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More disgusting Turkish "spin" on the AG from Turkish Weekly...
It was a great disaster that Armenians died in the late years of the Ottoman Empire. But a clear distinction needs to be made between the incapability of a state to provide safe conditions for its citizens in the severe war conditions and an ambition to kill all the members of an ethnic group. (me - yes I agree - there is a clear distinction) It seems highly contradictory to send people away if Ottomans really wanted to kill all Armenians. (me - oh really? Nazis did similar with Jews...and it has been shown that such policy was highly efffective killing mechanism that also allowed for deniability...) The second and more important contradiction is the fact that Armenians lived for hundreds of years together with Turkish people in quite prosperous conditions (There were thousands of merchants and many high diplomats) and still continue living, mostly as the elites of their society (Turkey). (me - and as well for anyone to claim these things shows their complete lack of understanding of the conditions and events of these times...and so why did Germans wait to kill Jews until the 1940s when they did? etc)
Many Turks died, as well. And also millions of other people all around the world, not because of genocide but because of wars and severe conditions in these years. (me - Yeah - and Germans died in WWII - so does this prove that there was no Holocaust?)
Armenians died in those years but not because of a genocide against them. If Just photographs, telegrams, testimonies are enough for claiming a genocide; Turks can also allege Armenians. (me - sorry - not - mounds of corraborated eyewitness testimoney plus documentation & confessions of perpetrators..sorry no go...Turks can alledge all they want - but ultimatly these counter claims are niether supportable nor truthful...)
Besides these, it carries great significance to keep respecting the sovereign rights of states no matter how much one is angry with what these have done. Turkish government is not a “so called” one but a fully established executive. (me - ?)
BTW - all of the above are/will be excellent material for disputing Turkish counter-claims section)...I'll do more on these in time... -
Laciner encapsulates the Turkish spin on the Genocide quite well
He weaves fact, fiction and Turkish propoganda/exaggeration into a really nice story...somehow he neglects to mention known fundemental facts concerning the Genocide itself and - like many Turkish denilaists - does his best to blame the Armenians for everything through exaggeration and mischariterization of events and circumstance. Still - this piece is very useful for Armenians and others to understand the deep rooted Turkish predjudices and outlook concerning the Armenians and why they refuse to take the blame for what occured. Remember there are a great many Turks that believe that this was how it came down - this in the only way they are able to look at these events...of course most Turks are not even aware of these details and specifics (some of which is accurate though much is not and is seen through a very specific Turkish perspective ignoring much reality of what was occuring/being done to Armenains and what role Armenians actually played in the Empire and even in regards to Armenians role in supporting the CUP...etc)Comment
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A related article that illustrates the Turkish blinders and excuses
my bolds...
What Happened in 1915: Genocide or Fate?
Armenian Issue
Thursday , 23 November 2006
Class Notes, November 2006, JTW
Turkish researchers argue that most of the Armenians died during the First World War years due to the bad war conditions. According to the Turkish sources most of the Ottoman Armenians died in famine, bad weather conditions and epidemic diseases. The Ottoman documents and modern Turkish exports accept that many Armenians were killed in communal clashes. Kurds and Circassians in particular attacked the Armenian villages in order to get valuables. Mostly the Kurdish tribes also organized counter attacks against the Armenian civilians to take revenge. However most of the loses were due to the bad war circumstances. (me - Kurds were "taking revenge"????) The Armenian historians generally do not accept ‘bad war circumstances’ and they argue that “epidemic diseases cannot remove hundred and thousands of Armenian people. They tend to believe in that Turks massacred all the Armenian population. However the scholarly articles prove the reverse. (me - ????) For instance researcher Ellen Marie Lust-Okar describe the circumstances the Armenians faced when they arrived in Syria, one of the Ottoman provinces at that time:
“Diseases spread rapidly. In Aleppo, more than 35,000 persons were said to have died from typhus between August 1916 and August 1917 alone. In almost all villages between Aleppo and Mosul 50 percent of the population is believed to have died, and in the district of Ra’sal-‘Ayn, this was to have reached 88 per cent. That thousands of Armenians and Arabs alike perished during the first years of immigration…” (Ellen Marie Lust-Okar, ‘Failure of Collaboration: Armenian Refugees in Syria’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1, January 1996, pp. 53-68, p. 57). (me - note the dates...and yes disease and starvation - just what you would expect....in death camps where no food or shelter was given to surviving refugeees = women, children and old - who somehow managed to survive till then...pushed to their limit...)
Not only the Armenians and Arabs but also the Turks and the Kurds were also deeply affected by the bad weather, epidemics and famine. (me - yeah - bad weather...kills millions every year in Anatolia...eh?) The Ottoman documents clearly show that more Muslim people died that the Armenian people due to these reasons during these years. Of course the Ottoman Government was responsible for all these loses, yet we have to accept that they were not able to provide the basic needs under the military attacks from almost all directions. The Armenian collaboration with the occupying Russians in the Eastern Anatolia and with the French armies in the Cilicia and the south worsened the security of the state. Thus the Istanbul Government decided to relocate the Armenian population to the remote part of the Empire. (me - the "argument" - its almost comical when one knows the facts...however it really isn't at all funny...) As a result, most of the Armenians from the Eastern and south eastern part of the State were forced to locate in the Syrian province in order to cut the link between the Armenians and the Russians. The decision obviously made the immigrating Armenians more vulnerable to the diseases, famine and weather conditions. However all these cannot be classified as systematic slaughter or genocide. Istanbul Armenians continued their normal life and many Armenians were among the richest and most powerful Ottoman citizens in Istanbul and some other parts of the State. Ten thousands of the Armenians continued to live in Turkey (me...of 2 million + who had been there previosly...I guess that millions of Jews remained in Germany just after the war proves no Holocaust eh?) even the Ottoman Empire was collapsed and modern Turkey was established. Even some of the relocated Armenians in 1915 returned later to their own towns. (Me - this is it folks - the essence of the dinilaist argument...need I say that I can post nearly the exact smae argument used by Nazi apologists who deny that it was the intent of Germans to kill Jews - that it was just the result of wartime circumstance and where Allied bombing is blamed - etc)
Another reason made the life worse for the ordinary Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire was the Armenian nationalist fanatics. (me - of course - blame the Armenians...this claim has been discredited by eyewitness testimony BTW - it is a total strawman in terms of real significance) The extremist Armenian nationalist fist hit the Armenian population. The armed Armenians killed more Armenian than the Turks between 1900-1911. They terrorized the relations between the Muslims and the Armenians. The extremist attacks against the Turkish, Kurdish and Circassian villages caused counter attacks. Many Muslim women were raped, killed and tortured. The conservative Kurdish villages were provoked by these Armenian attacks, and the security forces were not able to stop the communal attacks under the world war conditions. (me - yes do go on...) The clashes reached its peak when the Armenian extremists occupied the Van province. The Armenians were uniformed and armed. They had an independent Armenia flag and they handled the city to the occupying Russian forces. (me - somehow all eyewitnesses on the spot at the time saw these events quite differently - this is only repeating false Turkish war time propoganda used to incite the population against the Armenains and used as an excuse for the policy already secretly enacted to annhihilate the Armenians) Though most of the Armenian population were not extremist and not in co-operation with the occupying forces, the irregular Kurdish gang counter-attacks, defense attacks and revenge campaigns badly affected the ordinary Armenians as well. At the end of the day more than 520,000 Muslims were slaughtered by the armed Armenian groups and many Armenians were killed by the Kurdish and Circassian tribes (asirets). (me - Yes Armenians killed 520,000 Muslims - the misuse/misapplication of numbers and the relience on thouroughly discredited reports with fabricated accounts - etc etc etc - its not even funny...)
Today there are more than 100,000 Armenians in Istanbul. They have their own churches, schools and newspapers. They can freely educate their people in Armenian language, and the Armenian Patriarch provide many services special to the Armenians. Of course the Turkey Armenians also have problems like any other Turkish citizen, yet the European Union membership process has helped a lot in improving the rights. Even the Armenia citizens now prefer Turkey to live and work instead of Republic of Armenia. More than 70.000 Armenia citizens work in Turkey, mostly in Istanbul city with no serious problem. (me - yes no serious problems - Hrant Dink's friends and family and all Armenians and others witnessing would very much disagree...)
Class Notes, November 2006, JTW
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