Should Turkey compensate-your thoughts?

[shasa]

I don't want compensation from Turkey. Money doesnt change anything. It would be as if they were trying to buy 1.5 million Armenian lives.

so what do you recommend as a solution?
They started to discuss about the genocide themselves at Turkey. Sooner or later Turkish people will realise that Ottoman government made a genocide against Armenians.
So what will we do next if they accept the genocide and officially apologize for it?
Thanks for the apologize, no problem, lets be friends??????????????????????

[winoman]

Shasa - your avatar - "I love my family - I love my race" is something that harkens to similar statments made by Zia GoKalp - (Do you know who he was?) and while seemingly innocent on the surface echo such thoughts that were used as motivations for Turks to rally around and express their hatred toward Armenians (and of course massacre us). Now perhaps you don't fully understand this connection - of the role of race conciuosness as a precursor to genocide and to the Armenian Genocide specifically - (though your "kill them all" comments suggest that perhaps you do) - but I would advise you to learn some more of your history and better understand what seperates the "good guys" from the "bad guys"

[o0tinerz0o]

We dont need their money. We certainly do not need their recognition. I know people are going to rip me apart for this but I would rather have our ancestral land back, than get a foney "Im sorry" and nothing in return. Its a complicated issue, i know but land is more important than any financial compensation. The Jews upon international recognition of the Holocaust, have not only recieved their own state in 1947, but also since a few years ago have started to recieve official recompensation from the German government, not the mention all the money the individual jews recieved from court cases and law suits. What is the point of just recognition? I dont understand that is all. Im not bashing other armenians for wanting just a recognition, I know it looks sad now, but the list of countries accepting this genocide is growing every year , and this year alone the armenian lobby in the US congress has been the most powerful ever. We need to stick together thats all I guess. Sooner or later guys im sure they will admit it and we will have the oppurtunity to get our lands back. Until then I guess all we can do is stay strong. We are a strong race that im sure of, as much as we bicker and fight, we are strong, and all of our strength is our unity.

God bless

[winoman]

oOOOoooo - do you think that the Jews were just handed Palestein? And do you think that all such was free...and that they are not still paying the debt. Of course our situation is different for so very many reasons - and as apealing is the concept of "getting our ancestral lands back" is - and as seemingl to be justice for us - you're right - it is a very complicated issue. At l east two questions remain - 1) what are you willing to do - what atrocities are you willing to commit - to get such lands -and is such really worth it once the human cost is figured? and 2) just what will you go and do once you have secured such? Of course the issue of the possibility of successfully aquiring the land should be rationaly thought through...and maybe even thinking what sort of accomodation with Turkey might allow you to return without otherwise having to napalm the place - etc...yeah otherwise the odds - # of Armenains vs # of Turks...the issue of #s of planes and tanks - of who might step in to prevent such a thing if it ever did occur - etc (though I really don't see Armenai proper risking its existance to recapture some scrub hills - as apealing as they might be to us - particualrly in the face of the Turksih military and such...etc ...so what was it you were saying?

[o0tinerz0o]

I agree with many points you have brought up, and I myself do not believe a violent solution is the best solution, but I must bring up that these "Scrub hills" are more than just tweaks and shards of a remenant civilization, they are the ancestral homeland of our people. A full front military campaign is not the best solution in this situation for the simple fact: Sheer numbers. If you would check the CIA world factbook, it is easy to see the difference between the armenian military and the turkish. Also one must consider we were never a militaristic people/society. The best approach is to persue our ambitions through legal pathways, so in those situations our intelligence and unity would show its might over the gun and sword. To address your 2 points.

1) No atrocities would be commited, for at this stage it is exhausting and pointless (Karabagh aquisition resulting in billions of loss in embargos on both flanks). Again i would suggest working within the legal framework of MINSK and such. The value of the lands is priceless, being as if they are rich with the blood of many generations of armenians who through out of history gave their own lives for the promise that we would continue as a people on OUR land.
2) Our goal once we have acquired such lands should be to involve ourselves in international trade, which would not be complicated or difficult due to the simple fact that we are much more resourceful than our turkomen neighbors and we would be quick to utilize our economy and establish capital returns.

So then again all I have to say is justice is the hands of the people who seek it. By sitting here bickering amongst ourselves we only fortify the lack of unity between our people and aid the enemy is its dreams of "Pan-Turkism. I have much faith in our people, and i know they will never falter nor fade, for we never have and we never will.



God Bless

[Ashuri62]

so what do you recommend as a solution?
They started to discuss about the genocide themselves at Turkey. Sooner or later Turkish people will realise that Ottoman government made a genocide against Armenians.
So what will we do next if they accept the genocide and officially apologize for it?
Thanks for the apologize, no problem, lets be friends??????????????????????

I'll tell you what I think they should do. They should give us our lands back. Instead of compensating Armenian families with blood-money, they should pay towards the restoration of all the churches and cultural relics that have been left to rot in present day Turkey. They should revise all their history books to acknowledge the truth of what really happened. Thy should publically condemn the actions of Talat & Envar Pasha.

Then, just for good measure, they should tell the Azeri's to back the F*** up before they get a size 12 pabooj up their a$$.

[bell-the-cat]

We dont need their money. We certainly do not need their recognition. I know people are going to rip me apart for this but I would rather have our ancestral land back, than get a foney "Im sorry" and nothing in return. Its a complicated issue, i know but land is more important than any financial compensation. The Jews upon international recognition of the Holocaust, have not only recieved their own state in 1947, .....

And what are you going to do with all those ancestral lands once you miraculously get them back. Are you going to leave your NY apartment and move to some village near Moush or Erzurum?

Jews from Europe had been returning in substantial numbers to live in Palestine for about 100 years prior to 1947 - it was a political and intellectual decision for them. How many Armenians have moved to eastern Turkey since whatever date you want to mention - not one.

[nairi]

'Cause it's so easy for us to return to Eastern Turkey and build Armenia there, esp. now that the Europeans, including our best friends the Brits and Americans, are helping us steal our lands back and create our own independent republic. Not to mention that a 100 years before 1947, we didn't need to move anywhere.

Don't worry about excess in land. It won't take long before the whole region is populated by Armenians.

[winoman]

'Cause it's so easy for us to return to Eastern Turkey and build Armenia there, esp. now that the Europeans, including our best friends the Brits and Americans, are helping us steal our lands back and create our own independent republic. Not to mention that a 100 years before 1947, we didn't need to move anywhere.

Don't worry about excess in land. It won't take long before the whole region is populated by Armenians.

I don't see it. Doing what? Dry farming? While I very much share the feelings of wishing to see Armenians once more in those lands I don't think it is any kind of a near term possibility.

Additionaly - all Armenains who talk about the Turks giving "our" lands back etc - out of kindness or recognition for what was done - don't at all understand that Turks just don't at all see it that way. They see themselves as victims - that we "stabbed them in the back" when they were down and only got what was comming to us - and that they prevailed over the European powers and all stcked against them and very much deserve the fruit of their victory - Anatolia. - also they don't believe that these were ever our lands. During the Genocide - when confronted by Morganthau and others - Talat stated that there never have been Armenian provinces - and other Turkish leaders have echoed this exactly. Most Armenians fail to understand what we are/have become in the Turkish psyche - to them we are the ultimate betrayers (and that all along we just wanted to steal THEIR land!) - so consider the difficult hurdles that are faced just for them to overcome this misconception - let alone come to terms with the idea that they in fact did anything wrong at all worth apologizing for - and give up THEIR land to us!?!?!?! - you must be nuts!

[nairi]

Who cares what Turks think? Do they ever care about what we think?

As for OUR land, like I said, don't worry, before you know it, it will be populated. Look at Glendale today. Who would have thought twenty years ago that Armenians could fill up that place in less than one generation. Just give us a village in West Armenia, and see what happens within one generation. Why are you so pessimistic?