Homosexual Acts in the Turkish Army

[eceabat]

Hi all,

somewhat off (off being the operative word) topic I realise but there was the case in WW1 of an Australian soldier in England being court marshaled after being seen by two British officers having carnal knowledge of a swan by a river bank. At the trial, one of the officers giving evidence said that the swan, "appeared rather distressed". Puts the term "swanning around" in a whole new context.

Cheers
Bill

[nuyt]

Could someone for Godsake tell me why this discussion is relevant to this subforum that deals with the end of the Ottoman Empire?
What do statements like "conservative nation" and the "only Nato army that.." have to do with the last years of Ottoman rule, WW1 and the coming of the Turkish republic?
I have never questioned the sound judgement of the moderator, but in this case I wonder why this discussion has not been moved somewhere else.
I second Tosuns protest on the grounds that this discussion is doing more harm than good for this forum.

[Peter H]

The topic has been discussed between the moderators and it was decided to keep it open as a legitimate subject.

Western views/myths on the Ottomans need to be challenged,especially those that existed at the time of the conflict.

That such a reputable site as http://www.firstworldwar.com has such views expressed by one of its contributors there is a disgrace.

That such hearsay is still around I put down to the entrenched hatreds first expressed from the Gladstone days.Add Lawrence's silly fetish taken as the truth and anti-Muslim agendas that conclude that pedestary is the norm in the Middle East and a lot of cultures are being smeared without any proof presented.

We are trying to establish the truth and in my view the Turks are coming up clean so far.

[David Thompson]

Everyone -- Let's get back on topic, and if you don't have sourced information to accompany your thoughts on the subject, don't bother posting to this thread.

[clement]

Hi everyone
Just one interesting link

http://books.google.com/books?id=iGh1Z- ... MMJMzELXS0

cheers

clement

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

If I may step in briefly:

- Lawrence himself has said that his accounts of Turkish rape was fabricated. I think this was more about his own sexual fantasies than any reality. The sexual voracity of Turks is a favorite trope of Victorian biases and has had a long life. The "Other" is always considered inferior in every quality except sexual appetite - for instance the stereotype about black men. Everyone always accuses Turks of raping everyone. However, nobody every presents any concrete examples - because there aren't nay. People criticize Muslims for lack of respect of women, but the opposite is the case. Women and their bodies are sacred, and uncompromising respect for women is a fundamental principle of Turkish culture. The incidence of rape in Turkey is, for instance, a tiny proportion compared to that in the USA - IIRC, 20 times less per capita.

- I disagree that there was no homosexual activity - there always is. But there is nothing to suggest that there were any unusual levels of it as opposed to anywhere else. And certainly not a lot of man-rape. How would that even work? Soldiers live in barracks or are together in the field. You would have to go through a lot of effort to subdue someone and keep them quiet without anyone noticing! And there were large numbers of British POWs taken by the Ottoman army, and there were no complaints of rape. This is all based on Lawrence.

- I don't think Muslim society has quite the same intense moral opprobrium for homosexual acts that Western societies have tended to have - there is a difference between how this is perceived depending on whether you are the "top" or the "bottom" in the act, and the idea of a gay identity is viewed with intense hostility by a lot of Muslims, but I suspect this is partly because this is considered an invasive Western cultural import. Especially in Turkey, there is more of a "live and let live" attitude. It is pretty unthinkable for anyone to pry into and interfere in the private lives of anyone. Gossip about it, maybe! And for some reason, there is a surprising tolerance for really over-the-top flamboyance - for example, a really large proportion of Turkish entertainers are transexuals or drag-queens and there doesn't seem to be much objection. In the USA that would be unthinkable.

[Penn44]

The topic has been discussed between the moderators and it was decided to keep it open as a legitimate subject.

Western views/myths on the Ottomans need to be challenged,especially those that existed at the time of the conflict.

That such a reputable site as http://www.firstworldwar.com has such views expressed by one of its contributors there is a disgrace.

That such hearsay is still around I put down to the entrenched hatreds first expressed from the Gladstone days.Add Lawrence's silly fetish taken as the truth and anti-Muslim agendas that conclude that pedestary is the norm in the Middle East and a lot of cultures are being smeared without any proof presented.

We are trying to establish the truth and in my view the Turks are coming up clean so far.

Perhaps the situation is the other way around. According to the author of the below article, there were definite undercurrents of pederasty in the Middle East and Central Asian cultures. Western prejudices and alleged mythmaking aside, the author attributes the absorption of Victorian (i.e., Western) values by the modernizing elite within the region for taking steps to curb the practice,

The author reveals a long history of the relative acceptance of homosexual acts among males within the region. With this in mind, it is possible to imagine some lingering cultural continuance (cultural lag) of homosexual acts well into the early 20th century (in central Asia to this day). One can see the continuance of the domination relationship of pederasty in the reported sexual exploitation of Turkish soldiers by Turkish officers.

Note: Unfortunately, the Arabic script did not copy adequately. Please consult the original article.

Pederasty in the Middle East and Central Asia
The practice of pederasty in the Middle East seems to have begun, according to surviving records, sometime during the 800s and ended, at least as an open practice, in the mid-19th century. Throughout this era, pederastic relationships, poetry, art and spirituality were found throughout cultures from Moorish Spain to Northern India. The forms of this pederasty ranged from the chaste and spiritual adoration of youths at one extreme, to the violent and forcible use of unwilling boys at other. While sodomy was considered a major sin in Islam, other aspects of same-sex relations were not, though they were problematized to various degrees at various times and places.
The seeming co-relation of pederasty with the rise of Islam has been commented on by modern historians, who see a link between the love of boys and the protective attitude of Islam towards women, leading to their removal from public life, together with the tendency of Sharia law to accommodate within the domain of "private behavior" inevitable activities, as long as they do not interfere with public order.[1] The topos of "ishq" – passion – which could have as object a beautiful beardless boy as easily as a woman, is prominent in literature.

Literature and teachings
Literature reflects Muslim culture's fascination with love (sexual and nonsexual), a love which includes beautiful boys. To many, if not most Muslim literary figures, love was love: as Urdu poet Hasrat Mohani put it, "All love is unconditionally good." The lover was conceived as martyr and hero. His desire, known as ishq, was glorified as mad, unresonable, ecstatic, impossible to satisfy and leading even to death. An Arab proverb claims that "Ishq is a fire that burns down everything but the object of desire".

While pederastic themes abound in prose as well, it is through poetry that the genre has made its mark on the culture. This topos is found from Moorish Spain, such as in The Ring of the Dove of Ibn Hazm, to Egypt, in Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Hasan al-Nawaji's Meadow of Gazelles, to Baghdad, in the person of Abu Nuwas, "enfant terrible" and first among Arab poets, to the Gulistan of the Persian Sadi, and Urdu poets such as Mir Taqi Mir and Mirza Ghalib in northern India.
Individual regions

Middle East
The construction of same-sex love in the Middle East has been influenced by its history and geography. Hellenistic elements can be recognized in the use of the wine boy as a symbol of homoerotic passion, and in such ideas as that pederasty is absent from 'primitive' cultures since there a boy can learn all he needs from his father, but that people of high civilization require the erotic attraction of boys to motivate experienced men to teach the boys lovingly.

The valorization of youthful male beauty is found in the Qurān itself: "And there shall wait on them [the god fearing men] youths of their own, as fair as virgin pearls." (Qurān 52:24; 56:17; 76:19). Islamic jurisprudence generally considers that attraction towards beautiful youths is normal and natural. The Hanbalite jurist Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1200) is reputed to have said that "He who claims that he experiences no desire when looking at beautiful boys or youths is a liar, and if we could believe him he would be an animal, and not a human being." However, anal intercourse (liwāṭ), is proscribed and men are advised to be even more wary of attraction to beautiful boys than to beautiful women, through religious injunctions exhorting them to resist this temptation. It is related that the Prophet Muhammad enjoined his followers to "Beware of beardless youth for they are a greater source of mischief than young maidens."

Likewise, the imam and legal scholar Sufyan al-Thawri (d. 783 CE) asserted, regarding sexual temptation, that "If every woman has one devil accompanying her, then a handsome lad has seventeen." At the same time, a hadith by the Prophet posits that chaste love grants one passage into paradise: "He who loves and remains chaste and conceals his secret and dies, dies a martyr." As a result, love for youths in Islam, far from being the path to perdition the Christians made of it, was an understandable passion which, if kept in check, raised one up to the heavens.

Love of beauty, another quality praised in the hadith which records Muhammad as having said that God is beautiful and loves beauty, and that a handsome face refreshes the eye, was seen as a mark of refined and sophisticated character, even in the appreciation of beautiful boys. The 17th c. Persian philosopher Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi asserted that

We do not find anyone of those who have a refined heart and a delicate character . . . to be void of this love at one time or another in their life, but we find all coarse souls, harsh hearts and dry characters . . . devoid of this type of love, most of them restricting themselves to the love of men for women and the love of women for men with the aim of mating and cohabitation, as is in the nature of all animals [...]

At the other extreme, non-sublimated pederastic relationships were widespread, and widely documented in the poetry and art of the cultures involved, including in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. Libertine poets such as the Baghdad poet Abū Nūwās (750?–813?) flaunted their sexual conquests, often Christian wine boys, some of whom they plied with wine in order to subdue. [9] While some of these poems appear to describe affectionate relationships, others are clear depictions of rape, as is this quatrain by Mamayah al-Rumi:
The art of liwāṭ is the way of masculinity and might
So leave Laylah to Majnun, and Azzah with Kuthayyir,
And go up to every beardless boy, strip him, and even if he cries,
Present him with your prick and fuck him by force.

In order for any such act, whether willing or not, to be a punishable offense one had to consummate it and be caught at it, which required witnesses of four men or eight women. If one was not caught at it, however, it was thought that one would still be punished in the fires of hell.

Persia
Some sources have posited that same-sex relations may have been introduced by the hordes of the early Soghdian (Central Asian Iranian) conqueror Afrasiab. The local population is said to have been greatly shocked by the popularity among his people for "the vice against nature." The Zoroastrian priests reacted strongly, and decreed that any man caught in the act could be put to death - a stronger sanction than that against murderers.

The origin of pederasty in ancient Persia was debated even in ancient times. Herodotus claimed they had learned it from the Greeks: "...and [the Persians'] luxurious practices are of all kinds, and all borrowed: the Greeks taught them pederasty." However, Plutarch asserts that the Persians used eunuch boys "the Greek way" long before they had seen the Grecian main. Despite these historians, Richard Francis Burton was of the opinion that the Persians had picked up the habit from the people inhabiting the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.[14] More recently, the Persian literary historian Zabih Allah Safa called pederasty "the shameful inheritance of a period of moral turpitude which began to contaminate Iran from the [tenth and eleventh centuries AD] especially from the reign of the [Turkic] slave [kings] and the yellowskin Sinitic tribes."

In Islamic Persia, where, as Louis Crompton claims, "boy love flourished spectacularly," literature also made frequent use of the pederastic topos, often referred to as baccheh bazi, (the boy game). Omar Khayyám's (d. 1123) quatrains, Farid al-Din Attar (d. 1220), Rumi (d. 1273), Sa'adi (d. 1291) in his Rose Garden, Hafez Shirazi (d. 1389) in his ghazals, Jami (d. 1492), and even Iraj Mirza (d. 1926) wrote works "replete with homoerotic allusions, as well as explicit references to beautiful young boys and to the practice of pederasty."

The practice was not without its critics, such as Sanai of Ghazni. The poet mocks the pederastic practices of his time, embodied in the doings of the Khvaja of Herat, who takes his catamite into the mosque for a quick tryst:
Not finding shelter he became perturbed,
The mosque, he reasoned, would be undisturbed.
But he is discovered by a devout man, who, in his blame, echoes a traditional attack on same-sex relations:
"These sinful ways of yours," —that was his shout—
Have ruined all the crops and caused the drought!

Sanai drives the irony home by having the devout man, after the Khvaja makes his embarrassed escape, mount the boy and complete the act.

The pederastic topos in medieval Persian verse is so pervasive that it has been an obstacle for translations of these works into western languages. As Dick Davis comments, "A further cultural barrier, and one that can prove particularly difficult to negotiate, is the prevalence of the cult of pederasty in much medieval Persian verse." He notes that many translators have taken advantage of the fact that pronouns are not gender specific but notes that the translator "in availing himself of this help he is, as he knows, often fudging the issue, quietly bowdlerizing the texts." This is held to be true even of major works, such as the Gulistan (Rose Garden) of Sa'adi. English translators even in the tamer episodes of the "Gulistan" turn boys into girls and change anecdotes about pederasty into tales of heterosexual love.

The visual arts also were inspired by the male love tradition. Though there are a few examples which are sexually suggestive, most of the time the works reflect the Sufi sensibilites which locate the attraction in the gaze. Thus very often we see depictions of male couples, a mature man in the company of a comely youth who is the object of his attention. Many of the artistic works of Reza Abbasi, whose patron was the Safavid monarch Shah Abbas, depict such handsome youths, often in the role of saqi, or "wine pourer," either alone or in the company of a man.

Thomas Herbert, the twenty one year old secretary to the English ambassador to Persia, later reported that at Abbas' court (some time between 1627 and 1629) he saw, "Ganymede boys in vests of gold, rich bespangled turbans, and choice sandals, their curled hair dangling about their shoulders, with rolling eyes and vermilion cheeks." This was also a time when male houses of prostitution amrad khaneh, "houses of the beardless," were legally recognized and paid taxes. Regarding this trade, John Chardin, traveling through Persia at the time, reported that he had found "numerous houses of male prostitution, but none offering females." John Fryer, who traveled to Persia in the late seventeenth century, was of the opinion that "The Persians, when they let go their modesty.. covet boys as much as women."

The notoriety of the Persians for boyish pleasures was such that in the late nineteenth century Richard Francis Burton referred to Central Asian pederasty as "the Persian vice." He confirmed the findings of Chardin, indicating that the boy bordellos continued to exist, adding that "the boys are prepared with extreme care by diet, baths, depilation, unguents and a host of artists in cosmetics." He accounted for the tastes of the Persians by postulating that the habit began in boyhood, when Persian boys used each other for sexual pleasure, in a game known as alish-takish. Later in life, after marrying and begetting children, "Paterfamilias returns to the Ganymede," according to Burton.

The Ottoman Empire
In the Ottoman empire, same-sex relations between men and youths were often of a mercantile nature. The sex workers involved were either entertainers such as the köçeks or masseurs in the hammams known as tellak. The köçek tradition was a central element of Ottoman culture, flourishing from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. It was brought to an end by its very success in that the competition for the handsome boy dancers became a threat to public order, and the practice was banned in 1856 under the reign of Sultan Abd-ul-Mejid I.

The tellaks were also highly prized. Catalogs were compiled listing their individual qualities, and competition for their favors at times resulted in violence. One episode, in the mid-eighteenth century, led to urban warfare between opposing bands of Janissaries and was brought to an end only by the intervention of the Sultan, who had the boy hanged. It was expected that military men would have relations with handsome boys, who often would be taken on campaign. The English traveler Henry Blount, who accompanied the Turkish army through the Balkans in the 1630's on its march to Poland recounted that, "Besides these [ten to fifteen] wives, each Basha hath as many, or likely more Catamites . . . usually clad in Velvet or Scarlet, with guilt Scymitars and bravely mounted, with Sumptuous furniture."

The sexual doings of the Turks came under frequent criticism by their Christian neighbors. The Chronicles of the Moldavian Land mention that the Ottomans upon the sack of Crimea in 1475, sailed away with a galleon filled with one hundred and fifty young boys destined for "the filthy sodomy of the whoring Turk." Thomas Sherley, held captive by the Ottomans between 1603 and 1605 under harsh circumstances, reported in his Discourse of the Turks that "For their Sodommerye they use it soe publiquely and impudentlye as an honest Christian woulde shame to companye his wyffe as they do with their buggeringe boys." John Cam Hobhouse an early traveller to Istanbul with his friend Lord Byron described the köçek dances as "beastly" and the anonymous poem Don Leon (written in the voice of Byron and ascribed to him by some), referred to Turkish boy prostitution as a "monstrous scene." Osman Agha of Temeşvar who fell captive to the Austrians in 1688 wrote in his memoirs that one night an Austrian boy approached him for sex, telling him "for I know all Turks are pederasts".

The European conception of "all Turks are pederasts" possibly rooted in the often military nature of contacts with Ottoman Turks. Although zamparas (men drawn to women) outnumbered kulamparas (men drawn to boys) in society, Turkish military culture (especially Janissary culture) had pederasty as a principal aspect. Young Christian soldiers who were imprisoned by Turks were often raped and Janissary regiments (named orta) would frequently engage in skirmishes for rights over a young and beautiful novice (civelek). In 1770s, Âşık Sadık the poet wrote, in an address to the Sultan: Lût kavmi döğüşür, put kavmi bozar. Askerin lûtîdir, bil Padişahım ("The people of Lot fight, the people of idolatry spoil. Know, my Sultan, that your soldiers are Lotians").

The Turkish pederastic sexual practices influence the languages of the constituent lands of the Otoman Empire to the present day. Their "pusht," a borrowing from Persian meaning "back" or "anus" survives in modern Greek as "poustis," a term of invective used of passive homosexuals, and in Romanian as "puşti", presently an innocuous term used of children and adolescents, but up to the end of the 1800's meaning "pederast" and "sodomite."

Studies of Ottoman criminal law, which is based on the Sharia, reveal that persistent sodomy with non-consenting boys was a serious offense and those convicted faced capital punishment.

Central Asia
In central Asia the practice is reputed to have long been widespread. The paragon of the practice can be said to be the love between Mahmood of Ghazni and his slave, Ayaz. The Sultan is seen as an example of the man who, because of the power of his love, becomes "a slave to his slave." Ayaz came to be recognized as the ideal beloved, and a model of purity in Sufi literature. The two have gained pride of place among the favorite pairs of lovers in Persian literature. Modern scholars, such as Prods Oktor Skjœrvø, the Aga Khan Professor of Iranian at Harvard University, consider the relationship between the two to have been one example of the pederasty practiced at the Turkish Courts: "Under the Turkish Ghaznavid, Seljuq, and Khawarazmshah rulers of Iran in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, pederasty was quite common in courtly circles."

In the Terminal Essay of his translation of the Arabian Nights, Richard Francis Burton notes that, "The Afghans are commercial travellers on a large scale and each caravan is accompanied by a number of boys and lads almost in woman's attire with kohl'd eyes and rouged cheeks, long tresses and henna'd fingers and toes, riding luxuriously in Kajawas or camel-panniers: they are called Kuch-i safari, or travelling wives, and the husbands trudge patiently by their sides." Burton also reports a pederastic proverb common in the area: Women for breeding, boys for pleasure, but melons for sheer delight.

Though no longer widely practiced, such boy marriages nevertheless still occur. However, in part as a result of resurgent Islamic fundamentalism, they are less well received than in former times. In late 2005, the Afghan refugee Liaquat Ali, 42, and his Pakistani beloved, Markeen Afridi, 16, were both threatened with death by the tribal elders, subsequent to their public and ceremonial wedding in the Tribal Territories.(The Sydney Morning Herald)

In the aftermath of the US-Afghan war, western mainstream media have reported derisively on patterns of adult/adolescent male relationships, documented in Kandahar in Afghanistan (The New Yorker) and in Pakistan (The Boston Globe), often conflating them with pedophilia. The youth in these relationships, usually in his early- to mid-teens, is known alternatively as haliq, "beautiful boy," or ashna, "dear friend," and the man as mehboob, "lover," from the Persian mohabbat, "love," related to its Arabic counterpart, mahabbâh. The term balkay, referring to a beardless boy sexually available to men has also been reported. The prevalence of homosexual relationships in Kandahar and other Pashtun areas has been explained in these articles as a behavior resulting from strict gender segregation (Los Angeles Times) and "without any moral or educational value."

These reports however have been characterized as "privileging a political spin over more precise and informative writing," and as suffering from ethnocentric bias (Stephanie Skier, in queer.). Brian James Baer, writing in the Gay and Lesbian Review (March-April, 2003), claimed that "their subtext was clearly aimed at discrediting the Pashtun tradition by equating it with the ultimate American taboo, adult sex with minors," and that "Western journalists insisted on reducing relationships that are often long-term emotional bonds to a crude sexual bargain." In contrast, alternative media have carried accounts by native sources describing married men engaging youths in mutually affectionate long term relationships (Trikone).

Besides relationships following the pederastic model, cases of sexual brutality by men against youths - in this instance as one aspect of the military use of children - have also been documented. In Afghanistan, out of the thousands of Pakistani boys recruited by mullahs under the guise of jihad to fight for the Taliban, it is thought that about 1500 survived, only to be held for ransom in private jails, where they were being systematically abused J. Gettleman in the L. A. Times, July 2001. Also, commercial sexual exploitation of boys in Pakistan is reported to be widespread despite the fact that prostitution of minors is illegal and there is a death penalty for child abusers, according to the Bangkok-based international child protection campaign group, ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes).

In the northern, Turkic-speaking areas, one manifestation of the pederastic tradition were the entertainers known as bacchá (a Turkic Uzbeki term etymologically related to the Persian bachcheh, "boy" or "child", sometimes with the connotation of "catamite"). A bacchá, typically an adolescent, was a performer practiced in erotic songs and suggestive dancing. He wore resplendent attire and makeup, and would also be available as a sex worker. These Muslim bachás were trained from childhood and carried on their trade until their beard began to grow. Though after the Russian conquest the tradition was suppressed by tsarist authorities, early Russian explorers were able to document the practice.

Modern censorship
The traditional tolerance, literary and religious, for chaste pederastic love affairs which was prevalent since the 800s began to be eroded in the mid-1800s by the adoption of European Victorian attitudes by the new westernized elite. Historical material is reported to be systematically distorted. In his monograph on same-sex relations in the pre-modern Middle East, Khaled El-Rouayheb demonstrates how Persian and Arabic love poetry and other literary material is routinely heterosexualized or devalued in critical studies authored by post-colonial Arab and Islamic scholars. Similarly, the works of Abu Nuwas, widely available in their entirety in the Arab world until modern times, were first published in expurgated form in Cairo in 1932.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_ ... iddle_East

Penn44

.

[Peter H]

I see no reference to the practise occuring in Ottoman military circles after the 18th Century.

It also seems heavily relying on Janissary accounts,the Sultan's household troops and bodyguard.The corruptions of court!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissary

As the Janissaries were amassing more power and wealth, they gradually turned into a corrupt and largely useless caste, wielding an influence akin to that of the Roman Praetorian Guard. Finally, Mahmud II succeeded in forcibly disbanding them in 1826.

[Peter H]

Pending further review a post that did not do anything to counter by argument or evidence the post of another member and could be seen as more of a personal attack than anything else has been removed.

[Dogan Sahin]

Hi,
I am a newcomer also. I work on a specific subject " POWs in Turkish hands". Throughout my research I also came accross claims of abuse by a Mazlum Bey, a camp commander in Afionkarahisar camp on 2 English POWs. However, at a later stage I also found out that there are records of reports by British Doctors that such abuse did not take place. However, Mazlum bey had been punished for his unacceptable behavior and was one of the Malta exiles.

Many POWs recorded in their diaries that their first concern was " Food".

Of course, I would much appreciate any info on POWs kept in Turkish hands..
Regards.

[Tu-Man_KHAN]

Hails all...

Firstly i wanna say in Turkiye homosexuality (calling "İBNELİK") is a reason to banning and firing from the army... If you declare your homosexuality you will take your cyber "Pink" identification cos Men has Blue Women has Red identification and you are banning all military duty... It's a fully bullshit to think Turks and homosexuality together. Becouse in Turkish day life if you call someones homosexual you never take a good reaction... it's counting insult.

[Dogan Sahin]

Penn44

"I never did get the inclination to write about the use of hashish in the Australian Light Horse as they battled against the Turks. Like homosexuality, that never happened either - if you believe the fantasy.
"

Bill

I found in Ozzie diaries (WW1 soldiers) that some of them did infact use "Opium" whilst captive in afion..the Opium city..still is the largest opium producing city (medical purposes). So Ozzies did enjoy being captiev in afion at least! I reckon!

[Dogan Sahin]

Based on recent and past historical readings which I provided with quotes and sources, I asked a simple question regarding the prevalence of a certain activity within the Turkish army, that's all.

Penn44

.

It does happen in any army, group, sect, flock etc. But I agree with the comment that WW1 army consisted of "beleivers" and the faith prohibits homosexual acts. The faith did have a great deal in why the Turks won the war...
regards

[Richie B]

Dogan

Which war do you mean ?

Richard

[Dogan Sahin]

Dogan

Which war do you mean ?

Richard

WW1.
regards