswered questions, December 19, 2010
This review is from: Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town (Hardcover)
As the saying goes: I've got no dog in this fight. So perhaps I can give an unbiased review.
This book is a disturbing read, and I mean that in both a good way and a bad way. It poses more questions than it answers. As stated by other reviewers, this book was intended to be an investigation into the Armenian massacres in the early 1900s. And it seems to accomplish this task well. The author presents a balanced viewpoint. For me, what was new was to learn the this is not merely a Turkish/Armenian question, but rather a Turkish/Kurdish/Armenian question, with the Kurds being perhaps the worst transgressors. What I find disturbing about this, above and beyond the "genocide" question, is that we in the U.S. have come to view that Kurds as the "good guys," at least concerning our present situation in Iraq. But it seems, upon reading this book, that this view might have to be reevaluated.
Another disturbing aspect is that after spending the first third of the book trying to unravel the Armenian massacres, the subject is suddenly shuffled to the background for the remainder of the text, and the book becomes more about the Kurdish/Turkish dispute than the Armenian/Turkish dispute. This is understandable in that the book focuses on one particular town, Varto, and that after the massacres there are few if any Armenians left in that town, but it's rather disquieting to realize that the people we find ourselves castigating at the beginning of the book, we now find ourselves sympathizing with near the end. No wonder we find ourselves in such a quagmire whenever we get involved in the politics of the region.
In fact, the unresolved question at the end of the book is just who does have the better claim to the region. Or does anyone? Would the people of Varto be better served under a government of Greater Armenia or Greater Kurdistan than they are under the government of Turkey? And who exactly is to decide? The author basically throws his hands up in despair, and I can see his point.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all, at least to me-- and to the author as well -- is whether any of this could happen here in the West. We tend to think of ourselves as being civilized and above all of these tribal disputes, but it seems when you get down to it that the veneer of civilization is rather thin. The author (a British national) poses this question through his marriage to an Iranian. In my own case this question is poignant because I am married to a Chinese. Just where would the fault lines shape up in case of a global disruption? Not just between me and my spouse, but between the two of us and our neighbors, or even our families, whether we were in the U.S. or in China? And how would this effect our mixed heritage daughter? After reading this book, the answers don't seem so comforting.
It makes you want to stand up and shout, a la Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along?"
This text is difficult to follow at times but well worth the read.
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