United Armenia

That was an overstatement on his part. But taking REAL genocides like the Holocaust and trying to piggy-back fake ones on them to promote modern political agenda belittles the tragedies that have occurred. In the case of the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian side immediately labels anyone that disagrees with their highly ideological distortion of history "denialist", when nobody is denying anything.

What most ACTUAL scholars think is that:

- About 600,000 Armenians died, about half of them due to forced relocation by the Ottoman authorities and half due to other wartime conditions. Almost all of these died of famine and disease, not massacre. The number that did die of massacre is still very large, something like 50,000, but a far cry from 2 million.

- There is no evidence the Ottoman authorities had any intention of destroying the Armenians - that is why they were left alone in the capital and outside the war zone. There is not one single document to back this up - there are no concentration camps, no infrastructure to accomplish a genocide, no mass graves in Turkey (except for Muslims massacred by the Armenians, which are still being turned up), etc. Contrast that with the Holocaust, where the physical and paperwork evidence is so extensive. You can't kill four million people and leave no trail of evidence whatsoever. (The current claim is 2M Armenians, 1M Greeks, and 1M Assyrians, the last of which is a greater number than the total amount of Assyrians that have ever lived)

- The Armenians committed equal or greater atrocities in the same period, both in the Ottoman Empire and in the Caucasus.

Someday soon I'll write an essay about this, sourced and everything so we can never have to discuss it ever again.

What a surprise! I´d like to point out that I know Germans (not from this forum) who think exactly the same about the Holocaust. Furthermore I´m a bit irritated by the casual denial and downplaying of mass muerder.
Yeah, the thread should be closed!
 
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You're probably right about the banned member thing - it's just that he didn't sound all that different from a nationalist.

Stanford Shaw had his house bombed. All mid east scholars were subjected to a terror campaign in the 1980's that made sure nobody touches this with a ten-foot pole. Otherwise you get terrorized, branded a hired gun of Turkey, etc.

Bernard Lewis, Shaw, McCarthy, et al are all of course hired guns, while Armenian writers on the subject generally aren't even scholars at all, but are employed by various foundations that maintain the Armenian Genocide industry.

Good lord, you were actually able to read through everything he wrote. That had to be the most annoying font I've ever tried to read.



Actually, being able to read Turkish, or at least modern Turkish wouldn't help you much. The original documents are all in Ottoman, which uses a completely diffent script. Attaturk decided to "westernize" the language and so by now very few people even in Turkey can still read and write in Ottoman.

Unfortunately because this subject has been so volatile, I'm not sure if a single major Middle Eastern scholar has written a book about the Armenian Ethnic Cleansing(that's the term I use which is much fairer than genocide). In fact, I'll go so far as to say that I doubt a book has been written on the subject by anyone who can read and write Ottoman. Bernard Lewis has been put on trial for denying the genocide, Stanford Shaw had his house or car(I forget which) blown up over it, and Justin McCarthy has written plenty of essays and made plenty of public appearances decrying it, but I don't think any of them every published any books that focused specifically on the Armenian Ethnic Cleansing. Of the scholars who I could find who have written of it, I'd be shocked if either Peter Balakian or Guenter Lewy can read or write Ottoman. The only one I could find who might is Taner Akcam, but looking at his educational history from wiki(I know, I know) I seriously doubt it. Also, to be honest Akcam comes across more as an activist/revolutionary employed by a college than an actual scholar.

It's one of the great shames, but for obvious reasons(see Lewis & Shaw) most Middle Eastern scholars try and avoid the subject. Also, I think younger scholars are becoming less and less likely to be able to read and write Ottoman.

I know it might seem odd for me to have found this out but I think it was last year, one since banned guy who's user namer escapes me got into a nightlong fight with myself, Calgacus, Leo and AHP over the AG and pissed me off because when I started quoting Bernard Lewis he started argueing that Lewis had been bought off by the Turks, was old(true but irrelevant and insulting) and had used to claim the genocide happened before the Turks threw him some dinner parties or something equally idiotic and it caused me to hunt down Lewis alleged claims the genocide occured. Needless to say the guy was wrong. IIRC, he also lied about another scholar, David Fromkin.



Actually, I suspect he's more likely a banned member who wanted to pick a fight with you. That seemed like way too much of a cut and paste job(my eyes still hurt from trying to read it) to be the work of a real Armenian nationalist as oppossed to the ghost of some banned member.
 

Susano

Banned
What a surprise! I´d like to point out that I know Germans (not from this forum) who think exactly the same about the Holocaust. Furthermore I´m a bit irritated by the casual denial and downplaying of mass muerder.
Yeah, the thread should be closed!

*looks at Markus location*

Oh for the love of God, so we now have one of the German Loonie Lefties here, too?:rolleyes:
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
Stop being so melodramatic. Can this thread not be closed asap?
I don't think that word means what you think it means. :rolleyes:

You realize Neo-Nazis use the same "arguments": far less were killed, they were to be deported and not exterminated, they died of diseases, got caught in the anti-insurgency operartions, the historians/media are not telling the truth...

Ohh, and throwing people into jail who say this was a genocide certainly does not improve the "critics" credibility.
As it happens, my grandfather fought against the Nazi regime in WWII and, as a native speaker of German, was among the first American soldiers to cross into Germany. He and his fellow soldiers liberated the camps. I grew up hearing his eyewitness accounts of the evils of the Nazis. But hey, if you want to compare me to a Neo-Nazi based upon your misunderstanding of my arguments about a subject for which you clearly aren't entirely familiar with the facts, be my guess and make an ass out of yourself.

The fact that some very nasty people make similar arguments about a completely different event is completely irrelevant. Trying to cow me by comparing me to them is not only a dirty trick, but it's a stupid argument to begin with.

In recent years several prominent individuals have been fined or jailed for the mildest suggestion that the government did not intend to systematically eradicate the Armenians in 1915, including one of the foremost scholars in the field (Bernard Lewis). So, this shit goes both ways.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
I assure you I do, and I still think you were doing it in the aforementioned threads. But anyway, I don't want to get into an argument. ;)
Well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. But I still don't think that anything I've said could be constituted as melodramatic.

I'm the one quoting facts and trying to make a logical argument for my position.

In response, I have people calling me an "idiot," a "Turkophile worm," and insinuating that I'm a "Neo-Nazi." Now, as far as I'm concerned, anyone who starts suggesting that I'm like a Neo-Nazi has effectively relinquished the privilege to be taken seriously (I don't really take the accusation that I'm a "Turkophile" as an insult, even if in the mouths of some people it is such).

Who's being melodramatic here?

And, even if I were being "melodramatic" here (and I can assure you that I am not, at least not by any meaningful definition of the word), could anyone blame me? Those are some pretty strong accusations.

Strangely, after the dust has settled on these arguments, people always seem to remember that Abdul Hadi and I are the ones who are "flipping out," whereas the record will show that we usually keep our cool and can argue these issues pretty dispassionately. The same unfortunately cannot be said for everyone here.
 
Well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. But I still don't think that anything I've said could be constituted as melodramatic.

I'm the one quoting facts and trying to make a logical argument for my position.

In response, I have people calling me an "idiot," a "Turkophile worm," and insinuating that I'm a "Neo-Nazi."

Who's being melodramatic here?

And, even if I were being "melodramatic" here (and I can assure you that I am not, at least not by any meaningful definition of the word), could anyone blame me? Those are some pretty strong accusations.

Strangely, after the dust has settled on these arguments, people always seem to remember that Abdul Hadi and I are the ones who are "flipping out," whereas the record will show that we usually keep our cool and can argue these issues pretty dispassionately. The same unfortunately cannot be said for everyone here.

I'm not taking the other guy's side; I just don't think his stuff is worth commenting on. This is obviously a very contentious topic, and so is probably left alone, as others have said.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
I'm not taking the other guy's side; I just don't think his stuff is worth commenting on. This is obviously a very contentious topic, and so is probably left alone, as others have said.
The problem is that if Ian keep shutting down threads about this issue than certain people will argue that he's applying a heavy hand with the censorship and that we don't have the freedom to discuss certain issues. Already people act as if this a den of jackbooted PC thuggery. I don't think this thread should be locked, since it's no longer on fire, but I do agree that it has probably run its course already, and will soon die a natural death like most other threads here.
 

Keenir

Banned
RCTFI – who do you think you are???!!! You tell me about Turkish members and about one (Abdul the Bloodthirsty or sth.)


you're thinking of Selim the Grim. :rolleyes:


I just have one question for you, Fritzchen: if there was a deliberate ampaign to exterminate the Armenians, why did they ignore the Armenians living in Istanbul?

 

Keenir

Banned
Furthermore I´m a bit irritated by the casual denial and downplaying of mass muerder.

of the Turks? you can't ask for justice for just one side, not when both sides suffered equally.

ps: murder. pretty sure German doesn't umlauh/ue the word.
;)
 
There must have been some recognition that there would be a heavy death toll - after all, the casualty rate for soldiers moving through the region was 25%.

The principal way in which the argument diverges from the Armenian position is that the relocation of the Armenians was ordered for a specifically military purpose, to get a rebellious population out of a critical war zone, where they were materially aiding the operations of the enemy, rather than as an ideologically-driven effort to purge Anatolia of Christians.

The numbers game comes into play because the Armenian claim that there were 2.8M Armenians in Eastern Anatolia (combined with a severe underestimate of the Muslim population) creates the illusion that there was an Armenian majority in the region, when in reality they constituted about a sixth of the population. In addition, since everyone pretty much agrees that there were about 900,000 survivors, 2.8M - .9M = 1.9M dead, or 68% dead = genocide, whereas 1.5M - .9M = .6M dead, or 40% dead = same proportion of Muslims that died.

I wouldn't say that AHP says it was small scale. He's merely said (to summarise from memory) that the numbers of dead are in excess of how many were around (I think he's suggested 600,000 dead in the relocations, which isn't small potatoes by anyone's reckoning), pointed out that it was a disaster caused by inability rather than malice (rather like the British Concentration Camps in the Boer War), and encouraged people (er, perhaps rather pointedly) to check original sources rather than rely on more modern (and perhaps biased) interpretations of the facts.

But, aye, this is a tinderbox waiting for a match.
 
In response, I have people calling me an "idiot," a "Turkophile worm," and insinuating that I'm a "Neo-Nazi." Now, as far as I'm concerned, anyone who starts suggesting that I'm like a Neo-Nazi has effectively relinquished the privilege to be taken seriously (I don't really take the accusation that I'm a "Turkophile" as an insult, even if in the mouths of some people it is such).

Has anyone tried that with any of Stalin's policies? Remember that Stalin gerrymandered a lot of cultures in Central Asia and in Siberia (and now apparently Kazakhstan wants to go to the Turkish alphabet to replace the Kazakh version of the Cyrillic alphabet as a form of "de-Sovietization" over a period of 10-12 years) as well as doing a lot of damage to minority cultures in Russia and in elsewhere. If you ever go on YouTube and see the comments on any clip of rempetika, whenever a Turkish member shows up it immediately degenerates into a shouting match, with someone inevitably saying "go back to Central Asia" or something like that. The problem is that even then, Tajiks excluded, a lot of the Central Asian peoples that are of Turkic origin had to suffer through Stalin and suffer through gerrymandering on that front, including the forced adoptions of the Cyrillic alphabet (thus another break of continuity in terms of the Arabic alphabet). Thus, we may never know.
 
I didn't bother looking at the 2nd and 3rd pages for this...but can anyone post a map of a united Armenia and Kurdistan would look like?
 
I didn't bother looking at the 2nd and 3rd pages for this...but can anyone post a map of a united Armenia and Kurdistan would look like?

I suggest you should bother, 'cause it was posted by an Armenian extremist troll and most people here argue against his TL, and he is already banned.

Hence, your chance to gain the map is actually pretty slim....
 
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