Saturday, March 06, 2010
4 comments:
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KGS said...
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I answer your post here TINSC.
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3/7/10, 3:08 AM
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Anonymous said...
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So, your basis for denying that this constituted genocide is:
A. There is no official death toll
and
B. People who support calling it genocide are anti-Israel leftists.
Pardon me, but Holocaust deniers do the same with A. and lower the Jewish death toll all the time. Holocaust deniers also deny that there was ever a systematic campaign to eradicate Jews from Europe, and claim that Jews were just some of the many victims of the death camps ... that the death camps were for all of the regime's enemies, which included certain Jews.
As for B., well I guess it can be said that Holocaust deniers tend to be on the right side of the political spectrum, and like Hitler also tend to be anticommunist.
Look, the Turkish line about the Armenian holocaust is the same spin, PR, etc. that Muslim regimes always take about their crimes and human rights abuses. Take the government of Sudan's denials about their killing and displacing millions and enslaving the rest. So of all the Islamist propaganda machines, why should we believe Turkey and no one else? Or even better ... why should we believe this Turkish regimes' statements about the Armenian genocide while rejecting Turkey's claims that Israel is committing human rights violations against Palestinians? Either this Turkish regime is truthful or they aren't. If you are going to accept what they say about Armenian genocide as fact, well then you are going to have to also accept their accusations against Israel over Operation Cast Lead as being fact as well.
Look, you folks can keep trying to preserve Turkey as an ally all you want. Wishful thinking. The truth is that Turkey is now the enemy of Israel and the U.S. Second, don't think that Israel playing the Holocaust-denier role with the Armenians, and doing so solely because Armenia is less powerful than Turkey, won't have repercussions. The next time the "Holocaust denier" charge is made, that person will say "it takes one to know one."
Gerald -
3/7/10, 11:41 PM
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There is NO Santa Claus said...
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"Look, you folks can keep trying to preserve Turkey as an ally all you want. Wishful thinking. The truth is that Turkey is now the enemy of Israel and the U.S."
I share this observation, Gerald. Unfortunately, it is this observation that is motivating much of the political agenda behind labeling the Armenian Massacres as a genocide. We don't need 100 year old history to prove out today's Islamist hostility. Moreover, we don't need to call the Armenian Massacres a "genocide" and hang it on today's Turkey. Just because it wasn't a genocide does not leave the Ottoman Turks "not guilty" of a massive crime.
Last but not least, I think the Turkish government has always been cowardly about discussing the history of the massacres. Yes, the agenda of many were anti-Turk, but there is also empirical history that needs to be examined and the Turks have always been a bit cowardly about that. Here is where I think the modern Turkey can be severly criticized.
Some people just need words like "genocide" because they can't articulate a crime any other way. On this issue: Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it. -
3/8/10, 7:37 AM
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Will48 said...
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"Genocide" - a mass-murder campaign with a purpose of extermination of a certain population. No one is allowed, or is given a chance, to escape.
1915 anti-Armenian massacres in Turkey saw Armenians deported out from certain parts of Turkic Occupied Armenia, and many killed on the way. Many/some (50%/30%) were allowed/did succeed to escape.
IOW, what was planned was a total cleansing of a territory of Armenians, and not a total extermination of Armenians, who would be then not allowed to escape at all.
Conclusion: the campaign of mass deportaion and murder of Armenians by Turks and Kurds (who were the main perpetrators) was just that - a mass murder and deportation campaign.
An analogous action by Hitlerist Nazi Germany would be to send the Jews under their power to North Africa by the shiploads. Not to send them to the death camps and gas chambers by the trainloads, as they did.
And to conclude that, we need not take on faith not one word of the Islamist MuZlim Supremacist Turkey. -
3/17/10, 10:55 AM
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While the scale of murder suggests a genocide, the Armenian Massacres do not fully qualify as such. It should be noted that those who force the "G-word" on Turkey historically have been partisan leftists seeking to demonize a U.S. Ally. As such, the barbaric behavior of other Islamic nations throughout history and today are routinely ignored by these partisan leftists. It should also be noted that the Arab citizens of the Ottoman Empire participated fully in the massacre of Armenians yet escape the criticism reserved for a Cold-War ally of the United States.
Sound familiar? It should.
The same people hollering "genocide" against Turkey are those who routinely holler "apartheid" and "genocide" describing Israel's treatment of Palestinian Arabs. When you have to stand in the same boat with these people in order to hurl the "genocide" label on Turkey, ya gotta wonder just how accurate the accusation really is.
In fact, it is because the Armenian Massacres were NOT a genocide that the exact death toll is disputed. That is because unlike the Nazis who CAREFULLY PLANNED the inhalation of Jews, the Ottomans had no statistical tracking in order to measure progress. Thus, it doesn't matter what number you pick: a) the conservative Turkish number of 600,000; b) The Armenian/leftist number of 2 million; or c) the generally accepted number of "about a million", the mere fact that nobody can get an accurate accounting of the massacre is because the Ottomans did not set up an accounting system that would have been expected from a central and strategic plan of annihilation, i.e. a genocide.
There are some other excellent resources on this subject from anti-Terrorism specialists and historians. I recommend:
http://www.meforum.org/748/revisiting-the-armenian-genocide
http://www.meforum.org/991/armenian-massacres-new-records-undercut-old-blame
http://www.meforum.org/2114/ottoman-archives-reshape-armenian-debate
The general reason by which these horrific massacres fail to qualify as a genocide is because historians have failed to find evidence that there was a master plan developed by the Ottoman Empire leaders to totally annihilate ethnic Armenians. The charge of genocide against the Ottoman Empire is based on the scale of the massacres, NOT the true definition of the term.
But most important, remember this! If you're going to heave the genocide label at Turkey, don't be surprise if the person standing next to you is heaving the apartheid label at Israel. The use of these words have a common tactic and if you want to be careless with them, don't be surprised if that comes back to you like a boomerang.