RAFFI the PROPHET

[Vigil]

bah. Georgians are nothing, backstabbers.

 

but, they still are more european. and kurds, they are also another barbaric race, and saying that kurds are more cultured than turks...haha.

 

In my opinion they are more cultured mainly because Turks are still trying to wipe the region from Non-Turks, but again you can give Turkey excuses. The same fate that befell Armenians at the hands of Kurds and Turks has occured to Kurds at the hands of Turks. So to say that they share common traits is wrong because one group is still as barbaric today as they were 100 years ago. Yes, I agree that in the past both can be accountable for the atrocities they commited, but in the present I only hold Turks responsible for their actions.

 

Now you have to ask yourselfs who to blame the person ordered the execution or the executioner?

Edited May 31, 2004 by Vigil

[gurgen]

Both, as far as I'm concerned. But the former a bit more than the latter

[koko]

How can one talk about KUrdistan, without mentioning armenia or armenians?

Isn't that exacly the same the turks are doing?

 

We are not comparing here who is worse then the other.

 

Can a kurd from syria or iraq really claim that kurdistan in todays turkey( wester armenia) is his or her homeland?

 

(Over my dead body)

Edited March 21, 2004 by koko

[Vigil]

How can one talk about KUrdistan, without mentioning armenia or armenians?

Isn't that exacly the same the turks are doing?

 

We are not comparing here who is worse then the other.

 

Can a kurd from syria or iraq really claim that kurdistan in todays turkey( wester armenia) is his or her homeland?

 

(Over my dead body) 

 

That was not the question asked, but I agree with you.

Edited May 31, 2004 by Vigil

[StealthSwine]

Turks have British and American backing to wipe out the entire area, why shouldnt day?

 

I know I sound quite barbaric, but it is the honest truth. If you can erase your enemys like that, with the backing of such great nations, why not?

 

Put yourselves in their shoes.

[Vigil]

Turks have British and American backing to wipe out the entire area, why shouldnt day?

 

I know I sound quite barbaric, but it is the honest truth. If you can erase your enemys like that, with the backing of such great nations, why not?

 

Put yourselves in their shoes.

 

Yeah I bet Turkey's allies during WW1 also said the same thing.

Edited May 31, 2004 by Vigil

[Vigil]

Here is an interesting picture..

 

http://wildwnc.org/af/turkeyvulture.html

 

I can see the resemblence!

Edited May 31, 2004 by Vigil

[StealthSwine]

Turkey can do whatever it wants to the Kurds, it is not an issue of human rights, but an issue of who is stronger.

[koko]

Actually the USA are backing the kurds as well!!! Dont forget they have dubbel-standars when it comes to politics!

 

The kurds are backed by USA or else they wouldnt have gain all this attention.

Dont except me to respect anyone who doesn't wish to speak about the armenian question, and wishes not to mention them, because they have their own intrests to seek to. These are turkish and kurdish politics today. When they talk about my homeland, and not mentioning armenians, I am outraged.

and there is also the americans (the superpower) backing them up.

 

America gave weapons to the kurds during the iran- iraq war and encouraged them to start a riot against iraq. The americans wish was to do as much as they can do separate iraq as a hole country. At the same time they were giving their finicial support and weapons to saddam hussein as well!

[Vigil]

Actually the USA are backing the kurds as well!!! Dont forget they have dubbel-standars when it comes to politics!

 

The kurds are backed by USA or else they wouldnt have gain all this attention.

Dont except me to respect anyone who doesn't wish to speak about the armenian question, and wishes not to mention them, because they have their own intrests to seek to. These are turkish and kurdish politics today. When they talk about my homeland, and not mentioning armenians, I am outraged.

and there is also the americans (the superpower) backing them up.

 

America gave weapons to the kurds during the iran- iraq war and encouraged them to start a riot against iraq. The americans wish was to do as much as they can do separate iraq as a hole country. At the same time they were giving their finicial support and weapons to saddam hussein as well! 

 

I agree with you, but if anyone wanted to give Kurds any land they would have done it after the Armenian genocide. Today Kurds have no legal right to any land or statehood. However, Armenians do because of the formation of a Armenia after WW1, which was not taken into consideration when they reworked the treaties. This is why if Turkey was to have recognized the Genocide during Soviet era Armenians would not have a legal case, but today we do because we have again reformed our country.

Edited May 31, 2004 by Vigil

[StealthSwine]

^^actually, after the Genocide the Colonial powers were too busy slicing up their gains of turkey. So it wouldnt have happened until the 60s, which Kurdish uprising did begin.

 

Now, I am not sure, but, Even if Kurds are anti turk, they are not pro armenian.

 

we can fight a war with them against turkey, but once it is over, we are still two different people.

[Munzur]

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.

Edited April 5, 2004 by Munzur

[nairi]

Welcome back Munzur! Hope to see you here more often (sorry, I don't have much to say concerning this topic)

[Stormig]

Reading what you wrote in this thread, Munzur, just gives me the image of some grown-up walking into a playground or a giant-size pram full-up with snotty toddlers shouting their heads off. Please continue on keeping us informed. BTW - the Narek tribe of Silvan??

[Munzur]

Reading what you wrote in this thread, Munzur, just gives me the image of some grown-up walking into a playground or a giant-size pram full-up with snotty toddlers shouting their heads off.

 

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.

[Stormig]

I don't know if this is an analytical remark, a complimentary one for me, or a condescending racist one towards Kurds.

The complimentary, Munzur, the complimentary. For the last so many posts, there was so much gibberish that I was pleasantly surprised to see you even bothered to write here. Please do keep sharing with us.

The reason why I asked about "Narek" was because I was surprised it could have been used as the name of a Kurdish tribe.

By the way - I was going to ask what your take on this kind of thing was when I noticed the last post there had been made by you - http://armenians.com/forum/index.php?showt...2838&hl=mustafa

[Accelerated]

Reading what you wrote in this thread, Munzur, just gives me the image of some grown-up walking into a playground or a giant-size pram full-up with snotty toddlers shouting their heads off.

 

I don't know if this is an analytical remark, a complimentary one for me, or a condescending racist one towards Kurds.

 

Munzur, I wouldnt take Stormiq's comment too seriously, whatever it means. She often writes incomprehensible passages presumably to re-assure herself of her intellect.

[Stormig]

Yes, Munzur, ignore me and instead take Accel seriously. He is so down-to-earth, he doesn't care what it is he says.

[bellthecat]

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.

Huh, when I read that sort of whitewash I have to wonder if you really do know anything about Kurdish history!

 

The concept of genocide has always been a normal activity in Kurdish society. It is going on as we write, in Northern Iraq. The first example of genocide in the modern era in the middle east was committed by the Kurds, during their planned extermination of the Nestorian Christian population in SE Anatolia in the 1830s. The leaders of that genocide are still considered to be national heroes amongst Kurds.

 

As for Kurds "saving" Armenians, lucky for the Kurds that the hundreds of thousands of Armenians that they killed were not able to bear witness against their killers, as opposed to the few thousand who were saved by Kurds (mostly on payment of large sums of money).

[bellthecat]

From London to Armenia – by Aram Raffi – in the periodical "Ararat", 1914, p212. (I think the journey took place in 1913, but it doesn't actually say that in the article).

 

On his way from Persia to Van, via Hoshap, he and his fellow travellers (including British MP Noel Buxton) are "invited" (by a party of 25 armed Kurds) to spend the night in the castle of the Kurdish chief Ismail Agha Simko, located close to the Turkish border.

 

"We were much interested to hear the chiefs views. He was evidently a keen politician, as well as a brave soldier, and not without refinement. He spoke of the Kurdish movement, saying that what the Kurds are aiming at is to be independent of the Turks. In his opinion, since the country belongs to the Kurds, and they are the more numerous, their independence will be accomplished within two years. He said that should the Powers grant special political privileges to the Armenians, the Kurds would not endure it, and would massacre all the Armenians in a few hours."

[Munzur]

The concept of genocide has always been a normal activity in Kurdish society.

 

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.

[bellthecat]

To make myself clearer - for the Kurds, there was nothing especially unique about the nature of their participation in the Armenian genocide. All they were doing was acting normally, but doing it on a far greater scale than usual.

 

Re your "Arshak Safrastian, Kurds and Kurdistan (London: Harvill Press, 1948" citation - this is (if it is the book I think it is) a piece of Soviet propaganda. From the same stable that used to describe the Armenian genocide as a "war between neighbouring peoples".

 

I've seen Kurdish websites praising Khan Mahmud and Nurullah Beg as heroic proto-nationalists. Do you agree or disagree that the campaigns they waged against the Nestorians amounted to genocide?

 

Well, obviously "my people" are more civilised than any other race on this planet. It happens to be true on a world scale, but, when compared to Kurds, almost every nation could say that! It is a side issue, but you brought it up, so answer me this - what has been the Kurdish contribution to the world?

 

Steve

[bellthecat]

Bad press about the Kurds go back a long way.

 

"In the mountains betwixt Scanderone and Alleppo there are dwelling a certain kind of people, called this day Coords, who worship the Devill, and allege for their reason in so doing, that God is a good man, and will do no man harme, but that the Devill is bad, and must be pleased, lest he hurt them."

 

William Biddulph, a letter from Alleppo, shortly before the year 1600.

 

 

"We were no sooner over (the Euphrates) but forthwith we were encountered with a certain troope of people called the Curdies. ... They do adore and worship the Devil, and very cruel are they to all sorts of Christians, in which regard, the country which they inhabit is termed the Land of the Devil.

 

"Bitlis, an ancient city, but a city of much crueltie and oppression, where little justice and right is to be found".

 

Voyage of John Cartwright, 1600.

[Munzur]

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.

[Anaheet]

Armenians can claim to be Byzantines just as much Greeks can.

Yeah, no doubt. Don't forget about Leo the Issaurian (should be called Leo the Armenian. Levon the Armenian, if you like!).

 

Of course he was an iconoclast, but putting that aside, he was one of ours...