Armenian genocide

[chequita guevara]

The Armenians kinda remind me of the Albanian Kosovars. They all claim, "We didn't do nothing. We were minding our own business when the evil Serbs/Turks came and slaughtered us!" Funny how Pattycakes can be on opposite sides of the same phenomenon.

#1, nothing anyone does deserves Genocide as a response.

#2, the Armenians weren't innocent. They were attempting to ethnically cleanse their area at the same time as rising up against the Ottoman Empire during the World War.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Is Ararat any good?

Yes, I thought so.

[Dinner]

Che, there were rebels attacking Turkish settlements but it wasn't as wide spread as some make it out. The Turkish response was to kill or ethnically cleans all Armenians from Ottoman territory. Remember that much of eastern Turkey, Kurdistan, and northwestern Persia used to be part of the Armenian Kingdom so Armenians were settled in a large area. Notice how their current state is tiny.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Sprayber


For some reason I saw paiktis's name and automatically read it as American as well.

[Qilue]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Che, there were rebels attacking Turkish settlements but it wasn't as wide spread as some make it out. The Turkish response was to kill or ethnically cleans all Armenians from Ottoman territory. Remember that much of eastern Turkey, Kurdistan, and northwestern Persia used to be part of the Armenian Kingdom so Armenians were settled in a large area. Notice how their current state is tiny.

Seems hauntingly similiar to what is happening with the kurds.

[General Ludd]

The american genocide was worse than the amrenian genocide.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Remember that much of eastern Turkey, Kurdistan, and northwestern Persia used to be part of the Armenian Kingdom so Armenians were settled in a large area. Notice how their current state is tiny.

The Armenians were only a majority in a small portion of their historic territory. Most of the areas had a plurality of Turks, then Kurds, then Armenians. History has not been kind to them.

Remember that the Brits sponsored many revolts in the Ottoman Empire during the war. I don't find it unlikely that there was a widespread Armenian uprising. That, however, in no way justifies the response.

The Turks had turned nastier and nastier since the Russians handed them their ass in the 1870s, and they blaimed on the Christians living in their territories.

[Ancyrean]

Che, there were rebels attacking Turkish settlements but it wasn't as wide spread as some make it out. The Turkish response was to kill or ethnically cleans all Armenians from Ottoman territory. Remember that much of eastern Turkey, Kurdistan, and northwestern Persia used to be part of the Armenian Kingdom so Armenians were settled in a large area. Notice how their current state is tiny.

Well, it was pretty widespread. If you take a tour of Eastern Turkey, you'd be surprised how vividly those attacks and consequent killings are remembered even today.

It's true that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in the following relocations, but the Armenian claim of 1.5 million casualties are flatly exaggerated to increase the sense of victimhood. The overall number of Armenians in the whole of the Empire (including the Middle East) was less than 1.3 million, according to the Ottoman censuses and other sources quote similar numbers as well.

Besides, terming an event "genocide" 90 years retrospectively does the injustice of seeing historical events through the standards of today. It is of course terrible enough that hundreds of thousands died, but if you isolate those deaths from the circumstances that surrounded it, you make the mistake of monopolising the suffering for only one party in a complex conflict.

Today many Armenians do not know anything about what the Turks have to say on the matter and they grow up with intense hatred toward Turkey and Turks. I know many instances when, upon your diclosure of your being Turkish, Armenians withdraw a hand they extended upon introduction, hang up the phone in your face, blush in anger and walk the other way, drop their smile in a sudden surge of hatred, etc etc etc. Why? Because they are told that Turks killed their grandfathers for no reason but out of blind hatred, that they are on par with Hitler and his Nazis and all the feelings of outrage that this kind of raising fosters.

What is truly tragic is that an event tragic enough by itself in history is kept alive by rituals highlighting self suffering distorted at the hands of a nationalist worldview, a subjective view of history; that the sympathy that comes towards mass suffering is abused to frame and insult an entire people.

The emotional and subjective intensity of Armenians make it so hard to communicate with them. It fosters great hatred in Armenians towards Turks, and angry reaction in Turks against Armenians. It keeps the hatred alive. Instead we could come together with Armenians and mourn our dead Turkish or Armenian, and vow never to let it happen again.

But not like this, when they instead try to create a perception of exclusive suffering and retrospective classification of history...

I'm not saying that deaths of Armenians were "justified" any more than the deaths of Turks at the hands of Armenians were so. I'm saying that going from there to calling it "genocide" just plainly dismisses the nature of the events surrounding those deaths. It gives an image of exlusivity to suffering, puts a post-WWII concept onto an event that has a totally different historical framework.

Calling the tragedies of 1915 as "genocide" is nothing short of complicity with the institutionalisation of a one-sided, nationalist-tainted, hatred-breeding and ultimately historically inaccurate perspective.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by JimmyCracksCorn
Greeks and their Turkophobia...

Not that the genocide wasn't tragic though.

[Riesstiu IV]

What about the Dominion genocide of Cardassia Prime in the last season of DS9?

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Ancyrean
Today many Armenians do not know anything about what the Turks have to say on the matter and they grow up with intense hatred toward Turkey and Turks. I know many instances when, upon your diclosure of your being Turkish, Armenians withdraw a hand they extended upon introduction, hang up the phone in your face, blush in anger and walk the other way, drop their smile in a sudden surge of hatred, etc etc etc. Why? Because they are told that Turks killed their grandfathers

I don't think so. If some Armenians do that is because Turkey has not recognized the genocide. Should Greeks, French, British, Russians and people of Jewish religion walk away in anger when meeting a German? They don't, generally, because post war Germany did recognize what happened. Or was made to, in any case the victim has been to an extend justified.

About Turkophobia and what not, this was an anniversary and since noone else made a thread about it, I might as well do. Your conclusions about blah blah is your own.

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by Riesstiu IV
What about the Dominion genocide of Cardassia Prime in the last season of DS9?

Only good cardie is a dead cardie, so meh.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Ancyrean
It gives an image of exlusivity to suffering, puts a post-WWII concept onto an event that has a totally different historical framework.

Calling the tragedies of 1915 as "genocide" is nothing short of complicity with the institutionalisation of a one-sided, nationalist-tainted, hatred-breeding and ultimately historically inaccurate perspective.

What's this framework you're talking about? Had the Ottomans simply resorted to crushing the rebellion, I doubt 1+m would have died.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Ancyrean

It's true that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in the following relocations, but the Armenian claim of 1.5 million casualties are flatly exaggerated to increase the sense of victimhood. The overall number of Armenians in the whole of the Empire (including the Middle East) was less than 1.3 million, according to the Ottoman censuses and other sources quote similar numbers as well.

Then again, you have to bear two factors in mind.

Firstly- it wasn't the first genocidal policy against the Armenians, was it? In fact it was the second in 20 years.

Secondly- it wasn't just Armenians. There were Anatolians and Assyrians too.

[chequita guevara]

Anatolians??

edit: Do you mean Anatolian Greeks?