Re-establish Byzantium?

[Ancyrean]

Originally posted by Palaiologos
And dudes there can be no smoke without a fire. Why isn't anything heard by the genocides conducted by lets say Lithuania, China or whoever.

We mostly hear about the Turks. Greek and Armenian propaganda can't just have invented all these things.
The reason why the Turks are considered barbarians and evil its simply because they DID CONDUCT genocides at an unprecedented rate.

If I may attempt to shoot down your analogy, imagine somebody who doesnt like you accuses you of stealing something from her. You can't solve the issue. You go to court and tell the judge about your case. You say there's no evidence to support such an accusation about you. The girl says 'there's no smoke without fire'. Judge agrees with her, eh?

If I may attempt to answer the substance of your post, we mostly hear about the Turks because the wars of independence against Turks were almost always extremely bitter. Sure, those struggles were bloody, Ottomans hit back hard, many thousands died. The difficulty of the task of getting independence was so much within a background of centuries of foreign rule, emerging senses of nationality in the Balkans developed an unheathier dose of comparing the good 'us' against the evil 'them', 'civilised' us vs barbaric 'them', divine 'us' vs 'ungodly' them, 'compassionate' us and 'savage' them. 'Them' more often than not applies to everybody else, not only Turks, but as the hated former heathen rulers, they receive the brunt of the negative construction.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by paiktis22
And that has been asnwered.

Well I'm glad that you finally agree with us that you don't know what you are talking about.

[Palaiologos]

Ancyrean dude the Greek army in Asia minor did commit atrocities. And propably the Armenians gathered up in mobs and killed turks in the villages of the Caucasus by the dozens.

So what?. This was not a matter of state policy. The Greek goverment or the Armenian leadership didn't order their men to anihilate all the Turks they saw.
The fact that Greek officers and Armenians commited murders was due to their own accord.

Sadly your "great" Kemal ORDERED mass genocide.It was the Turkish state's POLICY.

[Ted Striker]

cut the crap

post more hot Turkish chicks please

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by paiktis22

Here's but a little expert from one of your compatriotes, Stokes' Europe I bothered to find on the net in an instant of exceptional boredom. It propably won't be reapated very often.

Ottoman forces would raid Christian villages, and kidnap boys, who were then brought to Constantinople as slave-soldiers, and forcibly converted to Islam.

A typical example of Ottoman Muslim contempt for Christians is supplied by a consideration of the burial-permit issued by a qadi (Muslim official) in 1855 for a deceased Christian: 'We certify to the priest of the church of Mary, that the impure, putrefied, stinking carcass of Saideh, damned this day, may be concealed underground.' [11] Undoubtedly, Muslims would regard such sentiments made in regard to a Muslim corpse to be bigoted and insensitive; they should not be surprised that Christians would react similarly, and find it difficult to credit that the Khilafah was indeed a Utopian regime.

As to the first part, four other people in this thread have dealt with the devsirme levy at length and in better detail than you. Do keep up.

As to the second part- if you're going to use an internet source, it is at the very least good manners to post the address of that source.

If you're going to quote a book, then provide the title of the book and the full name of the author, unless they're particularly well-known.

We have no context for your burial quote, we don't know the circumstances of the death, or where it took place, or why- if you're trying to imply a general state of affairs from the action of one cadi, then I suggest you're going to need more than one isolated incident mentioned out of any context.

I'm sorry that you find finding sources and quotes and facts boring, but if you're going to present an argument, or do anything other than make bald assertions, you will have to back up your more preposterous statements with evidence.

For the record, the author's name is Gale Stokes, and the internet source you were quoting is:

http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/xstnc-6.html#11

[VetLegion]

ROTFLMAO @ Hellenic Fez. Catchy nickname

The fact that Greek officers and Armenians commited murders was due to their own accord.

Sadly your "great" Kemal ORDERED mass genocide.It was the Turkish state's POLICY

And it was Greek policy not to punish the crimes they didn't order, ie Greek government condoned them.

Care to explain the difference in substance between that and ordering the crimes?

[Ancyrean]

Originally posted by Palaiologos
Ancyrean dude the Greek army in Asia minor did commit atrocities. And propably the Armenians gathered up in mobs and killed turks in the villages of the Caucasus by the dozens.

So what?. This was not a matter of state policy. The Greek goverment or the Armenian leadership didn't order their men to anihilate all the Turks they saw.
The fact that Greek officers and Armenians commited murders was due to their own accord.

Sadly your "great" Kemal ORDERED mass genocide.It was the Turkish state's POLICY.

State policy, by definiton, is formed through the decision making mechanisms of the state, and becomes state policy when orders to turn the decision into action are issued to the executive and administrative organs of the state.

Unfortunately for your assertion above, there happens to be no evidence, not even a single document ordering, mentioning or implying genocide towards any ethnic group within the Empire. With regard to the so-called "Armenian genocide", such evidence is conspicously absent from the Ottoman Archives, which by the virtue of its sheer compehensiveness, continuity and meticulousness made any 100% evidence destruction attempt nigh-on-impossible. We are talking about a so-called undertaking involving the details of the eradication of a race from the face of earth, to help grasp the complexity of such an attempt.

In other words, Ottomans were obsessive book and record keepers. Ottoman bureaucracy was immensely deep-rooted and had inticate and precise procedures. An enterprise on the order of genocide is unthinkable to have been contemplated, organised and executed without any mention of it anywhere in that vast archive (open to the scrutiny of foreign scholars).

For your information, the Allied Powers after the occupation of Istanbul, acting from similar impulses, arrested high level Ottoman officials pending full inquiry into the issue of "genocide" by Ottomans. They had full access to the Ottoman archives. Not only did they failed to find a single document remotely relatable to the claim, but also they failed to prove any destruction of evidence. They therefore had to acquit those officials.

The same absence of evidence is also valid for your implication about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who took over intact the whole state structure in Anatolia from the Ottoman Government in Istanbul.

[Evil Knevil]

All those who want to die, follow me!
Last words of Emperor Constantine XII Palaiologos

Actually his last words were "arrghhh!" as he got run through with a Janissary sword :P

Ancyrean, surely the Govt could have kept the records off of the official books, like the Nazi's tried to... Or deleted them? In any case the Armenian state was snuffed out by your reoccupation, so alot of contemporary sources from their side were also snuffed out or repressed.

[VetLegion]

Nazis is a great example how you can not destroy the evidence of such a large scale operation. They virtually destroyed tons of stuff yet tons more were left - enough to convict them without doubt.

[Evil Knevil]

Just extemporising here, so don't take it that I believe what I'm saying!

Germany was way more ****ed than Turkey, and was effectively overrun, wheras the Govt in Istanbul remained largely intact after the cease-fire. Being overrun and having a collapse of central authority stopped many records being incinerated?

Germany had an even more complex bureaucracy than Turkey- this was a consequence of Nazi policy. So even though they tried to keep the horrors off the books, some evidence managed to seep in.

The Jewish Holocaust was more visible? I.e in larger population centres, observed by a more literate population?

[Ancyrean]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Nazis is a great example how you can not destroy the evidence of such a large scale operation. They virtually destroyed tons of stuff yet tons more were left - enough to convict them without doubt.

Exactly. In a bureaucracy like that of the Ottomans, it would be impossible to destroy every single bit of 'evidence'.

Originally posted by Evil Knevil
Just extemporising here, so don't take it that I believe what I'm saying!

Germany was way more ****ed than Turkey, and was effectively overrun, wheras the Govt in Istanbul remained largely intact after the cease-fire. Being overrun and having a collapse of central authority stopped many records being incinerated?

Germany had an even more complex bureaucracy than Turkey- this was a consequence of Nazi policy. So even though they tried to keep the horrors off the books, some evidence managed to seep in.

The Jewish Holocaust was more visible? I.e in larger population centres, observed by a more literate population?

Good point. So can your basic line here be summarised as "we can't be sure they managed somehow to destroy all evidence, can we"? If so, I still would stand by my assertion that 100% destruction of evidence for an act of such scale would be impossible. There would still be something around that hints, implies or mentions about it in passing or in reference.

Actually, over the years, I read quite a bit on both side's views, and the Armenian side of the arguement seems more to concentrate on highlighting the human suffering than to ponder on the absence of documental evidence for the intentions of the government. I get the impression that the intention for genocide on the part of Ottomans is taken for granted as if by default of their inherent evilness. A grand Ottoman conspiracy to destroy documents is not a central theme even in their side of the arguement.

[Evil Knevil]

How about a grand Ottoman scheme to avoid recording it in the first place?

A common theme is not refer to such horrid things directly, or at all. There weren't many documents for the Russian jewish pogroms, or more importantly their treatment of Chechens pre-Stalin.

However, I'm officially 'opinionless' on the Armenian massacre since I don't think I've done enough research. Any recommendations?

[Bereta_Eder]

Yep. The black dog of fate (u can find it in amazon) contains many official, prototype documents by the turkish state which are rather breathtaking in their accuracy for eliminating the armenians. Main inspiration was the german "pronazi" idealism.

[Bereta_Eder]

It has a nice autobiographical story about that armenian kid growing up in the US so it's not all blood and gore dont worry. The official documents are in the last part of the book.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Ancyrean


Well, we are not discussing here if the idea of taking a kid from his family is an adorable act.

Ah very good. A breathrough, a cautious one but a breathrough nevertheless

That's why any approach of "Turks snatched babies from mothers! People built roads in the mountains to escape this! This is such a horrible act to endure! So admit that the Turks are the top barbarians of all time!" is not an arguement at all, both in substance and in letter.

It was a reality. I never said "the turks are barbarians". I simply pointed out what the reality was.

I more have the impression that you might be defending your points from conviction standing on years of exposure to folk tales (babies snatched -paidomazoma-, Janissaries were rapists and wanton killers, Christians lived a life of "daily horror" etc)

The only onces who try to deny that are some romantic modern Turkish literature and their followers. I don't think they render humanity any service at all

As for admitting each other's atrocities, you probably would agree with me that nobody has a monopoly on pain and suffering. Armenians died in the hundreds of thousands but they do not admit they killed as much Turks on their quest to create a country for themselves. They choose to make sense of their suffering by putting it in a context of a grand conspiracy to kill them off. My grandfather is from the city of Van. You really wouldnt want to know the collective memory of those years about Armenians there. Why would we admit we are as evil as Nazis, when the other guys don't even bother to admit they killed a single Turk (figuratively) back then.

Well for my part, I'm perfectly ready to admit any attrocities committed by the Greeks in the war of independence. Readily and courageously.

What about the exploits of the Greek army in "Asia Minor"? Do you think they just threw around flowers as they conquered territory? I was in Greece for three years but I never heard anybody talk about it. It was an army of saints. Come on...

Of course they were not.

I usually wouldnt prefer to come this close to rubbing sensitivities. I have many Greek friends, and I have the good fortune to have talked about these things with them with no ill will. Instead, what I'm saying is, we should stop trying to mortgage our future peace on the forceful acceptance of our version of history by the other. Nobody, including you, will pay for peace in such a currency. Please think about this (I mean not only you, of course, I mean people who might be thinking along similar lines with you) next time a rush of indignation against any country in the Balkans comes over.

Peace

here I disagree. I think it's fundamental that we accept the truth and not "Eachothers truth" but the truth in order to move forward. The same was done with Germany after WWII.
I'm not trying to play holier than thou, simply point out that denying attrocities or pointing fingers is IMHO the wrong approach.