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SÖYLEDİKLERİ VE YAZDIKLARI
For a better understanding of the subject at hand, it may be
useful to take a brief look at issues such as ethnic cleansing,
relocation and population exchange in a comparative manner. Both
ethnic cleansing and relocation seem, at first glance, to be aimed at
creating a more homogeneous demographic structure on a certain
piece of land by driving a given ethnic group from that region.
However, a closer look reveals that there are serious differences
between the two with regard to motive, method and geography. The
ethnic cleansing, which is not a legal concept, began to be used in
the 1980s in former Yugoslavia. In fact, it was reportedly coined by
a Serbian guerrilla. For this reason, one has to take as a basis the
ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina and compare that, first, to
the appalling conduct freely exhibited towards to the Turks and
other Muslims during the Balkan Wars and, then, to the Armenian
relocation.
Ethnic cleansing starts with the armed forces of one side
attacking the civilian population of the other warring party.
Naturally, the civilians, who do not have the capacity to defend
themselves, get killed or wounded. Their houses and settlements
are destroyed and burned down. Humanitarian convoys bringing
food and drugs are not permitted to enter the region. Men of
fighting age get arrested, imprisoned at camps with poor living
conditions or killed right away. Women get raped in a systematic
and massive manner. The cultural assets of the target group,
including temples and libraries, get burned. If they do not leave
their homes, they face continual fire or bombardment. The
massacre continues. After a while, these attacks bear fruit, and
masses of people start fleeing in the direction their attackers want
them to proceed. They get driven outside the region where the
attackers intend to cleanse ethnically, that is, outside the potential
borders of the state to be founded. The members of the target
group get prevented at all costs from returning to the region. At a
certain stage of ethnic cleansing, the attacking group comes to be
dominated by a certain feeling similar to racial hatred when
dealing with the target group. For example, the Muslim Bosnians
came to be called “Turkish seed”, and in this way they were
dehumanized. These persons get presented with the entire bill for
Ottoman sovereignty in the past. Rape gains a new biological
meaning, becoming an effort aimed at breeding a new generation
dominated by the aggressive race. Even after a region is rendered
homogeneous from the ethnic standpoint, civilian men get
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