Comparing Palestinian and Armenian causes

Last Updated: Thursday, 13 October 2005, 09:56 GMT 10:56 UK E-mail this to a friend Printable version Armenia heirs win $17m Axa payout Armenia wants Turkey to admit the killings were "genocide" The descendants of Armenians who died in mass killings by Ottoman Turks have agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit against French insurance giant Axa.

Full article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4337462.stm

 

So, does anyone have a life insurance policy, dating that age?

 

 

Edited by Yiannis

Ok we heard a lot of opinions on this topic, so i have another question...more specific and more appropriate.

Compare the Palestinian struggle with the Armenian-Azeri war over Nagorno-Karabagh. Are they essentially the same struggle or not? What are their differences and similarities, and what do you think should be the outcome of both situations?

Kars was an Armenian kingdom until the Medieval times, before the Seljuk conquests. The city was founded by Armenians.

The city was founded by Karsak Bulgars as I explained briefly before. Read my post again. Armenian Kingdom wasnt an important political union. It was just the remaining Armenian population after the Roman rule.

How many of these gangs do you think there were?

Not so much. Generally the peasent villagers who unified with the Russian equipped gangs, terrorizing their own villages.

There were not even 10,000 Armenian men in Anatolia after 1915

It isnt a correct number. There were lots �of Armenians left there, especially in Tunceli and Cilicia. We still have lots of Armenians in Turkey, in Eastern Anatolia, Istanbul, Kastamonu, Kayseri etc.

Ottoman Empire disarmed almost all the Armenians

Russians rearmed them.

I might be wrong, but it sounds like youre justifying the deportation of women and children because of these small Armenian gangs. Muslim gangs attacked the U.S. on 9/11, so should we deport all Muslim women and children? If youre not justifying this, then what are you trying to prove by your statements? Please explain.  Im not here to argue, but to try to understand.

I couldnt understand how you related my last post with such a conclusion. I was talking about the Armenian population and actions of Eastern Anatolia, and against Ottoman authority.

These werent small Armenian gangs. These were Russian supported Armenian troops by the leadership of Tashnaks. I know we have discussed all these issues enoughly before.

Ottoman Empire was fighting in more than ten battlesides when the Armenian gangs became to terrorize Eastern anatolia. The sick man of Europe, busy with all imperialist powers trying to share it, also has to deal with one of its own subjects uniting with the enemy, massacring its civilians. Unable to stop the violence, 90.000 Ottoman soldiers die in the Eastern battlesideside because of freezing. During a war situation, the sick man tries to find a solution.

Noone can justify any actions against civilians, or any actions took against an inner conflicts, supported by the enemy, during the situation of war. But everyone can realize that the last chance of an empire of more than 600 years old, the sick man, to survive was the law of "tehcir" (exile).

Christians were slightly a majority

During an earlier, greater discussion about the same topic before, Alp Arslan have introduced us the original Ottoman documents, proving the only city with a dominant Armenian population was Bitlis. If I can find them, I'll try to post them again.

But the discussion is real nonsense. We are repeating ourselves again and again by regular time periods of peace. Christians were never a majority there. Ottoman Empire settled Kurds in Eastern anatolia to balance the Christian population long before the declining period. Armenians were expanded all over the Empire.

But the question still remains...how are the Palestinian and Armenian struggles different ideologically? Dont Palestinian gangs murder innocent Jews to make the world notice their peoples' struggle? Is this different from Armenian gangs doing the same to Turks? Explain.

Are you asking for 1915 or now?Two is much different.

 

Maybe the lowness of the Armenian population in the Ottoman statistics was because of the fact that the non-muslims usually showed their own numbers less for not paying much taxes. I read something about that...

That article was specifically made in order to answer claims made by turks and sites like tallarmeniantales...

You can't just group all the Muslims together (not all Muslims were Turks) and compare them with the number of Armenians. Comparing the number of Turks and Armenians would be much fairer, and Armenians were more numerous. You can also compare the number of christians and muslims. Christians were slightly a majority. All this is according to the ''Blue Book'' written by Bryce.

Don't you think that Abdul Hamid-era Ottoman authorities would reduce the number of Armenians, in order to make it look like Armenians don't deserve independance?

By the way, though I can read Ottoman script to some extent, I can only read printed writings. The document is handwritten...

You mean you can read the Ottoman banners on that picture I posted? The word in the middle is ''msawat''. The 2 other words  are not completely viewable. This picture is from Constantinople. There are similar pictures of celebrations from other cities too. There many other pictures in a CD I bought during an exhibition of Armenian historical postcards.

Edited by Artaxiad

The Turks were clearly a minority in Eastern Anatolia. The Armenians, compared to any other ethnic group, formed a majority in all the areas they claimed. Bryce's ''Blue Book'' shows the population of the ''Eastern Provinces'' in detail. Read this for more info on the population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Armenian_Population

The attempted assassination of Sultan Abdul Hamid took place after the massacre of around 200 000 Armenians. Funny that you mention the assassination attempt, but you don't mention the exact date - July 21, 1905.

Originally posted by Oguzoglu Even the city name "Kars" comes from the Velentur tribe of Bulgar Turks, who immigrated from modern Dagestan to Eastern anatolia. The oymak of "Karsak" (the Karsak clan of Velentur) have settled in the area about B.C. 130-127

Kars was an Armenian kingdom until the Medieval times, before the Seljuk conquests. The city was founded by Armenians. What you stated is irrelevant to the argument. There were plenty of Islamic states in and around Armenia before the Seljuk invasions, none of them were Turkish...they were Arabic kingdoms, left over from their empire. The Arabs were fully driven out of Armenia before the Seljuk conquests.

Originally posted by Oguzoglu Crosses were burried with the massacred Turkish villagers, to show them as Armenians.

If the Armenians could kill that many Turks and had that much power, trust me, there would be no Armenians being deported. This obviously wasnt the case.

How many of these gangs do you think there were? Youre stating massacre after massacre as if the Armenian gangs were more than a couple of thousand people. If we massacred entire cities like you claim, we would need a good 10,000 men to do it. There were not even 10,000 Armenian men in Anatolia after 1915, let alone men that fought. Most people were lucky if they were able to run away with their lives. And you forget the Ottoman Empire disarmed almost all the Armenians BEFORE WWI because they said they needed as much firepower as they could get. So the Armenians sacrificed their personal property for the good of the empire, and therefore, 99% of Armenians didnt even have guns.

Also, there was a heavy presence of the Ottoman Army in Eastern Anatolia, gaurding against the Russian front. So these gangs that you are referring to were very small in number, and technologically backward.


I might be wrong, but it sounds like youre justifying the deportation of women and children because of these small Armenian gangs. Muslim gangs attacked the U.S. on 9/11, so should we deport all Muslim women and children? If youre not justifying this, then what are you trying to prove by your statements? Please explain.  Im not here to argue, but to try to understand.

But the question still remains...how are the Palestinian and Armenian struggles different ideologically? Dont Palestinian gangs murder innocent Jews to make the world notice their peoples' struggle? Is this different from Armenian gangs doing the same to Turks? Explain.

Yeah, sorry for my english...

Originally posted by ArmenianSurvival But by that rationality, the Ottoman Empire moved many Turks into Eastern Anatolia to make themselves the majority. Turks arent from Eastern Anatolia so how did they get there? Ottomans moved them there. They wouldnt be able to take western Armenia if they didnt move all those people there, and then "relocate" all the Armenians of Anatolia. That is basically what they did, even the Turkish government doesnt deny that one. And now they say "Too bad, theres already Turks living there", well, Jews say the same thing about Palestinians, "Too bad, theres already Jews living there." But most Turks support Palestine, but denounce Armenians. The two struggles are almost identical, with the only difference being Armenians struggle has been going on longer. Correct me if i am wrong.

They were from Eastern Anatolia. When Seljuks conquered Eastern Anatolia, most Turkmens have settled in the region. Erzurum was land of the Akkoyunlu State was found in Eastern Anatolia. Artuklu State was also found there. The whole Bay�nd�r tribe of Oguz have settled in the region with their follower tribes. Chepni, Pechenek, Salur, Afshar and Ighdir tribes also have settled in the region from Sivas to Azerbaijan.

Even the city name "Kars" comes from the Velentur tribe of Bulgar Turks, who immigrated from modern Dagestan to Eastern anatolia. The oymak of "Karsak" (the Karsak clan of Velentur) have settled in the area about B.C. 130-127. My grandmas family are from Kars, belong to the Chepni clan, settled there even before the Seljuk conquest.

The Tashnak gangs have ruined Kars. They burned the villages where they lived with Turks before. To prove their ethnic dominiance in the region, they massacred the local population which they couldnt exile in that conditions. The Russian army exiled 200 Turks who were resisting against the Tashnaks. Since Enver Pasha couldnt help the city after the disaster of Sarikamish, the Turkish population of Kars was even below the past century's.

The British didnt want the Turkish civil government of Kars, uniting the region from Batum to Nahcevan, to stay alive. so they ordered the Armenians east of Arpachay to setle in Kars, so that they would occupy the dominant population. If we are to look at the original Ottoman governmental documents, we'll see that the Armenian population was never a majority in the Eastern provinces, except Bitlis.

So practically, Armenians gangs supported by Russian and British were terrorizing the region, and massacring the local population. The massive graves around Kars are full of babies. Tashnaks have ruined their own churches to use the ignorant romanticizm of Western society, to show Muslims were massacring Christians. Crosses were burried with the massacred Turkish villagers, to show them as Armenians. A total western conspiracy to push Ottoman forces on civilian Armenians, and to apply the treaty �of Sevres, with their puppet colonies of Armenia and Kurdistan.

If that's what you have learned in Turkey (that Armenians were loyal during Young Turk rule), then why are Turks in general still accusing the Armenians, and saying that they wanted to create thier own state after 1908? Just look at how Armenians were celebrating the Constitution. On the flag, it's written Freedom, Equalty, Justice. If only they had known what was coming to them.

Armenians of Istanbul were always loyal to the government. Maybe because they were the government with Rums. Anatolian population was starving and the high elite class Armenians, Turks, Rums were causing these for their own benefits.

The regular Armenian society of Anatolia have been loyal, useful, and adventageous within the Ottoman society until the western imperialists and Russians have discovered them. Armenian terrorism was becoming organized by Russian support after the 1880s. The first rebellion was in 1890 in Erzurum. It was followed by several civil rebellions in several Anatolian cities. The Ottoman bank was invaded and a suicast was committed against Abdulhamid Khan. Even in a single city, Mus, there were about 22.000 Turks massacred in the rebellions. that number have been multiplied with the following rebellions all over Anatolia, and finally Adana.

Millet-i Sad�ka suddenly became Millet-i Ihanet. If anyone can read Otoman script, have a look at this link.