Some of you were there saturday afternoon, others of you were busy wussing out. Anyways, we were discussing the Armenian Genocide, and if Armenia was a seperate nation invaded by Turkey. Turns out we were all half right.
Links on the bottom, summary below
Note: Many of these links are under constant hacker attack by people who believe Turkey and the Turkish people did no wrong, either becuase the Armenians had it coming, or because it is all an elaborate pack of lies.
Armenians had inhabitited that region of the world for roughly 3 thousand years, and were repeatedly invaded and ruled by Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Mongols. The Ottoman Empire held sway over the Armenian Homeland, but the Ottoman Empire was falling apart. The Russians grabbed the chunk containing the Armenians but soon ceded it back. At this time the Ottoman Empire was almost entirely Turkish. The Grerks, Slavs, Romanians, etc were able to get independance. The Armenians, Kurds and some Arabs were not able to gain independance. The earliest acts of genocide in the closing decade of the nintheeth century were done by the Ottoman Government.
There was a big Turkish Nationalist movement, and the old sultan was forced to create a constitutional government and step down. The group that instigated this change was known as the 'Young Turks' While the borders of the Ottoman Empire were unchanged, this is usually seen as the end of the Ottoman Empire. This situation remained only for a short time, when three of the Young Turks took power through the use of military force. Their nationalist goals were twofold: to eliminate all non-turks in their country, and militarlity take over all regions in other countries with large ethnically turkish people. This is usually where most accounts stop using Ottoman Empire and start using Turkish Government. The Armenian region was a twofold problem to this Turkish government. The Armenians made up 10% of the population of the Ottoman Empire in the last days of the Sultan, and the first days of the new government, so by goal 1, they needed to be removed. The Armenina region also bordered a large turkish region under control of the Russians, so even if the Three Young Turks were to go for goal 2 first, the Armenians were right in the way. Of course, WW 1 was in full swing, this allowed great cover for the attrocities. The Russians actually stood up for the Armenians for a time, allowing them to flee through their lines, but troops were pulled to deal with their own revolution in 1917. Many Armenians took this opportunity to flee along with the Russian military, with plans to join a large Armenian community inside Russia. The Turkish government at that time, as well as today's Turkey use this action to retroactively state that the Armenians had been fighting for the Russains all along, hence their attacks on the Armenians were simply standard WW1 warfare.
After WWII a more moderate Turkish government was put in place, and there was an offically created Armenian Republic. Pres W. Wilson attempted to have it made officially a US protectorate. However, just months after, a new nationalistic leader ousted the moderates, ignored the treaty, and reoccupied the Armenian Republic, and finished off the Armenians there.
It must also be noted that the Kurds are not guiltless either. Oftentimes Kurds residing the the same village would join the mobs attacking the Armenian residents. Some of this can be seen as Kurds going along so that the mob wouldn't turn on them as well. However, most of the Kurds were nomadic, and not residing in villages with Turks and Armenians. When the Turks were forcemarching the Armenians, or when the Armenians were fleeing ahead of the Turkish forces sent to eliminate them, the Kurds would ride in, take the food, valuables, and attractive women, kill anyone who opposed them, then ride off with their loot.
2 comments:
I never knew much about the Armenian genocide until I moved to Los Angeles. The Aremenian community there, which is likely the largest in the country, remembers the genocide every year a city-wide rally that eventually ends with a demonstration outside the Turkish embassy. The L.A. band System of a Down, themselves Armenian, are well known for their efforts in educating the public about this little-known event. Serj Tankian, the lead singer produced a documentary called Screamers that examines genocide denial as well as the incidents in Rwanda and Darfur.
When there is one side that is powerful and obsessed and another that is weak and apathetic, naturally the overwhelming message heard will be that of the former. That means honorable people must be extremely careful before accepting propagandistic claims at face value, in the same fashion that none of us would appreciate being accused of a terrible crime without evidence. The fact is there is absolutely no evidence that the Ottoman state conducted an extermination policy (if you think there is, then answer this question: do you really know what this evidence is? Or do you just "think" there is evidence, simply because that is all you've heard through dishonest parties such as System of a Down obsessed with "educating" people as yourself and the gullible Gus, above?) and the side that is never heard is that Armenians were guilty of a systematic extermination campaign in their own right, between the years 1915-1920 when the Armenians killed hundreds of thousands of Ottoman Muslims and Jews, and one of the photographs used in one of the links above --
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/armenian_genocide_2.jpg -- happens to be of the Muslim victims of the Armenians. Is that not the utmost in shamelessness? Consult http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/forgeries-fotos.htm#2 for the story behind this particular photo's fakery.
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