TURKISH GROUPS MANIPULATING JEWS, ETC.

[khodja]

Ali,

 

The Armenians were not "lambs" even to those among the Armenians they did not agree with. Some great Armenian patriots were falsely accused by other Armenian factions of being Benedict Arnolds. Feeding multitudes of the poor, Armenian, Turk and Kurd alike at no cost to them and paying the oppressive taxes of thousands of Armenians is disregarded. As I have said before, there can be no peace between our peoples until there is TOTAL truth on both sides. The programing must be reversed and the propaganda must cease.

[aurguplu]

hagarag,

 

i am not quite sure that the total truth will ever be revealed, but enough of it to arrive at a much more accurate and balanced picture, yes, that will happen, and my gut feeling says that we are going to witness that sooner than we dared think. it may wel happen in this decade.

 

turkey has so far gone quite some way in addressing the grievances of her disaffected kurdish minority (of course there is much more she has to to), the only really serious obstacle remaining, in my mind, is cyprus, and secondarily the aegean. now since cyprus is a security issue, where the soldiers have more say than freely elected politicans, i really do not know when this will be solved. but i am sure some general will one day look atthe map and see all the borders to the west of turkey removed, globalisation rampant, click on the internet and communicate with people on the otherside of the globe, and see the ridiculousness of a tiny island like cyprus divided in two. that will happen one day, but when, i don't know.

 

cheers,

[ThornyRose]

Khodja, I consider that an insult to the people you say Turks are trying to make friends with. People (Jewish, Hispanic, etc., individuals – not groups) can think for themselves and in fact come to the same conclusions as some of us if you are able to present your case without flushing out the Turks. In a more distant future, we hope (its not being sooner is not what we hope for but what we all must succumb to), that small ratio can become larger.

[ThornyRose]

Why, say, Abdulhamid was against the formation of a Jewish state, fully independent or otherwise, when the Europeans (more like the British, I think) came up with the idea? Look at today for a hint. Regardless of the abuses of the Israeli state, Arab states cannot stand the existence. For the Ottoman viziers/advisors, a Jewish state there would mean an unsuccessful organ implant that was repelled by the body. The Jews of Konya were those who had been deported from Palestine because of unrest over there with the Arabs, long, long ago. Except for isolated cases such as these, Jews were allowed to go where they liked.
Your asking about such is as irrelevant as a question I would raise regarding the legitimacy of European civilization, democracy, whatever – you name it! – if I were to remind you that the Europeans who asked the Ottomans to set up a multi-national parliament actually treated their non-like subjects in their colonies no better, if not worse.

[Twilight Bark]

Dear Ali,

I know that you have accomplished a lot in the way of freeing yourself from most of the silly state indoctrination. And I assure you that I have a reasonably objective view of Armenians and Turks. So I know that not every Armenian was a "lamb". But an incredibly high percentage of them were exactly that. Clueless peasants who couldn't figure out what hit them until it was too late. Saying "majority of Armenians were not rebels" is quite misleading, although it may not have been intended to be consciously. Even in full mobilization of a community, the "majority" (i.e. greater than 50%) of the members would not be "rebels" or "soldiers". So acknowledging that "yeah, the majority of them were not rebels" is an information-free statement. The point is, the number of Ottoman Armenians who took up arms (or even were theoretically likely to) were absolutely tiny. Of the able-bodied Armenian men, probably not more than a few percent were involved in any activity that could be construed as "hostile". And where rebellion and resistance occurred, it was usually the result of too much oppression. Any other ethnic group would have rebelled in full force long before.

Now "objectivity" does not demand that we ignore the facts so we look reasonable to less-informed outsiders. It was an unreasonable time, and the facts and behaviors of that time look absurd today. But that is how it was.

Not all Armenians were lambs waiting to be slaugtered. But a vast, vast majority of them were exactly that. Let's get that straight and out in the open. It would be good education for Armenian chauvinists who like to fantasize that Armenians mounted a credible resistance like any "reasonable" group would. I am not necessarily saying that mounting a resistance would do any good, but they didn't in the vast majority of cases.

Cheers and regards,
TB

[Twilight Bark]

So what would be the percentage of Armenians who were wolves to Armenians and/or Turks alike? Please give an estimate. Any estimate, reflecting your intuition on the matter.

[khodja]

TB,

 

Inuition is NOT appropriate in this regard. I will return to my sources and try to estimate a percentage. I surmise that it will be approximately 2-3% or Ottoman Armenians who were acting like wolves.

[Boghos]

Indeed. Armenian so-called revolutionaries have been portrayed very effectively by the likes of Hagop Baronian and Yervant Odian. if you haven´t read Comrade Panchoonie, I do recommend you try to get hold of it. Even observers of the scene that did not have the same ironical flair of the above mentioned writers shared their views. You may try Bank Ottoman, the autobiography of Armen Garo, member of the Ottoman Parliament and ambassador of the Republic of Armenia to the United States, a bona fide member of the ARF.

Armenian revolutionaries not only were extremely naive, but also probably caused more harm than anything else to their own people.

As to local revolts, there should be no surprise as you quite properly point out. They actually are not a result of 20th century oppression, but rather partly arise from the mid-19th century internal fissures derivinf from Ottoman decline and an ever present suspicion and envy of Armenians.

Curiously, there is a major Armenian institution that has escaped scrutiny over the centuries: the Church. But that´s a wholly different subject.

[khodja]

Boghos,

 

Thank you for your posting.

 

I will respond first to the last statement you made. History has shown us that "Holy Men" ofter do very unholy things. My psychic abilities may be fooling me, but I have these peculiar dreams that try to tell me that the Karekin I death was somehow induced.

I have known many priests who have used their positions to strip their relatves of their inheritances. Catholic orphanages are known to have been used to coceal the births of illegitimate children born to the "women of the church." Luckily, Armenian parish priests are allowed to marry or we would have the same problems the Catholics have with the molestations of altar boys and girls. But, as you say, in other areas there has been little scrutiny of the actions of the Armenian clergy.

As for the other issue, we Armenians must stop talking out of two sides of our mouths, glorifying the revolutionaries, yet discounting their part in the terror that befell us. Eventually an Armenian nation would have formed, irregardless. We were more advaced than the Kurds and had a better geo-political deck dealt to us. The revolutionaries timing was very poor. They were very naive.

[Twilight Bark]

The "revolutionaries" simply reacted to the endless oppression, at a time when the empire was becoming both weaker and more brutal simultaneously. It is against human nature to have a total of zero people saying "I am not taking this anymore!" out of a population of 2.1 million Armenians. Were these hotheads naive? Yes. Did they underestimate the depth of apathy and passivism (probably justified, but we will never really know) among Armenians? Absolutely. Could we expect that no one among an oppressed people would act the way they did, however foolish it may have been? Absolutely not. Now, that would be naive. The few Armenians who couldn't take it anymore were used as a (very) thin cover for a premeditated slaughter whose cause had nothing to do with any threat that the "revolutionaries" may have posed.

[aurguplu]

dear twilight bark, hagarag, boghos,

 

i thought i had stated earlier that 1) the action of garabed doesn't justify the murder of varjabed, and that 2) the secret clique within the young turk organisation had the idea of getting rid of the armenians altogether, so if there weren't a cause, they were probably going to create one.

 

now some literature on the subject, not all written or sponsored by turks or pro-turks says that the armenian revolutionaries knew in advance that the young turks wanted to get rid of the armenians (it probably didn't take prophetic skill to realise that at the time) and attempted to use it in their fight for independence. their blueprint for this was what had transpired in the balkans, especially greece: the greeks had started to stage revolts (helped by the europeans) and massacred muslims, the turks massacred them in retaliation, and european public opinion, which was ignorant of the muslim massacres, was infuriated at the sight of poor greeks massacred by the barbarian turks. this gave the western states the public support they needed to come up with a moral cause to wage war against the ottoman empire, the ultimate aim of which was to "throw the turks bag and baggage out of europe (gladstone)" and get hold of the oil-rich arab provinces and the holy land. the europeans did genuinely care about the greeks to a certain extent by dint of classical antiquity, but that was not the main source of motivation. it was material gain. nevertheless, it did give the greeks enough support to freethemselves of turkish yoke, and gave a precedent to all other christian subjects of the empire.

 

russia, on the other hand, wanted 1) to get to the mediterranean to have access to the warmer seas because the frozen north sea and the distant pacific shore didn't give her the access to the international trade routes that she needed, 2) to get further south to the oil region, and 3) to curb imminent western (especially german) encroachment in the middle east. for this it had to be able to enter ottoman territory. the panslavism movement in the balkans, and the further emancipation of the other orthodox christian minorities and russia's self-imposed position as their protector, must be seen inthis light. in this way, the ottoman empire was set afire both in the west and the east. this gave the balkan slavs the opportunity to get rid of the ottoman yoke.

 

the process of the dismantling of the ottoman empire was well underway when armenian revolutionary activity had started. the armenian revolutionaries thought, quite logically in fact, that if they had succeeded in provoking turks to retaliatory measures by instigating armenian rebellions, the west would step in to stop the bloodshed and they would get their freedom just as the greeks and balkan slavs did. they rebelled, and attcaked the empire from behind at its weakest hour, and the "retaliation" they got in return was far more severe than what all other christian subjects who had previously rebelled got because 1) it was wartime, and the ottomans were fully aware that they were on their death throes, and 2) by then, pretty much the whole of the empire save anatolia was gone: if they lost that too, not only the empire, but the nation with it, would go extinct. so they resorted to the ultimate atrocity of getting rid of the armenians altogether. and the west just watched by.

 

the process was aided by the pan-turkic ideals of the young turks, but one must ask the question how much it would differ if they weren't pan-turkic: everyone realised that not only the empire, but the very existence of the turkish nation was at stake (with the non-turkish provinces gone, and all balkan muslims heading for anatolia, it was pretty obvious that the ottoman identity as such was a thing of the past). i doubt a non-panturkist government would have handled the issue all that differently, for pan- dreams aside, it was a visible fact that the empire was collapsing along first religious, and then ethnic lines. so even if the young turks did have pan-turkist dreams, one should probably set not that much store to them: pan or not, it was clear that the new state to emerge out of the ashes of the ottoman empire was going to have to be ethnically homogenous to be able to survive as a viable entity.

 

one crucial aspect of the issue i have not dealt with here is german complicity in the genocide. we all know it was there, and all evidence indicates that the germans were involved in the planning and execution stages, some german officers even took part in the actual bloodshed. perhaps another member of theforum can shed some more light on this issue.

 

we have to examine the issue in cold blood if we are going to understand the whys and hows of it, for the planners had done so.

 

cheers,

[Twilight Bark]