Originally posted by Evildoer

My grandfather's gradfather himself was beheaded by the Armenians while our city was in the borders of the Russian Empire.

But it is OK.The lifes of Muslim Turks are never worth mentioning.Even their loses are much more than armenians...Because they are simply Muslim Turks.who cares?

we still couldnt beat this mentality.Without doubt killing a christian is a murder but killing a muslim can be justified(rememer what happened to Turkish diplomats and in the wake)?that was same almost 90 years ago.And unfortunately i see that it is still today.

.Books,Movies,Monuments...etc.it is not history.Turkey itself asked the Armenians for putting their issue on the agenda of law court,which is responsible for that.But armenians never accepted this offer.why should they?dThe play the christian card so well.Their propaganda always find support since they are against Turkey.

the word genocide is a horrible crime.You can never blame anyone so easily while there is no any proof.while there is  not any racist policy.if you insist,this shows you have racist feelings towards that communityyou accuse with.

i end my post with the message of a Nobel peace prize winner,isreali stateman:

Peres: Armenian allegations are meaningless

Peres said:"We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. It is a tragedy what the Armenians went through but not a genocide."

In an exclusive interview to the Anatolia news agency, Peres said Israel should not determine a historical or philosophical position on the Armenian issue but added: "If we have to determine a position, it should be done with great care not to distort the historical realities."

Edited by TheDiplomat

Originally posted by TheDiplomat My grandfather's gradfather himself was beheaded by the Armenians while our city was in the borders of the Russian Empire. But it is OK.The lifes of Muslim Turks are never worth mentioning.Even their loses are much more than armenians...Because they are simply Muslim Turks.who cares? we still couldnt beat this mentality.Without doubt killing a christian is a murder but killing a muslim can be justified(rememer what happened to Turkish diplomats and in the wake)?that was same almost 90 years ago.And unfortunately i see that it is still today. .Books,Movies,Monuments...etc.it is not history.Turkey itself asked the Armenians for putting their issue on the agenda of law court,which is responsible for that.But armenians never accepted this offer.why should they?dThe play the christian card so well.Their propaganda always find support since they are against Turkey. the word genocide is a horrible crime.You can never blame anyone so easily while there is no any proof.while there is  not any racist policy.if you insist,this shows you have racist feelings towards that communityyou accuse with.

I never said the lives of Turks and Armenians had different values. Human life is human life. I never said that it was right for the Armenian gangs to kill innocent Turks. You know my opinion on that, i condemn it. But the difference here my friend, is that the tragedy fallen upon your people was a result of independent groups committing atrocious acts, while the tragedy that fell upon the Armenians was that of Government Policy.

The genocide doesnt have any proof? Documented accounts and pictures from Armenians and non-Armenians alike and the "disappearing act" of 1/4 of an entire ethnicity is not proof enough? Just remember who writes history: the victor. We are rewriting history with documented and proven facts, not just personal input.

Originally posted by TheDiplomat Your question itself is an answer to questions of if there was racism or not.As you put,the government didnt had any racist policy that even thought of supplying its subjects.i have read memories of talat and cemal pashas,that oth express how sad they are because of the events. was relocation necessary or not?if we look eastern anatolia was under the invasion of the Tsar Russia.and the armenian revolutionary oorganizations were putting the ottoman army between two-fires.You decide...

Talaat Pasha expressing his sadness toward the Armenian people...the same Talaat Pasha that exclaimed "Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention." And his response to a German Ambassador who persistently brought up the Armenian question, "What on earth do you want? The question is settled. There are no more Armenians." Seems to me the only thing Talat was sad about was that he didnt exterminate the whole nation.

Armenians mark April 24, 1915 as the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, when 300 Armenian intellectuals such as doctors, writers, etc. were hung on the streets of Constantinople. Every Turkish source i have heard of says they were "arrested", not killed.


They arrested this guy, alright. They didnt cuff his hands though, they cuffed his neck. Woops, better luck next time. I dont think i should post more pictures, especially since some of them have Ottoman Soldiers proudly posing next to their beheaded victims.

Cemal, on the other hand, did exclaim his sadness, "I am ashamed of my nation" and "800,000 Armenian deportees were actually killed...by holding the guilty accountable the government is intent on cleansing the bloody past. "

You talk about all the stereotypical ways in which certain people view Turks, and i understand. That is an unfortunate view the western world has of Muslims in general, and i know it doesnt hold true because ive done my homework. There is also stereotypes about the Armenians during the Genocide. They called them rebels when they were repelling the same Ottoman troops that had massacred their own countrymen in Western Turkey.

Originally posted by Tobodai Originally posted by ihsan Those who accuse the Ottoman administration of sending the Armenians to the deserts and not taking care of them forget the fact that the Ottoman Empire couldn't even supply it's own army and most Armenian casualties on the move were from plagues, the Ottoman administration couldn not send in enough medical stuff. Same goes for the Turks. There were also officers and soldiers who intentionally killed Armenians but they were rather low in number and they were immediately punished by the upper authorities. There were also bands of Kurds attacking Armenians on the way. Indeed, most of the Armenians killed (claimed to be killed by the Turks) were murdered by Kurdish gangs/bands/groups.   While this may be tru and I dont like to get involved in this discussion much I just have to bring up the point... If they couldnt supply even their on army then they never should have even bothered to waste the resources on Armenian "relocation"

 

You are quite right Tobodai...Ottoman Army,especially the ones fighting in desert area,lacked supplies...They didnt have water or food for months...If you had watched Lawrence of Arabia, you can see the army's terrible conditions due to lack of supplies. They didnt even have enough wagons to send supplies to any provinces as Ottoman wagons carrying supplies were sabotaged by Armenians and Arabs rebelling about Ottomans

We have a saying that goes "one should not try to justify the unjustifiable", perhaps you have it as well since we share many proverbs. I suggest you follow it.

 

When it comes to "Armenians' killings were sudden, therefore it cannot be called a gecocide because genocides are premeditated" I cannot follow your logic. Where did you find that?

The UN defines it as:

Genocide Convention 1948

The definitional article included in the 1948 convention stipulates:

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

 

Now, if a state organization forces women, old people and children to walk from Armenia to Syria without enabling them with provisions or protection, and thus most of them die en-route, then I call this premeditated genocide because this state authority has to know that these people will die. You can call it whatever you like, I call it Genocide. (unless these authorities plea "innocent on terms of stupidity")

 

 

i get the impression you wanna point out sentence C.There is something you forget,Yiannis.THERE WAS ALSO THE RETURN OF RELOCATED ONES

 i am now gonna add 6 documents which will satisfy your concern on the sentence C

Edited by TheDiplomat

Originally posted by Yiannis (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

This is what I had posted in the previous AE when the topic had come up (yet again). Apart from all historical subtlety and politics, this document here is fact, and the other fact is that Turkey also signed this article which means Turkey agrees with this document and has agreed to all its articles and items. No matter how we define 'genocide', internationally it is defined by one (or all) of these items and the deportation/relocation of the Armenian population caused (voluntarily or involuntarily) at least one of these final results. Furthermore, I think it can be argued for the 3rd item that since the Ottoman government at the time would have foreseen the consequences of relocating a population in the conditions of bad weather, scarce supplies and little protection would be disastrous (I am not arguing if it was the last resort or if their winning the war depended on that or not). In this case foreseeing the consequences and still preceeding with the act would probably fall under the 'deliberate' category. If it is to be counter-argued as no, they did not foresee the said consequences, then it means the Ottoman government at the time was entirely unqualified for and incompetent in the job of governing. Either way, it is a failing if it is a government (a supposedly controlled and organised body) that is in question.

For those who might comment on my post as nonsene or one-sided I just want to say that I am not making any value judgements here, I am merely looking at something factual and going by the system of deduction.




Edited by Colchis

Originally posted by Colchis  Turkey also signed this article which means Turkey agrees with this document and has agreed to all its articles and items.

well,you made a good point there.

Actually niether Yiannis,nor Me,nor armenian,and nor you can name issues here.

Because being a historian is not enough.The perspective of law is a ''has to be''.

Originally posted by Colchis [QUOTE=TheDiplomat]  -however I don't know if Russia in 1948 signed the document or not. Speaking of which, the Ottoman government would of course know about the relocation of Caucasians (not all of them Muslims by the way, although a majority were) as the Ottoman government was the other party in the agreement as the side who received them.

i am not mentioning about the migration of caucasus muslims in 1860s..i am mentioning about the 1900s.

please note down that there was the return of relocated  peoplein this issue whic makes ''sense''.

ARMENIAN POPULATION IN TURKEY, 1914

ARMENIAN POPULATION IN TURKEY, 1926

Diplomat, cmon man, out of 1.8 million Armenians in Turkey according to the map, a whole 20,000 Armenians were allowed to return? What happened to the sudden decrease in Armenian population? Nearly 4.5 Armenians in the world suddenly drop to 2.9 million. I guess they relocated them to heaven.

Its bad enough Ottoman Turkey conquered Armenia for no reason whatsoever, then they expel Armenians from the lands they have been living on for over 3,000 years, destroy a majority of the Armenian buildings, so there is no trace that we were hardly even there.

Originally posted by ArmenianSurvival ARMENIAN POPULATION IN TURKEY, 1914 ARMENIAN POPULATION IN TURKEY, 1926 Diplomat, cmon man, out of 1.8 million Armenians in Turkey according to the map, a whole 20,000 Armenians were allowed to return? What happened to the sudden decrease in Armenian population? Nearly 4.5 Armenians in the world suddenly drop to 2.9 million. I guess they relocated them to heaven. Its bad enough Ottoman Turkey conquered Armenia for no reason whatsoever, then they expel Armenians from the lands they have been living on for over 3,000 years, destroy a majority of the Armenian buildings, so there is no trace that we were hardly even there. 200 Armenian churches and monasteries on the territory of Turkey were burned and some 2150 ruined in the beginning of XX century. According to UNESCO information for 1974, 464 of 913 Armenian buildings were wiped off the earth, 252 - ruined, 197 need general repair. As for Azerbaijan, 21 Armenian buildings, among which churches, monasteries, chapels, Armenian cemeteries were destroyed and burned since 1998. It was not just a Genocide of people, it was also a Cultural Genocide. Right after all these catastrophes, the Republic of Turkiye was founded on these same lands that Armenians and their culture were expelled from. Many people do not know that right before the 1919-1923 Turkish War of Independence, that in 1918 the Ottoman Army was advancing toward Eastern Armenia, controlled by Russia at the time (Russian troops left because of the Russian Revolution). Ottoman troops were about to take the last piece of Armenia, and realize their dream of a Pan-Turkic Empire (An empire of Turks ranging from Istanbul to the ends of Kazakhstan, one of the reasons Talat Pasha ordered the Armenian Genocide to be carried out, as Armenia is the only entity in the way). They were met with heavy resistance from Armenian citizens, Men Women and even children, on the present-day border of Armenia and Turkey. The Armenians were victorious, and a huge monument has been built on the site of the battle. It was the Battle of Sardarapat. If the battle was lost, Armenia would be just a memory right now. Turkey likes to switch it around and say "Armenians were attacking us in 1919 during the War of Independence"...i laugh at this claim. They pushed Armenians Eastward and call it an attack when Armenians resist and fight back? I also laugh at how they can possibly call Armenian defense during the Genocide a 'revolt'.

 

And if you can give some reliable sources...You will have right to talk..Talk with experts' maps and analysis, not with maps from internet...

It is true that thousands of Turkish villagers died during that time due to Armenian terrorism in Eastern Anatolia...Among with the pashas whom Armenians claim to give the orders of genocide...It is real that some of the Armenians who didnt join the rebellion, were happy in Syria..How I know that;I talked with an Armenian gold dealer in Aleppo about the issue...