Should turkey be the only one made to pay reperations?

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According to the Peace Treaty of Versailles.

ANNEX I.

Compensation may be claimed from Germany under Article 232 above in respect of the total damage under the following categories:

(l) Damage to injured persons and to surviving dependents by personal injury to or death of civilians caused by acts of war, including bombardments or other attacks on land, on sea, or from the air, and all the direct consequences thereof, and of all operations of war by the two groups of belligerents wherever arising.

(2) Damage caused by Germany or her allies to civilian victims of acts of cruelty, violence or maltreatment (including injuries to life or health as a consequence of imprisonment, deportation, internment or evacuation, of exposure at sea or of being forced to labour), wherever arising, and to the surviving dependents of such victims.

(3) Damage caused by Germany or her allies in their own territory or in occupied or invaded territory to civilian victims of all acts injurious to health or capacity to work, or to honour, as well as to the surviving dependents of such victims.

(8) Damage caused to civilians by being forced by Germany or her allies to labour without just remuneration.

(10) Damage in the form of levies, fines and other similar exactions imposed by Germany or her allies upon the civilian population.

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German Guilt For Armenian Blood -ld19171027
From Armeniapedia.org
THE LITERARY DIGEST
GERMAN GUILT FOR ARMENIAN BLOOD

PUBLIC OPINION (New York) combined with THE LITERARY DIGEST

Published by Funk & Wagnalls Company (Adam W. Wagnals, Press.; Wilfred J. Funk, Vice-Pres.; Robert J. Cuddiby, Treas.; William Neisel, Sec'y), 354-360 Forth Ave., New York
The Literary Digest for October 27, 1917

NEVER has Germany been connected so intimately with the Armenian horrors as in the testimony of the Rev. Alpheus Newell Andrus, senior missionary for the Congregational Station at Mardin, Mesopotamia. The plan to extirpate the Armenian Christians from Turkey was "made in Germany and suggested to the Turks by German officials," he declares, with the further information that wherever the Armenians made a stand against their Moslem oppressors "it was German officers and German cannon that broke them up." The far-sighted Germans, he explains in the New York Evening Post, were looking forward to the time when "they expected to gain complete dominion in Turkey, and they wanted to eliminate the Armenian question by getting rid of the Armenian race." If details can add anything to the appeals for pity and succor for this unfortunate race, Dr. Andrus has accounts of deeds that exceed in barbarity even those already recorded:

"One of the ways the Turks went about it was to load Armenian men on goatskin rafts on the understanding that they were to ne deported -- and then they were taken out and dumped into the Tigris River and drowned. This was the fate of at least 2,500 men from the vicinity of Diarbekir and its suburbs in northern Mesopotamia.

"Armed soldiers were on the rafts, which each carries about 75 to 100 victims. Kurd boatmen rowed them out into deep water. Then the soldiers would drive the Armenians to one side of the rafts until they tilted and dumped them into the river. If they tried to climb back on the rafts the soldiers and boatsmen beat them and shot them until all perished."

The Germans and the Turkish Government, Dr. Andrus continues, looked upon the destruction of the Armenians in Turkey as a cold-blooded political move, and gave the actual execution of it into the hands of the Kurds and Turkish soldiers, who went about it with the ferocity of Moslem religious fanaticism.

"At first the Turkish Government objected to the German suggestion of the removal of the Armenians on the grounds that they were valuable as artisans and business men and necessary to the economic life of the country, but the Germans promised to supply men to take their places. Having persuaded the Turks, the Germans then left it to them to put the plan into effect.

"But the Turkish soldiers in some places could not overcome the Armenians. At Urfa, the city of suffering, the Armenians resolved to resist deportation and defend their innocent families and their church. They barricaded themselves in their stone houses in their quarter. For ten days they withstood all the efforts of the Turkish soldiery to dislodge them. In the end they would have prevailed but that German officers brought and trained cannon upon their stronghold and forced them to flee.

"Surely such a people should not be allowed to perish. There still remain of them to be cared for 6,300 in Urfa and near by. Will not the American people help care for them? Conditions in Mesopotamia have not been brought much to the public's attention, for the reason that there has not been any one to report the state of things there, and because no report could get past the rigid Turkish censorship.

"More than 30,000 Armenians were deported from Dearbekir and its suburbs. It was some of these who were dumped into the Tigris and drowned. The leading and rich men were among these. The others were detailed to dig trenches and to do other work with only an insufficient allowance of bread daily. Later they were shot in groups when no longer able to endure the hardships imposed. There followed an epidemic of cholera, and then a scourge of typhus. Before the war and deportations the city contained some 60,000 inhabitants. The last I heard there were only 7,000 citizens left there.

"Women were clubbed, stabbed, or shot down on the Mesopotamian plans and left for death in piles on the ground or thrown into old cisterns. Some, coming to consciousness, crawled out from the piles and up from the cisterns and dragged themselves up the mountain to our hospital at Mardin to have their wounds drest.

"Some of the Moslems at Mardin took pity upon more than a thousand babies of deported women who, in passing through, left those they had no milk to feed nor strength to carry as they went on to their lingering deaths on the plans below. When the local government officials learned that Moslems had the little ones they issued an order that whoever harbored any Armenian would be visited with the treatment dealt to the Armenians.

"The Moslems, therefore, secretly turned the little ones over to Christian families, who clandestinely cared for them until their resources were exhausted. And now the latest information from Mardin is that unless funds are immediately forthcoming the thousand orphans must be turned out upon the streets to starve."

The Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief has decided that &5 a month per child will be necessary. That is about seventeen cents along with what is spent daily on the other children and at the end of each month send the five dollars to the committee. Dr. Andrus, it is said, himself narrowly escaped execution at the hands of the Turks because of his work at Mardin in aiding the suffering. He was ordered to be court-martialed, which under the conditions, he said, meant a "mock trial and the cutting off of the defendant's head." The American Embassy, however, heard of the order and interfered so that it was rescinded and a decree of exile issued instead.

http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=German_Guilt_For_Armenian_Blood_-ld19171027

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Recognition of Armenian Genocide by Germany
From Armeniapedia.org

GERMAN BUNDESTAG PASSES DOCUMENT ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
6/16/2005 RFE/RL
By Armen Dulian in Prague

All factions of the German Bundestag today have approved a resolution regarding the Armenian Genocide.

The word `genocide' is used in the resolution only once. The German Bundestag states that `numerous independent historians, parliaments and international organizations qualified the deportation and extermination of Armenians as genocide.'

In an RFE/RL interview, analyst and journalist Ashot Manucharian, who has lived and worked in Germany for long years, called the document `a statement of cowards.'

`The Germans know well that a genocide was perpetrated, their archives are full of documents reaffirming that,' said Manucharian. Nevertheless, in his opinion, `it is better than nothing'.'

The document calls on the German government to press Turkey to investigate the killings and foster reconciliation.

In its motion, the German parliament said it was "convinced an honest historical review is needed and represents the most important basis for reconciliation."

The resolution also recommends establishing a commission composed of Turkish, Armenian and foreign historians to study the past events. It is said in the document that the Turkish authorities `oppress attempts to start a debate on this issue inside the country.'

The resolution states that `Germany bears a special responsibility in the matter of reconciling the Armenians and the Turks, because the German Reich once turned a blind eye to the actions of its allies in World War I.' The lawmakers called on the Foreign Ministry of Germany to open its archives related to that period.

http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Recognition_of_Armenian_Genocide_by_Germany

[Zane]

I tried to find a thread which solely discusses land compensation, and couldn't find one, so this thread seemed the closest alternative.

I hope this does not appear to be a tirade, and I know I am probably preaching to the choir here, but I seems to me that, combined together, Azerbaijan's and Turkey's assertions concerning the legitimacy of borders are wholly inconsistent.

ON the one hand, Turkey lauds the treaties of Alexandropol and Kars, which allowed for their present borders. It's safe to say those Armenians who signed these treaties did so knowing that refusing to do so invited the complete elimination of any Armenian state. In other words, Turkey cajoled these favorable treaties by stepping on Armenia's throat. Turkey wouldn't dare to say these border changes were legitimate from a demographic or historic viewpoint. Kars, and Igdir had been swollen with Armenian refugees, and despite ridiculous claims to the contrary, Turks are not Hittites, and every historian knows Armenians were in these lands first. Turkey, then, is essentially espousing realpolitik, the strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must.

Then, on the other hand we have Azerbaijan. Though they make claims about Azeri's being the indigenous inhabitants, they reluctantly acknowledge that Armenians were the majority in 1989. They accuse Armenia of violating internationally recognized borders, but doesn't this cast an air of illegitimacy around Turkey's rapacious expansion, because much of the world, including the Ottoman Empire, recognized Armenia's territories to include those that were controlled by the Russian Empire before WWI. Thus, according to Azerbaijan, power alone does not legitimize border changes.

In summary: Turkey does not claim that the borders are not legitimaized from legalistic, demographic, or historic viewpoints, but only through strength in arms alone.
Alternatively, Azerbaijan claims borders are legitimized through legalistic, and historical (however untrue this might be) standpoint alone. It seems to me that they, the Turkey/Azerbaijan axis, want to have their cake and eat it too.

Am I to surmise from the above that Karabakh's incorporation into Armenia would be considered more legitimate had Azerbaijan "willfully" agreed to give Armenia Karabakh because Armenians threatened to devastate Baku, and take everything in their path (discussions about their ability to do this being set aside) unless they agreed to all terms forwarded by the Armenians?

[1.5 million]

Nothing unusual in this - it is just oppurtunism and excuse. Don't get caught up in righteousness as you will just find your self with the short end of the stick. The bottom line is that there is no free lunch.