Lecture by Dr. Hilmar Kaiser

[DominO123]

The value of putting things in the "same bag" depends on whether the generalization is more useful than a fragmented view of the sub-classes. I cannot see why one kind of genocide is worse than the other.

I compleatly agree here.

[Twilight Bark]

... comparing this little racism, with the obvious form of racism that is responsable of the denial, I have to conclude the one responsable of the denial is more disgusting.

 

How disgusting one or another form of racism should be measured by its consequences. In that respect, can one really argue that "pure racism" (as you would call it) has scored more cruelty than the "lesser racism" (which it is really not)? The only reason you find the German racism more repugnant is because you still cannot free your mind from the images, empty values, and trivialities that are part and parcel of the simple-minded part of "western" mainstream.

 

I do still believe that Armenians were destroyed because of econimical and terrirotial reasons. It happened like this, finding other big notions would be overestimating the Ittihadists(this was what I was doing before). Armenians were just the problem for their conception of a newer Ottoman empire, the nationalisation of economy being one of the main ellements, and the construction of a Turkish nationhood. As a result, they were destroyed.

But that is a very trivial way of looking at it. Why weren't Armenians regarded as part of the new nation? Because Armenians' culture was regarded as incompatible with the Young Turks' vision of the new synthetic Turkish identity. And Armenian culture was regarded as inherently inferior, as indoctrinated by centuries of muslim-ottoman arrogance that survives in modern Turkish nationalism to this day. Armenians, with identical wealth, and identical geographical location, would not be harmed if they constituted a part of the muslim hierarchy. Pure and simple.

Edited June 30, 2004 by Twilight Bark

[DominO123]

TB, again, I am not talking about the act of genocide.

 

In the mind of the typical Turk, the Turks could not have commited the genocide, because as a Turk they can not commit such act, as well as Armenians as Armenians are regarded as eternel guilty people. This kind of proud Turk mentality was brought by the Kemalists, this distinction of Turks vs other Muslims existed only partialy with the Kemalists.

 

German racism is based on race classification, Germans considered others as inferiors. Turks were not considering Armenians as inferiors, you are talking about Armenian culture, but again I have difficulties with this term. For the Germans, they had to maintain racial purity, while the Turks not only did not have such concepts, but even considered Armenians as superiors in many domains, they have tried to use Armenian genes in order to acquire some traits. They did the same before that with Circassian women that were bought.

 

When someone talk about racism, this is how I define this word. For the Turks those concepts of "race" and race purity were alien, it was brought later only with the Turkish nationalism. The denial of the Armenian genocide is the product of this nationalism, and could be considered as racism in the proper sense of the term.

 

I don't think we can call any act of genocide more disgusting one from the other, because disgust is a sentiment and is relative from people to people.

 

So from my perspective, since German racism was responsable of war crimes and genocides, and in the case of the Turks it wasn't from my opinion the reason of the genocide, the German racism was more disgusting, because the consequences were genocide, while the consequences of Turkish racism was not the genocide(again from my opinion), the reasons behind the genocide had more to do with other things.

[Twilight Bark]

Dear Domino,

I think we are talking past each other. I'll leave it to the capable reader to get it.

[DominO123]

Dear Domino,

I think we are talking past each other. I'll leave it to the capable reader to get it.

Obviously we are not talking about the same thing, are we?

[Twilight Bark]

Obviously we are not talking about the same thing, are we?

To put it kindly, we are talking at different levels, and with different visions. In other words, we are talking about the same thing in different languages that are not one-to-one mappable by a simple dictionary. Now that must clarify things.

[nairi]

Armenians, with identical wealth, and identical geographical location, would not be harmed if they constituted a part of the muslim hierarchy. Pure and simple.

Do you mean Sunni Muslim? It's also something that Kaiser emphasized in his lecture.

 

Thanks for the rest of the comments.

[Twilight Bark]

Do you mean Sunni Muslim? It's also something that Kaiser emphasized in his lecture.

I shouldn't start down the road of pontificating in detail about what would or would not happen for all possible scenarios. But judging from the somewhat harrassed but physically intact Alevi population of Turkey, one could confidently say that any "acceptable" muslim sect would have escaped genocide (unless they didn't go along with the new "program"), and would have been processed by the assimilation machine set up by the republic, and made into nationalist "Turks".

 

Thanks for the rest of the comments.

Glad you found them of value.