The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: The Crux of the Turkish Genocide Debate.

Re: The Crux of the Turkish Genocide Debate.
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Tuesday, September 14 2010, 15:51:04 (UTC)
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>### But as I have attempted to show the Turks were not just acting to put down an insurrection. They were purifying and homogenising their empire in the same fashion as the barbaric European empires had done previously. And just like German communists, gypsies, roma people and the handicapped were victims of the Nazi purification of the 1,000 year Third Empire (Reich) so too were the Syriacs, Chaldeans, Yezidis, Shabaks victims of the Ottoman Empire's purification of its homeland. None of these ggroups unlike the Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians rebelled against the Ottoman empire but were also victims of deportations, massacres and Islamisation policies.

...those groups you mention didnīt have to be rebel themselves, initially...what was clear to the Turks, well before the Allies attacked the "sick old man" was that the West was using missionaries and a pretended zeal to protect Turkish Christians as an inroad, the first tactic in what was to be a future all-out war. Christian missionaries crossed the Sultanīs borders with impunity, always knowing their governments would protect them and encourage and support their efforts....this was enough by itself to put the Turks on notice that overtures were being made by foreign Christian entitities, allied to their governments, to entice and lure their own Christian subjects to direct their loyalties and their sympathies and hopes to these same foreign powers....just imagine Libya sending missionaries to cross United States borders at will and procede as did the Euro Christians in the Sultanīs lands while all the time Libyan officials were telling the world that the United Sattes was ripe for the plucking...you donīt think Americans would move against these Libyans and even more against their own Muslim citizens who followed suit? Of course they would.

....and since you admit that by fair means or foul, Christian nations had already cleansed and homogenized their groups, why canīt the Turk do the same? But also remember that the Turk honored and respected their own various groups well past the time the Euros were ethnically cleansing and periodically murdering, their groups...and the Turks would have gone on with this noble policy had it not been for Western intentions and actions....but in light of these first attacks, the Turks knew what was coming and made a hasty and much-too late attempt to ensure cohesion and loyalty....but donīt ever forget to value the fact that the Turk tried, nobly and valiantly for centuries to provide a peacefull home for Jew and Christian alike...something the Christians NEVER did for Jews and Muslims, let alone for "heretical" Christians...hell, look at the raging controversy over one Muslim community center being built in New York and the multiplicity of churches in Turkey...churches belonging to the religion that attacked it and dismembered it. If the Turk changed course, after centuries, we must look to a cause...so far all youīve indentified is a "sudden passon to homogenize", as if it came from nowhere, or had no motivating factors behind...except maybe that Muslims are "just like that", the usual cry of Aprim and Bet-Shlimon...a better course is to investigate, to seek to understand if there was anything the Turk was suddenly facing that brought about such a drastic shift in traditions and policy...I believe there was, that it was not in the nature or character or religion of the Turk as evinced by several centuries, to engage in these kinds of acts...this was normal procedure for Christians but unprecedented for Muslims or Turks, especially in the modern era.

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>### But that is the UN definition which is what I am using to base my definition on. As I said earlier no one is disputing that the Holocaust what be a 10 on the genocidemeter which is why it was not only genocide ....it was given its own term, the Holocaust.

...no doubt many are relieved to find out that genocide has been so watered down as to spare Christians the odious distinction of having coined the word, to describe what they did in 1940-45 when it didnīt exist and was not even thought of in 1918...but regardless of "new and improved" definitons, such as I found once when looking up "hero" and being confronted with a "new and improved" defintion which stated that a hero was a soldier who fought in an unpopular war, a definition Americans now embrace....I go by Orwellīs warning that in these modern times, words will be given new meanings to suit governments, especially fascistic governments... you too find this new and improved defintion of genocide appealing....the Holocaust is always capitalized because it refers to one and only one incident...genocide is a generic term, but still, the true genocides, in the modern era, have been committed by Christians not Muslims....as have all the wars and acts of Terror been initiated by them, while they tried to accuse those whom they attack of their own crimes.

>Also would you define the forced removal of children from their parents (part e) genocide? How about the US led sanctions of Iraq?

...removal of children from their parents, another time-honored practice of Christians, is, by my lights, not genocide...here again weīre making the definition of a horrible act flabby and weak by trying to make it so general that soon it will simply mean being "bad". US Sanctions are definitely genocide because their stated intent, voiced by government and NOT the people, was to force parents to take action by means of starving their children to death....how much of it was provoked by a deep seated hatred for Muslims (as Christians felt towads Jews for centuries) we canīt tell...but the targets were children, the old and the weak...the intention was not to wipe out all children, so I donīt know if I would call it genocide...Iīd rather reserve that term for the truly horrible and specific acts by government...perhaps there is a better term to signify, "the attempt to enforce policy by deliberately murdering or causing the deaths of innocent children as a way of motivating their parents"...this also is surely something new in the world of policy and , again, was invented by Christians...not Muslims....and not Turks either.
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>>But even so, even if you and the UN want to claim that killing the members of ANY group is gencoide, and even if in that case, everyone is committing genocide..then genocide isnīt such a bad thing, is it? I mean if every nation commits genocide, including the Israelis, then why is everyone focusing on the Turks alone? If we conclude that the Turks DID commit genocide, by this defintion, then so did everyone else and until everyone else stands so accused and apologizes and makes reparations then leave the Turks alone...be fair and just.
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>### Another thing we both agree on. Asking a nation like Australia who was responsible for enforcing the blockade that killed 700,000 Iraq children and an invasion/occupation that killed another 700,000 innocent Iraqis while ingoring their treatrment of the indigenous Aborigines during the 70s to recognise a genocie that was committed 95 yeras ago is equivalent to asking dracula to recognise that a vampire bat sucked your grandfather's blood a century ago!
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>### They didn't just attack the people that rebelled they attacked Syriacs, Chaldeans and even people they considered pagans such as the Shabaks and the Yezidis. The Ottoman Empire was homeogenising its nation state on one religion, one language and one culture. All impurities would be removed via deportation or massacre.

...how could they only attack those who rebelled when by defintion guerilla warriors use innocent civilians to hide among...and who wear no uniforms but try to blend in with the general populace? And the assyrians did indeed rebel...surely you remember Agha Poutrous...who was whisked away and decorated by the French...enemies of the Turks?

...as for homogenizing the nation, it was long overdue...unfortunately it took a war to precipitate it begun with incursions by missionaries with no respect for Turkish borders, traditions or religion...Iīm convinced, had not the Christian world attacked the Turks they would have gone on allowing the millet system to thrive...as it had for centuries...this is something you consistently ignore in your rush to damn the Turks...you overlook their stellar example of tolerance all those ages when Christian was murdering Christian and everybody else...give credit where it is due and the rest of your argument may stand a better chance..at least it will appear more the product of genuine concern and fair play than mere partizanship.
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>### Granted nows not a good time with the US empire looking for any pretext to invade Middle Eastern nation states and securing a ring of bases around the world's energy reserves. But what's so hard about them eventually acknowledging that they were responsible for genocide and seeking reconciliation and forgiveness with their neigbours?

...because they were not guilty of genocide...this is very like passing ex-post facto laws and going back in time to convict people when no such crime existed...the word, the term, the concept did not exist, was not invented to cover what the Turks stand accused of now...rather the word was coined after the horrible and truly unique fact of the Holocaust, brought to us, like all the great crimes of the modern era, by Christians. To now go back in history and apply a term to something that was never conceived in that light at the time, seems too obvious an attempt to smear Islam by accusing it of doing what it took Christians to invent decades later
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...the Germans apologized, as did the pope, because there was no denying what they did, and how they led up to it, or how truly evil it was....the Turks are being asked to apologize for something Christian nations are STILL doing with impunity...why the hell should they apologize for being attacked in the first place AND of having those attacking them prepare the way by first luring their own citizens into acts of treachery...who should apologize to whom? Shouldnīt the Euros and America apologize for treating this "old sick man" in such a fashion? Whatīs an "old sick man" supposed to do to defend himself that would suit you...should he ask those attacking him how they would like him to defend himself? Come on.....

>>> Let's also remember that genocide is the eventual result of hyper-nationalism crossing with a Darwinian "survival of the fittest" Eugenics policy that sough to purify the homeland. No one did it better than the Germans in WW2 and it is no coincidence that it was the same Germans who were the propaganda arm of the Ottomans helping them "purify" their homeland.
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>>>From my research this was not the case.
>>>Not only were Christians such as Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians killed but it did not matter whether they were from the CofE or from the Chaldean or Syriac churches.
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>>>In addition even Yezidis and Shabaks were targeted and slaughtered by the thousands. You see it was a purification of the Ottoman empire.
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>>...did you answer my question? Are you saying that the Turks went after ALL the Christians in the nation? And what is your time-frame...when did this cleansing and purifying take place? Was it before the Euro missionaries entered the country and set up fortress-"schools" or well before?
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>>...you still have not addressed the fact that the Ottoman Empire was the ONE place on earth where Muslim, Christian and Jews lived side by side in more harmoney than Christian ever lived next to Christian...that Charistians, where they rules, killed every Muslim and periodically every Jew....so that if one day a "purification" all of a sudden happened, in other words, if one day the Turk all of a sudden began to behave as the Christians always had, something drastic must have happened to the Turk to force him to change his centuries-old traditions...what was it? Turns out it was an insidiously innocent-appearing "mission" by Western Christians who entered his lands illegally and soon had their respective government interferring in order to "defend those poor Christians surrounded by Muslims". That was the beginning and the Tyurk was right in fearing it and fearing what would come next.
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>### You are absolutely right. Under the Ottoman empire on average minorities were better off even if there was a periodic pogrom or massacre. Christians, Jews, Yezidis, Shabaks, were tolerated at least.

....I know of no massacres...there were periodic mob actions against Christians..but this was provoked again, not be their religion but the ACTS of rebellion in certain provinces and by the disrespect for any religion but their own lurking in the black hearts of most Christians...certainly in the lower classes. After one such incident in which a mob attacked Christians, the patriarchs of all three faiths gathered in a large park in Istanbul and each took a turn reading the prayers of the OTHERS for peace and brotherly love...can you imagine any such thing happening, at the highest levels, in any form of Christianity? But rememeber that no one has killed or persecuted more Christians than have other Christians...no one. Have they ever apologized OR been accused of genocide?

>BUT it was only when the winds of nationalism blew through the Middle East that the minorities chose to seek independence and the Ottoman empire chose to purify and homogonise its empire.

...and those "winds" didnīt originate in Turkey but rather with Wilson, for one, and it was merely a "divide and conqure" tactic.

>So you see genocide is not an Islamic or a Christian issue but rather a result of an empire issue.

...no it isnīt...it never was a part of the Ottoman Empire...not until the Christian West ganged up on them for their oil...until then gencoide didnīt even exist in the peoples' consciousness. But genocdie is most definitely a Christian issue because it came into existence, it was first coined to describe what Christians did to Jews, a natural outgrowth of what they had been doing to them for centuries.
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>>>Source: http://www.seyfocenter.com/index.php?sid=2&aID=36
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>>>Van and Diyarbakir provinces had the highest number of victims with 80,000 and 63,000 killed, respectively. Going to more detailed investigations, the Syrian Orthodox Church specified the killing of 90,313 believers including 154 of its priests and 7 bishops and the destruction of 156 church buildings.[2] The Chaldeans reported the loss of 6 bishops, 50 priests and 50,000 of its faithful.[3] The Nestorians were so decimated and dispersed that they never managed to present any detailed figures.
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>>...to me, it matters a great deal where these figured come, who compiled them and how...if they come from any Christian sources, or American or Europoean diplomatic sources, then Iīm sorry...I no longer believe in every aluminum tube thatīs presented to me. In this case, where bigotry runs rampant I want to know where these figures come from...but even so, when faced with an armed insurrection, paid for and sponsored by the very people attacking them, the Turks had every right to act, and even over react...thatīs just the way it goes...but, since tnhey had never tried to cleanse their relam of Christians before, I think some better explanation or accusation than "they just wanted to get rid of Christians all of a sudden" is required. They had a few hundred years to do it...why the sudden rush?
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>>>[2] Memorandum presented by Syrian Orthodox Archbishop of Syria Severius A. Barsaum on April 2, 1920 printed in Sébastien de Courtois,. The Forgotten Genocide. Eastern Christians, The Last Arameans. (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press 2004), 237-239.
>>>[3] Emmanuel Thomas to Pope Benoit V July 6, 1919 Vatican Arcives, Archivo Segreto, AA.EE.SS. 1919 rubr. 12 fasc.1.
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>>...bishops and reverends and popes and priests tell children they are going to hell...they tell them they will live on a cloud forever when they die...please, this is a serious discussion, on my part at least.
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>### Yes but look at the dates. Are you saying that these two sources from two separate churches over 90 years ago are a Church conspiracy? I can understand the CofE manufacturing some of its history such as the Jesus sent Abghar a letter myth but the loss of so many innocents during WW1 is attested by multiple sources, Armenian, Assyrian and Greeks, who rebelled and Syriacs, Chaldean Yezidis and Shabaks who didn't rebel.

..of course they are church fabrications, ESPECIALY from 90 years ago....why would you ever think otherwise? People who tell the sorts of lies these people do are all of a sudden going to be EXACT and scrupulous about acertaining fact from fiction...about respecting the truth? They DEAL IN FICTION...in self-serving fiction most of all (fourteen elbows of John the Baptist indeed...and all from his LEFT ARM!)...what could suit their purposes better than to claim every dead Christian was a MARTYRED Christian? Donīt we see this same demented drive today to discover and fabricate martyrs wherever and whenever they can (while ignoring every Christian killed by another Christian because it doesnīt serve their purpose)...hell they DROOL over the propect of more and more martyrs IF killed by a Muslim...feeling cosmically put-upon is their stock and trade and they would have been poor Christians indeed, and worse diplomats, had they done any less.
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>I also realise that the seyfocenter is a European government sponsored propaganda site designed to enforce the framework of orientalism and justify the Euroepan G8 members who participate in the US banker's control of Middle Eastern black gold reserves. But the fact that these two sources appeared on seyfocenter doesn't make them any less relevant.

...I donīt see how you can say that...would you get your facts from a United States sponsored and supported site which claimed that no Iraqi children died as a result of any Sanctions...and had corroborating "evidence" from the Brits, Italians, Spaniards, Dutch, Japanese and others? Wouldnīt you have to be overwhelmed by SO MUCH testimony? Of course you would if it suited your purpose...and just what exactly IS your purpose? Are you really trying to understand, or condemn? Iīm not trying to defend the Turks...I am trying to defend history and truth, which has taken severe battering recently and continue to be treated as something that all can have "opinions" about...I want no more opinions...I want the best facts available on ALL sides....and where there are few or no facts to go on then Iīm going to use REASON..and I expect to be challenged by reason...not by opinion or wishful thinking....

...it does not make sense, in REASON, that the Turks would all of a sudden and for no good reason change years of tolerance and policy which allowed the millet system to flourish in the one place on earth it did for centuries...these are not the habits or traditions of a people who would all of a sudden stand accused of such horrible crimes...and when you add wartime to it and the efforts of Euro Christians to subvert the citizens of Turkey and all of it with the intent to steal oil, as they are still doing...then REASON must predominate...not emotion...thereīs enough emotional bilge being spilled on the one side...we need less on ours, not more.



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