Armenian Genocide - Concentration camps and the extermination process

[Aldgarkalaughskel]

I'm stunned by the major ignorance towards the facts of the Armenian Genocide. I'm willing to see why people deny the occurence of deportations and the extermination process conducted in concentration camps, not to mention the 'simple' butchery of civilians. The evidence at hand is just overwhelming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia...nation_process
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/

[PointOfViewGun]

There is no point in arguing it here with this PowerWizard when he's presenting his facts from Wiki. Such an insult to those that have died.

[Aldgarkalaughskel]

There is no point in arguing it here with this PowerWizard when he's presenting his facts from Wiki. Such an insult to those that have died.

So Wiki = Lie? Interesting point, hard to respond to.

[awalanche]

So Wiki = Lie? Interesting point, hard to respond to.

Ok if there were concentration camps and mass graves then why the Allied forces occupied Anatolian lands did not recover these camps or graves and made these publicly known.

If we killed 1.5 million Armenians where we buried them and where are mass graves ?

Maybe Turks had quickly hided them.

To tell you the truth I would like to see some third country embassy report showing that many mass graves were found

[Arto]

Ok if there were concentration camps and mass graves then why the Allied forces occupied Anatolian lands did not recover these camps or graves and made these publicly known.

If we killed 1.5 million Armenians where we buried them and where are mass graves ?

Maybe Turks had quickly hided them.

To tell you the truth I would like to see some third country embassy report showing that many mass graves were found

We're not talking about a Nazi style industrial genocide, so you wouldn't expect mass graves. Death marches and small incidents of massacre would not leave such evidence. You have to use eye witness reports and demographic analysis instead.

This guy. and many more missionaries who were witnesses.

[Nakharar]

so let me guess theseare al photoshoped?

http://www.warcrimes.info/shop/html/...genocide_1.jpg

http://www.warcrimes.info/shop/html/...genocide_1.jpg


http://www.anccanada.org/Portals/0/a...20genocide.jpg

http://www.danegerus.com/weblog/imag...anGenocide.jpg

http://members.fortunecity.com/fstav1/armenians4.jpg

http://www.journeyforhumanity.com/mu...n_genocide.jpg

[Nakharar]

You want evidence and these are only images if you want some more please just ask

so let me guess theseare al photoshoped?

http://www.warcrimes.info/shop/html/...genocide_1.jpg

http://www.warcrimes.info/shop/html/...genocide_1.jpg

http://www.bitsofnews.com/images/gra...rkey_large.JPG

http://www.anccanada.org/Portals/0/a...20genocide.jpg

http://www.danegerus.com/weblog/imag...anGenocide.jpg

http://members.fortunecity.com/fstav1/armenians4.jpg

http://www.journeyforhumanity.com/mu...n_genocide.jpg

[PointOfViewGun]

You want evidence and these are only images if you want some more please just ask

So a guy hanged and a few people dying of hunger is an evidence of genocide. What an intellectual argument.
You can't know for sure that the people in the picture are Armenians, Kurds or Turks.
You can't know why the guy is hanged or what's her ethnicity.
I also have many pictures that suggest killings by Armenians but I don't see them as any sort of evidence.
Get real and provide me real evidence.

[karo]

Were should I start, arresting intellectuals and executing them, cutting of the head of the Armenian community. And why were the man taken to labor camps when they should have been serving the arm instead. Why were there weapons taken out of their hands and they were forced to work them self to death. Why did the soldiers allow, they didn't even try to stop the Turkish lords from stealing Armenian girls and taken them to their harem? Why did Turkish soldiers cut open preagnent Armenian women just to see what sex they had? Why did the Imams declare a Jihad on the Armenian people? Why were they beeing guided to the middle of a desert as destenation? What were they going to find there do you think? The governement was well aware of hat was going on. And why didn't they let Armenians take with them all of their belongins and not only what they could carry? Please awnser all of those questians before you start telling there was no genocide.

[PointOfViewGun]

Were should I start, arresting intellectuals and executing them, cutting of the head of the Armenian community. And why were the man taken to labor camps when they should have been serving the arm instead. Why were there weapons taken out of their hands and they were forced to work them self to death. Why did the soldiers allow, they didn't even try to stop the Turkish lords from stealing Armenian girls and taken them to their harem? Why did Turkish soldiers cut open preagnent Armenian women just to see what sex they had? Why did the Imams declare a Jihad on the Armenian people? Why were they beeing guided to the middle of a desert as destenation? What were they going to find there do you think? The governement was well aware of hat was going on. And why didn't they let Armenians take with them all of their belongins and not only what they could carry? Please awnser all of those questians before you start telling there was no genocide.

Your question are completely absurd with little to no real info. All your questions deserve no answer.

[Crimson Scythe]

Were should I start, arresting intellectuals and executing them, cutting of the head of the Armenian community.

Some were arrested and some weren't. Of those arrested, some were executed for being part of revolutionary organizations and some weren't. As for "cutting off the head of the Armenian community", I seriously doubt that was the intent. It's little more than sensationalizing an event for political purposes.

And why were the man taken to labor camps when they should have been serving the arm instead. Why were there weapons taken out of their hands and they were forced to work them self to death.

Simply put, Armenian (and other Christian) troops were considered unreliable. Both politically, and because of the fact that they had only been in the army since 1909, when the bedel-i askeri was abolished. Note that the disarming of these troops came AFTER Armenian bands began attacking Muslim villages and towns post-Sarikamis. The main reason for the disarmament was because the weapons issued to Ottoman-Armenian troops were increasingly found to have been diverted to the aforementioned bands.

Second, Armenian/Christian troops were never assigned to a combat role, as the Armenian/Christian population OBJECTED to serving in the Ottoman military in that role. That's why they were placed in labour battalions instead, starting in 1909 in earnest (but long before for those Armenians that didn't pay the bedel-i askeri). As for their being worked to death, there's no evidence that this was intentional. Exposure, starvation, and disease also took a similar toll on Muslim troops, who also had to endure attrition due to combat.

Why did the soldiers allow, they didn't even try to stop the Turkish lords from stealing Armenian girls and taken them to their harem?

You obviously don't even know what the word 'harem' means, so I'm not going to dignify this propagandistic question with a real response.

Why did Turkish soldiers cut open preagnent Armenian women just to see what sex they had?

Circassian, Kurdish, and Azeri irregulars may have done so, because that's what was done to their women in the hundred years previously by Russians, Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, etc. (i.e., by Christians). There are plenty of Russian, Ottoman, British, and French sources from the previous, say, 50 years demonstrating the brutality of non-Muslims against their Muslim neighbours in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Keep this in mind so as to get an idea of the bigger picture.

Why did the Imams declare a Jihad on the Armenian people?

Imams can't declare Jihad on their own in the Ottoman system. Only the Sultan/Caliph was permitted to do so, and he only declared a Jihad against the Christian enemies of the Ottoman state. Your assertion would imply that the Armenians were among them.

Why were they beeing guided to the middle of a desert as destenation? What were they going to find there do you think?

They were being guided THROUGH a desert to their destination, contrary to popular belief. Der-el Zor (in Syria), for instance, is on the Euphrates river, and was a prosperous farming region during the Ottoman period, just as it is now. I'd hardly call that a desert. The Armenian Protestant representative Zenop Bezjian, in a telegram to Henry Morgenthau (US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire) portrays a far less bleak outlook for the deportees:

"Armenians at [Der-el] Zor are fairly satisfied; they have already settled down to business and are earning their livings." -(excerpt from Morgenthau's own diary - can be found here: Heath W. Lowry, The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, The Isis Press – 1990, pg.50 )

As for what they were going there for, maybe they were planning on waiting out the war and then returning to their homes, as allowed for in the Tehcir laws? Many did just that between 1918 and 1920, though they later fled to Armenia proper after the war between the Turkish Nationalists and the First Armenian Republic.

The governement was well aware of hat was going on.

Aware, probably. Able to do anything to improve the situation? Not really. No money, no food, no medicine, and no troops.

And why didn't they let Armenians take with them all of their belongins and not only what they could carry?

Can't carry a house or furniture; animals, any weapons, winter clothing and carts would have been requisitioned by the desperate Ottoman eastern army (just as happened during the Turkish War of Independence - this is a real 'total war'); and any valuables were supposed to have been turned over to the authorities for safekeeping (many officials that made off with these were among those sentenced in 1916), though some were naturally confiscated to pay for the war effort.

Most importantly, however, time was short. There was only a brief lull in the war on the Caucasus front during which the deportation could be carried out, mainly resulting from the Russians' own shortages (Sarikamis was a fairly pyrrhic victory for them) and their consequent inability to go on the counter-offensive, hence why they tried to use the Armenians to keep the Ottomans off-balance until they could follow up. It was this time constraint that resulted in the haphazard planning of the deportations, hence the massive numbers of deaths among those deported.

Please awnser all of those questians before you start telling there was no genocide.

I doubt the answers above will satisfy you, but there they are nonetheless. The evidence still points to a massive, barely planned, and incompetently executed deportation campaign, not a genocide.

[Edward lV]

Voted no by accident. I ment yes. Its as bad as denying the holocaust

[Arjun]

Its as bad as denying the holocaust

exactly!


Voted yes,

[Tiberios]

Voted no by accident. I ment yes. Its as bad as denying the holocaust

It is. therefore yes.

[Ahlerich]

i voted yes. germans like to vote yes when its about genocides

[Romano-Dacis]

What is the point? This thread is honestly a waste of time because:
1) Public opinion is not evidence.
2) This will only stirr up the Armenians and Turks again.
3) It looks like you didn't put much effort into the OP because you only quoted from wikipedia. If you could have at least found a representative author from both sides and quoted from them this thread may have been somewhat constructive.

You will always have the perpetrators who will claim "it didn't happen" or "it doesn't count as genocide" rather similar to the reactions of some Russians here on the forced starvation by Stalin. I voted yes, and it's easy to see why the Ottomans did it. They could see the bell was tolling on their empire and like any absolutist regime it tightened the grip when it could sense its power slipping away.

[Bovril]

Its not a quesetion of whether massacres and deportations occured, its a question of 'to what extent'. Even the most strident Turkish nationalists admit that at least a few Armenians were forcibly deported, and at least a few were killed extra-judicially.

[Bovril]

We're not talking about a Nazi style industrial genocide, so you wouldn't expect mass graves. Death marches and small incidents of massacre would not leave such evidence. You have to use eye witness reports and demographic analysis instead.

[awalanche]

We're not talking about a Nazi style industrial genocide, so you wouldn't expect mass graves. Death marches and small incidents of massacre would not leave such evidence. You have to use eye witness reports and demographic analysis instead.

I assume by saying death marches you mean the emigration order of Ottoman government for Armenians. If these orders were death march then how could many Armenians manage to arrive Lebanon and Syria.

Take a look at this document from US embassy at Adana



Sorry image is reversed

Plus I do not deny small incidents which were performed bu gangs. Since the Armenians took all their belongings and gangs heard them, they attacked. Turkish authorities are also agree on that.

Even Ottomans assigned some gendarme troops to protect them, but it was war time and measure became inadequate.

Look we are not mad to emigrate these people at war time because Armenians supported Russian army at Eastern front. Of course I am not accusing all Armenian civilians to support Russian army and organize paramilitary groups to hit Ottoman army back. But because of some Armenians, all Armenians had to leave their lands. Maybe they had no faults on that issue but it has to be done to protect army and logistics.

[Bovril]

I assume by saying death marches you mean the emigration order of Ottoman government for Armenians. If these orders were death march then how could many Armenians manage to arrive Lebanon and Syria.

Take a look at this document from US embassy at Adana

Your document accounts for about a third of Armenians from Turkey. I'm not saying no Armenians got out of Turkey alive; that would be an absurd claim. I'm saying that the forced expulsion was conducted in such a way that a huge (probably unknowable) proportion of Armenians died on the way, and that other Armenians were deliberately massacred in numerous fairly small scale incidents.