The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: Debate in UN About Armenian "Genocide"

Re: Debate in UN About Armenian "Genocide"
Posted by atheist (Guest) - Friday, March 5 2010, 9:38:17 (UTC)
from 71.116.93.101 - pool-71-116-93-101.snfcca.dsl-w.verizon.net Network - Windows XP - Mozilla
Website:
Website title:

>
>RONALD SUNY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

...This fellow does what Aprim does...he merely states his opinions as facts, assumes they are and then goes on to build his case based nothing more than his opinions.
>
>The argument of those who deny that the Ottoman Turkish government carried out a genocidal deportation and mass killing of its Armenian subjects in 1915 might be summarised as:
>
>"There was no genocide, and the Armenians are to blame for it! Armenians, after all, were rebellious, seditious subjects who presented a danger to the empire and got what they deserved."

...Who says these things? The writer provides no evidence that anyone thinks Armenians deserved to die, no more than American Blacks did...or Muslim Turks. But it is a fact that some Armenians were indeed rebellious...some Armenian groups did gather and store weapons and a group of them DID take hostage the central bank in Istanbul and threaten to blow themselves, the building and everyone in it if their demands for a "free Armenia" weren't met...they were finally allowed to leave, free and clear, on the yacht of the British Ambassador...the British are Christians and so are the Armenians...it should not be surprising therefore, that animosity would develop among the Muslim Turks against the very Christian nations who were promising war and chopping up the Ottoman Empire. Under those circumstances it's also understandable that the Armenians WERE a danger to empire. And we can see to what lengths nations, such as the United States, will go to to "protect" themselves from perceived danger....in the case of the Turks they had direct evidence that Armenians presented a direct threat to the country while America had no and has never presented any evidence that Iraqis posed any threat whatever to America...and yet we are STILL in Iraq killing civilians after 17 YEARS!
>
>There was no intention or effort by the Young Turk regime, they say, to eliminate the Armenians as a people.

...obviously this is true...or else they would have done a systematic job of it, as the Christians did in Germany, and Poland, France and Italy etc.
>
>Sadly, most historians know that in fact orders went out from the Young Turk government early in 1915 to:

....where is his evidence for such a statement? Where? Surely he, as a scholar, knows how much more convincing his argument would be if he could produce ANY evidence that such orders went out...just like Bet-Shlimon would love to have any proof that Muslims killed people just for their religion, or forced them to convert on pain of death...but he doesn't have any so he just keeps repeating it hoping THAT will make it true.
>
> * Demobilise the Armenian soldiers serving in the Ottoman army and execute them
> * Round up and deport (later kill) the Armenian intellectuals and members of parliament in the capital on 24 April
> * Force march the women, children, and elderly from their homes in Anatolia into the deserts of

...again, where is the proof? I have read that Armenians, living on the frontiers of the country, were indeed driven farther inland...but why? For one thing the Turks had learned from their experience with Nestorians and missionaries that the missionaries crossed over Turkey's borders at will and basically bought the loyalty of the Christian villagers....they didn't feel secure having Christians on the borders....perhaps they, like the Assyrians, would assist the foreigners in order to be "saved".
>
>Somewhere between 600,000 and 1.5 million people perished. In some places, like Van and Musa Dagh, Armenians resisted. Many thousands fled north to Russia.

....the numbers are vague and unreliable....the odd thing is that all Christians, who agree on these numbers gathered we don't know how and under what conditions and at that several decades ago are the same ones who deny the far more accurate and recent account of the numbers of Iraqis killed by Christians, especially the over 700,000 Iraqi children under the age of five.
>
>The difficult question is not whether but why the Young Turks committed genocide.

...an obvious trick,,,,taking for granted that they DID commit Genocide when that is the whole point...to prove that they DID.
>
>Their leaders themselves provided suggestive answers: The Armenians were seen as an internal threat allied to the advancing Russians; the very success of their middle class in business, even their European manners, created resentments among Muslims; and the ruling junta believed that a more Turkish, more Islamic empire, without the Christian Armenians, promised a more secure future for their regime.

...that is all probably true...but it doesn't lead to Genocide...it doesn't lead to rounding up children and killing them JUST because they have middle class roots...or their parents are successful. Even the Germans wouldn't have killed Jews for such reasons...there has to be an incredible hatred towards a people to do such things to their children...and Turks had lived in harmony with Jews for centuries...so why all of a sudden should they grow so murderous SO fast? But with the Christians there was a long history of prejudice, persecution, murder, kidnapping of children and expulsion of Jews....the Christian Genocide of Jews followed a recurring PATTERN, whereas the so-called Turkish Genocide of Jews, we are told, "just happened"...overnight.
>
>Insecurity and a pervasive sense of threat led to a catastrophe, both for the Armenians and, ironically, for the Ottoman state.

...exactly...somewhat as fear and insecurity led America to lock up its Japanese, Italian and German citizens during the Second World War....okay, we didn't kill them. But our country wasn't being overrun, being bombed and occupied....but, we DID commit Genocide against Native Americans...of that there is no doubt. Facts tell the story...



---------------------


The full topic:



Content-length: 6529
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Accept-encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-language: en-us
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: *hidded*
Host: www.insideassyria.com
Keep-alive: 115
Referer: http://www.insideassyria.com/rkvsf5/rkvsf_core.php?Debate_in_UN_About_Armenian_Genocide-MRim.79be.QUOTE
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9