Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu described the deportation of Armenians under the Ottoman empire as "inhumane"!!..

[Manuel I Komnenos]

Don't worry white-wolf, killing those Turks was justified, but don't get clone or Manuel started on the Greek genocide! Or the Pontian genocide!

Uhh, are you suggesting I consider the slaughter of Turkish civilians as justified?

I think in his misguided post, he makes a good point about double standards. For example, in the Greek Revolution, there was a widescale killing of Turks and of Greek Muslims, and in essence with the Treaty of Lausanne we had a form of legal and internationally acceptable ethnic cleansing.

As far as the blame game goes, it is inherently pointless since it was basically a century ago, and nothing is gained or lost if the Turks accept it as being a genocide. Turkey however is the legal successor to the Ottoman Empire, which is why Turkey is held as being the responsible country.

It would be hilarious, if not that misinformed. You are seriously suggesting there's any relation between the systematic removal of the Christian population of the Ottoman Empire in concentration camps with the slaughter of Turkish civilians by irregulars after certain sieges during the Greek War for Independence? Really?

[Stavroforos]

I'm suggesting that both are crimes and both are ethnic cleansing, but neither is genocide.

[Odenat]

No, because they did not have military duty.

Alas, the Ottomans if only did follow spaniard example; convert you all either with sword or fire.

Indeed. The problem with the Turkish is that we didn't civilized the Greeks or Armenians as USA civilized the Native Americans for example. When you kill 10 millions of native americans and you conquer their lands, and send the few thousand remaining one to the concentratio... ooops i mean reserves, then you become a civilised country, nobody blames you for genocide. And, American natives today are living still at reserves !

"About half of our country’s 2,500,000 Native Americans live on reservations, in conditions that are "four to five decades behind the majority of Americans"
"The average life expectancy for Native Americans as a whole is 55, which is lower than for residents of Bangladesh,"

Then, maybe we must also speak of Spanish muslims, Australian natives, Siberian Tatars, all South America etc etc. When it's Christians, they are "civilising" people. When it's musims, they are doing genocide.

http://www.americanindianchildren.or...onditions.html

[PointOfViewGun]

Well, I couldn't have shown the double standards better than clone and Manuel, so, kudos to them.

And this is why you can't have nice things...

No wonder their always seem to be rampant nationalism, violence and infighting in the Balkans and middle east if people their adopt these kinds of attitudes... Stav will have a go at me for this. But seriously?

Anyway, on topic, It would be interesting to know, that beyond the historic context of the ethnic cleansing's by the Ottoman Empire. Is their actually any real political issues regarding this? I've seen some people throw around how Turkey and Armenia will never have proper diplomatic relations until one sides admit their wrongs, and then the other apologizes blah blah.

But beyond a historical context, is this really that important?

I mean reading on the most bias source i could find;

http://www.armenian-genocide.org/ottoman.html (That's it an entire forum dedicated to the Armenian genocide, you can't get more bias than that!)

It states in the opening line 'The Ottoman Empire was the State responsible for the Armenian genocide'. Which collapsed in 1923 and gave way to various successor states in the Middle East, and of course Turkey.

So you can see where i'm going with this, playing devils advocate, why does Turkey have sole responsibility for the genocide? Why isn't the Ottoman Empire blamed? Remember the two technically are not the same. Why arn't the other former parts of the Ottoman Empire blamed too and held equally responsible?

As far as i can see the only real link to it solely being Turkey, that that certain young Turk officers were involved (Still serving the Ottoman Empire).

It's about money and land. Some Armenians want money and land from Turkey and some are demanding money from insurance firms. Turkey giving into Armenian allegations would at least be a big win for the latter.

[Manuel I Komnenos]

I'm suggesting that both are crimes and both are ethnic cleansing, but neither is genocide.

It would have been ethnic cleansing if there were some kind of coordination by the state, but, there was no Greek state at all the period. What we had was hundreds of irregular troops under their own captain, fighting whenever and however they wanted. Of course Greece cannot be held responsible for ethnic cleansing because such groups murdered Turkish civilians. On the second case, we're talking about genocide without a minimal doubt. It's actually so well established that I won't waste more time discussing it.

[Stavroforos]

Well, that's a relief.

[Manuel I Komnenos]

The Armenian genocide has been dubbed the first modern genocide. It was, as the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador Johann von Pallavicini described it, a means of 'creating a national state through the annihilation of foreign elements'.²¹⁵ This undermines Turkish claims that the deportations were purely a matter of security. Had a definition of national security, however paranoid, been the only reason for acting against the Armenians, the result might have been more like, for example, the Tsarist deportations of ethnic Germans, Jews, Poles, Latvians, or Lithuanians from areas near the eastern front during 1915—unpleasant and often incidentally lethal, but limited in scope, and with no design to decimate the deportees.

‘Security’ only assumed its significance because of the linkage in CUP thought with the drive for ethnic homogeneity and national territorial integrity in the 'heartlands' of the Ottoman empire, and political and economic independence for Turks as an ethnic-national group. Armenians in Cilicia and eastern Anatolia were already seen as obstacles to each of these ends. And with Entente military advances and the very real Turkish fears of their implications for the empire, the presence of an internal 'alien' element was no longer just an obstacle, it seemed an immediate threat. The whole of the war in the Near East and the Balkans was drawn along ethnic-national lines and every imperial power was seeking advantage in their opponents' territory by offering incentives to nascent ethnic/religious/nationalist movements therein. The fact that such links did exist between Armenians and the Entente, though they were not quite of the nature the CUP imagined, was all the evidence that a paranoid and chauvinist regime required to confirm their suspicions of Armenian ethnic enmity.

Once the strategic city of Van had been ‘liberated’, the distinction between innocent and ‘guilty’ Armenians was rendered meaningless both ideologically and practically in CUP eyes. Now, even if not all, or only a minority of Armenians were active enemies, all would benefit from the situation that some of their number had brought about. (The CUP’s fear of Armenian revolutionary potential was demonstrably coloured by its own success in overthrowing the Hamidian regime with only a small cadre.²¹⁶) That, and the feared prospect of Armenians joining with Entente forces, could before stalled if the Armenian population was once and for all physically removed.This would leave Muslims in sole occupation of the land—and,almost as important, of Armenian property—and would also render Mass Murder in an International Systemredundant any Russian claim to a protectorate. And even if, as some officials could discern, the Van Armenians had risen only in self-defence, they still represented an obstacle to the prosecution of the war in the short term, and an ethnically defined challenge to Turkish authority in Anatolia in the long term.Talat’s shameless propagandizing about the 'Armenian threat' therefore made perfect sense in his terms, as did his observation that the deportations 'were determined by national and historical necessity'.²¹⁷ The First World War brought everything to a head.

This interpretation in itself is not partisan; the question is to what use it is put. For the CUP the Van rising was a realization of a prophecy of Armenian treachery, but because of the repressive and often murderous nature of CUP policy up to that time, the prophecy became self-fulfilling. Any claim that the murder of the Armenians when it unfolded was not a genocide, simply because there might not be unequivocal evidence of genocidal intent prior to May 1915, is as absurd as the suggestion that the Nazi ‘final solution’ was not a genocide because it was not inscribed before the invasion of Poland or the USSR that every Jew was to be murdered. Since the historiography of the Holocaust today is more mature and less politicized than that of the Armenian genocide, the question does not now really obtain, but it would be equally controversial for a scholar of the former as one of the latter to pinpoint exactly when that genocide began. Indeed, the scholarship of the ‘final solution’ has long been divided about the existence and timing of a single specific order for the annihilation of the Jews.Part of the interpretative problem is that ‘genocide’ is more a legal term than a historical one, designed for the ex post facto judgments of the courtroom rather than the historian’s attempt to understand events as they develop—that is, out of non-genocidal or latently murderous situations. In this sense, ‘genocide’ is a classic example of the past examined teleologically—a retrospective projection. As the epithet ‘genocide perpetrator’ has become the major stigma under international law, the politico-legal battle between,crudely speaking, representatives of Turks and Armenians has raged around the applicability of the term, and specifically the key notion of intent to destroy. It may be said categorically that the killing did constitute a genocide—every aspect of the United Nations' definition of the crime is applicable ²¹⁸ - but recognizing that fact should be a by-product of the historian's work, not its ultimate aim or underpinning.

‘Deciding’ upon genocide is not like one man resolving to kill another,packing a gun, and then locating and shooting his victim, where intent is clearly illustrated by the prior wielding of the firearm. In such a case, it is eminently possible to prove state intent to kill individuals; but genocide involves mass, sustained, and indiscriminate killing, and often a period of the expansion of murder from individuals, even in large numbers, to whole Ethnic ‘Reprisal’ and Ethnic Cleansing groups. Pinpointing the precise time within that period of radicalization at which a state framework that is demonstrably permissive of murder and atrocity becomes explicitly genocidal is extremely difficult and unlikely ever to be achieved definitively.

One scholar to have debunked the idea of a unilinear progression from idea to act via a ‘Fuhrer order’ in the Jewish genocide is Peter Longerich.²¹⁹ Toborrow from his analysis of the development of the ‘final solution’, if we think more along the lines of a ‘policy of annihilation’ we get the idea of a general consensus of destruction of the Armenian national community, a consensus which developed and was augmented over time around broad principles of discrimination and xenophobia, progressing from notions of removal by dilution and/or forced assimilation to physical removal by deportation and/or murder. Thus, phases of acceleration and radicalization become more appropriate terms of reference than discernible, discrete shifts in intent.In the historiography of the Armenian genocide the writing of reconstructive history has too often been subordinated to ahistorical ends. Interpretations have been artificially dichotomized into pre- and post-‘decision’ periods. The confrontation at Van is a prime example of the confusion to which such an approach can lead. Put plainly, representatives of the official Turkish nationalist viewpoint have tried to use those events to illustrate Armenian treachery and thus to ‘legitimate’ subsequent CUP policy. On the other ‘side’, while proving that Van was a result of Turkish provocation,scholars have argued that it must, therefore, have been a response to a preconceived policy of genocide, or at the very least that it gave the perpetrators the excuse they were looking for. The former interpretation cynically disregards the whole history of CUP policy up to April 1915; the latter ignores the complexities and contingencies of state policy-making in a period of prolonged wartime crisis. In reality, the Van episode contributed to the exacerbation of existing CUP policy and the unleashing of its most extreme tendencies. This is probably insufficient for scholars who have been involved in a long quasi-political battle to prove outright prior genocidal intent. Yet Van is precisely illustrative of a process of cumulative radicalization towards apolicy of genocide, a radicalization with its roots in the interaction of great power imperialism, Near Eastern nationalism, and the decline of the Ottoman empire.
~

From The Great Game of Genocide by Donald Bloxham, page 94-96

[Sphere]

Indeed. The problem with the Turkish is that we didn't civilized the Greeks or Armenians as USA civilized the Native Americans for example. When you kill 10 millions of native americans and you conquer their lands, and send the few thousand remaining one to the concentratio... ooops i mean reserves, then you become a civilised country, nobody blames you for genocide. And, American natives today are living still at reserves !

"About half of our country’s 2,500,000 Native Americans live on reservations, in conditions that are "four to five decades behind the majority of Americans"
"The average life expectancy for Native Americans as a whole is 55, which is lower than for residents of Bangladesh,"

Then, maybe we must also speak of Spanish muslims, Australian natives, Siberian Tatars, all South America etc etc. When it's Christians, they are "civilising" people. When it's musims, they are doing genocide.

http://www.americanindianchildren.or...onditions.html

In the US I was taught that what was done to the Native American tribes was a slow burning genocide. In US academia there is actually a fetish for talking about/teaching their history of abuse and mistreatment. I remember in my undergrad a cocky young professor who thought he was dropping a bombshell when he told us that this was a genocide. Nobody even batted an eye.

The plight of modern Native Americans is less well known, as the popular sentiment is that they have all become filthy rich off of casino money, and from the sizable amount of Federal scholarships and aid they are given. This is a rather inaccurate portrayal of life for most Native Americans who still live on reservations. Especially the large ones out west. 200 years of abuse and oppression have left a very negative legacy which is still very much a problem today.

[clone]

Indeed. The problem with the Turkish is that we didn't civilized the Greeks or Armenians as USA civilized the Native Americans for example. When you kill 10 millions of native americans and you conquer their lands, and send the few thousand remaining one to the concentratio... ooops i mean reserves, then you become a civilised country, nobody blames you for genocide. And, American natives today are living still at reserves !

"About half of our country’s 2,500,000 Native Americans live on reservations, in conditions that are "four to five decades behind the majority of Americans"
"The average life expectancy for Native Americans as a whole is 55, which is lower than for residents of Bangladesh,"

Then, maybe we must also speak of Spanish muslims, Australian natives, Siberian Tatars, all South America etc etc. When it's Christians, they are "civilising" people. When it's musims, they are doing genocide.

http://www.americanindianchildren.or...onditions.html

that unfortunatly is true

[Dante Von Hespburg]

Well, I couldn't have shown the double standards better than clone and Manuel, so, kudos to them.




It's about money and land. Some Armenians want money and land from Turkey and some are demanding money from insurance firms. Turkey giving into Armenian allegations would at least be a big win for the latter.

Ahh i see. I was trying to work out where the drawback might be of a political apology or some other sure empty gesture. The UK, France and co go around quite frequently apologizing to various states about the ills we inflicted on them under Empire. I literally doubt anyone really takes notice, even the countries themselves. It's all rather empty being so long ago. Like Germany in 2004 apologizing for the genocide in Namibia.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/200....andrewmeldrum

So it's not as if they'd be an international scandal.

And surely an apology can be made without the need for reparations? All those affected primarily are dead by now, and i don't see how their ancestors could claim compensation in any right frame of mind (otherwise that potentially opens up legal battles for wrongs committed hundreds of years ago, and i doubt any court will take that seriously.) Besides any who do ask for money are surely rather missing the point...

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

I remember when us Iberians civilized South America, we did such a good job that the Natives are almost gone completely. Not like in Mexico where most people are of mixed race. But in South America there is a really high population of Creolles and we would just run into the Amazon with our armies and stage a few raids and kill some others here and there and then come back like nothing happened. Nobody even said anything to us about it, mind you this was in the early 1900s and no one even cared, there were no reserves so we just straight up killed them.

[Manuel I Komnenos]

And surely an apology can be made without the need for reparations? All those affected primarily are dead by now, and i don't see how their ancestors could claim compensation in any right frame of mind (otherwise that potentially opens up legal battles for wrongs committed hundreds of years ago, and i doubt any court will take that seriously.) Besides any who do ask for money are surely rather missing the point...

Even if Turkey recognized the genocide, it would have no effect on the demand for reparations. Go figure who exactly died, under what conditions, whose property was burned or confiscated etc. I think it wouldn't cost Turkey a dime. It would just give closure to the issue as a political one, making it just a recognized historical event.

[Erebus Pasha]

http://news.yahoo.com/deportation-ar...152528124.html

Wow, never believed that I would hear something like this from Davutoglu, but it's a huge step in right direction. And that right direction is
reconciliation and normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia and also an apology from the Turkish government for the Genocide
of 1915!! It is obvious that Davutoglu is using diplomatic language as any good diplomat but even to say this was unthinkable in modern Turkey
until recently.

What Davutoglu said was that Ottoman deportations of Armenians were inhumane and brutal and he couldn't say Genocidal but everyone got the
point. Right step in a right direction for modern Turkey, it's time to step out of the state of denial and accept historical facts!!

I agree that it is progress, even if it is in limited form. These are small steps in the right direction but let's hope that it leads to normalisation in relations between Turkey and Armenia.

[PointOfViewGun]

Ahh i see. I was trying to work out where the drawback might be of a political apology or some other sure empty gesture. The UK, France and co go around quite frequently apologizing to various states about the ills we inflicted on them under Empire. I literally doubt anyone really takes notice, even the countries themselves. It's all rather empty being so long ago. Like Germany in 2004 apologizing for the genocide in Namibia.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/200....andrewmeldrum

So it's not as if they'd be an international scandal.

And surely an apology can be made without the need for reparations? All those affected primarily are dead by now, and i don't see how their ancestors could claim compensation in any right frame of mind (otherwise that potentially opens up legal battles for wrongs committed hundreds of years ago, and i doubt any court will take that seriously.) Besides any who do ask for money are surely rather missing the point...

Well, there are cases of their ancestors getting money. Keep this section of the Armenian Declaration of Independence:

11, The Republic of Armenia stands in support of the task of achieving international recognition of the 1915 Genocide in Ottoman Turkey and Western Armenia.

Western Armenia in that sentence is actually Eastern Anatolia of Turkey. The idea that Armenia should get those lands back is embedded in their declaration and various government officials of Armenia voice comment in support of that. If there was no monetary or land value for Armenians, they probably wouldn't lobby as much.

[white-wolf]

I agree that it is progress, even if it is in limited form. These are small steps in the right direction but let's hope that it leads to normalisation in relations between Turkey and Armenia.

At 2010, Turkey and Armenia almost normalise the relationship; if only there is not an occupation of Azeri lands (Karabağ + other 6 rayons) by Armenia.

[Manuel I Komnenos]

Western Armenia in that sentence is actually Eastern Anatolia of Turkey. The idea that Armenia should get those lands back is embedded in their declaration and various government officials of Armenia voice comment in support of that. If there was no monetary or land value for Armenians, they probably wouldn't lobby as much.

Armenia has absolutely no right to claim any Turkish territory and neither does any other neighbor of Turkey. Recognition of the genocide shouldn't be connected with claims that cannot stand on the international stage.

[Admiral Piett]

I remember when us Iberians civilized South America, we did such a good job that the Natives are almost gone completely. Not like in Mexico where most people are of mixed race. But in South America there is a really high population of Creolles and we would just run into the Amazon with our armies and stage a few raids and kill some others here and there and then come back like nothing happened. Nobody even said anything to us about it, mind you this was in the early 1900s and no one even cared, there were no reserves so we just straight up killed them.

Depends on the country down there. Belize, Peru, and Bolivia have remarkably high percentages of near pure indigenous heritage. At least 1/3rd of the population in Bolivia especially.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

I'm actually talking about South America proper. With Peru and Bolivia having the highest population of Native Americans. If you go to places like Colombia and Venezuela most of the Natives have been wiped out or assimilated (but fewer than the ones that were totally wiped out), any actual natives still remaining constitute like 2% of the population.

[Dante Von Hespburg]

Even if Turkey recognized the genocide, it would have no effect on the demand for reparations. Go figure who exactly died, under what conditions, whose property was burned or confiscated etc. I think it wouldn't cost Turkey a dime. It would just give closure to the issue as a political one, making it just a recognized historical event.

I think this shouldn't be a problem them to be honest, as i've said Post-Colonial Western nations have a long list of apologies to make which they do. So this should really be more a non-issue to be honest. Though Sutekh's post does raise some issues with this i think;

Well, there are cases of their ancestors getting money. Keep this section of the Armenian Declaration of Independence:


Western Armenia in that sentence is actually Eastern Anatolia of Turkey. The idea that Armenia should get those lands back is embedded in their declaration and various government officials of Armenia voice comment in support of that. If there was no monetary or land value for Armenians, they probably wouldn't lobby as much.

I actually cannot believe they got a payments out of these companies... that's actually ridiculous. Also i concede that's a rather inflammatory way of wording such a point. Though again i think negotiations held where recognition is given, but terms such as no payments, no land are agreed upon in exchange would surely be the best option, and most sensible. Indeed The Republic of Ireland changes it's own declaration and constitution removing the idea of an all means necessary incorporation of Northern Ireland in exchange i believe of a 'democratically held referendum at Northern Ireland's own leisure at some point in the future' concept- which basically satisfies everyone as Northern Ireland of course will probably never ask for such a referendum in the foreseeable future.

[PointOfViewGun]

I actually cannot believe they got a payments out of these companies... that's actually ridiculous. Also i concede that's a rather inflammatory way of wording such a point. Though again i think negotiations held where recognition is given, but terms such as no payments, no land are agreed upon in exchange would surely be the best option, and most sensible. Indeed The Republic of Ireland changes it's own declaration and constitution removing the idea of an all means necessary incorporation of Northern Ireland in exchange i believe of a 'democratically held referendum at Northern Ireland's own leisure at some point in the future' concept- which basically satisfies everyone as Northern Ireland of course will probably never ask for such a referendum in the foreseeable future.

I honestly don't think Armenia will ever change their declaration of independence.

On other news, this happened:
Denying Armenian 'genocide' is no crime: European court
An interesting part:

The court drew a distinction between the Armenian case and appeals it has rejected against convictions for denying the Nazi German Holocaust against the Jews during World War Two.

"In those cases, the plaintiffs had denied sometimes very concrete historical facts such as the existence of gas chambers," the court said. "They denied crimes committed by the Nazi regime that had a clear legal basis. Furthermore, the facts they denied had been clearly been established by an international tribunal."