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Labour battalion (Turkey)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For more information on battalion see Labour battalion
A labour battalion (Turkish: Amele Taburu, Greek: Τάγμα Εργασίας Tagma Ergasias) was a form of unfree labor in late Ottoman Empire and later in Turkish Republic [1] It also refers to disarmament and murder of Ottoman Armenian soldiers during WWI.[2] [3]. Labor battalions provide key evidence for the Pontic Greek Genocide.
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During the beginning of WWI, Enver ordered that all Armenians in the Ottoman forces, some as old as sixty, to be disarmed, demobilized and assigned to labor battalion units. Many of the Armenian recruits were taken and executed by Turkish soldiers and armed squads known as chetes (groups whose roles were similar to Nazi Germany's Einsatzgruppen) in remote areas.[4] Those who initially survived were turned into road laborers (hamals) and construction mules, but were eventually killed thereafter.[5]
The well-known writer-novelist Elias Venezis later described the situation in his work the Number 31328 (Το Νούμερο 31328).
Leyla Neyzi has published a study of the diary of Yaşar Paker, a member of the Jewish community of early 20th century Ankara who was drafted to the Labour Battalions twice, first during the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and then during the Second World War in which Turkey did not take part. Neyzi's paper on the basis of Paker's diary published by Jewish Social Studies presents an overall picture for the conditions in these battalions which were composed entirely of non-Muslims. [6]
- Labour battalions in other places
- ^ Henry Morgentau, Sr., "I was sent to Athens", Garden City N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co, 1929
- ^ Foreign Office Memorandum by Mr. G.W. Rendel on Turkish Massacres and Persecutions of Minorities since the Armistice, March 20, 1922, Paragraph 35
- ^ USA Congress, Concurrent Resolution, September 9, 1997
- ^ Balakian. The Burning Tigris, p. 178
- ^ Toynbee, Arnold. Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915. pp. 181–182
- ^ Strong as Steel, Fragile as a Rose: A Turkish Jewish Witness to the Twentieth Century, Leyla Neyzi paper on the basis of Yaşar Paker's diary published in the Jewish Social Studies in Fall 2005