Genocide

[Guest]

That's very simple. The only nation that stands on Turkey's way to Central Asia was Armenia, is Armenia and will be Armenia.

 

From 13-th century to 1896 Ottoman Turkey carried out similar policy against all the nations within its boundaries. From 1896 to 1908, after failing to expand either to Europe or the the Middle East, Turkey decided to expand to the Caucasus and Asia Minor, using the idiology of Pan-Turkism as a basis. To accomplish that Turkey needed to have homogenous turkish population in its East, at those times populated mainly by Armenians and Kurds.

[Guest]

First i want to answer your question about the language and religion.You are right they didn't force a nation to change them,because it was the basic politic of Ottoman Empire.Because the land they reigned was too large and the population was so great that if they wanted to change these there would be so many rebellions that they couldn't stand against...They reigned about 600 years but not all the land.They started to lose land in the end of 17th century.So i believe they were a strong empire from the fall of Constantinople(1453) to 1700.So it's 150 years..After 17th century they only tried not to lose what they own.

We were not the only race faced the massacre,Do you know the Greeks of Pontus or the Kurds of Dersim?Maybe there were less people died but is there an exact quantity to define 'this is massacre and this is not'.

The government of Young Turks and Talat ***** planned the genocide.And it wasn't only in rocky,non-productive soil of eastern Anatolia,first all the Armenians around the Anatolia were forced to leave where they live and to go Syria than on the way they were killed by the Ottoman soldiers ordered by Talat *****.It's written on the archives of Turkish Military that 800.000 Armenians were killed but that's not the exact number as we know.

There is never a reason for such a mass massacre on any race,it's only a shame of humanity.But the reason for Turks were because they were paranoid.They've lost all the battles and only Anatolia was left for them.They tried to make Anatolia a christian-free land so they forced Armenians,Pontus(the northern Anatolia)Greeks and Christian-Syrians to leave Anatolia.They saw us as a thread and all the world knows what happened later.

They couldn't do this to Greeks as much as they did to us because Greeks had a free country in those years so Greeks who could survive went Greece...but in 1915 there was not a free Armenia for us to run....But after,in 1916-1917, they started to kill Armenians saying this is a war between Ottomans and the Armenians who sided Russians.

[Guest]

OEG,

 

I will be very brief:

 

1. Turks have committed Genocide not only against Armenians, but also against Pontian Greeks and Assyrians. There is an ongoing struggle by Greek and Assyrian organizations to promote awareness of mentioned Genocides;

 

2. The Genocide of Armenians is not of religious or cultural characters, but of political. It is a model of political Genocide. Armenians of the Ottoman Empire have become the most political minority of the empire beginning late 19th century. In or around 1890, three Armenian political parties have been established with an agenda of liberation of Armenian lands from the Turkish yoke. In the pre-WWI period, Armenians have been very instrumental in the revolution of Young Turks, and have demonstrated their mussel. The Armenian issue had become an international issue, however limited in its scope, throughout the 19th century. To summarize, Armenians were becoming a political minority in contrast with many other minorities of Ottoman Empire;

 

3. Armenians have resided in the heart of Ottoman Turkey, while Serbs, Bulgars, etc, have resided in its periphery. The Genocide has been much easier implementable inside the Empire then in its periphery;

 

4. The Armenian political leadership has made significant mistakes, by leaving the nation vulnerable. The political and national activities of Armenians have taken place in the context of an elitist movement rather than all-national. The nation has not been ready to execute resistance on the scale that Serbs have done, for example.

 

There are more reasons, however, but it would be a very long story, and I don't have much time, now.

 

 

[This message has been edited by MJ (edited February 04, 2001).]

[Guest]

I wonder about one thing... As you know Ottomans ruled countless nations between 13th century and 1920... Romanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Arabs, Kurds, Ukrainians, Azeris, Georgians, Austrians, Italians ( for a short period) Jews, Serbs, Bosnians, Slovenians blah blah blah.... How come they only massacred Armenians...Why dont we hear massacres and genocides from Serbs or Bulgarians or Greeks. As you know Turks put a fight against Greek army in Turkey... Why do the Greeks never talk about genocides? I mean isnt it logical to massacre Greeks instead of Armenians?

 

First of all, Greeks in Turkey at the time were more powerful...and the land they were holding (aegean coast) is 100 times more valuable than rocky-non productive soil of eastern Asia Minor.

 

And one more question? Why did the Ottomans wait for so long to make this genocide...I mean they could have done that in 15 th century, when they were the biggest empire in the world... why did they wait for 600 hundred years?

 

And is it true that Ottomans let all nations(they ruled for 600 years) speak their language and practice their religion?

Because you know it generally takes some 80-90 years to change the whole values of a nation... like the Spanish invaders did to Latin America...

And as far as i know all those nations i mentioned above still speak their own language and practice their own language.

 

And my last question is?

 

Why did they do such a bad thing against Armenians?

 

Does anybody know the reason of genocide?

What started the genocide?

 

Thank you in advance for your answers

[Guest]

There were also massacres of Serbs and Bulgarians. It is not just as a result of NATO's genocide that there are no Serbs in Kossovo - the heartland of Serbia before the Ottoman invasions. That "tower of sculls" picture that some Armenians still put forward as an image from 1915 is (I think) a vision inspired by massacres in Bulgaria during the 19th century (it is actually taken from a painting from the 1880s). And many Greek settlements on the Agean islands never recovered from the massacres of their populations that took place during the Greek wars of independance

 

Steve

[Guest]

HI everybody

 

Thank you for your answers,

 

I disagree with some opinions, first of all i dont think that Armenians were such a force against Turks on the way to Central Asia. They were not a warrior nation at that time, if they were, they would have resisted against Turks and kicked them out of Anatolia between 1299 and 1915. So we can see that Armenians have never been a threat against Turks for all those centuries.

 

About the changing the values of a nation;

 

I think ottomans could have easily changed all languages and religions of those many nations. I should mention about the wars they made against crusaders or austrians 1500 miles away from constantinopolis, or sending navy to indonesia, or suleyman the magnificient's manhunt against rebel leader ferdinand in black forests of germany. I think when we think logically we can see that if a king can run after a rebellion inside another country's borders (germany), it wouldnt be a challenge for him to force some 3 million people to change their religion and language especially if those people have no weapons or armies against this empire. Who can say that Ottomans were scared of rebels in their own land when they could keep fighting in 3 different continents and indian ocean.

 

And uhmmm about christian free anatolia, well there are still christians living in pontus region of Turkey, they still speak their own language (greek), there are christian arabs in hatay, antep, and suryanis in mardin, some italians in samsun and in black sea region, a few armenians in elevit and trovit mountains of camlihemsin, rize, armenians greeks and italians in istanbul, greeks, italians, french and dutch in izmir, by the way levon, you should read that part of history again because greeks moved to greece in 1924 two years after the war, one year after the turkish republic was founded, they never escaped to greece during the war. they never wanted to move out of anatolia, they were swapped with Turks in Greece by Lousanne treaty in 1924. Greece was founded by Greeks in Mora peninsula. And those Greeks who founded the new republic never asked Turks to leave Greece but Turks in Greece and Greeks in Turkey was forced to leave their homes by their governmets after the Treaty was signed, after then (1924) we can talk about almost christian free anatolia, and almost muslim free greece. Istanbul and thrace ( east greece ) was excluded in Lousanne Treaty, thats how Greeks and Armenians in Istanbul are still there.

And one more thing levon 1700 minus 1453 is about 250 years )

 

In my opinion, Armenians were happy during all those centuries just like the other minorities under ottoman control. Because if they were not, they would have started a war against Turks in 250 years or 600 years or 900 years, isnt it interesting that there was no fight between those two nations for all that time. Ottoman Sultans called Armenians as loyal nation because armenians never betrayed to the country they were living in, which is a good thing.

 

Again, in my opinion, there must be a better reason for this genocide... it can not be just political or some kind of paranoid Turks or something like Armenian parties in Istanbul. Because Armenians were always a political minority, why did Turks decide to kill all those Armenians in all of a sudden? Could there be a possibility like Armenians rebeling against Turks (not turkish army because there was not a significant army in eastern Turkey at the time) in eastern Turkey? Just a thought.

 

Thank you

[Guest]

Dear OEG,

 

My first impression is that you already had your answers to your own questions from the beginning. Then why to waist time to articulate them in terms of questions, and then to negate our answers.

 

However, let me disagree with some of your answers.

 

Ottomans have by in large succeeded in having Armenians speak Turkish rather then Armenian. By the time of the pre-WWI, the absolute majority of Armenians of Anatolia was Turkic speaking.

 

Ottomans were not scared of the rebels of their lands, while they were as strong as you described them to be. However, they were scared of the rebels, when their empire started to crumble, after the Russians entered the political scene of the region.

 

I think you are presenting the Ottoman history as a homogeneous event throughout its existence. However the character of that empire has significantly changed throughout history.

 

You are saying that there are still Christians living in Anatolia. OK. We are aware of it. What does it prove? I am sure you are aware that there are Jews living in Germany. What does that prove?

 

You are recommending some of us to read parts of history again, but you are not specific on the issue of the sources of history you want us to read. What sources of Ottoman history do you read? Can you make specific references, when you dismiss our arguments or advance you theories?

 

I am not going to speak about the Greeks of Ottoman Empire or the history of their depopulation from Turkey. I don’t know much about them. However, the depopulation of Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, and then, the Republic of Turkey, outside Constantinopolis, has been finalized in 1923. We, along with several international institutions, attribute the Genocide of Armenians by Turkey to the period 1915-1923, btw.

 

And talking about the swaps, while the war prisoners of Russian and Turkish origins were being swapped as a result of the Russian-Turkish Treaty of March 17, 1921, Armenian war prisoners held by the Turks were being butchered at the same time.

 

It is interesting that you have an opinion about the happiness of Armenians in the period between 1453 and 1700. What sources is this perception of yours based on?

 

Maybe you could consult your sources a little further, and “ask” the opinion of Armenians of that time? And why would the happy subjects of Ottoman Empire press for reforms in San Stefano and Berlin conferences, if they were so happy. Why did their "happiness" convert to such an overwhelming unhappiness two centuries later? Why would Armenians risk angering the rootless sultans, by taking to the international arena what might’ve been deemed as Turkey’s “internal” affair?

 

There were indeed no attempts by Armenians to rebel until the WWI. And even during the WWI, Armenians have not rebelled in the true sense of the word. Only a part of the population of the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and even that after these provinces were under the Russian control, have sided with the Russians. The rest of the Armenians have fatefully fought in the Ottoman Army against the Russians. This certainly doesn’t speak well about us, and is not something we may be proud of, today. Yes, we have not been a militant nation. We have been a peasant nation, by in large. A nation, that has been feeding the army, which has been conducing war on three fronts, and organizing expeditions in Germany and Indonesia, of which you speak with such admiration. Now, you should perhaps push your imagination, and “ask” the peasant feeding the most rootless army in the history of mankind, whether he was indeed happy under the Ottoman rule.

 

This issue of the betrayal as raised by you is absurd. You don’t betray those who have invaded your lands for centuries, who have deprived you from your basic freedoms, who plunder your hard earned harvest and other wealth, who rape or force into sexual relationship your wife or daughters under the threat of execution. You either submit or rebel.

 

Yes, Armenians were minority in the Ottoman Empire from some point on, and not a threat in its prosperous times. They were deemed to be a threat only in the period of crumbling of that Empire. They were qualified so by Sultan Abdul Hamid and on, even though they have been the most oppressed minority throughout at least the 18th and 19th centuries. They have been perceived even more so by the Young Turks, who have frequently found refuge from Sultan’s persecution in Armenian quarters. And whoever might've underestimated the growing strength of Armenians in Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks had had a first-hand experience with the dynamics of the political maturation and the ability to get organized of the Armenian elite. This dynamics, combined with the economic leverage in the hands of the Armenian wealthy class, with the defeats of the “invincible” Ottoman Army in the hands of Western and Russian armies, the revolutionary movement inside Turkey, might’ve resulted in a different picture.

 

Now, if your insinuation has been that Armenians have been punished by Ottoman Turkey for their “betrayal,” I would be pretty satisfied if the Republic of Turkey makes an official statement along these lines. Then we will go from there.

 

 

[This message has been edited by MJ (edited February 05, 2001).]

[Guest]

OK OEG,

If Ottoman Empire was such a great land to live why-not only christians- but muslims too rebelled the empire and fought against them with European countries?

Can anybody blame Greece,Bulgaria,Serbia,Iraq,Egypt and all those ex-Ottoman countries for rebellions against Turks?And you say they trusted us and we betrayed them....Didn't all those countries do the same?A free land was their right but not ours.huh?

You're right there's some christian minorities in Turkey,can you compare before and after the war?what's the percentage?If everything was perfect what happened?are they evaporated?

After losing all those battles and just a small land left for the Turks they decided to build a new country on a non-muslim basis,a land of Turks unlike the religious Ottoman Empire,than they killed(the most populated christian minority-Armenians-seeing as a thread to their new Turkish republic.As all we know only a Kurdish ethnicity with a big population lives in Turkey now and being about 15 millions,still cant educate in their own language,cant have a kurdish tv,and since 10 years ago speaking and singing in Kurdish was forbidden-they were prisoned if so-.

I can feel the Turks are getting sad but the age of Turks is over for so long.I cant blame them to dream about their years of ruling the world.But dreaming so much is giving harm to them.

By the way do you know one dollar costs 700.000 Turkish Liras and it's the most unvaluable money on Earth?

[Guest]

Armenians have committed Genocide against Turkish nations, the Turks in Turkey and now the Azeris. You all are pityful people for not recognizing your own mistakes. Recognize yours first before wanting others to recognize the so called genocide....

[Guest]

I thought you were gone, and didn't want to be referenced...

 

Why cannot you talk in terms of facts and logic, instead of showing angry and red faces? Or is it too much to ask?

 

And you call yourself "analyst" ...

 

P.S. I also want to add that I personally, and I am sure many of us, would enjoy having discussions on this painful subject with our Turkish neighbors, but they have to have elementary qualifications, and adequate ability to conduct themselves.

 

 

[This message has been edited by MJ (edited February 06, 2001).]

[Guest]

quote:

---

Originally posted by OEG:
Could there be a possibility like Armenians rebeling against Turks (not turkish army because there was not a significant army in eastern Turkey at the time) in eastern Turkey? Just a thought.

Thank you

---

I think that lately one excuse that Turks seem to find for doing what they did is that Armenians rebelled. First of all this does not excuse anything because the ones that rebelled did so for good reason, one of which being that they lived on their own ancestral land. I just wanted to know what was the extent to which Armenians rebelled. What did they do and how much of it?

[Guest]

Let's say that the Armenian Genocide did not take place, for the sake of argument. Even so Turks would still have a reputation for being a barbaric, violent nation disliked by many. I know for a fact that Greeks feel dislike for Turks, and so do Kurds, both groups having been opressed. In addition in many European nations the word "turk" is the equivalent to an insult, applied to someone irrational and/or violent. Obviously this does not really PROVE anything since it's nothing academic, but it does say something about this GREAT nation which for centuries has lived off other people's sorrow and would not have anything today unless backed by the U.S. (just because it's a military ally)

[Guest]

quote:

---

Originally posted by RAVEN:
Armenians have committed Genocide against Turkish nations...

---

1. The word Genocide is often used with the verb "to organise". Because Genocide is an organised action. Sporadic killings, even in big numbers, cannot be refered to as genocides.
2. Genocide is also a centrelised action.
3. To organise a Genocide you need a carefully desined set of actions assined to appropriate sub-divisions of a given state.

Now tell me, were there any Armenians in the Turkish goverment of Ottman Empire, Young Turk or Ataturk governments to organise it? Where was their CENTER? Were there any territorial sub-divisions in Turkey of that period controled by Armenians?

[Guest]

quote:

---

Originally posted by OEG:

I disagree with some opinions, first of all i dont think that Armenians were such a force against Turks on the way to Central Asia. They were not a warrior nation at that time, if they were, they would have resisted against Turks and kicked them out of Anatolia between 1299 and 1915. So we can see that Armenians have never been a threat against Turks for all those centuries.

---

1. Armenia has never been and it isn't a threat to Turkey (as well as all surrounding countries). Though we are a very warrior nation, we are not an offencive warrior nation, like Turks have always been. When you proudly say "Ottoman Empire", do you ever think that the word "Empire" means that Turkey has conquered all that counries and nations.
2. When Turks came to Anatolia, Armenians and the Armenian state were already exhausted by centuries of fighting with different "Empires", so it were the Turks who kicked us, Greeks, Assirians and others out of Anatolia. And now they you're kicking out the Kurds.
3. We were not a threat on Turkey's way to Central Asia. We were an obstacle.

[Guest]

The appearance of the following material in today's Groong Digest is pretty timely in the context of the development of this thread. Though, by in large it is of historic character, given the discussions of this forum, I feel it is suitable to post it here. However, I found at least two incorrect dates in the material - the date of Adana massacre, and the date of the recognition of the independence of the Republic of Armenia (first) by European countries. But overall, the material is pretty well written, in my view. _____________________________________________

 

 

The G-Word

By Mark Mazower

 

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

 

>From LRB Vol 23, No 3 |

February 8, 2001

 

The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-16: Documents

Presented to Viscount Grey of Falloden by Viscount Bryce. Uncensored

Edition by James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee, edited by Ara Sarafian.

Gomidas Institute, 677 pp., £32, 11 December 2000, 0 9535191 5 5

 

Last October James Rogan, a Republican congressman from California,

and manager of the impeachment campaign against Clinton, faced the

prospect of a tight re-election battle. His district had been targeted

by the Democrats. Crucial to the outcome was the largest concentration

of Armenian Americans in the US. To garner their 23,000 votes, Rogan -

whose only-ever excursion outside the country was a trip to Armenia -

proposed a non-binding Congressional resolution condemning the

genocide of 1915. The outcome was a minor international crisis.

 

The Turkish Government was enraged and threatened terrible things

if the motion was carried - among them, the closure of Nato bases,

crippling Allied surveillance flights over Iraq; the blocking of

billion-dollar oil and arms deals; a Turkish rapprochement with

Iraq and Iran. Clinton was the heaviest of the hitters deployed

to stop the resolution's progress through Congress. But by then

the European Parliament had passed a similar motion and so had

others.

 

In Britain, a New Labour storm has recently blown up over the new

Holocaust Day commemorations and whether the Armenians were to be

included. After the usual 'consultation exercise' and under the

auspices of a 'steering group', the Home Office first decided

that for some mysterious reason only genocides which took place

after 1940 were to be mentioned. Then Armenians in the UK protested

and there was a sudden change of heart. The wish to affirm Britain's

'multi-ethnic' character - the avowed purpose of the new ceremony -

has brought Whitehall, like Washington, face to face with the

complexities of late Ottoman history.

 

By the summer of 1915, the Ottoman Empire was in its death-throes.

It had been the most successful empire of modern times, lasting

from the 14th century to the 20th. At its height it was the dominant

power in Europe. But from the late 18th century onwards, other

powers meddled in its internal affairs, helping its Christian

subjects - Greeks, Serbs, Wallachians - to gain their freedom.

 

Thanks to the active sponsorship of Russia and Britain, Austria

and France, these groups won autonomy and then independence. By the

end of the 19th century, Christendom had regained much of Ottoman

Europe as well as the fringes of the Black Sea and the Caucasus.

Muslims - Circassians, Tartars, Bosnians and Turks - fled southwards

to the safety of the shrinking Empire.

 

There, too, Christian activists hoped that what the Greeks had

won might yet come to them.Reports of Ottoman atrocities against

Slav peasants led in 1878 to the creation of Bulgaria. Macedonian

terrorists tried to provoke the Turkish authorities into violence

as a way of gaining independence for Macedonia.

 

Within the Empire, continual international humiliation led to

demands for political reform and military revitalisation. In

1908 the revolt of the Young Turks brought to power a group of

officers determined to halt the Empire's decline. Like the

ideologies of similar groups elsewhere - there were coups in

Greece, Serbia and Portugal around this time - theirs was a

confused amalgam of liberal constitutionalism and national

purification.

 

Reform-minded Christians in the Ottoman Empire soon realised

that in the minds of the Young Turks' dreams of pan-Islamic

and pan-Turkish dominion overshadowed the battle for equal

rights and parliamentary sovereignty.

 

The nationalist turn became even more prominent after the

tremendous losses of two Balkan Wars virtually ended Ottoman power

in Europe. It is true that Enver *****, perhaps the best-known of the

new elite, won huge prestige when he held the city of Edirne for the

Empire (Enver Hoxha and Anwar Sadat were two of the thousands of

babies to be named after the hero of the hour), but this was small

compensation for losing Libya, Macedonia, Epiros and Albania. By 1913,

the Empire, ruled over by a puppet Sultan, had shrunk to Istanbul,

Anatolia and the Arab lands as far as Suez.

 

For Enver *****, whose meteoric rise to power was facilitated by

marriage into the Ottoman dynasty, the outbreak of the First World

War was an opportunity to reverse these losses, with German support.

Despite Britain's entry into the war - an unpleasant shock which he

had not bargained for - he saw the chance for a bold thrust eastwards

into the Caucasus, regaining land lost to the Russians in 1878. Buoyed

by news of German victories against the Russians at Tannenberg, he took

personalcommand of the Ottoman Third Army, overrode the objections of

field commanders and led the attack against Tsarist forces which

culminated at the town of Sarikamis in January 1915. The Russians

lost 16,000 men, but Enver lost 75,000.

 

Despite his efforts to present the result as a minor setback, Sarikamis

was a catastrophe. The rank and file - including Armenian soldiers in

the Ottoman ranks - had fought with astonishing resilience, but their

leaders had let them down badly. In February, Djemal ***** led an attack

on the Suez Canal: this, too, ended in defeat. The fact that the

Russians, under pressure at Sarikamis, had asked the British to come

to their aid with a diversionary attack made matters worse by

bringing the British within range of Constantinople. In March, as

the Commander of the Aegean Squadron, Admiral de Robeck, prepared

to force a passage through the Straits, which were all that lay

between him and the city, most observers anticipated the Empire's

collapse.

 

Had the British not retreated in March and turned instead to the

ill-fated Gallipoli landings, the capital must surely have fallen.

Indeed, the Young Turk leadership had planned for an emergency

evacuation to continue the war from Anatolia - much as actually

happened in 1919. But this in turn raised the question of the

security of the Anatolian heartland, inhabited not only by Turks

but also by Greeks, Armenians, Kurds and others. The Ottoman

leadership was deeply uncertain of the loyalty of these groups,

especially with a Russian offensive looming. It had already

deported Greek civilians from the Anatolian shoreline into the

interior (the Russians were doing much the same with Russian

Jews in Tsarist Poland, the Habsburgs with their border Serbs).

But these deportations were on a relatively small scale and do

not appear to have been designed to end in their victims' deaths.

What was to happen with the Armenians was of a different order.

 

There were one and a half million Armenians in the Empire, mostly

in eastern Anatolia and in Cilicia, though there was also a

substantial community in Constantinople. An integral component

of the Ottoman system, they had traditionally been regarded as

the most loyal of the Christians - as late as 1913 the Ottoman

Foreign Minister was an Armenian. But the Russian advance

southwards, the growth of nationalism, and disputes over land

increased anti-Armenian sentiment. The Great Powers offered

their scarcely disinterested support.

 

Between 1894 and 1896, at least a hundred thousand Armenians had

died in massacres in eastern Anatolia. Armenian revolutionary

nationalists had provoked the regime of the Sultan Abdul Hamid II

in the hope of prompting a Russian intervention comparable to the

one that had liberated the Balkans in 1878, but the Russians did not

move.

 

The massacres followed. The revolutionaries, their terror strategy

discredited, retreated into exile, where they built up close links

with the Sultan's main opponents, the Young Turks. In 1909, shortly

after the Young Turk revolution, supporters of the Sultan carried

out another massacre, this time in the town of Adana, in western

Anatolia, in which perhaps twenty thousand Armenians died. The

Young Turks spoke out against this, but the rift between them

and the Armenian nationalists was growing wider. The war made

it unbridgeable.

 

In the spring of 1914, Russian pressure obliged the Porte to place

Armenian districts in eastern Anatolia under international

supervision - exactly the kind of scheme which a few years earlier

had led to eventual autonomy and independence in Macedonia. Had the

party of war not prevailed in Istanbul, this arrangement might well

have ensured a very different future for Turkish-Armenian relations.

As it was, one of the Ottoman Government's first wartime acts was to

revoke it. On 16 September, Tsar Nicholas told the Armenians that '

the hour of liberty' had 'finally sounded' for them. Several thousand

Armenians from Ottoman provinces enlisted in the Russian Army. In

the aftermath of the defeat at Sarikamis, offers of assistance came

flooding in.

 

In this dangerous situation Ottoman Armenian leaders counseled absolute

loyalty to the Porte. But Enver and his circle needed scapegoats for

their recent military failures, and were committed to asserting the

state's power over all potentially subversive groups. Even though

Enver himself had congratulated the Armenian Patriarch on the courage

of Armenian conscripts, the latter were consigned to labour battalions.

 

Enver's brother-in-law, who had been appointed Governor of Van in

February, shortly after Sarikamis, now embarked on the slaughter

of the Armenian population of this border region. According to the

inspector-general of the Ottoman forces in Anatolia, the Governor

of Van had given an order 'to exterminate all Armenian males of 12

years and over'. On 20 April, the Armenians of Van rose in self-

defence, and held on till a Russian advance reached them in May.

Four days later, as British forces were about to land at Gallipoli,

Armenian deputies and former ministers were arrested.

 

In Anatolia, the killings and deportations spread, supposedly to

clear sensitive combat zones of potential fifth-columnists. Reports

of massacre were so widespread that the British, Russian and French

Governments issued a joint declaration deploring 'these new crimes

of Turkey against humanity and civilisation'. (The word 'humanity'

replaced 'Christianity', which had appeared in an earlier draft.)

 

The signatories warned that they would hold members of the Ottoman

Government personally responsible. But the massacres continued.

What ensued is described in the collection of documents under review.

(The original, censored version withheld proper names and sources.)

At the end of August, during a mass held in the Armenian church in

Salonika, the bishop warned that 'the Armenians of Turkey are being exterminated:

for four months, massacre, rape, deportation, hanging,

exile, imprisonment, dispersion of families and many other

barbaric procedures have been serving the systematic

extermination of a people.'

 

Although the Ottoman authorities referred to all these acts as

'deportations' and justified them on the grounds of national security,

the numbers of those killed soon dwarfed the massacres of the late

19th century. In June, the Armenian Patriarch in Constantinople told

the German Ambassador Baron von Wangenheim that the policy was no

longer 'temporary neutralisation' of the Armenian population, but extermination.

 

Wangenheim, who could scarcely be accused of anti-Ottoman

sentiments, came to the same conclusion in early July, noting

that the deportations had reached provinces well removed from

the fighting.

 

It is the systematic nature, as well as the scale, of this mass

killing which distinguishes it from such precursors as the Tsarist

pogroms against the Jews, and earlier Armenian massacres, and also

from the many killings of Turks and others in what was, effectively,

an ethnic civil war unfolding in eastern Anatolia and the southern

Caucasus. Deportation - a traditional instrument of imperial rule -

had little to do with it: the old-fashioned version, which valued

subject populations for economic reasons, aimed to relocate rather

than destroy them. By the time the killing wound down, perhaps as

many as one million Armenians were dead; most of the survivors

had fled.

 

Who had been in charge? The Sultan was a mere figurehead, the

Parliament irrelevant; even senior Army commanders were powerless

against men who were nominally their juniors in rank. The shadowy

Committee of Union and Progress had no opposition: its triumvirs -

Enver ***** (Minister of War and effective Commander-in-Chief),

Talaat ***** (Grand Vizier and Minister of the Interior) and Djemal

***** - reigned supreme.

 

The Committee itself was an unstable amalgam of many factions which

feuded incessantly; its members were activists,many were military

men or rough types who had resorted more than once to assassination.

Mustafa Kemal, the future architect of the Turkish Republic, was a

member, though not a leading one. As in all combatant states, the

war had militarised every aspect of government, and power lay

chiefly in the hands of hard-line nationalists.

 

Working through the military, the regional bureaucrats and Enver's

own secret service, the Teskilat-i Mahsusa, which carried out his

dirty work throughout the Empire, the new leadership had begun

preparations for the killings perhaps as early as February 1915.

Other members of the Ottoman elite were kept in the dark. A few

tried to denounce or obstruct the atrocities and were replaced.

 

Via Armenian intermediaries, Djemal, third of the triumvirs, made

an astonishing secret offer to the Entente: he would bring the

killing to an end if they would support his bid to become Sultan.

As for public sentiment, the evidence indicates both popular

participation - massacre is always a quick means of enrichment -

and opposition. From Erzerum, for instance, comes a report of

July 1915 that 'the Turkish people itself is absolutely not in

agreement with this solution and feels already the economic

decline which has affected the province since the Armenians

were chased out.' Yet opposition remained ineffectual.

 

In the eyes of the West, the supposed Turkish propensity for

atrocity had long been a strong argument for ending Ottoman rule

over Christians. No doubt this is why in 1916 the Entente was not

content simply to issue a warning to the perpetrators of crimes

against the Armenians, but collected and published evidence of

their wrong-doing. James Bryce, who together with the young

historian Arnold Toynbee was responsible for the dossier submitted

to Edward Grey, was a Gladstonian Liberal with an interest in the

Armenians - and a contempt for Turkish rule - which stretched back

forty years. Bryce and Toynbee's research (see extracts below)

exemplified a crucial stage in the evolution of Western attitudes

towards crimes against humanity, a midpoint, so to speak, between

the paternalist interventions of the 19th-century Concert of

Europe and the post-World War Two creation of the United Nations

and international instruments such as the Genocide Convention.

 

The term 'genocide' was not coined until the Second World War - it

came from Raphael Lemkin, an assiduous chronicler of Nazi occupation

policies, who shared Bryce's belief that scholarship could serve the

cause of justice. But the parallels between what happened to the Jews

and to the Armenians are striking. In both cases, a murderous policy

was shaped in wartime by high officials of state with far more single-

minded objectives than those of their populations at large. They

prevailed thanks to their control of the machinery of violence, both

formal and informal, and to the resources that accrued to them from

sudden large-scale dispossession.

 

The killing in 1915 was not industrialized, as it would become in

the later stages of the Holocaust: the murderers of the late Ottoman

state relied on the harsh weather and arid terrain, as well as compliant

nomads and military units. There were a few loopholes which did not

exist for the Jews - conversion to Islam, escape to neighboring

provinces.

 

The goal was not total racial annihilation - Armenians survived in

Istanbul, Izmir and elsewhere - so much as the elimination of

Armenians as a factor of any consequence in the life of the country.

Though both regimes felt themselves to be beleaguered, there was a

world of difference between the Nazis, who dominated the continent of

Europe in the early 1940s, and the Ottomans, who faced the very real

prospect of defeat and partition in 1915. But there is enough

similarity between the crimes of 1915-16 and the Final Solution

for the earlier events to qualify as genocide.

 

There is room, of course, for disagreement and a need to clarify

terms. In the universities, a new sub-field of genocide studies has

developed over the last few years and scholarly journals are devoted

to the study of massacres and atrocities. What is astonishing is how

far an academic dispute about terminology has pushed itself into the

public domain. The question of whether they were victims of genocide

now matters intensely to the Armenians, whose lobbying has brought

this issue to the fore again and again in the past few years; and it

matters equally to the Turkish authorities, who do not seem to blanch

at the term 'massacre' but are beside themselves when the G-word is

mentioned.

 

In 1918, following the Armistice, the new Imperial Government in

Constantinople began its own investigation into the massacres and

indicted Enver, Talaat and 20 other defendants before a military

court. The Armenian issue had entered Ottoman politics, and there

were Turkish denunciations of 'the immense wrong done to the Armenian

people'. On the other hand, the nationalist opposition, which believed

that, by fighting on, Turkey could be saved, regarded such apologies as

abject and intended merely to curry favour with the West.

 

The French, Italians, Greeks and British were all advancing claims

to Ottoman territory. The Armenians themselves declared a Republic,

which was recognised in 1920 by the Allies and accepted in the Treaty

of Sèvres. If the nationalists - amongwhom Mustafa Kemal was now the

rising star - repudiated Enver and his legacy, it was not because of

his crimes but because he had failed. Enver, Talaat and Djemal escaped

abroad; all died within a few years - the last two at the hands of

Armenian gunmen.

 

Against the odds, the nationalists prevailed, and out of the rubble

of war arose the Republic of Turkey. The Armenians were deserted by

their supposed friends. Republics and mandates evaporated; the eastern provinces

of Turkey were retained. A Greek invasion was beaten back,

and Anatolia's Greek population sent with it: the Greco-Turkish

population exchange of 1923 saw the compulsory transfer of two million

people. The Treaty of Sèvres was superseded by that of Lausanne, which

made no mention of 'Armenia' at all. Two major Kurdish uprisings were

crushed at a cost of between 40,000 and 100,000 lives. In fact and in

law, the Republic of Ataturk was coming closer to its ruler's ideal

of a predominantly Turkish Anatolian homeland.

 

The Armenians scattered, some to the USSR, the remainder to camps and

shanty towns in Europe and the United States. It took the best part of

half a century to turn Erevan into a modern city and to see the Armenian American

diaspora become a wealthy, largely professional community more

than half a million strong. Between the wars, their problems were

overshadowed by others'. When it appeared in 1933 Franz Werfel's novel

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh annoyed both the Turkish and the German

authorities by its use of the Armenian tragedy to warn the world

against Nazism. But in general there was little discussion of what

had happened, and little controversy in the decades before and

immediately after the Second World War.

 

Although American Armenian organizations have supported the ratification

of the Genocide Convention since 1950, it was not until 1965 that

the Armenian issue returned to grab the world's headlines - and it

has done so with increasing regularity since the early 1980s. The

50th anniversary of the killings was commemorated by Armenians around

the world, and not long afterwards a wave of terrorism, distinct from

that of the early 1920s, led to the assassination of more than twenty

Turkish diplomats.

 

>From bases in Lebanon, Armenian groups struck in the US, France and

elsewhere. In the 1980s, activists turned to public lobbying,

especially in the US, where they have been helped by the national

obsession with the Holocaust and by a growing interest in genocide

as a historical phenomenon. The Armenian Assembly of America, founded

in 1972, today has seven thousand individual and organizational members

and a budget of $2.5 million. It grades members of Congress according

to which way they cast their votes on Armenian issues and has focused

lately on trying to get the 1915 massacres officially recognized as

a genocide. The Turkish Government has retaliated, paying millions of

dollars to diplomats, academics and lobbyists to counter the Armenian

effort.

 

Why does it matter whether or not the massacres are 'officially' a

genocide? Does it have something to do with claims to land, money,

property? This is not clear. For many Armenian activists, restitution

or compensation remain desirable goals - especially given the example

set by the Germans - while some nationalists still regard the borders

as an open issue. Others, following the cultural dictates of the day,

just want some form of public apology from the Turkish state, an

indication of goodwill and a notification of regret or, better,

remorse. In a world where victimhood has become a desirable status,

the Armenians insist on what is rightfully theirs.

 

Meanwhile, preserving the memory of catastrophe has become a means of

keeping a diaspora identity alive, rather as the memory of the

Holocaust has done for American Jewry.

 

Perhaps more baffling than the Armenians' demand for acknowledgment

of what they suffered is the continued Turkish refusal to supply it. Continuities

of personnel and ideology carried over from Enver's reign

into the Republic of Ataturk: men who subsequently enjoyed prestige

and wealth in interwar Turkey were deeply complicit in the crimes

of 1915.

 

Ataturk did not rescue Turkey singlehandedly - except in the myth -

and Enver's Teskilat organisation was helpful even after Enver had

gone. Thus far, the Kemalist legacy may be said to entail an equivocal

attitude towards the massacres. But if Ataturk's Republic was

emphatic in repudiating the Ottoman past in most other areas,

why has it not been able to do so in this case? Do Turkish

politicians fear the thin end of the wedge? Can Ankara believe

that a major power would today try to have Turkey's eastern

boundaries redrawn, or back the claims of the Armenians for

monetary compensation? Turkey's overwhelming importance in

Eurasia makes this unlikely, while the Republic of

Armenia itself has too many pressing internal and external

problems to pose any kind of threat.

 

It seems to me that there is something else at stake, less

materialistic and more intimately bound up with official Turkish self-perceptions.

 

If today's authorities find an expression of regret

beyond them it is not so much because they wish to protect the

reputation of their forefathers, but more generally because they are

highly sensitive to their country's image in the world, and

recognise,in a way most Europeans do not, just how anti-Turkish

sentiment in the West has been for centuries. The redoubtable

traveler Edith Durham once remarked that Europe was quick to

condemn Muslim violence towards Christians but remained

indifferent when the tables were turned.

 

Even today, no connection is made between the genocide of the

Armenians and Muslim civilian losses: the millions of Muslims

expelled from the Balkans and the Russian Empire through the long

19th century remain part of Europe's own forgotten past.

 

Indeed, the official Turkish response is invariably to remind

critics of this fact - an unconvincing justification for genocide,

to be sure, but an expression of underlying resentment. To

acknowledge the mass murder of the Armenians may run the risk

of confirming the one-sided European stereotype of the 'barbarous

Turk'. Turkey's prestige, on this line of argument, is

best served by resolute denial, even though the consequence is

that the genocide has a significance for the modern Republic

that acceptance would help to efface.

 

And yet of course there are many Turks - some in public, more in

private: businessmen, intellectuals and political liberalisers- who

agree that a change of position is overdue. Unfortunately for them,

the legacy of the generals' coup in 1980 has been a renewed

militarisation of Turkish politics and an obsession with national

security and territorial integrity. Turgut Ozal and his successors

have tried gradually to erode the Army's power, but its domination

of civilian politics remains enshrined in the Constitution.

 

Globalisation, the ending of the Cold War, and, not least, the

prospect of entry into the European Union may one day soon encroach

on the neo-Kemalist values of the military, but for the moment,

they remain supreme. These values are not checked, as they are

elsewhere, by the forces of institutionalised religion or dynastic

authority - they were smashed in the revolution that created the

Republic. Nor has modern Turkey suffered the profound humiliation

of defeat, as happened in Greece.

 

Continued instability in the post-Soviet Caucasus preserves its

influence internationally. What would it mean, given this balance

of forces, for the Turkish Government to express public regret

for what the Ottoman state did to the Armenians? It would imply

facing up to the murderous consequences of military dominance in

Turkey after 1913. It would mean accepting that modern Turkey

was born not only out of heroic resistance to the Allies and

the glorious war against the Greeks, but also from the more

shameful war against largely unarmed Armenians.

 

It would mean a dramatic shift in the civil-military power struggle

within Turkey, and signal the beginnings of a new or at any rate

modified foundation myth for the Republic itself. It would also be

a sign of vitality and resilience in Turkish society, an indication

that Ataturk's work had been done, and that the country could now

move on. But before this happens, it is likely that Armenians and

Turks will be locked in the struggle of memory for some time to

come.

 

 

Letter from Viscount Bryce to Viscount Grey of

Falloden, 1 July 1916

 

My Dear Sir Edward,

 

In the autumn of 1915 accounts of massacres and deportations of

the Christian population of Asiatic Turkey began to reach Western

Europe and the United States. Few and imperfect at first-for every

effort was made by the Turkish Government to prevent them from

passing out of the country - these accounts increased in

number and fullness of detail, till in the beginning of 1916

it became possible to obtain a fairly accurate knowledge of

what had happened . . .

 

As materials were wanting or scanty in respect of some localities,

I wrote to all the persons I could think of likely to possess or

to be able to procure trustworthy data, begging them to favour

me with such data . . .

 

When the responses from these quarters showed that sufficient

materials for a history could be obtained, I had the good fortune

to secure the co-operation of a young historian of high academic

distinction, Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee, late Fellow of Balliol

College, Oxford. He undertook to examine and put together the

pieces of evidence collected, arranging them in order and

adding such observations, historical and geographical, as

seemed needed to explain them. The materials so arranged by

Mr. Toynbee I now transmit to you . . .

 

I am,

Yours sincerely,

BRYCE

 

 

Testimony of Rev. E.W. McDowell of the Urmia

Mission Station, 6 March 1916

 

There was a general massacre in the Bohtan region, and our helpers,

preachers,teachers and Bible-Women, with their families, fell

victims to it among the rest. The man who brought the word is known

to me personally. This young man tells thestory of how, by order

of the Government, the Kurds and Turkish soldiers put the Christians

of all those villages, including Djeziré, to the sword. Among those

slain were Kasha (Pastor) Mattai, pastor of the church in Hassan;

Kasha Elia, one of our oldest and most honoured pastors, recently

working as an evangelist; Kasha Sargis, superannuated; Muallin

Mousa, pastor of our church in Djeziré, and his 16-year-old son

Philip. There are three preachers not heard from, and one of them

is probably killed, as his village, Monsoria, was put to the sword;

another, Rabi Ishak, is possibly alive, as there is a report that

his village had been preserved by the influence of a Kurdish agha.

It is to be feared, however, that this agha would not be able to

protect them for long, as from every source comes the word that

the Government threatened such friendly Kurds with punishment if

they did not obey orders. The third man is reported as having

fled to Mosul.

 

Whether he reached there or not is not known. The women and children who escaped death were carried away captive. Among

these were the families of the above mentioned brethren. The wife and two daughters of Muallin Mousa, the daughters of

Kasha Elia, and Rabi Hatoun, our Bible-Woman, were all schoolgirls in Urmia or Mardin. Kasha Mattai was killed by Kurds in the mountain while fleeing. Kasha Elia and Kasha Sargis, with other men of the village of Shakh, were killed by Turkish soldiers who had been stationed in their village by the Government.

 

The three villages of Hassan, Shakh and Monsoria were Protestant, and it is to be feared that they were wiped out, as were all

the other Christian villages of the plain.

 

Mark Mazower has been elected Anniversary Professor of History at Birkbeck College, London.

 

 

 

[This message has been edited by MJ (edited February 06, 2001).]

[Guest]

Dear MJ and Berj,

 

You should charge turks with a fee for the history lessons.

Several years ago a delegation from the turkish Ministry of Education (yes, they have such a ministry) came to Bulgaria to negotiate revision of the Bulgarian history regarding the turks, whereby in history books "turkish yoke" should have been replaced with "ottoman presence?!?!". The proposal itself infuriated the Bulgarian society. Turks true to their bribing habits offered in lieu a generous packege of economical help for the democratic reforms in the country.

[Guest]

I hope the moderators have nor banned our two Turk guests from the site! They should be welcome and free to ask and comment. After all we have nothing to hide.

 

Indeed I was annoyed reading their postings, especially knowing that they are young and educated , or probably young students in the USA.

If educated people are not open minded at least, then what can we expect from a nation , whose illiteracy percentage runs exremely high!

If people like American-educated 'professor' Tancut Ciller are so fanatic and so hostile to a tiny little country like Armenia, what can we expect from the 'citizens' ( if not 'serfs' ) of this 'Republic'.

A Republic based on blood and hate , is not only bad to its neighbours , but it cannot cherish and flourish its own people and the public interest. Keeping the folks 'dormant' and ignorant is the easiest way to control and manupulate them.

 

The spirits of Voltaire, Lafayette, Marx, The American Founding fathers , Lenin has not yet reached Turkey. When it does, it will be a blessing for the rest of us!

 

A simpe and 'dump' question to any Turkish person : " Why should we insist on something that cannot be true? Why should we put most of our efforts to the Genocide recognition? "

Do you think that by recognising the Genocide, Turkey will be asked to return our lands and territories back to us?

 

It is a Just cause. It is a cause inspired by the millions of lost souls, who are in search of their final rest. Who need to see that their sufferings and sucrifices were not in vein.

I am all for FORGIVING, but not FORGETTING!

 

The youth of Turkey have nothing to be afraid of. They do not have to be hostile to us. All we are asking from them is to clear their Nation's Shame brought upon them by their grandparents and their leaders.

 

A young German can look into the eyes of a young Jew and not feel ashamed any more!

Can any Turk look into my eyes and be absolutely sure that there is nothing to feel ashamed of?

[Guest]

Raffi,

 

Of coarse they are not banned. In fact we are eagerly waiting to see either a qualified argument, or a change of heart.

[Guest]

To ALL,

 

Why don't you all admit like human beings how many thousands of Muslims and Turks the Armenians killed. Some of you say this is justified, how barbaric are you then? You are telling me you had good reason to kill helpless babies, women and men. I have heard true stories of how horrible crimes were committed by you neanthradhals. Why don't you accept those facts, huh. All you do is blame the Turks. You might see the Turks as barbarians, but I see you people as gutless, spineless, dishonest cowards. You will not accept your own doings. You cannot keep denying, there are lot of documents and first hand interviews that have been done to prove how inhumane the Armenians are.

What about ASALA, your terrorist organization, killing people...You people are not worth the time.

Talking about your ancestral lands, who nowadays have their ancestral lands, so don't even go there. Many nations have conquered before, look at your friends the French, who colonized and killed Africans, And what about the english, germans and so on.

Europeans are racist just like you are, racist against Muslim, this is true. It is obvious too that Turks are hated, i mean was it not the Ottomans that ruled the world for 500 years. ALmost conquered all of Europe, that is the hatred.

[Guest]

OK, you got us.

 

Everybody: turn out the lights, shut the door, the party's over...

[Guest]

To you,

 

Why cannot you like an intelligent human being, make arguments without blurring your statements. “Armenians have killed thousands of Muslims and Turks.” Why cannot you be courteous (after all you have visited our forum, and not the opposite) and professional enough, so that when you allege something, you provide us with some “unimportant” details per our multiple requests, like which Armenians have killed thousands of Turks and Muslims, where, when, on whose behalf, etc.

 

Even if we would accept, per se, that we are Neanderthals, and you represent civilization, it would not look as an exaggeration to claim that our Neanderthal way of life and mentality seems to be many millenniums ahead of your civilization.

 

Since the first day of your appearance in our forum, we have asked you to have manners, and make at least one qualified argument that you can defend. You have failed to provide any arguments, you have come up only with slanders and slurs, you have always ran away from the culmination of the discussions, since apparently, you cannot back any of your insinuations up. Additionally, however contradictory this statement may sound, it is evident that you are convinced that your ancestors have committed the crimes we allege. All you are trying to do is to put a sign of equality between the murderer and the victim, the oppressor and the oppressed.

 

I would appreciate that instead of talking about a lot of abstract or fabricated “documents,” you give one reference, so that our conversation may become more material.

 

And before we can move on with you to discuss the pros and the cons of ASALA, we have a long way to go along the lines of enhancing your morality and humanity. When we feel you are ready, we can also discuss ASALA.

 

Yes, we are aware of many nations having conquered other nations before, and that by in large that process is irreversible. It is true for Germany, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Russia, and others. But there is one fundamental difference – those nations have either brought civilization to the conquered, or have been able to enhance their own civilization at the expense of the conquered, so that to establish some kind of equality. They have also had the courage and the morality for assessing their past, and for moving on to the future. In the case of Turkey, it has brought nothing but blood and distraction to the conquered nations, and has been totally ignorant in terms of learning something from them. It has aspired to be equal to the conquered only in one way – distracting and burning their cultural and other values, and plundering their wealth.

 

I am saying all this, but deep in my heart I hope that we don’t have to go there, because we are not interested in Turks being barbarians. We are interested in them being a civilized nation, with whom we have to live side-by-side. We are also aware that not all Turks are like you. We are aware that almost 11% of the Turkish population of Turkey, as well as a substantial chunk of your intelligentsia are aware of the crimes committed by their ancestors, and are willing to acknowledge it. Out of the respect to those 11%, and those who we know will join them in the near future, we keep this conversation alive with you.

 

The categories Turk and Muslim always go parallel in your outbursts. We have no and have never had serious problems with Muslims. Our Christian compatriots have lived for centuries with Arab Muslims, and by in large with Iranian Muslims, in harmony and peace, and they continue to do so. The true Muslims have respected our religious identification and have not tried to contrast it to those of theirs. You are not even Muslim, as much as not every Christian who alleges being Christian is so.

 

You are just a week person with lack of values, who recognizes the very facts he is trying to deny, and all this out of the fear to face the truth. It is our hope and expectation that out of the depths of Turkey, people of all walks would arise pretty soon, to recognize and reassess their past, and will come out of their centuries old blood ordeal, debauchery and ignorance, cleanse themselves from this heavy burden, and move on to join the rest of the civilized world with renewed appreciation for life, truth, morality and progress.

 

Now I will “quoth nevermore Raven.”

 

 

[This message has been edited by MJ (edited February 07, 2001).]

[Guest]

I apologize and feel so much sorry for the genocide we organised to kill all the Turks.I

am really,extremely shocked to learn the truth from you.For about 85 years all the Armenians and the whole world(including my father and mother) told me that the Turkish people tried to kill all the armenians.But you showed me the light.Your words answered all the question i've been wondering for years.

I HATE YOU ARMENIANS,FROM THIS DAY I'LL TRY ALL THE WORLD TO LEARN THIS SHAME OF HUMANITY YOU ORGANISED.I REFUSE MY PAST AND I AM A TURK BY NOW!!!!!

LEVON

[Guest]

This son of a Turk Raven is an anal-yst, it is written in his profile. D)

[Guest]

Simply put- Greeks hate turks. Armenians hate turks. Arabs hate turks. Persians hate turks. Serbs hate turks. I don't think Armenians are the one who needs to do explaining.

[Guest]

Well, its not just serbs and greeks and bulgarians and armenians, all of the countries we ruled for years hate us because we RULED them, we told them what to do, we controlled them when they wanted to do something, we collected taxes from them, thats true we conquered all those countries one by one, none of them could even resist a day, the most brave ones were the greeks, who resisted for 154 years, until 1453. After that they were history until 1825. Think of it, you are erasing a whole nation from the history for 400 years, but then suddenly in 1825 they got their freedom again by making a war against ottomans, and they got what they wanted, a real war, man to man woman to woman, you'll either lose it or win it, no mercy, one wants to get his freedom the other wants to keep his lands and sources, what a holy war, no trigerrers trying to kill some poor diplomatic man, nobody is putting bombs in airline offices and kills the kids inside (I mean ASALA), they make a real war.

 

Ottomans lost the war, and they gave greeks their land, and come back to Istanbul. Ottoman empire becomes the second country to recognize newly founded Greece, and its king. Neither ottomans nor greeks killed one single person of the other side who was left in its country. Have you ever heard Greeks talk about a Genocide made during the 1825? More than 2 million people died during this war, More women and children than the men, has anybody ever heard greeks asking other countries to recognize the genocide (if there is any )made by Ottoman soldiers during their independence war?

 

Lets look at the balkan wars between 1912-1915 romania, bulgaria, greece, serbs, against ottomans, allied forces of balkans approach to istanbul, densely populated thrace and european part of anatolia was totally killed by allied forces, men women kids babies, even the cows, at the same time ottoman soldiers try to defend their land by killing anybody from the other side, its a war, you kill them, they kill you, its sad but true. Can you talk about human rights in a war? What right, what human? You have to kill otherwise he will kill you.

 

Anyways... more than a million people died during balkan wars, maybe half Turk half Greeks and Serbs and Romanians, who knows? Who talks about it today? Who talks about the genocide, two army did to each other's people? Noone, because Ottomans know very well that there can only be two results in a war, lose or win, there is no need to cry for the ones you lose after the war. Turkey lost 40.000 young people in last 15 years, one of them was a very good friend of mine killed by PKK ( Parti Kurdi Kurdistan ), i never saw his mom crying, cause before he was gone to the war zone he told his mom (thats what i heard from his mom ) that he counted himself as a dead person anyways, and if he ever could get back that would just be surprising for him. Isnt it interesting he tells himself every morning - I am dead anyways, today or tomorrow-. I think this guy knew that he is in a win or lose situation. And one day he lost, he was killed in a war, and the story is finished for him.

 

There is a saying in Turkish " War is a sacred, holy thing ".

Turks never cry for the people they lose in a war, they believe that its a very holy thing to get killed in a war and you become a martyr, and they never ask mercy for their martyrs from other countries.

 

I believe it was the same story with Armenians, they also wanted to get their land back,and getting freedom and land from ottomans was like the uhmmm latest fashion between 1800 - 1920 and ottomans applied the same treatment ( war-not genocide) to Armenians, but unlike other nations, Armenians lost the war, you dont need anything to make a war, if 1.5 million armenians were killed during this war, for sure they were not waiting in their homes to be killed, they were fighting as well just like other nations who want to get freedom who wants his land back, just like real men and real women, i know a lot of armenians a lotttttt, none of them are cowards, because there are no coward nations on the east of italy, ( italians are not cowards-its just they dont fight or make wars often ) but starting from former yugoslavia up to the east end of asia, its all wars, and pain, and tears, that part of the world has been fighting for more than 12.000 years, and will keep fighting, if not with his enemy, with his next door neighbor. We all know and understand each other very well, cause we are all easterns, you are not more civilized than i am or i am not more civilized than you are, we are all same *hit under different names.

 

Now if i go back to the genocide issue again, i am sure that none of those armenian people killed during the WW1, begged for mercy from ottoman soldiers, i am pretty sure that they preferred dieing instead of begging, cause thats the way things work in anatolia, i am sure that they fought with everything they have, just like my people do, and if they died, they died in a war with their honor, no army can kill 1.5 million people in a day or in a week especially where there is still no transportation facilities, it will take some time to do that, and during this time your grand grand father did something to protect his family and his nation, he warned the others about a coming threat, they formed lines or they found more weapons, i respect that with all my heart, for me he is the most brave man in this world, standing against the enemy and fighting with him instead of crying and begging, he wins or loses, nobody can ever cry after him or try to get his revenge thru some european or american council or senate, he was one brave man, and he never ran away from the enemy, did he?Armenians are not jews in Germany, Jews never fought or they never had to defend themselves for centuries, but Armenians were living in an empire which was fighting in 3 fronts, fighting was not something new for armenians , at the end we are all oriental people, we even fight for the smallest things,( jews in germany were like apples on the trees, they were waiting to be picked up no jew ever fought against germans-its not surprising because they did not grow up in a nation where there are street fights and fights with neighbors and verbal fights and those kind of hot blooded actions, simply they were not from eastern culture, and fighting was not for them) so your grand grand father didnot escape if he had done so, there would be no genocide issue today because all that 1.5 million people would be somewhere else, in USA France or Lebanon, who knows?

 

The best proof of Armenians fought like real brave men is that genocide issue, if they had run away there would be no genocide or no armenians to kill, if 1.5 million people were killed that was the result of the war between your grand father and mine.

 

In Turkish there is a saying, "the one who loses, wants to fight again and again"

 

So Armenians lost that fight and they lost their families, kids, women, but the most honorable thing is they died in this war. Before they went to the other world, for sure they took some enemy with them, they were not jews in germany, they fought until they fall, what an honor. I respect that and we all do,

 

Now,

Armenians have an unfinished business with Turks. According to you, I live on your main land, that soil i am stepping on is yours, and you absolutely have the right to want it back, and i absolutely have the right to fight for it.

 

Again, In turkish there is a saying,

"if there is blood on your flag, then its really your flag

if there is anybody willing to die for that dry soil, then its your land its your country"

 

I am sure that there must be a saying like that in Armenian, and you know what i mean.

You want that land back, you have to fight for it, You become many, and one day you knock on the door in the border and tell that one Turkish soldier that you are back for your land and for your ancestors, and you have an unfinished business with Turks, and its the time to finish that, then your grand grand fathers will be very happy watching you from the heaven and will say that their grand grand sons are back to fight just like the way they did. like a man, and then you either get that land back or not, if you do i am pretty sure that you will feel sorry for the people that will die during this war, but you will know that your land is now really yours cause your people died for it and there is enemy's blood on the flag. Now how can i cry for the people you will kill during that war? how? how can i go to some other country and ask them to confirm or recognize that my enemy killed my people. Of course he will, thats why i call him enemy, enemy kills, enemy has no mercy, enemy is enemy, my people will fight and you will kill, i cant see anything wrong with that, the baby you killed is my honor, that baby has gone to heaven and he/she fought for his/her country without even realizing that, the time that soldier took to kill that baby, gave my army some time, maybe one of my soldiers killed one of yours while your other guy was busy with killing a baby.

 

Your people died when they were trying to establish a new country, they sided with russians and french armies. If they were successful, now you would have a country that is 5-6 times bigger than today's Armenia

maybe 60-70 million population, but my folks made it and now i have the land and i am the winner of that game for now, the game is not finished yet, and it never does. If you wanna keep playing, cause im the winner and i want the game finish like that, but you dont want, we may play again, so u want one more maybe two more maybe countless plays, until you win. I respect that, as long as you knock on my door and ask me to play once more, one to one, i am always in to it. But dont bring audience(France, USA, This congress and that council and this mayor and that newspaper blah blah) audience have nothing to do with our game, do you think i will lose everything -i earned with my blood- on the table?

 

You know me, I know you, have you ever seen me losing something without shreding my blood?

I never did, and will never.

And i have never seen you losing something without shredding your blood, You are at least as brave as me, i know you are not a coward, so play the game like the way you did before, like the way your grand grand fathers did, did not they want a free country, no more ottoman sultans, they played it but lost it.then i respect the whole thing.

 

1.5 or 3 million Armenians who died during the war did not escape, the biggest evidence is their bones lying somewhere in eastern anatolia, and the bones of my people that killed by yours. That means they fought, when you are saying that your people was killed and it was a genocide you are lowering your nation. I believe even if they had to opportunity to escape i know that they would never, would you? Would any armenians escape from enemy? Would you encourage your mother, sister, grandfather, to fight or to beg for mercy? would armenians go and hide behind french soldiers when Turkish massacre troops come? or would they throw whatever they have to those killers -i call them soldiers- and fight and send some of them to the other world? I am sure they fought and they did not ask help from anybody?

 

You killed my people i killed yours, it was a war, genocides are for weak nations, weak nations do whatever the rulers say, weak nations do not fight but wait to be killed, and this is called genocide, Armenians are not weak, they fought but lost, they may win sometime in the future, as long as we play the game fair, one to one, no audience. no referee. No excuses for the last game, last game is finished and noone can change the score. I am sorry for your people and for my people, what a holy thing they fought for, but one loses one wins.

 

Nobody can show me a strong nation that talks about Genocide, Turks killed more than 25.000 australians in 1915, but they never talk about genocide in contrast they come to turkey every year and visit their martyriums, and be proud of their ancestors, cause they were so brave and went overseas to fight with Turks.They also killed 100.000 english soldiers in Gallipoli, have you ever heard english talking about Turkish Massacre?

Genocide thing is not for you, its for weak people, strong nations strong countries never ask for apologies, did english government ask for an apology from turks? did french ask any kind of apology for something in the past? greeks, serbs, bulgarians ask for apology?

 

If you want to ask something from Turkey, ask for land? try to get your land back? dont ask an apology from the enemy for killing your people, thats a big evidence of weakness, but you guys are not weak, that recognition and then apology and then land thing will not make your martyrs comfortable in the other world. Go direct for what you want, and its land, not recognition, or apology.