Armenian killings - mutual massacres or genocide?

After the constitutional revolution of 1908 Christians had to serve in the Ottoman army.

The Ottoman Armenian men who might have been able to defend their families and towns were killed when they where forced into arduous work in labour camps.

The uprising of Van was similar to the Warsaw ghetto uprising. It was an act of self defense against those who wanted to eliminate them once and for all.

http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1915/bryce/

The Vilayet of Van had a higher percentage of Armenians in its population than any other province of the Ottoman Empire ; it was also the border province of the north-eastern frontier, towards Russian and Persian territory, and as such was the earliest to be exposed to invasion after the breakdown of the Turkish offensive against the Caucasus in the winter of 1914-1915.

The documents contained in this section give a detailed and perfectly self-consistent account, from five independent sources, of those events at Van which led to the first open breach between the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and the Turks, and which gave the Government a pretext for extending the scheme of deportation already operative in Cilicia to the whole Armenian population under its jurisdiction.

The evidence makes it clear that there was no unprovoked insurrection of the Armenians at Van, as the Ottoman Government asserts in its official apologia. The Armenians only took up arms in self-defence, and the entire responsibility for the outbreak rests with Djevdet Bey, the local governor-whether he was acting on his own initiative or was simply carrying out instructions from Constantinople.

This is how Turkey looked like in 1920 according to the Sevres Treaty:

Russian attacks on Turkey and the Armenian collaboration are well documented, they started much earlier than the alleged genocide:

What saved Turks from the catastrophe of Sevres, was the inconsistent policy of the Russians, and their witdhrawal as a result of the Bolsevik revolution.

Dashnak, an armenian political party formed in Georgia in 1890 much before the alleged genocide took place, had as an aim to "liberate" Armenia from the ottoman empire. Their terror activities against the local muslims and collaboration with the Russians are undeniable facts, which the armenian side often plays down. Images from the era:

Armenians collaborating with Russians during the occupation of Van:

Armenian rebells:

Armenian rebells during the Van rebellion:

There are very gruesome pictures of mutilated and killed turks, which I will not post here.

In any case I do not deny any of the massacres against the armenians, they undoubtedly occured, many innocent people were killed. What I cannot tolerate is the one sided picture armenians like to paint, and deny the killings and massacres against the local muslim population.

Ottoman archives are full of references describing massacres against the muslims of eastern anatolia, these are undeniable facts, and with time they will be known to the west as well.

What annoys me most is the arrogance of some people who while accusing turks of denialsim, are themselves in complete denial of the turkish victims.

Yes Turks and Kurds massacred and killed armenians in cold blood, I am not denying it.

You are the ones denying your own crimes.

The armenian massacres against the Turks is an undeniable fact, there are hundreds of witnesses of these events that are ready to testify, people who have lost relatives as a result of the armenian war of liberation, but their testimonies are conveniently ignored or bipassed, and we will make absolutely sure that their voice is heard as well! 

I personally know people who grandaparents have been murdered by ARMENIAN gangs during the period while their husbands who were supposed to protect them were on the frontline fighting the Russians.  

If there are killings it will not be called a genocide-you have to prove it was systematic and on government order-which is quite impossible, since there are no documents on it

Your words are basically what every Armenian says in return like every Turk saying the same, so this topic is also going nowhere.

Turkish deaths in mere thousands???Turkish mortality rate was more than Armenian mortality rate in Eastern Ottoman provinces..What kind of neutrality does this historical sources have?

Armenians supportive of the Ottomans???Well, I believe we are not playing FRP here, so there is no need to deny the facts.Armenian parliamentarians personally even joined the groups killing the Turkish folk.And both Hinchak,Tashnak,the parliamentarians state their aims.Look at Talaat Pasha thread for this.

This is a very difficult debate because everybody believes what they heard from their families.

In fact, at that time nobody from the ordinary folk had much knowledge about what happened all around the Empire at that time. For example, the horrible loss of 90000 soldiers at Sarikamish was kept as a secret and it was publicly learned seven years laters in 1922! Also many people didn't leave their own villages so they weren't aware of what was happening. Therefore everybody believes in what their own family experienced. For example my family is from a village of Erzurum and I listened my older relatives who either witnessed or learned from their parents the massacres, tortures and rapes by the Armenian gangs. For such people, the only reality is what they experienced. You cannot tell them that at another point of the Empire the Armenians were massacred, too. Today, after some decades I, as a social scientist, can see from a macro-perspective that  Armenians are wiped-out from their motherlands (either by deporting or killing) as a result of inhumane policies and this is very sad. But you cannot expect from a people who knows only their own families' pains to accept being cold-blooded murderers.

Can you please provide sources?

Ottoman Archives have ample evidenve of the massacres comitted by armenian gangs and the death toll is much higher than you state, around 500,000.

I don't have the sources at hand, but I'll try to find them. On the meantime, you do understand that your claim is a bit... well... how to say this polite... oh, what the heck, ridiculous?

Half a million dead? Can I see something of those archives, please? The archives you mention, not the ravings of some crazed Neo-Turk apologist, the actual archives. Because this is truly hilarious. I mean, somebody would notice, don't you think?