BBC News - Mark Mardell's European Diary - on Armenian Genocide 02 Nov 2006

[1.5 million]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6107360.stm

A flawed but interesting disucsion. Also of interest are the comments after.

Most Turks (and many "others") just don't seem to "get it" yet - do they?

Also - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6045182.stm

[1.5 million]

From the second article:

What happened?

During World War I, as the Ottoman Turkish empire fought Russian forces, some of the Armenian minority in eastern Anatolia sided with the Russians.

Turkey took reprisals. On 24 April 1915 it rounded up and killed hundreds of Armenian community leaders.

In May 1915, the Armenian minority, two or three million strong, was forcefully deported and marched from the Anatolian borders towards Syria and Mesopotamia (now Iraq). Many died en route.

This really bothers me because it is essentially un-factual and in error - in at least two major ways -

First -Turkey did not "take reprisals" and one cannot blame (Anatolian) Armenian cooperation with Russians as instigators - only convenient excuses. Turkish massacreing of Armenians (& Greeks) (in far-Eastern villages for the former and in the Aegean area for the latter) began as early as 1913-14 - prior to the war - as part of a deliberate pre-planned ethnic cleansing ploicy. Records of CUP party Congress high level meetings show clearly that these plocies were contemplated and adopted (awaiting appropriate times to enact) as early as 1911. It has been amply demonstrated that WWI became that time - it was a cover for the CUP - as Western oversite was removed - capitualtions and foreign Inspector Generals provisions were immediatly rescinded. It is also well documented that the CUP/Ottoman Officials acted deliberatly to stir up Anatolian Armenian communities to rebellion by repressive acts against them and that by and large (except for only a handful of documented cases) the Armenians actually just took it and did not rebel. Meanwhile the Special Organization was sponsoring Chettes in the Far East (Caucuses & Northern Iran [Ottoman & Russian] regions) to massacre villages and harrass Armenians. In their overzealousness they also attacked Muslim villages! (yes this is also documented) and then blamed Armenians. There was also some Armenian baditry (that still paled in comparsion to that being practiced by Kurdish bandits) and some activities by Caucasian Armenians within Anatolia to attempt to stir Anatolian/Ottoman Armenians against Turkey (just as the Ottoman SO was doing the same with Turkic groups within Russian held territories....all of this prior to declearation of war with Russia. And we should all be familiar with the details of Van and Zeitoon by now - where Armenians initially attempted ccoperation with local authorities and only "rebelled" once said authorities began arrests, massacres, and assasinations. Van became a most convenient excuse for the CUP who distorted reports/dispatches to indicate an Armenian rebellion with Armenians massacreing Muslims by the thousands - whan no such thing was occuring - it was the opposite - and this is confirmed by 3rd party reports! Regardless this became the excuse that allowed the CUP to take action and to disguise the action (Genocide) under a viel of legitimacy (deportation of population due to rebellion) when in fact the "deportation" was not such at all. The CUP disinformation of this time is still used by Turks to justify and excuse the actions.


The second (major) fallacy of this BBC presentation is to portry the "deportation" aspect of the Genocide as the only aspect - when in fact there were direct executions of Armenian males as well as wholesale slaughters of Armenian populations from a large number of regions with no pretense of deportation. Again all of this is well documented - and the BBC and others do a great diservice to not mention and explain these facts - the great degree of (3rd party) eyewitness first hand accounts as well as CUP confessions and convictions and the fact that after WWI the outrage expressed by not only foriegn governments and people but by a great many Turks themselves (as recorded in the Turkish Press). The facts of the Armenian Genocide are not disputed by anyone with integrity and honesty. And anyone with a brain can see through the utter unbelievability of Turkish charges of any kind of similar scale or otherwise similar actions of Armenians against Turks during this period. Armenians had no capicity for such (Turks are always downplaying the number of Armenians...how could such few have killed so many Turks? And the mobilized Turkish nation/military could do nothing about it? Why aren't there any reports of Turkish military engagements with free roaming Armenian 5th colomn elements within Anatolia during the war that Turks claim to have been running about the country murdering hundreds of thousands of Turks...? hm...why not - because basically these things never occured!)