The Beginning Of The Armenian Relocation

[Nakharar]

The Beginning of the Armenian Relocation

 

Monday, March 21, 2005

 

 

Turkish people were struggling to survive. Enemies -- those within the country as well as those abroad -- seemed determined to destroy Turks this time, having considered them subhuman. Toynbee says that the disintegration of an empire is the most 'painful' phenomenon in the human adventure called history. The Ottoman Empire was going through the final phase of that process

 

Gündüz AKTAN

 

We would not be able to understand the relocation of the Armenians if we isolated it from its historical context.

 

At that time the Ottoman Empire was fighting its last war. Millions of Turks and Muslims had been massacred or driven out of their homes since 1821 as the empire lost one territory after another. Only two years before the Armenian relocation the empire had lost the Balkans and the 1.4 million subjects it had there, with 400,000 “migrants” taking refuge in Anatolia. Its forces were fighting with the armies of the British, French and Russian empires -- at Gallipoli and on the eastern and southern fronts.

 

Since the non-Turkish groups of Ottoman subjects were trying to carve out from the realm the biggest piece of land possible, the second (1908) attempt to switch to constitutional monarchy too had failed. The economy was underdeveloped and its agricultural sector had collapsed as well when farmers had to join the army. Medical and health facilities were inadequate and epidemics of infectious diseases broke out in that climate. Law and order in the empire was disrupted. Brigands flourished in the mountains, especially those in eastern Anatolia.

 

Turkish people were struggling to survive. Enemies -- those within the country as well as those abroad -- seemed determined to destroy Turks this time, having considered them subhuman. Toynbee says that the disintegration of an empire is the most “painful” phenomenon in the human adventure called history. The Ottoman Empire was going through the final phase of that process.

 

Enver *****, the acting commander-in-chief, sent Interior Minister Talat ***** the following written message on May 2, 1915: “Around Lake Van … the Armenians remain gathered and ready to continue with the uprising … I think that the Armenians should be driven out of these places to disperse the hotbeds of rebellion. According to the information supplied by the Third Army Command, the Russians drove into our borders, in a miserable state, as of April 20, 1915 the Muslims that had been living inside their borders. As a reprisal to that and, at the same time, to achieve the aim I've mentioned above, the Armenians should be, together with their families, either sent to Russia or … spread to various locations inside Anatolia. I am kindly asking for the selection of the suitable one of these two alternatives and for its implementation. If it is not going to be deemed inappropriate I would prefer the sending outside our borders of the rebels' families and the inhabitants of the region in whose place could then be settled the Muslim population coming from abroad.” (Prime Ministry's Ottoman Archives, DH.SRF, nr 52/282).

 

Talat ***** opted for the second alternative, that is, for sending the Armenians to some other parts of Anatolia (and later to north Syria which was also a part of the Ottoman realm). In other words, he never had the “intent to destroy a particular group.” He could have adopted the first alternative suggested by Enver ***** and done to the Armenians what the Russians had done to the Muslim population of Russia. That would have been the kind of operation called ”ethnic cleansing” in our day, that is, the kind of operation Turks and Muslims in the Balkans and the Caucasus had already been subjected to. Roughly half of the Turks and Muslims driven out of the Balkans and the Caucasus had died as a result of the military operations of that kind. If Talat ***** had opted for that alternative the Armenians too would have died in the same manner and no one would be able to demand an account for those deaths in our day. Talat's opting for a relocation, which is a much more regulated form of resettlement, reduced greatly the Armenian casualties. However, that choice, which could be humanitarian under the conditions existing at that time, was later presented to the world as a case of genocide by embellishing it with fictitious exaggerations.

 

I am not writing all this in order to downplay the tragic aspects of the event. However, the Armenians oppose any attempt to call the relocation “tragic.” This is because what they understand from that word is "both sides suffering in a conflict with none of them admitting responsibility for what happened." They seek out the term “genocide” in order to shift the blame entirely onto us. For them, denying their responsibility for their historical follies is much more important than the tragic fate of those who died.

 

For these reasons, their insistence on the “genocide” concept (despite the fact that application of that term to the 1915 events would go against historical realities and international law) constitutes the biggest obstacle to the recognition of this human tragedy. This particular generation of Armenians are doing their own dead the biggest injustice by selfishly refraining from facing their historical responsibility.

 

This problem becomes all the more complicated due to those persons in Turkey who call themselves “intellectuals” and who identify their own personal traumas with the traumas of others and accept these as “historical facts.” These persons suffer from a loss of identity and from a resulting tendency to consider themselves guilty of everything. They present this as “intellectual integrity” though, in reality, loss of identity is a psychopathological state.

 

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=8711

[Nakharar]

This article is so bizarre and surreal I had to post it. I guess relocation is the acceptable euphemism in Turkspeak today. I wouldn't be surprised if they choose trekking or expedition the next time.

 

 

Someone should definitely ask this fellow what the difference between Enver's ethnic cleansing and Talat's "relocation" is.

 

If Talat ***** had opted for that alternative the Armenians too would have died in the same manner and no one would be able to demand an account for those deaths in our day.

Oops! The author didn't realize that he was thinking aloud here. He is unwittingly admitting his desire for the extermination of the Armenians and their pesky demands.

 

Talat's opting for a relocation, which is a much more regulated form of resettlement, reduced greatly the Armenian casualties.

How touching. He'll probably scold us for ingratitude.

 

 

Does this guy sincerely believe any of that hogwash he wrote? Or that any of his mostly foreign readers will buy it? If he does I just feel sorry for him.

[DominO123]

What junk article, doesn't even worth answering to, another writer that think he knows of what he is talking about.

 

Guys, that's really weird thing that is happening. Long ago, McCarthys work has been taken off from the Turkish ministry of foreign affair website, after I had provided the link to it and attached a critic of it in another website, I said, yeh!!! Maybe it is just councidences.

 

But another thing happens with Kamuran Guru work from the so-called Armenian Institute in Turkey, after Torque(tallarmeniantale author) refer to it and that I criticise the work with bunch of details and stuff at Wikipedia. The link was shut down the same day of the critic I submitted. And since now, the page no longer exist while the site is runing.

 

Should I call that paranoia or those idiots really follow what I write? I would not have believed this, if I were to not read an email someone submitted to turkishforum.com asking information about me and telling that "tetedeturc" has probably warned them about... in the email he refered to my website about Weems, which was misteriously shut down as well. (I knew about it, from the list of emails turkishforum published in their site)

 

And now, I recieved a stupid thread not considering at my Wikipedia personal page, and there is a moron deleting the entry at Wikipedia.

 

Is the MIT after me?

Edited March 22, 2005 by QueBeceR