Lebanon remembering bloody Turkish record

Aya Ezz

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a plan for controlling Lebanon through a wide range of tools.

Nevertheless, this Arab country has bitter memories of Ottoman control and presence.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun said recently that his country had suffered a lot because of Turkish terrorism since World War I.

Repression

The Turkish terrorism mentioned by the Lebanese leader includes the major famine that took place between 1915 and 1918.

Turkey used food as a tool to force the Lebanese people into submission and prevent them from opposing the Ottoman rule.

The Ottoman ruler, Jamal Pasha, made the famine worse by preventing the entry of food and agricultural products into Lebanon from Syria.

Ottoman gangs carried out numerous crimes against the Lebanese people during World War I. They kidnapped Lebanese children and men and then recruited them forcibly in the Turkish army.

Aoun said these kidnapping operations emptied Lebanese homes of men and male children.

The Ottomans, he said, forced the people they kidnapped into labor and those who refused would be left to starve to death.

Other crimes

Aoun added that the Ottomans used the chance of the absence of men in Lebanese homes and rapped Lebanese women in all villages.

Some women, he said, were kidnapped and disappeared forever.

Meanwhile, Lebanese media usually talks about the Ottomans imposed huge taxes on Lebanese farmers.

The farmers who refused to pay the taxes or failed to pay them were usually taken to jail and tortured to death, the Lebanese media says.

It adds that Ottoman rulers and commanders used to confiscate the farms and the homes of the Lebanese and take them for themselves.

The Lebanese farmers or citizens who oppose these measures were usually executed, the Lebanese media says.