Ask a Turk

To Winner, to the bunch of Greeks indoctrinated from birth to be anti-Turk at all times, and to various other owners of ignorant and/or prejudiced messages,

Let's clear the plate of the small things.

1- One side says 1.5 million, the other side says 500k, blah blah, who cares, that's not the point. Everybody agrees that a horrific number of Armenians died.

2- The majority of you non-Turkish posters, stop putting words int Turks' mouths. Nobody is saying Armenians did not die, nobody is saying Armenians did not suffer horribly. Even the "official position of the Turks" that you ridicule acknowledges this. So stop cluttering the discussion with comments of otherwise.

Now some history

3- Here is the main point behind what you call denial; here is the issue that the two poor Turks in this thread whom you have been attacking blindly failed to mention: We are talking about the single period during which Turkish nation suffered the most in its history. Most of the world got away with only 4 years of WW1, while we had to fight defensive wars against superior military forces for ELEVEN straight years (1911-1922). During this time Turks experienced the meaning of the term "genocide" in many localized events (not only in eastern Turkey), summing up to several millions of civilian deaths (again, numbers don't matter, it is some catastrophic number). I empathize with Armenians, theirs is a sad tragedy. But I would die before commemorating their dead, while nobody commemorates my dead, killed by Armenians and Europeans. Other countries killed my people and they got praised while Turks tried the only feasible alternative to genocide and got blamed. (This last sentence should become clearer later)

4- According to Armenian sources, 200k Armenians enlisted in the Russian Army, and became the main fighting force commanded by Russian officers against the Ottoman Empire. Turkish officials often call Armenians traitors because of this, but I disagree. They were a nation fighting to gain independence from a larger empire, which has countless examples over the world. Ironically, after they got their independence, they asked for military assistance from Turkey - would a nation that was genocided a few years before ask that from their genociders? Alas, Turkey was still busy fighting off the Greek invasion, the last leg of our 11 years of war. Later, during WW2 Armenians also enlisted in the German Army when the Reich went deep into Russia. Perfectly rational early 20th century behavior from a small and desperate nation trying to break free from a large empire, be it Ottoman or Soviet.

5- Talking of desparation, do you know what else is 1915? It is the Dardanelles campaign. It is the biggest battle/operation in Tukish history, ever, during which a total of 1 million soldiers fought on a tiny peninsula. For those who don't know where it is, Dardanelles is not far from Istanbul - then the capital - and is the direct route. If it fell, so would the empire. Armenian troops stroke hardest at these times. Again, no blaming, it was strategical opportunity, they would be stupid not to take it. Ottomans would be stupid not to respond. The way wars were fought then - and still - is by cutting the military unit from it's supply base. Just like the deliberate incineration of German and Japanese civilians in the Firestorm bombings by the allies in WW2. (If you don’t know what those are, they are the conventional equivalent of nuke, incinerating everything to dust. For more info search for Dresden, that’s the most famous one). So how do you cut the supply, if the supply is everywhere? You get rid of the people.

6- Again, we are talking about an Empire that is so poor that it can’t afford to equip its troops with coats in winter, such that in one batch 90000 of the 110000 men it sends at the Armenian army froze to death before reaching the front. Even at these desparate times, the fact that they tried to get the Armenian civilians out of the way, and succeeded in a small proportion shows good intention. (I must admit some unit commanders improvised “easier” solutions and saved themselves the long walk, but these were scattered events, and to this day no supporter of Armenian cause was able to prove any deeper organization behind them). If you think sending these civilians into mountains is murder, keep in mind that you cannot expect an army to provide coats to its country’s citizens while it can’t provide coats to its own soldiers.

(Interceding flashback: the Turkish-Kurdish-Armenian conflicts have been continuing in that region since 1890s. To understand what is going on you must understand the tribal/feudal society of the region. Think of the fighting of factions in Iraq, and then uncivilize the people by a century, and finally remove any substantial security force from the area. And for all the 21th century city boys out there, these feudal societies consider pursuit of vendettas to be one of the most important measures of their honor. Of course everybody owned a gun. Consider three factions out of these sorts and consider them fighting each other for 25 years. Now that you have an idea of how much these peoples hated each other, we may continue)

7- Now imagine this kilometers and kilometers of horde of 1+ million civilians, flanked by Ottoman soldiers, at a frequency of about one (or two, I’m not sure) per 100m (as their orders were). These soldiers had no way of stopping any assault from some local tribe, as they would be outnumbered. And a good number of them probably had lost some relatives or neighbors to the Armenian gangs, so he would happily look the other way while evil was happening anyway. Here I must also note that although the official Turkish position is that these were Kurdish gangs, in my opinion Turks must have played an equivalent role, as there were equivalent numbers of Turks and Kurds in that area.

8- In the end, a substantial portion, but still less than half of them completed their torturous journey. Of course, in the meantime the Armenian army in the north, with the promise of an independent state, was cleansing as much land as possible from Turks and Kurds by the hundresd of thousands. And this is as documented as well as Armenian deportation and sufferings. And not only from Turkish survivors, but also from the reports of sickened Russian officers. (quasi-related comment: Among the tree nations, only Kurds did not have an organized army. I remember someone made that into a criterion for genocide in this thread. By that consideration Kurds, not Armenians were subjects of genocide).

9- Of course, these events were perfect tools for UK to rally its colonies into war. The British government ordered that a propaganda book be written for this purpose. Of course only with the stories of Armenians, this wartime publication became “the blue book” that is the most cited source of Armenian cause. No historian (except those bribed) ever takes wartime publications seriously.

10- DO NOT MISS THIS ONE!!!
Here comes the fun part…In 1918, UK fully occupied Istanbul, and arrested some 50 or so high ranking Ottomans – most of them ministers and parliamentarians – and set up a tribunal in Malta. Consider it the precedent of Nurenberg (for those who don’t know, after WW2, Allies trialed the top-nazis in Nurenberg and found them guilty of genocide of Jews). After months of British prosecutors scouring the Ottoman administrative documents, interrogation and trial, came the verdict: There was not enough evidence, and all Ottomans were acquitted.

11- For a couple of decades everyone was preoccupied with more important things like great depression and WW2. At the end of WW2 Allies founded Israel, a country that gets unprecedented benefits from the western world. Only then Armenian diaspora remembered to advertise their suffering, because they wanted the benefits too. Then for a while (70s) they became terrorists and killed innocent Turkish diplomats and families. They also generated some fake documents, be it a painting by some russian about some unrelated war of 19th century, be it a telgram order for genocide from the Ottoman government with so many discrepancies and errors that no non-Armenian historian ever took seriously. There was even one that angered other Armenians because it was too obviously fake (but I don’t remember what it was). Of course there is a lot of undeniable proof that Armenians suffered in great numbers, and died. But until now, they failed miserably to produce any authenthicated evidence that Armenian suffering was the result of a policy, intent, or order. They also failed to counter the proof of documented deaths of Turks and Kurds (of course in the end there are mass graves belonging to all three nations, so there is no way for them to argue within the boundries of logic).

12- Unfortunately, at some point the Armenian diaspora realized they don’t need to prove anything. When they mix some lies and some truths, and tell these repeatedly to people who know nothing about it, they can rewrite history. And they are doing it in a most obscene manner. They keep adding hatred to our already saturated world. They influence naïve countries and make them teach their kids hatred and racism (I am not exaggerating, if you teach schoolchildren “Turks did genocide”, they will think Turkish nation as monsters, and subconsciously be racist)

13- I see the Armenians have three kinds of people:
i) Good people who just want an apology or commemoration, my heart aches with you, but as I said above, I can’t commemorate your dead while you refuse to commemorate mine. Majority of Armenian citizens are this bunch.
ii) Dreamy people – Israel aspirants – who want nice things for their country and expect money and land from Turkey, sorry, nothing short of absolute extinction of Turkish nation can give you that, stop dreaming and go join first group.
iii) Bad people – the best lobbyists of the bunch, they do everything in their power to keep the hatred in Armenians alive. To this end they plot schemes designed specifically to infuriate Turks with hopes of hardening thir stance. As long as the two people disagree, they have their inflow of money and power. That’s why they threaten more moderate Armenians from interacting with Turks. Guess what, some do anyway.

I am afraid ours is a losing battle as third group’s abuse of first group’s sincere feelings continue.


14- I would gladly have my nation’s name (not country though) in a historical list of strong militaries that bullied smaller ones, or a list of killing civilians. But both of these would be very very long lists. Even a list of bloody mishandlings of internal unrests is fine (although list would be shorter). Because all of these are true. But singling out my nation and declaring it evil is plain racist. And that’s exactly what Armenians want you to do, without considering historical context.

Well, I know this will be strange to some Europeans with addled brains, but in civilized countries like Turkey everybody is innocent until provn guilty, not other way around. Therefore, I am innocent (as yet) on your charges of genocide. As a scientist this is my logical deduction, and I’ll proudly say it in any EU country with barbaric laws.



Interlude
My dear WINNER, that photo in message #169 is nothing more than a propaganda tool designed to stir feelings of the rest of the world, unless you prove all of the following: (a) the men in uniforms are Turks, (b) the dead men are Armenians, (c) they are innocent civilians as opposed to gang members or soldiers (note they are all men). For all I know they can be Turks hanging Turks, the death penalty was quite common in those times. Finding a picture of a bunch of Turkish-looking guys hanging a totally nondescript bunch of guys at a nondescript location…way to go…great proof, really… And in the end, as I said, nobody denies Armenians were killed.




Finally to the main subject, the laws…

15- Turkish criminal law 301 makes it a crime to insult Turkish nation and Turkishness. It has nothing about Armenians. Still, I am not going to defend it because I think we shouldn’t have such a law and it should be abolished. My understanding is it was originally intended against open offensive comments or burning the flag etc. And lately there has been talks about that in the parliament. Of course politicians happily disagree on whether to just abolish it or to replace it with a better worded and more narrow one that will disallow its abuse. Meanwhile some overnationalist lawyers try to get in a few last kicks from it. It is always celebrities that get prosecuted, because the Armenian diaspora turned it into a publicity stunt. Too bad, our idiot nationalist lawyers don’t realize they are harming Turkey with their actions.

16- In Turkey, people discusses whether Armenian tragedy was genocide or not. The government brings in people to discuss it into cabinet meetings. There even was a conference to which people defending both theses attended. I am not saying it is a nice absolute freedom of speech, as these people had to worry about the 301. Some got prosecuted too, but…

17- To my knowledge, no one that has been charged under this law 301 in relation to the Armenian issue EVER got sentenced to anything. This is thanks to the maneuvering space provided by the ambiguity of this law, and judges’ wise understanding that this is not the purpose of this law. The French bill, on the contrary, is very clear, with no such maneuvering place. If the bill passes, the French judges have no choice but to sentence every one prosecuted. As Hrant Dink, the editor of the Armenian newspaper in Turkey said "if this law passes, I'll go to France and deny the genocide, just for the sake of freedom of speech"



My final comments: War is bad, its consequences are even worse. But there is no point in crying about it either. Everybody must grow up and accept that every nation did bad things at some point in history. We must establish friendship and mutual understanding. From where I look, the Armenian diaspora is against both of these. And now, so are the 100 French politicians who sold themselves for 2% more vote.


Disclaimer: These are not the official opinions of either side. They are my opinions after the things I have read/heard from both sides. I am not a historian.

Disclaimer2: I am not trying to justify atrocities. I just think this kind of issues must be discussed within their context, understanding the reasons.


“There is only one civilization, and that is humanity” - Ataturk