Armenian killings - mutual massacres or genocide?

The Armenian state did not exist at that time, but it was about to be created. In the early days of the conflict Armenians aided the Russians and sabotaged retreating Turkish troops. Turkish troops initiated massacres and deporations against the Armenians.

Yes, this was the turning point of the war. If the Revolution had not started in Russia, Turkey would probably have lost this war.  As a result of the successful offensive of the Russo-Armenian forces in Feb 1918 most of East Anatolia was under Armenian control.

On p.305 of  http://www.armenica.org/cgi-bin/history/en/getHistory.cgi?1= 999=305=40==1=3=A we read:

I do not know but it is often cited in wikipedia as a source for the military conflicts between Russia and the Ottomans. I included it as evidence that the Turks were on the loosing side of the war before the turning point in 1918.

The second link was a source for the number of Russian participating in the War, and it was in response to your statement that Armenians could not have achieved big massacres against the Turks due to the their numerical inferiority. But they had their Russian allies on their side, whose total forces during the Great War numbered up to 12 million.

You can access it here:

http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=10040&am p;PN=1&TPN=1

Throughout the decade of strife (1912-1922) Van has lost 62%, Bitlis 42%, Erzurum 31%, Diyarbakir 26% of their Muslim populations as a direct result of the actions of the Russians and and their (East) Armenian collaborators. As a result around 600,000 muslims (Halacoglu) have lost their lives. But apparently this is not enough to qualify it as a genocide.

I may go a bit off topic but I just wanted to clarify something which is unclear to me.

According to Churchil's words 150 thousand Armenians (Eastern Armenians according to you) joined the Ottoman Army and 115 thousand of them have died in action on the frontline. Does this number count towards the 1.5 million figure of Armenian casualties? Are the Armenian soldiers in the ranks of the invading Russian Army victims of Genocide?

My point was that after 1917 most of Eastern Anatolia was under Armenian millitary control, I do not see how this is far fetched.

McCarthy quotes similar figures for the Muslim casualties. I have posted references before, you can also find them in the other thread.  Since your criteria on the reliability of historians seems to be the number of Armenian victims they quote, you have no choice but to accept McCarthy as reliable since he quotes "more than a million Armenian dead" :-)

The figure of half a million is the total estimate and it is not restricted only to the period after 1918. Of course as the Russians left Armenians were severely weakened, but with the Russian presence before 1918 the ability of Russians and Armenians to cause Muslims casualties of that scale should not be underestimated.

This Armenian source http://www.armenianhistory.info/thefirst.htm states that a "100 thousand Turkish army crossed the pre-war Russian frontier" Assuming that this is not an exaggeration, the ratio of 2:5  in favor of the Turks, but it is not as desperate as you claim.  

Besides Turks were fighting a war in the West against the Greeks, in which until August 1922 they seemed to be on the loosing end.

Is that really so? The modern border was not reached until 1920. Kars was taken on October 30 1920.

I could ask those same question but with the roles exchnaged. Why would the Ottoman Army which suffered defeat after defeat in the hands of the Russian bother to deport and massacre Armenians prior to 1917? If you can answer this question you will have answered your own too.

If there was a plan by Turks to "kill all Armenians" you would expect many more Armenian dead too. In any case I do not see how you disprove McCarthy's and Halacoglu's figures with such a statement?

And the only persons refuting this claim are of Armenian origin. I have never seen anybody else question McCarthy's credibility and integrity.

It is not that simply. McCarthy's work has been scrutinized by peer-reviewers and here is what they have to say on the subject:

Dennis Hupchick, Wikes University in American Historical Review

Kemal Karpat, University of Wisconsin - Madison, International Migration Review

Robert Olson, review

TURKISH, FOREIGN ACADEMICS DEBATE WWI ARMENIAN MASSACRES

Middle East Times, Egypt
March 15 2006

ISTANBUL -- Some 70 Turkish and foreign academics gathered in
Istanbul on Wednesday for a three-day conference to discuss whether
the controversial massacres of Armenians during World War I amounted
to genocide or not.

In a rare move, the gathering, organized by the Istanbul state
university, offered the floor to academics of all convictions even
though it was largely dominated by historians and officials who defend
Turkey's official position on the 1915-17 killings.

Turkey categorically denies that Armenian subjects under its
predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, were victims of a genocide, but
acknowledges that at least 300,000 Armenians and as many Turks died
in civil strife during the last years of the empire.

Armenians claim that up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered
in orchestrated killings.

In the first session of the conference, Yair Auron, an Israeli
researcher of Jewish archives from Ottoman times, openly used the term
"genocide" and appealed on Turks to question their past.

"Every civil society has to deal with its past, including the black
pages of this past," Auron said.

Books detailing the Armenian claims were also available at the entrance
to the conference hall in a rare move.

Turkey has only recently begun to openly discuss the taboo subject
of the Armenian massacres, which many countries have recognized
as genocide.

In September last year a private Istanbul university hosted a landmark
conference organized by intellectuals disputing Ankara's official
line on the mass killings, despite a court order to block it.

If you are so keen on not mixing them, you should use the term Genocide of WESTERN Armenians. You cannot aks that Turkish crimes be considered against all Armenians, and at the same time try to dissolve the collective responsibility of Armenians as a whole for their crimes by creating artificial distinctions.