Armenia: the end of the debate?

[Anoush]

Re: Armenia: the end of the debate?

All good questions. Perhaps the article was designed to stir controversy by raising more questions than answers, I can't be sure. Nevertheless, I would definitely like to see this journalist justify why he has come to the conclusions reached. I just don't see the merit in character assassinating someone just becuase they have an opinion that differs from the existing dogma. Research, discussion, debate in all forms should be encouraged and not just dismissed because of snide remarks or established doctrines.

NOT when a systematic Genocide was committed by a nation and the facts have been much more than substantiated and turkey is on constant denial. Enough is enough! Don't make us more mad than we are already. Will that Dyer be able to speak in the same tone about the Haulocaust? Of course not, they'll get very angry justifiably so and so will we.

[avetis]

Re: Armenia: the end of the debate?

Հայաստանում հարկավոր է հեղապոխություն վոր հայ ազգը մնա այս աշխարի երեսին և ոչ թե դառնա թանգարանային նմուշ:

[Anoush]

Re: Armenia: the end of the debate?

"Claws and bite" have nothing to do with it. More to the point is the kind of credulity and deference you are willing to offer a writer solely on the basis of an impressive resumé, extensive publication, and unsubstantiated claims of having at some point in the past read this or that, let alone whether the right conclusions were drawn from what he read. And did you ever wonder whether his grasp of Ottoman Turkish was that good as a "budding" historian? Why does he not name one date, place or historic leader of the Armenian revolts he mentions? Yes, he is 'seemingly' independent. Well said. Is that good enough for you? It's not good enough for me; not good enough to justify his disseminating a blatant and cruel falsehood in his far flung media markets, namely that Syria was a salvation point for Armenian deportees, when in fact it was the place they were disposed of in the deserts of Der Zor like so much refuse. Despite his impressive resumé, all his perspicacity seems to vanish when it comes to the Armenians in 1915. Maybe you can explain that to me.

Diranakir jan, When the majority of the women, old men/women and children were forced to walk the death marches down the Mesopotamian deserts, Der El Zor at Saahaddin was where they were all massacred. Thrown in the huge ditch in there and then burned to die. Whoever by chance weren't killed in there and finally half dead arrived to Syria; Talaat Pasha or I should say Talaat "posha" sent a telegram to the Syrian governor to kill every Armenian soul that arrived in Syria. Read Talaat's Black book that was on the internet just recently. But the benevolent Syrian governor did'nt follow Talaat "posha's" instructions. The Armenians in 1915 (all women, children and old folks) who finally arrived to Syria after being mostly killed, looted, raped; finally the remainder of these poor souls when they arrived in Syria three quarters dead skeletons were ordered by Talaat to be massacred. Indeed the systematic Genocide did occur from 1915 through 1923. It is all written day by day what was happening to the Armenian nation through the United States and the European media all over their papers. All one has to do is dig up the Times and several other papers of US and Europe of that time. The Western powers, Germany and Russia, they all witnessed the Armenian Genocide and they all turned a deaf ear. The turks mostly and above all the perpetrators (Talaat/Gemal/Enver) and later Attaturk were all guilty of the blood of more than 1.5 Million Armenians.

[Pedro Xaramillo]

Re: Armenia: the end of the debate?

Armenia: the end of the debate?
By Gwynne Dyer

THE FIRST great massacre of the 20th century happened in eastern Anatolia 94 years ago. Armenians all over the world insist that their ancestors who died in those events were the victims of a deliberate genocide, and that there can be no reconciliation with the Turks until they admit their guilt. But now the Armenians back home have made a deal.

On October 10, the Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers signed a accord in Zurich that reopens the border between the two countries, closed since 1993, and creates a joint historical commission to determine what actually happened in 1915. It is a triumph for reason and moderation, so the nationalists in both countries attacked it at once.

The most anguished protests came from the Armenian diaspora: eight million people living mainly in the United States, France, Russia, Iran and Lebanon. There are only three million people living in Armenia itself, and remittances from the diaspora are twice as large as the country’s entire budget, so the views of overseas Armenians matter.

Unfortunately, their views are quite different from those of the people who actually live in Armenia. For Armenians abroad, making the Turks admit that they planned and carried out a genocide is supremely important. Indeed, it has become a core part of their identity.

For most of those who are still in Armenia, getting the Turkish border re-opened is a higher priority. Their poverty and isolation are so great that a quarter of the population has emigrated since the border was closed sixteen years ago, and trade with their relatively rich neighbour to the west would help to staunch the flow.

Moreover, the agreement does not require Armenia to give back the Armenian-populated parts of Azerbaijan, its neighbour to the east. Armenia’s conquest of those lands in 1992-94 was why Turkey closed the border in the first place (many Turks see the Turkic-speaking Azeris as their “little brothers”), so in practical terms Armenian president Serge Sarkisian has got a very good deal.

The communities of the diaspora, however, believe the Armenian government has sold them out on the genocide issue. Their remittances are crucial to Armenia, so President Serge Sarkisian has spent the past weeks travelling the world, trying to calm their fury. In the end, he will probably succeed, if only because they have nowhere else to go.

But can any practical consideration justify abandoning the traditional Armenian demand that Turkey admit to a policy of genocide? Yes it can, because it is probably the wrong demand to be making.

Long ago, when I was a budding historian, I got sidetracked for a while by the controversy over the massacres of 1915. I read the archival reports on British and Russian negotiations with Armenian revolutionaries after the Ottoman empire entered the First World War on the other side in early 1915. I even read the documents in the Turkish General Staff archives ordering the deportation of the Armenian population from eastern Anatolia later that year. What happened is quite clear.

The British and the Russians planned to knock the Ottoman empire out of the war quickly by simultaneous invasions of eastern Anatolia, Russia from the north and Britain by landings on Turkey’s south coast. So they welcomed the approaches of Armenian nationalist groups and asked them to launch uprisings behind the Turkish lines to synchronise with the invasions. The usual half-promises about independence were made, and the Armenian groups fell for it.

The British later switched their attack to the Dardanelles in an attempt to grab Istanbul, but they never warned their Armenian allies that the south-coast invasion was off. The Russians did invade, but the Turks managed to stop them. The Armenian revolutionaries launched their uprisings as promised, and the Turks took a terrible vengeance on the whole community.

Istanbul ordered the Armenian minority to be removed from eastern Anatolia on the grounds that their presence behind the lines posed a danger to Turkish defences. Wealthy Armenians were allowed to travel south to Syria by train or ship, but for the impoverished masses it was columns marching over the mountains in the dead of winter. They faced rape and murder at the hands of their guards, there was little or no food, and many hundreds of thousands died.

If genocide just means killing a lot of people, then this certainly was one. If genocide means a policy that aims to exterminate a particular ethnic or religious group, then it wasn’t. Armenians who made it alive to Syria, then also part of the Ottoman empire, were not sent to death camps. Indeed, they became the ancestors of today’s huge Armenian diaspora. Armenians living elsewhere in the empire, notably in Istanbul, faced abuse but no mass killings.

It was a dreadful crime, and only recently has the public debate in Turkey even begun to acknowledge it. It was not a genocide if your standard of comparison is what happened to the European xxxs, but diaspora Armenians will find it very hard to give up their claim that it was. Nevertheless, the grown-ups are now in charge both in Armenia and in Turkey, and amazing progress is being made.

n Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.


Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
http://www.cyprusedirectory.com/arti....aspx?ID=15731

What absolute tosh, how are Armenians getting a good deal from this, this signs away historical Armenian claims, and it can by way of wording harm Artsakh, who is this idiot anyway and having a blog that a bunch of people view does not make him right, its once again probably Turkish financial influence driving this, I wonder how close he is with the Turkish government

[Anoush]

Re: Armenia: the end of the debate?

What absolute tosh, how are Armenians getting a good deal from this, this signs away historical Armenian claims, and it can by way of wording harm Artsakh, who is this idiot anyway and having a blog that a bunch of people view does not make him right, its once again probably Turkish financial influence driving this, I wonder how close he is with the Turkish government

Very well said Pedro jan.

[Catharsis]

Re: Armenia: the end of the debate?

What absolute tosh, how are Armenians getting a good deal from this, this signs away historical Armenian claims, and it can by way of wording harm Artsakh, who is this idiot anyway and having a blog that a bunch of people view does not make him right, its once again probably Turkish financial influence driving this, I wonder how close he is with the Turkish government

The Turkish government for decades has denied and ignored the resolutions by the Association of Genocide Scholars (whose countless members are amongst the chairs of genocide studies and international genocide prevention groups) to recognize the Armenian Genocide. The Turkish government has spent billions in their genocide denial campaign to "recruit" corrupt and immoral "scholars" like Justin McCarthy or Heath Lowry who have no moral or academic standards and would stoop so low. I cannot say that Dyer is one of them with certainty, since I do not have direct evidence, however I would not be surprised at all, given the treatment he has received at the hands of the Turkish government, while scholars who have published works on the Armenian Genocide are vociferously attacked and silenced by the fascist junta inside Turkey.

[Diranakir]

Re: Armenia: the end of the debate?

In addition, if one looks into what Mr. Dyer has written on the Armenian Genocide (though he does not call it that) one is struck by the generous, compassionate allowance he makes for the mental and emotional distress suffered by the perpetrators of the genocide and which he presents as making the "crime" ( his own term) perfectly understandable. He tells us they were running scared and didn't quite know what to do. They were in "panic" at imminent victories of the allies with a southern assault, all aided by Armenians (who were fighting for their life and had no state institutions they could fully rely on). Gripped with this "panic" they methodically went through every Armenian town, village and hamlet in Anatolia over a period of at least two years and coolly told everyone to get out and march for the deserts of Der Zor, all to prepare for an assault that never happened! Ridiculous! And does he show a shred of sympathy for the distress of these innocents torn from their homes to be tortured in death marches and sent to their death? He does not. All his sympathy is for those in Ottoman uniforms. This is the measure of the man, this high paid and very successful "historian".

From Mr. Dyer's: Turkish 'Falsifiers' and Armenian 'Deceivers': Historiography and the Armenian Massacres, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Jan. 1976), pp. 99-107

"When more work is completed on the period I believe that historians will come to see Talat, Enver and their associates not so much as evil men but as desperate, frightened, unsophisticated men struggling to keep their nation afloat in a crisis far graver than they had anticipated when they first entered the war (the Armenian decisions were taken at the height of the crisis of the Dardanelles), reacting to events rather than creating them, and not fully realizing the "tent of the horrors they had set in motion in 'Turkish Armenia' until they were too deeply committed to withdraw. As for the complicity of ordinary Turks with their leaders, hatred and revenge and blind panic were the motives for the behaviour of the Ottoman army and the Muslim Population of eastern Anatolia in the Armenian massacres, scarcely creditable motives, nor ones an Armenian is likely to forgive, but common enough in all nations and even understandable in the Turkish situation in the East in 1915."

[Diranakir]

Re: Armenia: the end of the debate?

For those who are still under the illusion that Gwynne Dyer is a straight talker without an agenda, please note his confusion about the meaning of the word "genocide". Apparently, between the writing of the article (from which the following quotes are taken) and his column which is the subject of this thread he reached some kind of enlightenment on that question and is now ready to say without hesitation, and assert to the whole world, that it WASN'T genocide. What cleared his mind in the intervening years? ? ?

http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20We%20Really%20Massacred%20Them.txt

" The Armenian desire to have their national tragedy given the
same status as the . . . . Holocaust is understandable, but it is mistaken.
The facts of the case are horrifying, and certainly justify calling the
events in eastern Turkey in 1915-16 a genocide. . . . . It was certainly a genocide, but it was not premeditated, nor was it systematic...."

[Catharsis]

Re: Armenia: the end of the debate?

"...It was certainly a genocide, but it was not premeditated, nor was it systematic...."

Dyer shows complete ignorance there since Genocide by its very definition already means premeditated and systematic.

[Diranakir]

Re: Armenia: the end of the debate?

Exactly. So what does that say about the vaunted authority of someone who, at the point he said that, had received honors and recognition and had the better part of his career as an "historian" behind him? It means he can change his tune and betray the truth at the drop of hat for the highest bidder, as someone said earlier in this thread. And there are plenty of "credentialed"
individuals and organizations who are ready to push him forward and give him top billing. It's time for us to wise up.