Labour battalion (Turkey)
- Labour battalion (Turkey)
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 [ Henry Morgentau, Sr., "I was sent to Athens", Garden City N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co, 1929] The term is associated with disarmament and murder of Ottoman Armenian soldiers during World War I [ Foreign Office Memorandum by Mr. G.W. Rendel on Turkish Massacres and Persecutions of Minorities since the Armistice, March 20, 1922, Paragraph 35] [ [http://rs9.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.+Con.+Res.+148: USA Congress, Concurrent Resolution, September 9, 1997] ] and with the Pontic Greek Genocide. [ [http://www.genocidetext.net/iags_resolution_supporting_documentation.htm Notes on the Genocides of Christian Populations of the Ottoman Empire ] ]
Armenians in labor battalions
During the beginning of World War I, 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" (from the word "çete" meaning gang in Turkish) in remote areas. [Balakian. "The Burning Tigris", p. 178] Those who initially survived were turned into road laborers ("hamals") and construction mules, but were eventually killed thereafter. [Toynbee, Arnold. "Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation". London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915. pp. 181–182]
Depictions
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 World War II 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. [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]
ee also
*Labour battalions in other places
References
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