History, Repeating Itself

"[Kassab] is a symbol of Armenian history, language and continuity. It's very symbolic."
"And so the fall of Kassab, I consider it the defeat of Armenian identity in that area."
Ohannes Geukjian, political science professor, Armenian history and politics

"When you say Kassab, you understand you are referring to the Armenians. It symbolizes Armenian culture."
Arpi Mangassarian, Badguer, Beirut-based Armenian cultural organization

A rebel fighter checks a launcher near the village of Kasab and the border crossing with Turkey, in the northwestern province of Latakia. AFP Photo 
 

This is the Middle East, with all its Byzantine intrigues, hatreds, connections, conspiracies and unabated tribal, ethnic, sectarian antipathies and related violence. The Armenians of Turkey suffered horrendously during the First World War, when Turkey unleashed a massive atrocity the world considers the first 'modern-day' genocide. Official Turkey has always strenuously denied that it committed such a horror, denying fact and reality and history.

The Middle East's latest mass murdering tyrant, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, intent on punishing Syria's majority Sunni population for the offence against the ruling Syrian minority Alawite Baathist government, is seen as Syria's Armenian population as their protector. Just as the Syrian Christian population see the Alawite government of al-Assad as their protector. The Kurds trust neither and are self-reliant, battling any who bring the conflict to them.

Turkey's government has declared a diplomatic war against Syria's tyrannical government, defending the Syrian Sunnis, and giving haven to the rebel leadership within Turkey's borders. And no doubt harbouring some elements of the rebel militias as well. Square that with Turkey's friendly relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Shia Islam's most frenetically Islamist country whose Middle East and nuclear designs hugely concern most Sunni-majority countries.

The position of the Kurds in Turkey has always been fraught with oppressive violence. Only in Iraq, another minority-Shia country, have the Kurds been able, post-Saddam Hussein, to obtain geographic and political autonomy, hoping no doubt, to eventually carve out a country of their own from a little bit of Syria, Turkey, Iran and of course Iraq, but not if Turkey has anything to say about it.

The Syrian regime, which looked to be in dire straits under the combined attack of its own Syrian rebel groups, later augmented by hordes of Islamist jihadis flocking into Syria from North Africa and other Arab states, has seen better fortune smile on its prospects when its sponsor Iran and the Al Quds division of the Republican Guard authorized Shia-Lebanese Hezbollah, a proxy militia of Iran, to join the fray, enabling the Syrian military to retake rebel-held portions of the country of great importance.

Now, Armenians living in Kassab, the very area where Alawite Syrians call home, are once again leaving in a panic of self-preservation with the seizure of Kassab after a two-day successful attack by Syrian rebels, most of whose fighters represent a abundance of 'conservative' Islamic groups, inclusive of the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Islamists do not look kindly upon Christians, even Christians who have lived historically in areas Islamists are now invading.

That Bashar al-Assad's ancestral 'home' and that of his followers has been taken by the rebels will not sit well with the regime. The village that holds Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches, now in the hands of rebels does not auger well for its Armenian population, and so they flee to safer areas. The fleeing residents describe mortar shells and gunfire from over the Turkish border toward their village. And, claimed a Syrian field commander, gunmen initiated their attack "with clear support from the Turks".

"The allegations by some circles that Turkey is providing support to the opposition forces by letting them use its territory or through some other ways during the conflict ... are totally unfounded", claimed the Turkish government through a statement to the media. The government claims its preparedness to admit Syrian Armenian refugees as "protection could be provided to them".

Armenia's President Serge Sarkisian confirmed the attack by Turkish militants in 1909 of Kassab, when local Armenians were forced to flee for their lives. When, in 1915, the Ottoman Empire was in its death throes, the Armenian population was deported by the Turks, with tens of thousands dying in the march across the desert. "This is the third expulsion of Armenians from Kassab and it represents a major challenge to modern mechanisms for the protection of ethnic minorities", stated the Armenian president.

Before the Syrian rebellion some 70,000 ethnic Armenians lived in Syria, concentrated in the northern city of Aleppo, and the area around Kassab. Armenians are now leaving for Lebanon, Armenia, Canada and the United States.