There is nothing that so cries out for justice as the forgotten who are slaughtered and whose deaths are left in thunderous silence of receding history. The pain for families only barely eases with the passing of decades or even centuries. This last 150 years has seen mind-twisting inhumanity. The Holocaust weighs on us with a pressure that has barely eased since the end of World War II. And yet, in the same war there was a holocaust visited upon the Serbs, which some Serbs called a term a stolen holocaust, so little light has ever shone on it.
The massacre of Armenians in 1915, and at other periods after 1885, is another agony of mass death that is little known to most people. Taking place during the death throes of the Ottoman Empire, the slaughter—termed a genocide by the Armenians—has been the subject of critical debate in the last years. The Turks, descendants of the last Ottomans and inheritors of their state, argue that Armenian deaths were the result of civil war, and that there were massive casualties on both sides. There are reliable contemporary accounts to bolster both arguments.
On the Ottoman side: According to Bernard Lewis, scion of American Middle Eastern studies, “What happened to the Armenians was the result of a massive Armenian armed rebellion against the Turks. … The massacres were carried out by irregulars, by local villagers responding to what had been done to them.†Dr. Lewis was subsequently charged with and convicted of denying the genocide by a French court, which fined him a symbolic one franc.
On the Armenian side: Henry Morgenthau, Sr., the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, wrote, in a memoir dated 1919: “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.†Many of the Armenians died during forced deportations, deportations now being considered a crime against humanity.
It’s even more complicated than the diametrically opposed viewpoints of fine historians. When the EU started making noises about demanding that Turkey “accept responsibility†for the Armenian genocide (which, in fact, the current country did not commit), Prime Minister Erdogan asked that the United States and Russia both open their sealed archives to historical review. Both refused. Complicity on the part of the United States has been documented to some extent already. But it’s the suspected Russian involvement in Armenian acts of terrorism against the Ottoman Empire over a period of nearly 80 years that Russians most certainly don’t want exposed. To the casual observer with no axe to grind, declarations made without access to all the pertinent archives certain smacks of a railroading for political purposes, a seeking of illegitimate leverage with half the facts concealed.
But it’s worse than that, because the Armenian genocide, in which 1.5 million people may have, doesn’t hold a candle to another genocide happening during the very same time period.
The mass murdering of the Congolese in the Belgian Congo between 1878 and 1910 is a genocide with none of the detractions of the Armenian-Ottoman tragedy. The death toll is variously placed between eight and 30 million, depending upon the time period assessed, and the means of assessment. However, what is certain is that this genocide was about clearing the Congo of its entire native population, for the purpose of handing over to Belgian King Leopold II and his administrators an entire country belonging to other people.[2] Adam Hochchild’s King Leopold’s Ghost [3] details this travesty, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness provides the visual backdrop of the terror that was visited upon a completely innocent native population.
However, we don’t find the U.S. Congress and Nancy Pelosi banging on the royal doors of Belgium for an apology to be forwarded to the descendants of the slaughtered of a black African nation.
Why not? Because there are too few Congolese in Nancy Pelosi’s district. Is that why we find no resolution for the good of the Congolese, who lost some 5 to 25 times as many people during the same general time frame? Do they count less because they’re black? Do the Armenians count more because they are white and have many numbers in Pelosi’s district?
Some have suggested that Pelosi’s arrogant, reckless act of political narcissism is something of grand Machiavellian plot: that having been able to raise no passable resolution to end the Iraq war, she instead engineered a declaration of genocide against an American ally in order to elicit Turkey’s cutting off America’s ability to feed, clothe, enable with energy, and heal with medicines that routinely make their way into a war zone from the air bases and protected Kurdish trade routes through Turkish cities and air fields. If this be true, Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason, as well as of usurpation of executive authority and Congressional authority by manipulation of a house panel.
But the truth is likely both more and less horrifying than this possibly. Because it is very like that Nancy Pelosi, in her almost unbested capacity for gross incompetence and mirror-staring, is simply so foreign-policy ignorant and so utterly incompetent that she actually tried this bit of grandstanding for Armenian votes in her district—and publicity, without which she apparently cannot continue to breathe oxygen for a period of 24 hours.
What needs to happen next is that Nancy Pelosi needs to be removed as the Speaker of the House by Democrats who would still like to win the next election.
This toying with the Middle East, as if she had any clue what is doing, follows on the heels of her hijab-wearing photo-op with Bashir al-Assad, an egregious blunder that was cheered by al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hizbollah. Yes, what a positive movement when women in Saudi Arabia will be charged with adultery and stoned to death were they to do the same thing. The Islamists cheered Pelosi’s actions as a symbol of their supremacy over U.S. foreign policy, not as a victory of U.S. attempts to ‘win the hearts and minds.’
Michael Rubin’s comments in National Review, in the best article written on this matter this week,[4] should sober everyone about Pelosi reckless incompetence. Referencing Pelosi’s fawning visit with al-Assad, he writes: “Basking in the glow of Pelosi’s headline-garnering visit to Damascus — again in contravention of a State Department request — Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad upgraded his support for Hezbollah and his nuclear dealings with North Korea.â€
Pelosi’s lust for the power of the presidency or of the entirety of Congress and not just her individual part must be contained for the good of the country. For if she had succeeded this week, the cost of American and Iraqi lives would have been laid securely at her own feet. She should be grateful the President and the Congress grounded her little flight toward the sun before her candle-wax wings melted and caused her crash to be worse even than it is.
Someday, after the Russian and American files are opened, a full history of the Armenian tragedy should written—by University professors, not House committees, as Rubin also points out.
And while they are at it, they should have a look at the Belgian atrocities in The Congo and the extermination of so many of the world’s indigenous populations by European states greedy for wealth and avaricious for the saving of souls.
But when all of it is said and done, it is a matter for the fullness of government to decide, not the province of a narcissistic, reckless, incompetent and dangerous pool-gazer bent on fame and political gain.
Morgaan Sinclair has written for The Weekly Standard and The New York Post and is a Fellow of Gracen Intelligence
[1] http://serbianholocaust.com/
[2] http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide2.htm
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/30/daily/leopold-book-review.html
[4]http://article.nationalreview.com/q=MTMzZjVkNTFjMzg1ZjIwNWFjZTlmMWM2MmQzNDZlMTU= Â Â Â Â
18 users commented in " Narcissistic and Reckless Arrogance: Pelosi and the Armenian Genocide Resolution "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackYou might want to note that Bernard Lewis received grants by the government of Turkey therefore of course he will have to side with denial.
Stop polarizing this country! This is a nonpartisan resolution obviously with all the footnotes we may assume that you did research on the subject but I would kindly see otherwise.
Will you also call Former President Ronald Reagan a looney Liberal for calling the Armenian genocide a genocide?
Show some respect to our representative form of government through our Congressman. Your rant is seems meaningless, considering that it is not an informed opinion. Further-more it seems to be filled with hate, more then
informing the reader of your views. Maybe tone down the partisan slant and you will have more readers respect your writing, although I whole heartedly disagree with all the points your trying to express.
This issue is never going away. I and others like me will never allow it to go away. You and others like you can rave and rant as much as you like, but the fact remains it was a genocide and we Armenians will use our(admittedly limited) human resources to the fullest extent in whichever countries we happen to find ourselves in. We have that right. If you want to stop the issue from coming up again in Congress, go start a lobbying group to propagandize your views on the issue. In the meantime keep your uninformed opinions off the internet, or at least off of google.com/news. Actually nevermind, any publicity is good publicity.
To me it seems that the hatred armenians show as a response to this article is once again evident. They are not after recognition of genocide for their ancestors but on bloody witch hunt using american and eruopean politics as a tool. so sad to see a group of people respond with such hatred and such subjective point view. hatred begets hatred, and so it will in this case.
Ms Sinclair,
This is about the Armenian Genocide not all genocides and certainly not any in Africa . Armenian-Americans all 2 million of them are U.S. citizens and they vote.Perhaps you might enlist the NAACP as regards the Congolese genocide because I don’t think your fellow African-Americans care at all.
Its a shame you are using the suffering of the Christian Armenians as your little soap box . You are very self-absorbed.Everything has to always be about you.
IK ..
I don’t think the Armenians are after blood. I just don’t. This issue has been a long time simmering, not made easier for the fact that Turkish discrimination against Armenians has been ongoing for the last 100 years. The murder of Hrant Dink this year was evidence of the shocking ethnic supremacy SOME — that is, SOME — Turks still hold. The very notion that one can be tried and jailed for “insulting Turkishness” should give everybody pause.
However, it’s good to remember also that so furious was the Turkish backlash against the murder for Dink that 100,000 Turks showed up for his funeral, chanting, “Today I am an Armenian, too.” Ethnic supremacists among the Turks were shocked. But the Turkish population in general is furious at this murder. Dink himself, however, chided his fellow Armenians about their own refusal to get along. And Dink, with others, also sought the opening of files that would give some resolution (hopefully) to the unresolved truths believed held in them.
It is not a resolution calling the Armenian genocide what it is (a genocide, in my opinion) that I object. It is the reckless assault on stability in the Middle East and the safety of US soldiers in Iraq to which I object. It is the endless pursuit by Nancy Pelosi of her own shadow presidency to which I object. And it is the cherry-picking of causes, linked to the vote, to which I object.
Some of the comments here actually smack so badly of racism that they are shocking, however. The NAACP should handle the Congolese genocide. I though this was a matter for all humanity. And the racial branding by “PN” is amusing, and also disappointing. Says PN: Perhaps you might nelist the NAACP as regards the Congolese genocide, because I don’t think your fellow African-Americans care at all. This exhibits quite an amazing attitude: apparently if I care about the Congolese as much as the Armenians, I must be black (I’m not, but certainly wouldn’t mind being). So it would appear that PN might be the one having a bit of a problem being self-absorbed, and wrapped up in ethnicity first, and humanity after.
ALL genocides — including the Armenian one (I tend to believe Morgenthau knew what he was talking about — should be examined and resolved, probably best together.
In the meantime, my greatest fear is for the progress of the situation in Iraq and for our soldiers there. Pelosi’s recklessness and irresponsibility has been almost completely paralleled in this regard. Also, I have been afraid that the recent upsurge in feelings of compassion and renewal of friendship among the Turks for the Armenians will be squandered if a determination to humiliate them at this time is allowed to overtake the process.
When Hrant Dink was murdered, the overwhelming response of Turks in brotherhood to the Armenians was not lost on Armenians — at least not those living in Armenia.
Quoting from Mustafa Akyol’s piece at http://www.thewhitepath.org
All this implies that there is an important trend in Turkish society toward embracing its historical “others.” The “others” note this, too. In his piece published in the Turkish Daily News, the former prime minister of Armenia, Armen Darbinyan, wrote, “Armenians in Armenia did not anticipate such a sincere manifestation of solidarity” in Turkey for Hrant Dink. “This leaves no doubt that a core transformation in the worldview of today’s Turkey has occurred,” added Mr. Darbinyan, “[which] should become a turning point in the relations between Turkish and Armenian nations.”
He is right. These two great nations, which lived peacefully side by side for centuries until the curse of modern nationalism, should seek reconciliation. An Islamic principle reads, “From every evil, there emerges a good.” Perhaps the good emerging from the evil murder of Hrant Dink might be the chance to build that mutual understanding. Had he lived, that would have been his advice to us all.
I would like the Armenian genocide to be handled in a way that is not reckless and irresponsible, that does not threaten the growing sense of fraternity going on in Turkey, and that does not threaten our troops.
And no fair resolution can possibly come about if the files of the United States and Russia remain under lock and key so that historians, both Turkish and Armenian, are barred from accessing their own histories by other countries which have something to hide.
Meanwhile, Democrats need to remove Pelosi from her position. Her grandstanding with al-Assad and over this issue belie an attempt by a sitting Speaker of the House to create her own presidency. That is dangerous for absolutely everybody, no matter how one feels about resolutions regarding genocides.
But meanwhile, is anybody capable of getting outside their own ethnicity long enough to care about the Congolese, or the Serbs, or the Russians, or the Poles?
And do you agree that if we are to humiliate Turkey for some their Ottoman ancestors, a century dead, did (there is not one person alive who had any hand in this), we must also have another round on the Germans apologizing to the Poles and the Belgians, that the Belgians must apologize to the Congo and pay reparations, that the Vatican must apologize to Paraguay, Belize, the entire Caribbean, and that the US government must pass resolution about its genocide of African Americans?
To pretend this resolution is about condemning ‘another government from another time’ and has nothing to do with the Turkey or Turks of today is disingenuous to say the least.
Anyone with any knowledge about this issue knows that issue of recognizing Armenian genocide claims is tied to LAND RESTITUTION CLAIMS.
Stunningly, at the urging of the Armenian Diaspora, this resolution has been drafted to allege that the alleged genocide occurred from 1915-1923, which is outrageously incorrect. Relocation orders were issued in 1915 to remove Armenians from locations near the Russian front. However, BEFORE WWI ended, orders were issued repeatedly to stop relocating Armenians.
Starting in 1919, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the nationalists under him began the war of independence against the Ottoman sultante. During that time, the so called “French” Armenian Legion invaded South East Anatolia aided by the French. Why? Because the French wanted control over the oil fields in what is now Northern Iraq. At the same time, there was an unprovoked invasion by the Greeks to the west, conducted under the watchful eye of the British.
This resolution was deliberately written to include as “genocide” this period of time, long after WWI and when Armenians were clearly waging an all out war against Turks. The intent can only be, if this resolution is ever adopted, to next allege that the modern Republic of Turkey is responsible for the “genocidal” acts occurring during 1919-1923 under the leadership of those officials who formed the modern republic.
This is characteristic of the Diaspora’s methods. They are dishonest, dishonorable, in denial that their own Dashnak revolutionary forces openly declared war against the Ottoman government during WWI, which then set into motion a horrific series of events in which Ottoman muslims and Armenians massacred each other on an industrial scale, while the Allies idly stood by and watched. They eagerly and openly promote ethnic hatred of Turks and Turkey.
They refuse to release the archives of the Armenian revolutionary parties operating in concert with Russia and France during WWI, and declare it is Turkey that move prove that a genocide did not occur!!
Moreover, the one and only Turkish citizen that was granted to the Armenian archives, was arrested by Armenian authorities as he was boarding a plane to come back to the states to return to his doctoral program at Duke. He was arrested for buying books, old books, and having the audacity to think he could take them with him when he left. All of his research was confiscated and he was imprisoned for several months and finally tried and convicted of some bizarre law relating to printed matter more than 50 years old.
Furthermore, in Armenia, it is illegal to possess a copy of the Manifesto of Hovhannes Katchaznouni, First Prime Minister of the Armenian Republic. Why? Katchaznouni was a leader of the Dashnak revolutionaries during WWI. In his manifesto, he honorably takes responsibility for the Armenians inability to achieve a Greater Armenia in SE Anatolia. He acknowledges that the Dashnak leadership overestimated the support the Russians and French were willing to provide, and grossly underestimated the resolve of the Turks to keep their homeland. Most strikingly, he actually states that the Ottomans knew what the Dashnaks’ goals were and that they were justified in doing what they did to protect their lands.
Freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry when it comes to Armenian genocide claims only exists for those who accept the Diaspora’s claims without question. Let’s not also forget, that Professor Stanford Shaw, one of the most renowned historians of Ottoman history, concluded there was no Armenian genocide, only a failed attempt at forming an independent nation. As a result, Armenians bombed his house in Los Angeles, Armenians disrupted his classes at USC and essentially made it impossible to remain in the U.S.
Some of the first acts of terror that occurred in the U.S. were committed by Armenian terrorists who murdered over 70 Turkish diplomats (and members of their family, including children) as well as people of other nationalities who were unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity during a span of 12 years, starting in 1972.
Apparently, among the Diaspora, freedom of speech and civil liberties like the right to life, libert and the pursuit of happiness are only permitted if you mindlessly and unquestioningly support their claims.
Finally, what I find most offensive about all of this is, these people are American born Armenians. Our country is at war. If you were Americans first, our Congress wouldn’t be wasting its precious time on an event for which historical archives are still withheld, rather than on healthcare issues for children or maybe what’s going on today in Darfur. The living come first, not the dead.
Just for the record,I’m Armenian. My Father and his family were very dark. Darker than many negroes. The Russians used to refer to the Armenians as the black people of the caucasus. Here in California as a child I was subjected to racism you can’t believe. All because my father is a person of color. So let’s not make this a white black thing. Armenians are a race unto themselves, not white, not black, but different. I know the stories my grandmother told and I know they were true. The Turks commited genocide, deliberate. However, I forgive the Turkish people and I want NOTHING in return. I just want eveyrone to recognize that Nancy Pelosi is a good person trying to make a difference. George Bush is a bad person trying to keep things as is.
Lynn …
Yes, this is just a *part* of the subsumed cultural and political histories I’m talking about. There’s much, much more.
Lynn’s comment:
“Anyone with any knowledge about this issue knows that issue of recognizing Armenian genocide claims is tied to LAND RESTITUTION CLAIMS.”
Is 100% false and it is obvious he or she did not read the resolution whatsoever.
Lynn, you might as well say:
“The Jews want recogniton of the Holocaust for the reparations!”
What a disgusting assumption
Secondly I commend “Lynn” to Mehmet Ali Birands piece: “why did we invite them” in the Turkish Daily News. where he lays out how our Turkish government in fact used this opening the archived as a ploy and refused to do it time and time again.
Birand is the most notable and respected Journalist in Turkey!
Here is a fact: Not all the Turkish people want us to be in this disgusting genocide denial business.
The genocide agains the Armenians occured. It was a horror and the US and Turkey should recognize it just as every respectable scholar of genocide has.
A
Nihat/A,
I’ve spoken to many Armenians, and, they unequivocally want land- the Wilsonian Armenia. That’s what AAA and ANCA want. It seems like you’re out of touch with the Armenians who are most vested in efforts to obtain parliamentary proclamations.
If this is not about claims to land, why are the resolution’s dates WRONG? Why do the dates extend to the foundation of the Republic? The relocations ended before WWI did in 1918. Pelosi claims this is all about historical accuracy. Yet, this Resolution is inaccurate about the most basic level: when these events occurred. Nobody’s that stupid. No, indeed, it the resolution is clealry framing a request for land.
Events in SE Anatolia cannot compare to the holocaust, on any level. Tens of thousands of Jews did not rise up against the German government in an effort to establish Israel in the heartland of Germany, as the Armenians did in the Ottoman Empire. Jews did not band together and give as good as they got, the way Armenians in SE Anatolia did. The holocaust perpetrated against the Jews is not comparable on any level.
Armenians and Turks engaged in mutual massacres, neighbor against neighbor, retaliation and vengeance. It was a bestial time, but it was not a genocide.
“how our Turkish government in fact used this opening the archived as a ploy and refused to do it time and time again.”
Whatever you are trying to say here makes no sense to me.
Fact, the Ottoman archives are open.
Fact, the Armenian archives are not.
Fact, the Russians, British and U.S. are also withholding information pertaining to events that occurred in SE Anatolia between Armenians and Turks.
Fact, the most notable and renowned experts of Ottoman history, all conclude there was no genocide. While you cite no names, I will: Bernard Lewis, Pierre Oberling, Dankwart Rostow, Stanford Shaw, Justin McCarthy, Norman Stone, Guenther Lewy, Heath Lowry, and Avigdor Levy.
The Turkish government has invited Armenia to participate in a collaborate historical commission with disinterested third parties, and offered that Turkey would pay reparations if such a historial commission concluded it was genocide.
Amazingly enough, Armenia refuses. Why? Because if it agrees to engage in such a commission, it will have to open its archives and then we shall see to what extent the Armenians militias were armed, trained and ready to wage war and terror against the Turks in SE Anatolia…and, of course, that would eviscerate the genocide claim.
End result: Our people were used by others to bring down the Ottoman Empire. They didn’t care about Armenians or Turks. They never intended to form a Greater Armenia no matter what the Armenians did for them (check out the Sykes-Picot Agreement). We were used back then, and this democratic congress, elected on a platform to get the U.S. out of Iraq, is using us again.
I refuse to be used by others to my detriment and to their gain. I acknowledge and welcome Armenian friendship, because I see us as cultural cousins. Those who are obsessed with the past still live in it and the medieval hatred that took hold of people’s souls. You’re welcome to dwell there if that’s your wish. I, however, will not.
Denial, yes, and how well it applies to Armenians, such as yourself, who still cannot come to grips with the fact that the Dashnak leadership made a grave mistake when it chose to side with Russia.
The whole balance of power in the middle east would be wildly different, if instead of trying to ethnically cleanse SE Anatolia of Turks, Armenians had united with Turkic peasants, instead of allowing themselves to be divided.
Pelosi is unprincipled and calculating. Her pandering to Armenian-American voters goes back many years see: http://www.ancsf.org/pressreleases/1998/10281998.htm
Using the American Congress to poke a finger in the eye of another nation to express the bile of an ethnic group with old world allegiances is disgraceful.
But, giving up historic tribal grudges simply seems impossible for some people.
Nursing grudges is a primitive approach to life. It does not serve humanity and it is fundamentally un-American. We are the un-tribe and we should not be embroilded in tribal animosities with long, complicated histories. In coming to this country, one should end one’s tribal allegiances, give up the old wars and leave behind old world tribalism. Armenians may have a right to hold grudges, just as Hatfields and McCoy’s have rights to hold grudges, but that doesn’t make them right, nor does it entitle them to our seal of approval or our cooperation. Immigration to America is not an invitation to continue one’s tribal warfare from the safety of the these shores. It’s an opportunity to grow beyond the past into an entirely new way of seeing one’s place in the wider world.
There’s an effort underway to remove all the roadblocks to impeachment: Directly challenging the Speaker. (Details at link under “Anonymous”) Please consider showcasing this approach on your site/news feed; and encourage others who may know others at Daily Kos to consider this. Thank you.
Lynn stated:
“Armenians and Turks engaged in mutual massacres, neighbor against neighbor, retaliation and vengeance. It was a bestial time, but it was not a genocide.”
Lynn the Ottoman government organized and carried out a genocide against Armenians.
The Armenians were a minority population under the rule of the Ottoman Government, who had the military rule over the country. The Armenians did not have military rule but were subserviant to the Ottoman Turks.
In fact before the Armenians were sytematically unarmed under false pretenses of suspision of insurection. Armenians were inlisted in the Ottoman army and were better fighters then Turks themselves. Armenians were decorated heros of the Ottoman Army.
Yes, later Armenians did attempt to protect themselves from mass barbarism. It is a human instinct to protect themselves rather then be killed off like sheep. The odds were insurmountable against an army.
How ready would you be if our government came to your neighborhood and rounded you up like sheep? Maybe get your neighbors together on a hillside with a few handguns and shotguns looking death in the face?
In short your charactorization of neighbor against neighbor paints an even fight when in reality it was mass slaughter.
————-
I still believe Morgan’s blog above is more of a partisan slant at simply attacking Pelosi more so then the Armenian genocide itself.
To add, other nationalities representing various organizations have banded together against genocide. It is not soley an Armenian issue but is a human rights issue where it is all inclusive.
Also charactorizing Armenians on this issue with a hate filled motive, old grudges, tribal animosity, only try to deflect rightful recogniton of a very dark history of the Ottoman now Turkish government. Turks and Armenians do have a rich history before the massacres and genocide. Unfortunatly it was the Ottomans who decided to scapegoat and kill off it’s Armenian minority populations.
For me and many that I know this is an issue against the current Turkish policy of denial, not the Turkish people. So for me this is not race based, hate, or tribal differences and the like.
This is about the reality of the Armenian genocide and working against entitiies to deny it.
Rich,
You state a lot of facts, but provide zero citation to sources. So let me help you out.
You may know that Garegin Pasdermajian, Boghos Nubar and Havhannis Katchaznouni were leaders of the Armenian revolutionary bands that fought agains the Ottoman Empire DURING WWI and BEFORE Orders to relocate the Armenian population in southeastern Anatolia issued.
You should read their publications.
Pasdermajian, Nubar and Katchaznouni all ADMIT that close to **200,000** Armenians were armed and fought with Russia against the Ottoman Empire in southeastern Anatolia during WWI.
That is MORE troops than the U.S. has ever had during its most recent war in Iraq.
That is war, declared by Armenians against the Ottoman regime.
In fact, the Russian archives are rife with Orders issued by Russian commanders demanding that Armenian militants stop massacring and plundering the Ottoman Muslim civilian population. The Armenian militias, however, boldly responded, in writing, to those orders by stating they would do as they pleased.
200,000 armed Armenian troops… and they were armed and ready to attack before WWI began (see Katchaznouni).
What’s most offensive though, Rich, is when Armenians post pictures from the Turkish archives of piles of bodies claiming that those photos depict the Armenian “genocide”, when IN FACT, those are photos of unarmed civilian Ottoman Muslims who were massacred by Armenians.
Our people have blood curdling stories about the atrocities committed by Armenian revolutionaries Rich, and they are slowly coming out and being told… the most recent of which has been made into a motion picture “120”. Predictably, the Armenian community in Australia tried to prevent the showing of “120”– and in that particular movie, the most notorious atrocity committed by the Armenian revolutionaries was against another Armenian.
Get this Rich, I am not the Turkish government, I am one of the Turkish people and my family has stories of atrocities too committed by Orthodox Christians so spare me your BS.
Lynn I would hear better arguments of the Jews killing off Nazi soldiers in Auschwitz.
We all know possibly some Jews tried to fend off Nazis forgoing insurmountable odds to defend innocent women and children.
Your arguements are for not if you consider the mass killings before WWI against Armenians.
Should a movie like “120”, an attempt to
re-write history and fabricate the truth, akin to a Nazi perspective see the light of day?
I would hope not. A movie like “120” (which I have not seen) may only serve to perpetuate the inhumanity toward man.
Lynn you also stated:
“What’s most offensive though, Rich, is when Armenians post pictures from the Turkish archives of piles of bodies claiming that those photos depict the Armenian “genocide”, when IN FACT, those are photos of unarmed civilian Ottoman Muslims who were massacred by Armenians.”
Third parties witness to the mass killings verify the deaths of Armenians including Ambassadors from different countries, relief organizations, Turks, and German officers allied with the Ottomans army, how much more authentic do you need it to be?
Go dig up the bones they are resting in unmarked graves outside the hundreds of Armenian villages in Easten and parts of Central Turkey. You may need a special permit which is hard if not impossible to aquire if your looking for Armenian bones and artifacts.
“Go dig up the bones they are resting in unmarked graves outside the hundreds of Armenian villages in Easten and parts of Central Turkey. You may need a special permit which is hard if not impossible to aquire if your looking for Armenian bones and artifacts.”
Silly uninformed Rich, they’ve been digging up bones and documenting findings related to mass graves since the 1980s.
Armenians have been invited to participate, but guess what? They won’t come.
Why? Because artifacts found among the bones–things like miniature Korans, tobacco cases with Islamic symbols on them and pieces of cloth that survived– establish that the deceased were Ottoman Muslims.
One more thing Rich, the Russians are now opening up their archives to Turkish researchers who have found several reports written by Russian military officers asking for assistance from Moscow, describing massacres committed by Armenians against the Ottoman Muslim & Jewish population and the inability of the Russians to control the Armenian militias.
Why now? Because the Russians don’t like Armemnia cozying up to America.
Keep living in denial Rich. Armenians continually side with western powers against their former Turkish neighbors, and every time they do, they are betrayed by those western powers… just like they will be again.
Lynn, during negotiations between Turks and Armenians in Erzrum in 1914 Armenians stated that Armenians Western Armenia will serve Turkish army as they did, and no one can stop Armenians in Eastern Armenia from serving Russian army as citizens of Russian Empire.
Moreover the “bands” Turkey was fighting against in WW1 was actually Russian Empire Army.
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