Turkey's challenge to the Armenians

[abian]

...the moving of Armenians was a planned action to protect Anatolia, the loss of lives did not take place as a result of a systematic killings of Armenians, but rather due to lack of coordination, administration and food supplies in the then-troubled Ottoman Empire during war time. Both sides lost lives in the events.

You must be regurgitating a passage from a Turkish textbook. There is a well known international term for what you call "... the moving of Armenians" which you admit was a "planned action to protect Anatolia" during which "loss of lives..." took place. Forcible removal of a minority group is called "ethnic cleasing" and it is a crime against humanity. Ethnic cleansing of an group accompanies by loss of life is defined as genocide per the following Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. You yourself stated that the "moving" was planned, which shows intent, and what you euphemistically call "move" was accompanied by killing (a), causing bodily and mental harm (b), and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (c). Certainly marching entire vilayets across entire length of Turkey qualifies.

"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:

(a) Genocide;

(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;

(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

(d) Attempt to commit genocide;

(e) Complicity in genocide. "

[imported_Ozgur]

hi everyone.

i discovered this forum by google search for ottoman history.
first off i´m sorry for my english, that is college-type english in turkey.

i live in istanbul and i am 16 years old. my names ozgur.

there are some words i want to say, firstly your effort is holiness.

but i reading some bad words as well as "barbarian turks", you know this way isnt good. this approach is not getting good result if you want.

whats good result?

turkish government accepted all armenian-side arguments (all of you want). = this is good result.

but, its imposible if not turkish people say "okay".

whats turkish people position...

you know turkish people influenced by turkish tv-news. from this point of view, we believe nothing happen in 1915.


but my mind is changed on this forum (and other internet based -armenian origin- documents). you know, there are some fact in 1915. and everybody knows it without turkish people.

in this case, your mission is informing to turkish people much more on internet.

you see your "turkeys challenge in WDC" photos one more time, feel their atmosphere,

winner??? what do you mean???

this is not football game! and they arent football team.



they are cross section of our people. so called "uneducated people." okay inform them.

right now a guy from istanbul in this forum. because INTERNET, this tool is best way to you. direct communicate to target people, if you want. if you really want, i believe that turkish people´s mind changed to positive for you, because your arguments better than turkish tv-news.


turkish people say "okay" automatically turkish government say "We accept",

there is no another way if you want to hear "okay" by turkish government.

[imported_Hellektor]

Can't Undo Brainwash

I just found this thread and after reading the first page, I am kind of amazed at the fact that Tongue keeps on taking this McMongol seriously and tries to wake some human emotion in the corrupt soul of this Turk. Perhaps it's not his fault and the brainwash damage is done. This is obvious from his regurgitation of his revisionist-fascist government's endless denial horse dung.
And I want to warn everyone not to fall in the trap of the numbers game. It's not about how many people died. It's about the irrefutable fact that Armenians lived in Armenia for thousands of years, then the Turks invaded their homeland and from day one they brought nothing but death and destruction.
Millions of Armenians were living in their homeland under Ottoman rule. Since there was no official census (not even ONE) during the barbaric Ottoman tyranny and since the Turks were in minority, they always tried to give a distorted picture of the number of the minorities. It doesn't matter how many millions, since the Turks, throughout centuries, stole Armenian women and children, for jenicheri or for their harems, they also systematically reduced the number of Armenians... Just imagine: when Ottoman bandits invaded Asia Minor in 1299 A.D. (they conquered Armenia only in 1512), they numbered maybe several tens of thousands, comprised of nomadic savage hordes in the earliest stages of evolution. (Doesn't the total absence of human attributes such as compassion, shame, remorse, justice, integrity, even to this day, prove this?)
Where are the indigenous peoples of Asia Minor now? Isn't the fact that there are no more Armenians living in their homeland of thousands of years prove that what happened in 1915 (and not only) was genocide? What is the importance whether the number of the dead was 1,500,000 or 600,000 or whatever? If Turks want numbers then doesn't the fact that at least 2200 working Armenian churches were accounted for in 1912 by archbishop Ormanian show that over two million Armenians lived in their homeland and today there are NONE. Isn't the fact that over 95% of these churches are now destroyed point to an ethnocide? How can you deny that this isn't being done by these savage murderers in order to cover up their despicable deeds? Doesn't this prove beyond reasonable doubt that the genocide did take place?
According to a 1974 UNESCO account, from the 913 monuments still standing after the genocide 464 were totally destroyed, 252 were turned in ruins and 197 needed serious restoration.
Whichever way you look at it, it was GENOCIDE because the indigenous people are permanently and brutally removed from or Turkified in their homeland. Now try to explain this to a brainwashed Mongol, they give the same revisionist garbage that Armenians rebelled against their masters (how self-righteous!) and they got what they deserved.
Only what doesn't make sense is how come the armed to the teeth Armenian rebels did not rebel against their butchers and walked like sheep to roast in the desert.

[abian]

you know turkish people influenced by turkish tv-news. from this point of view, we believe nothing happen in 1915.


but my mind is changed on this forum (and other internet based -armenian origin- documents). you know, there are some fact in 1915. and everybody knows it without turkish people.

Hi, Ozgur.

This is what happened in 1915:

• In 1915, the Turkish government carried out an organized campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Armenians.
o Tens of thousands of Armenian men conscripted into Turkish armies were disarmed, then taken into secluded areas where they were bayoneted or shot.
o The first official deportation of thousands of families was carried out in Zeitun. Most were marched on foot to Lebanon or Syria. Some were deported via rail. Many died on the way.
o In April of 1915 250 leading Armenian citizens of Constantinople, were arrested in the night and deported immediately. Most were killed in various destinations in Central Anatolia.
o At the same time, in Eastern Anatolia, Armenians beat back marauding Turkish army and held the city for a time until stronger Turkish forces entered the city and massacred the combatants and non-combatants.
o Over the course of the year, mass eviction and deportation of Armenians took place throughout Turkey. The Turkish government recruited large numbers of convicted criminals to harass, kill and rob Christians on the way. Systematically, the evicted families were not allowed to pack or to take supplies of food or water, which assured that a large portion of them would die before getting to intended destination.
o It is estimated that over a million of Armenians died in 1915 alone.

• In 1916 mass deportations and killings of Armenians continued resulting in another half a million killed.

Turkish citizens must demand full disclosure from their government to assure themselves that the government would not be able to purpetrate such crimes in the future.

Don't worry about "barbarians" and other epitaphs flying around. As you know, ancient Greeks called everyone who did not speak Greek barbarians because they couldn't understand what they were saying and thought their speech sounded like "bar-bar". From that viewpoint, we are all barbarians.

[abian]

No. I'm not. But surely it looks like you are regurgitating a passage from your Armenian textbook.

Let's see, nevermindname. I can prove that every sentence in your latest missive is untrue. Let's start with the first one. You say you are not repeating an official Turkish party line, yet at least two other Turkish contributors to this site repeated the same explanation in very similar words. Furthermore, here's a quote from a Turkish propaganda pamphlet entitled "Setting the Record Straight: On Armenian Propaganda Against Turkey", published by the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, Washington, D.C. (no date): "...Armenians were deported because they were a security threat and were massacring Muslims...". Sounds familiar? It's the party line, isn't it?

My information, on the contrary comes from a number of contemporary and current sources, none of which are an Armenian textbook. Let's see now, regarding the events of 1915 I've seen the following sources:

Erik Jan Zucher, "Ottoman Labor Battallions in World War I", edited 2002, Leiden,
Arnold Toynbee, "Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation", London, 1915
Morgenthau, "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story"
Ahmed Refik Altinay, Iki Komite, Ike Kital (Two committees and two
massacres), Istanbul 1919.
Auswrtiges Amt (Germany's Foreign Office Archives) Bonn
US State Department Records
Hilmar Kaiser, "The Baghdad Railway and the Armenian Genocide 1915-1916: A case study in German resistance and complicity" 1998, Detroit,
"Some biographical notes on Djeved Bey, Vali of the Vilayet of Van," Geneva, 1916.
Peter Balakian "The Burning Tigris", New York, 2003.
Khachig Boghosian, "My arrest and exile on April 24, 1915", 2001.
Jesse B. Jackson, Correspondence, 1915.
Lord Kinross, "The Ottoman Centuries: the rise and fall of the Turkish Empire",
Andrew Wheatcroft, "Infidels".

There are really too many to list, there are New York Times articles, Woodrow Wilson, Thea Halo, Oscar Heizer, Leon Surmelian, John Pollard, Charles Allen, Tavoukjian, George Horton, Edward Nathan, Aghazarian, Hartounian, Yessaian, Vartanian.

[abian]

Every opinion or comment that is different than yours is a lie or a passage from a Turkish textbook (in which case I would assume it to be accurate by the way!), isn't it?

There are so many problems with that sentence I don't even know where to begin. First of all, we are not dealing with opinions or comments. Armenian genocide is an amptly documented fact. Why even you don't deny it, you just say that it was justified. In general, on any subject, I would not regard an opinion or a comment that is different from mine a lie. Whether I would regard that opinion as correct or incorrect would depend on the strength of the basis supporting the opinion. In general, opinions are formed about things that cannot be unequivocally proven. Since Armenian genocide unequivocally occurred, this is not a matter on which opinions can be offered. Your next frase, however, gets down to the crux of the matter, doesn't it? You are saying that no matter what is written in the Turkish textbook you would assume it to be true, regardless whether that particular textbook may be mistaken or disinformative. You would not check its veracity or sources? So as long as the source is Turkish it must be right, is that what you are saying? Weren't you saying something about being brainwashed further down? Certainly, blind acceptance of an official position is a sign of being brainwashed.

[abian]

The thing is you've been brainwashed my friend. !

Ah, falsehood yet again. Let's examine the term "brainwashed". Webster defines it as:
: a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas


I certainly have not been forcibly induced to give up a belief in Turkish innocence and accept a regimented idea of Armenian Genocide. I assure you I never held the belief in Turkish innocence. When I was younger I knew nothing of this matter at all, and when I began reading about it the weight of historical evidence clearly and unequivocally showed that the Armenian Genocide took place. It really helps to know the words you use. Furthermore, you may be a nice albeit disinformed fellow, but I'm not your friend. Yet another misuse of a word?

[abian]

And I sincerely believe that there is not a slight chance that you and people like you will even consider reviewing the evidence the other side of the story has to present.

You've already proven that you are ready to believe blindly and therefore I think you are sincere in your erroneus belief, however, it is, as every sentence in your post, wrong. I have seen a large number of American, English, Turkish, German, Armenian, Arab, Italian, and other evidence on the matter of Armenian genocide. But the evidence is overwhelming that the genocide, meaning intentional extermination of an ethnic group did occur. Once again, you yourself do not deny it occurred, you simply say it was justified for the reasons of security, etc. Since you blindly believe anything Turkish, you ought to believe this:

So called Yozgat trials, conducted between February 5 and April 7 1919, yielded a large amount of Turkish Interior Ministry written and interrogation data. Yozgat, as you may know, is near Ankara, far from advancing Russian armies. It is also were tens of thousands of Armenians and other ethnic minorities were killed. The trials were headed up by Hasan Mazhar, former governor of Ankara province. In one of the trial proceedings, a Col. Halil Rejayi testified that he had received from one Col. Sahabeddin cipher telegrams in which "deportation" order was a code for "extermination". Col. Sahabeddin: "I can confirm that the Armenian population was massacred in and around Boghazlyan". In anothe one, the district governor Mehmed Kemal was described as being "angry at the ineptness of the Turkish villagers rounded up to help his five hundred mounted troopers massacre a convoy of several thousand deportees. Shouting furiously at them: 'You dont seem to know how to kill,' he then demonstrated that it would be more effective if they slashed their victims throats diagonally instead of horizontally". The proceedings of the trials were printed in Takvim-i-Vekayi the official newspaper of the Turkish parlament. Since it's a part of Turkish official record you've already said you must believe it. So this sentence, in its entirety is also false. I'll continue dismantling the rest of your post later.

[abian]

You simply dismiss the other side's view as being wrong or falsified. !

The historical record is clear and unequivocal on the matter of Armenian Genocide. It happened. Even a quick review of evidence would yield this conclusion. Not only is there a mountain of written and verbal evidence, there is also personal evidence from the older members of most of the families in diaspora. The massacres of Armenians were planned in advance, they were carried out with the purpose of eliminating an ethnic group, and they largely succeeded. So no, there is no "simple dismissal", one simply cannot ignore a large body of evidence none of which supports "the other side's view".

[abian]

I know the mentality of the likes of you. !

False yet again. You certainly don't know me or anything about me. You don't know anything about my mentality and therefore you wouldn't be able to recognize "the likes of" me.

By the way, in those Yozgat trials, Kemal Bey was convicted to death and hanged for acting "against humanity and civilization..." and "...practiced all methods of murder..".

Since you only believe a Turk, here's what Mustafa Kemal Ataturk said, you've heard of him, haven't you: "These leftovers from the former Young Turk party, who should have been made to account for the lives of millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and massacred...", 1926.