Munzur

This is indeed very interesting material on these Armenian relics and should indeed be published in some scholarly or journalistic form. Maybe I'll take a look there myself this summer! Didn't you encounter any difficulties with the authorities, bell?

Sure dude. It seems you got your mind made up. Nothing to discuss about then. You keep on believing what you want to believe, and keep on keeping on with your prejudiced self, fragmented information and nationalist rhetoric.

This is what we call a 'sweeping statement', which are not only 99% of the time historically incorrect, but also reveal a nice thick layer of ignorance and prejudice. The average genocide scholar would lambast this absurd statement. Nobody is genetically predisposed to be violent or even genocidal, whether German, Hutu, Serb, or Turk, and it is simply historically wrong to claim that 'Kurds' have always been on the perpetrating side of the violent spectrum. It is indeed a question who is versed in Kurdish history and who is not. The annihilation of many Assyrian villages and its inhabitants in the 1830s was not committed by "the Kurds" but by Emir Bedirxan and his allies, e.g. Xan Mahmud and Nurullah Beg. And it was not a manicheistic battle of Kurds vs. Assyrians, but of Bedirxan vs. Mar Shimun, two power-wielders in the region. I have to note that Xan Mahmud's army included several thousands Armenians and Assyrians of his tribe, who sided with the Bedirxan chieftains (Arshak Safrastian, Kurds and Kurdistan (London: Harvill Press, 1948), p.51). On the other hand, an authority on Kurdish history writes in his classic book: "Several Nestorian opponents of the Mar Shimun remained not only unharmed but even received gifts from Bedr Khan because they had previously proclaimed their loyalty to him" (Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan (London: Zed, 1992), p.203, footnote 113). I guess these are trivial platitudes in your ideological narrative of dumbing down a very complex history of local power struggles to a manicheistic view of perpetual victimization of Armenians and opportunistic demonization of Kurds. Richard Hovannisian has writted on Kurds saving Armenians and Assyrians, and published an excellent article on it, based on Oral History archives. Currently George Shirinian of the Zoryan Institute is preparing a collection of stories of Muslims saving Armenians and Assyrians, and there are many Kurds among them too. As to your second post, I can only repeat what I wrote first (and what you conveniently overlooked): "The pitfalls of such generalized thinking is that people start thinking of millions of people as abstractions, personified in chieftain X or Y." Yes, Ismail Agha Simko is responsible for the murder of Mar Benjamin Shimun in 1918 and yes, he did instrumentalize Kurdish nationalism. But I am holding in my hand here two brochures, one by the Kurdish Socialist Party (1991), the other by Komala (undated, probably the 1980s). Both of them condemn Simko's assassination as "a despicable murderous act against our Assyrian brothers". Whether one wants to see nuances or not does not depend on intelligence, but on conviction. Some people are just convinced of certain things, even though they are myths, or dogmatically closed to new interpretations. I would like to continue this captivating exchange but... *sigh* ... this discussion is not about history, it is about nationalism. It is about the fundamental ideological conviction that one's own people is superb and more civilized, elegant (and more superlatives), and others (especially 1 constructed 'Other') is inhuman, brutal, and the like. Hence, people do not want to see certain events that did or did not happen in history. These are serious sociological missers and a deplorable malfunction of human existence. Unfortunately.

I don't know if this is an analytical remark, a complimentary one for me, or a condescending racist one towards Kurds. With "the Narek tribe of Silvan" I mean the Sunni Kurmanj-tribe called Narek living in Silvan (formerly Farqin or Meyafarqin), the town between Diyarbakir and Bitlis. Their chieftain was Khalid Agha, a huge man, and a brave, but stubborn individual. He saved many Armenians and Assyrians who now live in Syria and perhaps even in the west. It was his grandson Yusuf Azizoglu who mentioned the Armenian genocide in the Turkish parliament in 1967 and was subsequently banned from any political activity in Turkey. He then returned to Diyarbakir where he built the first large hospital in Eastern Turkey. I think it's safe to say that one way or the other, the then progressive elements of Kurdish society have remained progressive throughout history. The same goes for Kurdish accomplices in the genocide, many of them are now rich, corrupt, own huge lands, and between 1984-1999 they have sided with the Turkish state in trying to stamp out the PKK.

Phew, you guys, there's really a lot of research still to be done on Kurdish-Armenian relations... somebody really needs to seriously specialize in it. Maybe I can write a comprehensive article on it later because Koucharian and Hofmann's article is really insufficient, prejudiced, and very, VERY ahistoric. Some quick remarks: 1) It is a cardinal sin in history to speak of 'THE Kurds', 'THE Turks' and 'THE Armenians', for 2 reasons: a ) Eastern Anatolian society was/is strongly tribal and local, thus, as such, one needs to name tribes as actors, and regions as settings, as it is obvious that Bursa or Adapazari Armenians never suffered from Kurdish exactions. So we should be careful in generalizing since it doesn't add to our understanding of what happened. b ) 'Ethnic thinking' didn't exist among 95% of the Kurdish population, and there were Kurds and there were Kurds. If you were an Armenian peasant, working for Kurdish tribe X in Bitlis, then you could've gotten killed by Kurdish tribe Y from Mush, and vice versa. The chieftain of your tribe X, who decides on life and death, would then take revenge on tribe Y by killing 'its' Armenians. The pitfalls of such generalized thinking is that people start thinking of millions of people as abstractions, personified in chieftain X or Y. That is typical in modern ethnic nationalism: "Georgians are backstabbers," "Kurds are barbarians," "Turks are racists," "African-Americans are dumb," "Germans are hierarchic," "Arabs are lazy," etc. etc. I cannot underline this enough: this is all nonsense and bears no socio-historical truth whatsoever. 2) What happened in 1915 was an aberration in Kurdish society - and I'm not even mentioning the infinitely complex relation between Muslim Kurds, Jewish Kurds, Yezidi Kurds, and Alevi Kurds. All of a sudden, the government ordered chieftain X or Y to kill its OWN Armenians, a very costly operation for the tribes in question. Many tribes (such as the Narek tribe in Silvan, or the Bezik tribe in Malatya) refused, and urged their Armenians to convert to Islam and reconvert once the Ittihadist wind blew over. It didn't, and the Armenians were excised out of Eastern Anatolia (western historic Armenia, northern Kurdistan, whatever you wanna call it), thus destroying the very fabric of the Kurdish economy. One reason why Turkey can't join the EU is because it doesn't meet the economic criteria: the economy of Eastern Turkey hasn't kept up with the rest, and the reason why Eastern Turkey is poor is because of the genocide. 3) It is true that Kurdish nationalism benefited from the genocide: the entire region north of Lake Van became more than 80% Kurdish (although many of those Kurds were deported in the 1930s, the Armenian farms distributed to ethnic Turks). However, there is a gaping hole in Armenian and Kurdish historiography, i.e. 1915 in the collective memory of the Kurds. Drawing from my preliminary oral history research, we can say most Kurds deplore the genocide, but not too much, since they know certain Kurdish tribes played a role, and they'd like to hear THEY are victims of history - apart from the fact that indeed the Van, Kars, Ararat regions would be lost to Kurdish nationalist aspirations. However, Kurdish collective memory is packed with fascinating detailed information on the genocide, and Armenians in general. I could name you guys the family names of aristocratic Armenian families from cities like Diyarbakir and Kharpert (Elazig), who converted to Islam and live happy lives in those cities; some Kurdified, and are rabid Kurdish nationalists, some are pious Muslim Turks, one family even leading a prominent Islamic fundamentalist order (Nakshibendi) in Mush. I know these people personally, there're there, tangible evidence of the genocide. Few people know this, but it's real. That is the disadvantage our friends in North America deal with: being far from the reality of the 'Old Country'. Anyway, I'm getting too carried away again. More research is on its way.

I read the book. It's good, as most of Hilmar's work is. His theses are in general, correct and balanced. Racism towards Armenians was not an exclusively German endeavour. Mark Sykes wrote in The Caliph's Last Heritage about the "greedy and avaricious Armenian race" that nobody liked, etc. etc. He was particularly negative about the urban Armenian elite, whom, he contends, deserved what they got. I was very disturbed by it, but once you get to think about it, peasants are frugal everywhere in the world, it's their living. He IS positive on the Kurds, whom he calls "noble savages": very hospitable, but very savage. Personally, I don't think "national characteristics" exist... personal behaviour is personal and temporal, if not, very often situational. There is no such thing as "Kurds are hospitable," or "Armenians are hard-working," or "Jews are gifted merchants," or "Italians are friendly". It's all nationalist BS if you ask me, but because of the fact that nation-thinking and nationalism is ubiquitous in the modern world, we buy this type of nonsense.

Well, I'm gonna be there Thoth. Perhaps I can slip into an internet cafe once in a while to write about how it's coming along. It all looks very promising, but we'll have to see how it goes. I get bored fast and I set the academic standard high. Judging from the impressive staff, the two-volume syllabus, and a preliminary list of the attending students, I think: next to being unique, the course will probably be fantastic.

Again, a relevant and important topic. I believe we had this discussion about the Kurds some time ago. I can't remember if it was this very topic (because then my posts would have disappeared). I still think this is an important topic. I can't stress it enough: there are Kurds and there are Kurds. Let's please differentiate when we speak about 'The role of THE Kurds in the Armenian genocide'. I'm writing a monograph on this historical phenomenon, incorporating the different attitudes of Alevi, Yezidi and Muslim Kurds towards the Armenians and Assyrians before, during and after WW I. Really, the relations between Yezidi and Muslim Kurds were worse than those between Yezidis and Armenians, and this is not a simple matter of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. I quote from Hilmar Kaiser: Hilmar Kaiser, "'A Scene from the Inferno': The Armenians of Erzerum and the Genocide, 1915-1916," in: Hans-Lukas Kieser & Dominik J. Schaller (eds.), Der Völkermord an den Armeniern und die Shoah (Zürich: Chronos, 2001), p.129. Of course it's a fact that Muslim Kurds conducted and executed the mass killings, rapes and abductions of Armenian deportees and Assyrian villagers. Without their participation and willing obedience to Turkish orders there wouldn't have been an Armenian genocide, at least not on this scale. It's now useless to treat the obscene horrors in detail, this doesn't in any way enhance our understanding of the genocidal process. What is often overlooked is the role Alevi and Yezidi Kurds played in rescuing a lot of Armenians: the Dersim region about 20.000, the Mardin Yezidis about 5000. This shouldn't be forgotten. When I spoke to Vahakn Dadrian about this, and I will soon again speak to him again at the Zoryan Institute Genocide & Human Rights Program in Toronto (in August), he kept on emphasizing the role of Islam when assessing the position of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Then I asked this question: "If Islam was such a determinant factor in the genocide, doesn't this imply that non-Muslims, such as Alevis and Yezidis would not only have helped the Armenians, but were also oppressed themselves?" I believe it's important to think about this question. We need to get rid of some of these stubborn dichotomies when dealing with the genocide. There are huge grey areas when it comes to defining 'perpetrators, victims and bystanders'. Turkish denialist efforts have concentrated on downplaying the Armenian demographic presence in western historic Armenia by subsuming Alevis and Yezidis under the category of 'Muslims'. This is wrong and works in our interest, as people concerned with the genocide. A dialogue between Kurds and Armenians should be based on resolving these difficult historical matters and not on the principle of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. In the end, this will lead to fratricide.

This genocide thing is a serious problem, more serious than I thought it was when I first stepped in. We'll have to be patient and wait for more Turkish students to investigate into the matter... there's a lot of talent, e.g. in Germany, so perhaps the future isn't that dim after all.

Domino: Yes you are wrong, because not all "Turks" there recognize the genocide as it happened, or they do not agree to the minimal level of consensus on the historical facts. I won't name names, but apart from Akçam there was only 1 'Turkish' scholar that used the word 'genocide'. On the 3rd day there was even a hot debate on why the word 'genocide' should or should not be used (which is of course a discussion for genocide scholars and not for scholars of Ottoman history). Personally, I have to agree with Hilmar Kaiser when he said that it's idiotic to continue speaking about the genocide in terms of the bi-polar 'Turks' vs. 'Armenians'. At best, there is only good research and bad research. I suggest we stop using the above terms to formulate stands and perceptions of the genocide because it's exactly what the Turkish government wants: to polarize the academic debate on grounds of ethnic background (when e.g. the Kurdish population participated more in the killing than Central-Anatolian Turkish peasants, who barely saw any Armenians in WW I). It's much wiser to speak about 'denialists' and 'realists', especially since Turkey buys corrupt scholars to articulate its denial with a quasi-academic voice. Thick volumes can be written on this process alone, but sometimes it's just disturbing to witness how much this galvanized topic is affected by childish, nationalist emotion.

Thanks for posting this Domino. You know, there was a 3rd Turkish-Armenian dialogue panel on the genocide at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis. I was there as an observer and I was going to write down my perceptions of the conference, but I haven't gotten the chance to. It was an interesting conference, but what struck me was that the workshop was less about the genocide an sich and more about the political implications of the genocide. A lot of experts were present, including Stephan Astourian, Vahakn Dadrian, Taner Akçam, Ronald Suny, Hans-Lukas Kieser, etc. etc. The papers were extremely interesting and will hopefully be published this year. For now, this is it. I will write more when I have time.

Hi Raffi, Yes there is a two-week genocide course in Toronto, next August. A lot of experts and genocide scholars will attend; I'm going to be there too to follow the course. You can consult the following site for information on the course: http://www.zoryaninstitute.org/genocidepro...gram/index.html Take care, and good luck!

I know a lot needs to be done still, not only because it's intrinsically interesting to conduct Oral History research in the region, but also to write down accounts and views of the local bystander and perpetrator communities (e.g. Alevi Kurds, Yezidi Kurds, Lazes, etc.), a highly neglected area of study. Luckily the Armenian diaspora has loads of oral history documentation, especially in the US. I'm equally interested in how Armenian seniors in the diaspora perceive the present East-Anatolian population, such as the Kurds or Kizilbashes. I guess I need to dive into the oral history archives in Glendale, Berkeley, Boston. P.S.: Thoth, it really shows that you're by no means an abstracted xenophobe, hating people you've never seen. Big up to your nuances concerning ethnodiversity and sense of reality.

Stormy, don't underestimate government heterophobia in Turkey. Any mention of ethnicity (let alone Armenianism) in connection with the 'East' is potentially deadly. They wouldn't harm American citizens, but I have a Turkish passport so I need to watch out. If I had walked into a village square or city cafe, one where no one knew me, and bluntly asked "Excuse me, I'm a genocide scholar and I would like to know if the Armenians were really horribly slaughtered by our government... and oh yeah, did your grandfather participate in the killing?", I would be lynched (the incident where a Turkish TV crew went to a Hemshinli village, said "you guys are actually Armenian" and got beat up is infamous). No, my M.O. was all about stealth. In some villages I didn't utter the word "genocide" or "Armenians" for weeks, letting the people get used to "this European kid who studies history." Then, once they trusted me, I'd do the interviewing. Parev Azat, thank you, I was quite busy for a while. The Oral History material will be published. I conferred with Ara Sarafian (Gomidas Institute) and we agreed on publishing the results, only if there's enough material. So it'll be a couple of a years before I can publish all of it in the form of a decent book. I want it to be an eye-opener for both the genocide survivors and the Turkish government. Because we can peck fights in European archives and American Congresses but... the event happened in the Eastern provinces and affected those people a lot. [ February 22, 2003, 03:15 PM: Message edited by: Munzur ]

hagarag: Of course, I realize that not all Armenians are alike, just like Turkomans from Iran are different from Bosnian 'Turks' or Chechens. I'm just trying to make sense out of this genocide thing and how it worked out for 1) the region in question, 2) the survivors that inhabited it, 3) the present population. Stormy: I'm one of the second generation of those millions of people that emigrated from rural Turkey to Western Europe during the 1960s and 70s. Since 90% of my relatives still lives there, every summer we spend two months in the Eastern provinces. Upon reading the vast amount of academic genocide literature, I realized that having access to the region's population is a prerogative that most Armenian genocide scholars don't have. Moreover, there is NO objective Oral History research on the bystander and perpetrator descendants (the few subjective interviews that the government did are full of omissions and distortions; they just pay people to demonize Armenians). So I started interviewing grandparents of friends and travelling from village to village, socializing and sampling the collective memory, interviewing every senior I met. I have a pretty good picture how the various people in the region think about Armenians and the genocide (highly interesting for having people acknowledge the facts). For me, the crucial element was having the people accept you within the confines of their "we"-group. Since I have more identities than one, this was easy: I just posed as a Kurd, Turk, Kizilbash, whenever convenient. You just need to strike the right nerve. The dark side of this research is that I don't know whether the Turkish secret service opened a file on me. As you know, the Eastern provinces have been the scene of death, destruction, genocide and carnage from 1890 until today. Kurdish nationalism was and is a horrible taboo so I was lucky that the PKK war ended. Frankly, I don't think they watched me, not only for the simple fact that I "infiltrated" those communities with the help of friends and relatives. I also didn't talk much, I wasn't busy getting people to acknowledge the genocide; I just let them talk. But there's a lot more work to do, and FAST.

Hi guys. I was scrolling over the other forum parts and I saw this interesting discussion. To me, it’s quite surprising to see that there is a hot debate among Armenians about identity. Being multicultural (Armenian, Kurdish, Kizilbash) from descent, I would like to say some things that struck me. It was stated: quote:It is incredible that 11.7% of the Turkish population, which means several million Turks, would openly admit that the Armenian Genocide is a fact, with another 9.6% saying that they don't know. Given the repressive regime in Turkey, which routinely sends people to jail for simply expressing their opinion, I fully expected that all 100% of the respondents would have "wisely" repeated the government's oft-repeated line that there was no genocide. In fact, much more than 11.7% of Turks would have probably admitted that there was a genocide, were it not for their fear of the consequences.This is not so incredible as it may seem. From my Oral History research, I can conclude that the genocide lives in the collective memory of the “East Anatolian” population – “East Anatolia” is actually a wrong index, Anatolia being strictly the peninsula; western historic Armenia, or North Kurdistan, the Upper Euphrates basin, or Vilayet-i Şarkiye (The ‘Eastern Provinces’), call it whatever you want to, the region needs a name exlucing the term ‘Anatolia’. In the summer of 2002 I was all over the place and conducted about 70 interviews with elderly Turks, Kurds, Kurdish-Alevis, Gypsies, Lazes, muslim Georgians, Arabs, Dersimlis, crypto-Armenians. Out of these 70 people, of whom only 4 were literate, 61 recognized the genocide as it happened. There were some interesting mostly eye-witnesses accounts, containing much (new) information. Perhaps I can post some transcriptions of interesting parts of these interviews. The point being, collective memory includes the historicity of the genocide and all that needs to be done now is to bring this wealth of information above the surface. This also means that denialists can seldom be the indigenous ‘Easterners’ (as they are usually Ankara-based Kemalist bureaucrats) and erosion of collective memory is in Turkey’s interest; also, time is on Turkey’s side. There is a huge population that knows what happened but has never gotten a chance to speak out. THOTH has written: quote: Likewise I know many Turks - mostly here in the States - but also those I have met in Turkey - and I can't help but think - they are a lot like us. Obviously the cultural diffusion went both ways - but there can also be no doubt that the ottoman culture was predominate during the period of empire and it profoundly affected all Armenains living within it - some (urban/Western Anatolian) much more so then others of course. And the culute of Turkey today is a direct decendent of that Ottoman legacy...as are we...This is, of course, absolutely true. The cultural difference between Armenians and Turks is minimal and mostly restricted to religion. Armenian culture influenced Ottoman and vice versa; the genocide meant the excision of Armenians and Armenian culture from Anatolia and the ‘East’ but this doesn’t change the reality of cultural proximity. Personally, I was pretty amazed that Nasreddin Khoja is an element in Armenian culture. This raises questions that are important for both Armenians and Kurds: how useful is it to hate a cultural entity or legacy of which we are actually a part ourselves? This cultural difference is even less with Kurdish culture, and sometimes so minimal that it’s difficult to discern who’s an Armenian and who’s a Kurd – especially in Dersim, where I’m from, practically the only place where relative harmony between the various peoples was omnipresent throughout time. If you ever wonder how the bulk of Armenian peasants must have been living, before the genocide, I suggest you take a look in villages around Muş, Erzincan, Harput, Diyarbekir, Van. It’s Kurds now that live there but especially in old Armenian villages, for example Khinzori or Khachikian in Erzincan, you’ll see that the Kurds (both muslim and Kizilbash) have adapted to agriculture, which was essentially an exclusively Armenian practice. Socio-economically, this meant that they ‘Armenianized.’ There’s an excellent study of this phenomenon by a German ethnologist: Helmut Christoff, Kurden und Armenier: eine Untersuchung über die Abhängigkeit ihrer Lebensformen und Charakterentwicklung von der Landschaft (Kurds and Armenians: A Study on the Dependance of their Lifestyles and Character-developments of the Landscape), doctoral dissertation, University of Hamburg, 1935. Personally, I think that Christoff is right and that economy plays a significant role in shaping interpersonal manners, mentality, thought pattern, etc.. He uses examples to demonstrate that an Armenian merchant from Istanbul had little in common with an Armenian smith from Diyarbakir. This might seem like stating the obvious, but even Mark Sykes wrote that urban Armenians were totally different from rural Armenians – he even claims they’d never intermarry and that the rural Armenians would rather intermarry with Kizilbashes. This is confirmed by Hagop Mintzuri, who, in his memoires writes that in the entire valley of Erzincan, the Armenians were so intertwined with the environment, that in 1915 Turkish gendarmes, upon entering villages without churches, they couldn’t discern Armenian from Kurd or Kizilbash from Armenian (it even happened that non-Armenians were deported). Because, with respect to language, most Armenians spoke Turkish, Kurdish or Zaza fluently. I even know a small village in the valley of Erzincan where 50 Armenian families escaped deportation by simply stating that they were Kizilbash – a branch of my family belongs to one of these families (by the way, I found a large khachkar in a ruin there, I took a picture, I’ll upload it some time). So in disputable cases, it was only religion that did the selecting: churches in the squares, uncircumcised men... Also, I think that a genocide survivor family living in, e.g. the US, is an anachronism. The Armenians were brutally ripped out of their historic homeland while, from every aspect, these people belong in their villages or cities in western Armenia. So when Peter Balakian describes his afternoons baking ‘choeregh’ (çörek) with his grandmother in an east coast American city, I feel like he’s talking about my own grandmother and my afternoons. The difference, especially between the ‘East-Anatolian’ Armenians and their then neighbours, is (was?) minimal. The only thing that I find difficult to accept is the present animosity, or at least lack of solidarity, between these peoples. I’d like to see this changed.

Thanks for posting the article, MosJan. Myself, I'm specifically supporting the Zoryan Institute's efforts of studying the Genocide. As a matter of fact, I will follow the 2nd genocide summer course in Toronto (in August). We'll see what will happen there. By the way, between March 27-30, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota organizes the 3rd Turkish-Armenian genocide dialogue conference. Several Turkish and Armenian academicians will be there. I will attend the workshops as an observer. Here's some information about the colloquium: ___________________________________________ Armenian-Turkish Historians' Dialogue at U of M March 27-30, 2003 On March 27-30, 2003 the University of Minnesota is hosting the third Turkish-Armenian Workshop. The theme for 2003 is "Vectors of Violence: War, Revolution, and Genocide." This is a major scholarly and public event. The seminar hopes to have 26 scholarly participants and almost 50 observers attending the restricted scholars workshop (not open to the public), and the public session at 9AM (all day) on Saturday at the Cowles Auditorium at the Humphrey Insitute. The Turkish-Armenian Workshop was initiated by Professors Suny and Gocek. The first meetings were held at the University of Chicago in 2000 and the University of Michigan in 2002. They have been controversial, both in the substance of the matters with which they dealt and in their form of organization. Some individuals and groups continue to oppose the use of the term genocide to describe the fate of Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire; some people oppose any form of dialogue about the history and its consequences. Others were disturbed by the closed nature of the Workshop, a complaint that Professors Suny and Gocek tried to address at the second meeting by holding a press conference as the concluding session. Whatever the difficulties to date, the Workshop has proved vitally important. It has provided a setting in which Turkish, Armenian, and other scholars, as well as some members of the interested public, can talk to one another about the difficult history and its contemporary ramifications. It has also served to encourage and showcase major scholarly research on the history of the Armenian genocide and the late Ottoman Empire. Professors Suny and Gocek and various Centers and Departments at Minnesota are committed to maintaining and even expanding the conversations and research that the Workshops have fostered. In line with these commitments, we expect the Minnesota Workshop to have a greater public resonance than the previous two meetings at Chicago and Michigan. We will have a more active and more widely advertized public program on Saturday, March 29, which will include a report on the proceedings of the workshops, a keynote address by Professor Elazar Barkan of Claremont Graduate School, an open discussion, and a reception. We will have significantly more observers present from outside of academe, incuding two well-respected journalists in Turkey, Hrant Dink and Cengiz Candar. The public is invited to the Saturday session. __________________________________________

Good article, takavor. I keep track on Die Welt and I must say their integrity never disappoints me. I also liked the way they blatantly qualified Goldhagen's first book as einfach schlecht, which was true in my opinion. I hope Germany doesn't dodge its responsibility because it's probably the only country that can persuade Turkey to acknowledge: first off, there are 2 million Turks in Germany, of whom about 10.000 founded the Soykırım Karşıtları Derneği ('The Anti-Genocide Association'). The chairman of this association is Ali Ertem, he attended April 24th in Paris last year and will be in Assen in 2003. Second, Germany is the perpetrator of the Holocaust so they have a right to talk about genocide recognition. I just think the Turkish diaspora isn't "western" enough (as defined by Hannes Stein) and has been unable to think liberally about Turkish history. Maybe German universities could teach more on the Armenian genocide so that the tens of thousands of Turkish students would finally "see the light" and do something. Perhaps this way, government recognition can even be pushed by the Turkish diaspora, although there's a slim chance to this because of strong nationalist organizations. I'll just stick to my own conviction: the genocide was carried out in East Anatolia and its recognition will also be from out of (the people of) East Anatolia. Munzur

First off I’d like to say that I posted the above list because it was relevant (concerning the topic of ethnic backgrounds of the authors of the genocide); it’s a document that can be evaluated and does not represent the way I think. However, allow me to add that ethnic background can never explain genocide-planning – to contend this would be a very Goldhagenian argument and thus, short-sighted. I wonder if anyone has read Yair Auron’s book (I only read one of his articles concerning this same issue), because I believe he’s the man to explain the Zionist-Jewish-Sabetayist link with the Genocide. Frankly, I think theories like “the Jews helped the Turks with the destruction of the Greek and Armenian population; 20 years later the person that designed Auschwitz was an Armenian” are based upon racist inspiration and can be refuted easily. Apart from this, Domino is absolutely right when he says that “the genocide was perpetrated in the name of Turkism.” As a matter of fact, these are the exact words that member of parliament Nalbandian spoke in 1918. Actually, it’s a very interesting discussion: how Turkish is a converted Christian that claims to be a Turk? Moreover, who is a ‘Turk’? One who ethnically is, or one who claims to be? This discussion is inevitable, because the average Turkoman peasant from a random Central-Anatolian village (let’s say: Konya) would be ethnically Turkish but perhaps did not commit genocidal crimes or did not even profit from the ‘positive externalities’ of the Genocide (how morbid this even sounds). The enactment of the Genocide wouldn’t put him in the accused corner, but would inculpate Talat Paşa, who was a Pomak. I think Taner Akçam made a good but hasty effort in his book (İnsan Hakları ve Ermeni Sorunu; İttihat ve Terakki’den Kurtuluş Savaşı’na) to solve this question. He uses the Weberian sociological term ‘power elite’ to describe that it’s not a simple matter of “Turks killing Armenians,” but of a power elite, claiming to act on behalf of a nebulous classification as a nation. Also, Tessa Hofmann even concluded that the main perpetrators were Balkan Muslims, Kurds, and Caucasian Muslims and that the actual role of Central-Anatolian Turkoman villagers/city-dwellers was negligible. Differentiation of ethnicity is of vital importance, as I tried to demonstrate in another thread about the Kurds (namely, Alevi, Yezidi and Sunni, or koçer vs. gundî, each with totally different collective identities, attitudes towards and roles in the Genocide). Still, the fact remains that there were a lot of people that claimed to act on behalf of nation A, and destroyed nation B. We should remember that in genocide, actors are morally assessed on their roles as perpetrator, victim or bystander (Raul Hilberg), and the intensity of performing their roles; not as anything else. Munzur

Ali, I do know that both Mesut Yilmaz and Tansu Çiller are Masons; I can't remember where I read that they are Sabetayists too (well that's actually not hard to guess since half of the Turkish elite is Sabetayist). I do recall that I read it in an interview with Atilla Ilhan. I found a passage in a historical journal, and although we know that Enver's father was Çerkez, Talat was a Pomak, Said Halim was an Egyptian Arab, the list seems to be more focused on whether the members were Bektasi, Mason, etc. The list is based on a document, written by Halifebaba Turgut Koca: MASONS: Ali Fuat (Cebesoy), Ağaoğlu Ahmet Bey, Abdurrahman Şeref, Dr.Akil Muhtar (Özden), Abdullah Cevdet, Dr. Bahattin Şakir, Beşir Fuad (İlk pozitivist), Cavit Bey (Maliye Nazırı), Cevat Abbas (Bey), Eşref Sencer Bey (Kuşçubaşı), Edip Servet Bey, Halil (Kut) Paşa, (Enver Paşa’nın amcası), Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın, Halil Şerif Bey, İsmail Canpolat Bey ( Dahiliye Nazırı ), Kara Kemal Bey, Kazım Nami Duru, Mehmet Reşit, Mahmut Şevket Esendal, Nuri (Kıllıgil) Paşa (Enver Paşa’nın kardeşi), Osmancıklı Nuri, Dr. Nihat Reşat Belgevi, Dr. Rıza Nur, Sait Halim Paşa, Şemsettin Günaltay, Dr. Tevfik Şükrü Bey, Talat Küçük (Muşkara), Prof. Veli Bey, Yusuf Akçura, Hüseyin Kadri Bey, Hüseyin Haşim Sanver, Mithat Paşa, Nuri Bey (Yeni Osmanlıcı). BEKTAŞİS: Ahmet Rıza Bey (Ayan Reisi), Ahmet Nesimi Bey (Hariciye Nazırı), Ali Haydar Mithat, Ali Şefik İzmirli, Ali Rüştü Hersekli, Ali Rıza Kırımi, Asaf Derviş, Ali Rıza Paşa, Gazi Ahmet Muhtar Paşa, İsmet Fazlı Bey, (Debreli) Behçet Efendi, Esat Paşa (Draç mebusu), Eyüp Sabri (Akgöl Bey), Avlonyalı Ferit Paşa, Selanikli Fazlı Necip, Şeyhulislam Ürgüplü Hayri, Hasan Rıza Paşa (Hudeyce mebusu), Çerkez Hayrettin Paşa (Tunuslu), Hilmi Tunalı Bey, Halil Muvaffak Bey, Şair Hüseyin Sıret, Kimyager Hüseyin, Hasan Tosun Bey, Gümülcineli İsmail Bey, İbrahim Temo, Dr. İsmail İbrahim Efendi (Dobrucalı), Kamil Paşa, Lütfi Fikri Bey (Dersim mebusu), Mahmut Paşa (Çürüksulu), Mithat Şükrü Bey (Bleda), Çorum mebusu Muhiddin Bey, Mahmut Nedim Paşa, Giritli Muharrem, Milaslı Murat Asker, Veteriner Mehmet Bey, Mustafa Ragıp,Mustafa Hayri Ürgüplü, Dr. Nazım Bey, Nabi Bey (Yücekök), Ömer Naci (Muallim Naci), İzmir Valisi - Mebusu Rahmi Bey, Rauf Ahmet Bey (İstanbul mebusu), Dr. Rusuhi Bey, Hariciye Nazırı Rıfat Paşa, Refik Bey (Manyasizade Adliye Nazırı), Dr. Rıfat, Eczacı Raşit Tahsin, Reşat Paşa Matlı, Dr. Refik Nevzat Bey, Recep Peker, Binbaşı Sabri Bey, Sezai Bey (Şurayı Ümmet Redaktörü), Bosnalı Veli Bey, Yakub Cemil Bey, Saffet Lütfü Tozan. MELAMİS: Ahmet Şükrü (Maarif Vekili), Ali Suavi, Ahmet Vefik Paşa, Ahmet Mithat Efendi, Bezmi Nusret (Kaygusuz), Cemal Paşa, Fevzi Çakmak, Hafız Hakkı Paşa, Hüseyin Avni Paşa, Kadir Efendi (Hoca Mehmet Kadir Nasih), Mustafa Asım Efendi, Mehmet Tahir (Bursalı), Damat Mahmut Paşa, Necmettin Molla (Adliye Nazırı), Naili Efendi (Nakşibendi, Şeyh Abdülkadir’in kardeşi), Ömer Seyfettin, Menemenlizade Rıfat Bey, Miralay Sadık Bey, Sami Paşazade Sezai, Saffet Paşa. MASON and BEKTAŞİS: Ali Fethi (Okyar), Ahmet Bedevi Kuran (R.K.), Cemal Bardakçı, Enver Paşa, Ethem Ruhi Balkan, Fuat Balkan, Niğde Mebusu Hayri Efendi, İhsan Namık Bey, Kazım Karabekir Paşa, Şeyhülislam Musa Kazım Efendi, Dr. Miralay Mehmet Ali Baba, Mehmet Cemil, Namık Kemal, Rıza Tevfik Bölükbaşı, Salih Cimcoz (İstanbul mebusu), Prens Sabahattin Bey, Talat Paşa, Cemal Paşa, Kara Vasıf Bey,Ziya Paşa, Hakkı Baha Bey. - Toplumsal Tarih, vol.97, January 2002, p.16.

Hi Eduard, you posed a good question: "we know that young turkish movement was started and led by the zionists. why did they have to target THE ARMENIANS?" Remember that the Ottoman economy was basically in the hands of Greek, Armenian and Jewish merchant elites. So if the Ittihadists were mostly Jewish dönmes, they targeted the Greeks and the Armenians for their properties. But I think there's more to the story because the genocide was too destructive to be interesting economically. After all, dead Armenian merchants weren't 'good business'. Most of the members of Ittihat, especially the intransigent hardcore Turkish-nationalist wing, were Sabetayists and Bektashis (I'll post a list of the most prominent members and their ethno-religious backgrounds soon). quote:Some of the Young Turks were Donmeh or "hidden Jews" from Salonika. There is no doubt that they furthered the interests of their co-religionists toward establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.Well, İttihat manifested a virulent Turkish nationalism and even threatened the Zionists to come down on Jews as well during WW I. The elimination of the Nili-group by Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa agents is a good example of this fact. But there are Jews and there are Jews. I don't think the Sabetayists were (and are) die-hard Zionists, but it is true that a substantial proportion of the present Turkish elite is ethnically Sabetayist: İsmail Cem, Tansu Çiller, Mesut Yılmaz and many more. These elites DO support Israel, but it can also be 'good old Realpolitik'. The story is complex, I haven't sorted it out yet either, but there's an interesting source that may shed light on the situation: Yair Auron, The Banality of Indifference; Zionism and the Armenian Genocide. Has anyone read this?

De Volkskrant, May 9th, 2000, p.7: 'Het was een geweldige tragedie' Van onze verslaggever Wio Joustra ASSEN Turkoloog Zürcher vindt dat Turken in Armeens gedenkteken moeten berusten. 'Los van de schuldvraag vind ik dat de Armeense gemeenschap de ruimte moet hebben om haar doden te herdenken. Want we hebben het hier wel over een geweldige tragedie in de geschiedenis.' De Leidse hoogleraar Turkse taal en cultuur E.J. Zürcher vindt dat de Turken in een Armeens monument in Assen zouden moeten berusten. Zoals ook is gebeurd in Duitsland, Frankrijk en de Verenigde Staten. De kwestie speelt voor het eerst in Nederland en Zürcher geeft toe dat die bijzonder gevoelig ligt bij de Turkse gemeenschap. Voor de oorzaak van het conflict moet worden teruggegaan naar de Eerste Wereldoorlog, naar 1915. Zürcher: 'Turkije nam daaraan deel aan de kant van Duitsland en een van zijn vijanden was Rusland dat begon op te dringen in Oost-Turkije. Sommige nationalistische groepen in Armenië zagen in de Russische opmars de gelegenheid hun verlangen naar een eigen staat te verwezenlijken.' Uit angst daarvoor deporteerden de Turkse moslims vervolgens alle in het land wonende Armeense christenen, anderhalf tot twee miljoen in totaal, naar concentratiekampen langs de Eufraat in de Syrische woestijn. 'Deze enorme volksverhuizing werd op een vaak barbaarse manier aangepakt', aldus de Leidse Turkoloog. 'Het officiële leger hield zich er buiten, maar heel veel mannen werden omgebracht door speciale moordcommando's. De Armeniërs zeggen anderhalf miljoen, maar dat is onmogelijk. De Turken zeggen tweehonderdduizend, maar dat is veel te laag. De waarheid ligt ergens in het midden. Het conflict is te vergelijken met dat tussen Servië en Bosnië.' In wezen gaat het volgens Zürcher nog altijd om drie geschilpunten. 'In de eerste plaats om het aantal slachtoffers. Betrouwbare schattingen gaan uit van 700 tot 800 duizend aan Armeense kant.' In de tweede plaats gaat het, vindt Zürcher, om de vraag of het een 'bedrijfsongeval' was. Een inter-etnisch conflict zoals de Turken beweren of om volkenmoord zoals de Armenen zeggen. 'De Turken hebben altijd ontkend dat het een doelgerichte politiek was de Armeniërs uit te roeien. Maar ooggetuigen spraken in die tijd van orders uit Istanboel die daar wel op duidden', vertelt Zürcher. 'Het derde geschilpunt is of de Turkse republiek, die pas in 1923 is ontstaan, zich voor de etnische schoonmaak van het Osmaanse Rijk verantwoordelijk moet voelen. Nee, zeggen de hedendaagse Turken. Maar dat zou hetzelfde zijn als Duitsland zou ontkennen iets te maken te hebben met de daden van het Duitse Rijk.' ----------- I rest my case.

Thank you very much Wat is het weer heerlijk om met positieve mensen te converseren... Munzur

bellthecat: I agree with your point that the 4 reasons I mentioned do not totally exclude Kurdish attitudes towards Christians in the decades before 1915. However, this does prove that there was a clear pattern of continuity in this historic perspective. In other words, the final genocidal stroke was not something new and could’ve actually been foreseen. This way, this simmering but strong anti-Christian attitude resembles the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, culminating in Holocaust. Garo Sasuni emphasizes this when he writes that every Armenian effort to form a joint and egalitarian frame of opposition was vain effort because the Kurds were unable to “finally learn a lesson from the past” and “stop seeing the Armenians as their subjects”; Garo Sasuni, Kurt azgayin sharzhumnere ev hay-krdakan haraberutyunnere (Beirut, 1969), p.14 (Turkish translation: Kürt Ulusal Hareketleri ve 15.Yy’dan Günümüze Ermeni-Kürt İlişkileri (İstanbul, 1992), p.12). quote:I see Kurdish participation in the Armenian Genocide to have be mainly a case of them behaving in a normal way, but on a far greater scale than normal circumstances would allow.I do not want to discuss “norms”, but the “normal”, or ordinary way that perpetrator Kurds behaved toward Armenians had been “pervasive oppression”, “whimsical taxes” and “enslavement” for years, these being the words of Christapor Michaelian; quoted in: Vahakn N. Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide; The Key Elements of the Turko-Armenian Conflict (London, 1998), p.33. It was not rational, in the sociological meaning of the word, for the Kurdish derebeyi’s to destroy the Armenians, since they profited from Armenian labour. You may have a crucial point here when you point at this fact: why destroy an Armenian population if you can opt for a parasitic strategy, which had worked for years? Again, the analogy with the Holocaust is cogent, since the extermination of the Jews wasn’t Zweckrational either; Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge, 1989), pp.135-148. quote:Some Kurdish leaders had, in the years before 1915, threatened genocide on eastern Turkey's Armenian population if reforms were to lead to those Armenians becoming more economically or politically powerful than the Kurds.I couldn’t have formulated this better myself. I think Henry Lynch articulated this powerfully by stating that this tribal hegemony of the Kurds would prove “disastrous” for the Armenians; Henry F.B. Lynch, Armenia; Travels and Studies (Beirut, 1965), vol.II, p.423. I think this argument is plausible enough: history has proven that a disturbance of balances of power irrevocably leads to mortal violence. quote: But, reading all your citations was rather disapointing. Don't you think you are going down roads already well trodden? I don’t understand this, what exactly do you mean by this? quote:Given your access to the population, I'd much rather hear of what those elderly Kurds said.I’m in the process of compiling Oral History documentation. I’ve interviewed lots of elderly Kurds and Dersimli’s and am able to copy relevant parts of private tapes of Kurdish families and researchers. I’ve agreed with the Gomidas Institute on publishing the results when I feel that I’ve gathered enough raw material for a book. You are also right with respect to your statement that exterminated East Anatolian Armenian culture lives on in contemporary Kurdish and Kizilbash (Alewi) culture. As a matter of fact, I hold that there is considerable proof that all settled populations in different regions of East Anatolia show little difference in everyday life practices. I experienced this myself when I read in the many memoires of Armenians the descriptions of cuisine, customs, mythology, music, clothing and in the Alewi case, even religion, in “the Old Country”. I especially find the writings of Migirdich Margosyan for the Diyarbekir case very instructive. In conclusion I would like to express that we need to approach the ethnic term Kurd with care. ‘Kurdish’ society is far from homogenous, and, as a matter of fact, at the edges of the spectrum, ethnic identity blurs into something totally estranged from ‘mainstream Kurdish’ identity. Neither the Dersim, nor the ‘Alewi Kurds’ (whether Zaza or Kurmanc), or Yezidis, see themselves as nominally Kurdish; even if they are, their religion is a defining factor in dealing with their Muslim, Yezidi, Alevi or Christian neighbours. To quote Tessa Hofmann and Gerayer Koutcharian: quote:Some Armenian monasteries [...] were also used by [non-Muslim] Kurds as places of pilgrimage and worship. This adoration of Armenian monasteries [...] was especially widespread among those sectors of the Kurdish population which, like the Kurdish Kizilbashes, Yezidis, or Zazas, were hardly influenced by Islam. Characteristically, living at the periphery of Kurdish Islam and despised by fanatical Muslims, these groups repeatedly gave protection and refuge to the Armenians in times of especially bloody persecution.- Tessa Hofmann & Gerayer Koutcharian, “The History of Armenian-Kurdish Relations in the Ottoman Empire”, Armenian Review, vol.39, no.4-156 (1986), pp.6-7. Conclusion: before speaking on ‘Kurds’, we need to define explicitly and specifically which ‘Kurds’ we are talking about. Thank you for taking the time to read Regards, Munzur P.S.: nairi, what do you mean by “I just hope you don't take yourself too seriously”? If it’s about Zürcher, the man can at times be a naive Orientalist but he is by no means a denier, apologist or falsifier. He acknowledges the reality of genocide both in his book Een Geschiedenis van het Moderne Turkije (English: Turkey; A Modern History; Turkish: Modernleşen Türkiye’nin Tarihi) as in a recent article: “Young Turks, Ottoman Muslims and Turkish Nationalist Identity Politics, 1908-1938” in: Kemal Karpat (ed.), Ottoman Past and Today’s Turkey (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp.150-179; also from my private conversations with him, I can only conclude that he fully acknowledges the historicity of the Genocide.

Sorry, I forgot to answer the last question. No, they did not understand the bigger picture and unfortunately, a lot of them still don't, judging from my interviews with elderly Kurds. Munzur