AKHTAMAR, Turkey (A.W.)—A group of Armenian children from Armenia were told to leave Sourp Khatch Church on the island of Akhtamar this month for lighting candles, singing, and praying.
The children, who were winners of Hay Aspet’s (Armenian Knight) television contest, were on a visit to Turkey.
Karin Tonoyan, the founder and director of Hay Aspet, told News.am that the children wanted to light candles in the church, “but policemen said that it is forbidden, as ‘it is a museum and the walls will be stained.’ I told the children to stand in the center, not to stain the walls. The children started singing and praying; but suddenly a policeman came and told us to leave the church.”
Tonoyan said that the kids left the church, but continued to sing outside it. They were not allowed to burn incense by the khatchkars (cross-stones) or gravestones in the church’s surrounding area.
“The children tried to burn incense near one of the khatchkars but a Turkish policeman came up and stepped on it,” Tonoyan said.
A video clip posted on YouTube shows the kids singing “Der Voghormya” (“Lord Have Mercy”) as they are being told to step outside, where they continue singing the hymn. To watch the clip, click here.
Established in 2005, Hay Aspet Educational Philanthropic Fund is an organization based in Yerevan that aims to encourage youth patriotism and activism in schools, through extracurricular activities, after-school programs, and campaigns. One of their recent projects was organizing a children’s trip to historic Armenia, which ended on Aug. 17.
Nanore Barsoumian
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Shame on Turkey. Sassounian, the ARF and the RA
are right in advocating we boycott this show in
September.
A wolf is still a wolf even when its hidding under sheeps skin.
I have heard similar stories from a group that visited recently. I understand the Turks are especially sensitive when there are other visitors. This clip is very inspiring and brought me to tears…. to see a new generation of Armenians who have respect, praying and returning to the land that is rightfully ours. It is further evidence that the Turkish denial plan has failed and that the issue of Western Armenia and the years of Turkish deceit will not prevail. 95 years after the crime, our people will not be denied. This entire Akhtamar situation is becoming very interesting.
May God Bless these children and our beloved cause.
The Turk (sizable majority or a powerful less than majority) has been the same for the past 1000 years and I hope I am wrong but I don’t expect anything different (for the better) for the next 1000 years. We are stuck with a group (the Turk) who is full of hate towards not just Armenians, but others in and around Turkey that are not Turks.
You people DO realize that it’s forbidden to light candles in ANY museum, right?? I mean, I can’t go to the MFA or the MET and light a candle in front of a religious relic… This is a very transparent attempt at provocation… It is not smart, and will lead to absolutely nothing.
I hope that this yuo tube clip gets incredibly wide distribution. In addition to the faith of these children and the inspiring hope it gives to us as Armenians, what a message for the world to see!!!! The “tolerant” and “EU ready” Turks preventing children from Armenia from praying in a church. It says it all in a video…… the denial and vile policy of the Turks,,,, the faith and courage of our people…. our timeless commitment to our ideals and the hope of a new generation.
Let the EU take a good look. No boycott!! Go to Akhtamar and do as our children are in this video. Srong in their faith and confronting the repulsive policy of the Turks for the world to see.
Jack, You can’t make museum out of stolen property! The church needs to be returned to its righteous owner, The Armenian Church. Then you wont have to guard it against kids.
“Kogh seerdu togh.” Sacrilege in the occupied land of our ancestors. They fear nothing more than our Der Voghormia.
Ter Voghormya brings me to tears and while the graceful manner in which these children exited from the church was admirable, the act itself was symbolic and, mildly put, a senseless display of provocation. You know that the Aghtamar Church has been consecrated as a museum by the Turkish state. You know that the Holy Apostles Church in Kars has been consecrated as a museum. The same thing would have happened if some Greeks decided to sing mass at the Haghia Sophia in Istanbul. So why provoke them? What else did you expect the authorities to do?
Yes, this video just goes to show how barbaric the Turks can still be, harassing little kids and not letting them sing and to light candles but the number one rule that every Armenian is told prior to their going to Turkey is to not rabble-rouse and start hitting every raw nerve the Turks have. They surely must have known this and I don’t understand how doing pointless things like this will ever help us get our lands back.
These are the kind of provocations that make many Turks hesitant about all of these religious institutions and the kind of crowd they may attract. Intentions were not innocent it it seems and a school trip and children were hijacked for a nationalistic demonstration. They were fully aware of course that services were not allowed and the place was not open as a church. You may not agree, but law is the law. All this just delays normalization. The provocators are also well aware of that of course, but they could care less it seems, since that is hardly the point.
annihilate an entire civilization, steal their properties, destroy their cities and villages and then deny the few survivors of their right to pray in churches which were built by their ancestors by calling it a “museum”
Turkey=epitome of shamelessness
Jack, do you really think Turks need you as their apologist to explain that candles aren’t allowed in “museums?” Come on! They can call it what they want but it will always be a church to Armenians. It’s consecrated, hallowed ground and sacred space, regardless of what Turkey calls it. I am very proud of these kids for their civil disobedience which provoked the security to reveal the oppressive and religiously intolerant Turkish policy. Bravo to Armenians who do not forsake their heritage for fear of offending their oppressors. (95 years did not dull our understanding of the meaning of Sourp Khatch to an Armenian. The Turkish gov. and their guards are the one’s who should be singing “Lord have Mercy.” They will need it.
GRONK .YEGEGHETZI. AGHOTK.ASHAGERDOUTUIN,
KHAYDARAK YEZRI VRAH GE GANKNI HAY AZKE NERGAYIS, ISG TURKERE
GIANG GE NERSHENTZE,ANKAM ME YEVS BARDEVETZANK , AYT AGHTAMARE VDANKAVOR
NOR TAKART MEN AE, KRETZING ESELOV ISHKHANOUTIAN MI KACHALEREK AYS AHRELI
TURK TSRAKIRE,VNAS AE TE NOUTAGAN YEV KAGHAKAGAN PNOUTOV HAY AZKIN,
AYS DARVA YEGHATZE ARACHINE YEV VERCHINE ELLA GESSE HAY ZHOGHOVOURTE.
GETZTZE TASHNAGTSOUTUINE
GETZTZE HAY ZHOGHOVOURTE
Jack, so if someone or some entity illegally kicks you out of your home and declares it a museum and you return to sleep…I hope society won’t say to you – “Jack, you’re being silly, you know you cannot sleep in a museum…”
Murat said – “These are the kind of provocations that make many Turks hesitant about all of these religious institutions and the kind of crowd they may attract.” Your statement says it all about the Turks. A few kids praying in a church is a provocation? What was provoked? What negative harm could be possible from kids praying? The Turks could not tolerate the Armenians praying in the past and they still cannot. I keep hoping for a changing Turkey (for the better) but my hopes get dashed by comments like Murat’s and the video.
A sampling of comments from above, no need to search high and low:
“… to see a new generation of Armenians who have respect, praying and returning to the land that is rightfully ours.”
“… I am very proud of these kids for their civil disobedience which provoked the security to reveal the oppressive and religiously intolerant Turkish policy.”
:…Turkish denial plan has failed…”
So, in all honesty, will you still claim that this was a few innocent kids praying? It sounds like some here at least so as an act of reclaim and re-conquest. Where is God and religion in this?
Murat stop acting so smart. Akhtamar is an Armenian church its not a museum.
End of story.
Jack, Murat and the other apologists,
The HOUSE OF GOD AIN’T NO MUSEUM. We know it, you know it and so do those who deliberately provoke Armenians by desecrating the walls of HIS blessed house with Turkish propaganda and images of maniacal consummates of genocide.
You wanna know what a blatantly “transparent attempt at provocation” really is though? Its an act of religious suppression under the supposed guise of renovating the religious property of others.
Ohhhhhhh I get it now my sly Turkish compatriots!
Children wanting to pray and light candles in their own church was an “act of provocation” just like your flotilla on its way to Gaza was also an “act of provocation” right…?
Murat,
Excellent points made! Too bad they’re wasted here, on the peanut gallery!
Jack,
You also made a great point! Note how they start getting incoherent as they can’t face the truth of the situation, even after you’ve “enlightened” them. If the exact same thing happened in reverse in Armenia, and a group of Turkish kids went into a museum and started to light candles which is clearly stated as being forbidden, what would be the expected outcome. Excellent and resounding reasoning by both you and Murat!
again, there are writers asking us to simply bend our heads and knees to the immorality of Turkish law rather than to assert our rights. The kids lit candles. the turks fired up a shish-kebab fire and are hoping to drive Armenian lambs into it.
Merhaba Murat;
“these religious groups” happened to be there before the invasions of the Central Asian Mongolian invasions. In fact, they were there 11 centuries before. The real issue is Turkey wants all the history of the first indigenous people and their culture to disappear.
The notion of a Republic of Turkey is a new and novel concept not even 100 years old.
Murat,
since when do you care about Armenian churches? If I am not mistaken, the church, like most of the ancient Armenian monuments in Turkey, has been neglected and looted by treasure hunters for so many decades. Why weren’t you raising your voice before? I guess, as long as the Turks or Kurds caused the damage, it was fine. It’s ridiculous how you all suddenly overreact when you see Armenian kids there. I don’t think any of you is really worried that the candles would harm the church. FYI, Christians light candles when they worship. Do you have a problem with that? You can call it a Turkish museum or dress it up the way you want, you cannot erase the fact that Holly Cross was and IS an Armenian church. It was built by OUR ancestors, not yours. You DO get it, don’t you?
Silly, silly Murat, don’t you see that when Turks turn an Armenian church into a museum they force Christians to commit civil disobedience in order to express their faithin that sacred space. Who has the greater fault in this? I still say Bravo! to the Hai Aspets.
Further Murat and Robert, why does it bother you that children lit candles in a church but it doesn’t bother you that your government would turn a church that belongs to the Armenians into a museum instead of allowing the patriarchate of Istanbul to administer it? Your government turns our church which it gained by the forced deportation and massacres of our people and turns this holy place into its precious treasure/tourist attraction and you are okay with this? I say that these children revealed the oppressive and religiously intolerant Turkish policy and you say nothing to refute this? You are more bothered by children singing a hymn on consecrated ground. Religious tolerance is not important to you. Very strange.
Merhaba Venessa, Nishan, Gina and Robert,
Just to make it clear, my personal opinion is for a cross to be put on this church where it belongs (a silly topic that became political football it seems) and for it to open to service as a house of God.
As a side note for some, I have been to more churches and lit more candles than you folks here collectiveley been to a mosque.
The tone of the discussion here though, strictly revolving around nationalistic themes, and the tendency in general to see this church as a symbol of Armenian claims to the land, and I do not mean in the emotional and cultural sense, makes me think maybe I am being naive and this may be the sort of thing authorities are worried about. What happens then, when even more provocative acts take place and authorities interfere and the whole thing turns into a pr nightmare – yea, Turks need more of them!
I do not need to remind anyone here that churches, both Armenian and Greek, have served as hot bed of nationalism in the Asia Minor in the previous century. I mean literally. Turkish authorities sensitivities have little to do with religion.
I have tried to tell this little personal story about this church before, but for unknown reasons, never passed through the “filter” before. I will try again. Grandpa, who was stationed in the are as an Ottoman officer, one day receives a tip about weapons being stored in Akdamar. He takes a platoon with him, and gets to the island in a small boat. Priest in charge there greets him at the door, he is very cordial, they sit, chat, have coffe and he takes a tour and sees nothing suspicious. Just as he was about to take the last step out the door, he is distracted by the strange sound his boots make on the stones. Upon closer inspection he discovers a hidden door in the floor which leads to a hidden basement which is full of guns and ammo. I still wonder if the basement is still there.
Hey robert and murat, I want you both to remember this latest act of intolerance by your kinsmen so that when you and your government are herded out of the corridors of Europe you don’t foolishly ask why, but recall this and a long laundry list of such anti-democratic actions against citizens and non-citizens alike.
I do have my doubts “Murat” being Armenian. And if he is then he and his alike should be ashamed. Persons like him, traitors is another name, have caused the Armenian Nation a lot of harm in the past and today.
Robert,
The difference here is that Armenia would never turn a religious monument into something other than it is, especially if the entity to whom it belonged was active and alive.
Case in point: the Persian Mosque in Yerevan is still a Persian mosque first and foremost. If the Persians want to turn it into a museum, by all means. But the Armenian government would never snatch it from the Persians, call it a toilet, use it as such, and then prohibit Persians from using it as anything other than a toilet.
Hundreds if not thousands of Armenian churches have been destroyed or have become stables & this is all recorded & very well documented.
These properties belong to the Armenians whether murat(always present with his super racist anti Armenian comments everywhere…one wonders how much he is paid???),jack or robert accept it or not.By international law we will regain our properties back even though our land will remain occupied for the time being.
Soon the cross will top the church.Soon there will a sacred ritual a MASS so much publicised by Turkey.Will they forbid incense & candles which are part of our religous ceremony?Let’s wait & see.
hello everyone
I think the main problem in this debate is that the historical/moral presence of Armenians and the legal sovereignty of the state are seen as substitutes. But they are not. Indeed, they should be seen as complements in order to make progress. Armenians claim that the church was built by Armenians, and the owners of the church should be their successors. This is right. TUrks claim that, the state has the legal sovereignty over her territories. Stopping people who do not obey the rules within this territory is the obligation of the state. Hence, turks are also right.
In order both sides to be satisfied, this building should be given a church status. As far as I know, Mesrob II personally asked the prime minister Erdoğan to use the building as a church one day a year when it was in the restoration process. As you can his wish was fulfilled.
Perhaps instead of complaining, and getting angry, lobbying may be a more efficient strategy. What do you think.
ps. I didn’t write these to “increase your blood pressure” I just shared my opinions and observations, would like to see your evaluations-critics about it.
thanks
This is an action of civil disobedience of a type known in almost all countries (that is if it was clear in advance that lighting candles and singing was forbidden in the church). It is very parallel to the Kurds’ insisting on publishing books in Kurdish at the time when it was forbidden, or celebrating Newroz when it was forbidden. Authorities and many Turks were angry and said that insisting on writing Kurdish and celebrating Newroz was not so innocent as it was said. And this of course was true. These were political actions using the universal rights of one’s own language and traditions, and the acts symbolised a fight for a much more comprehensive goal. Today Kurds are free to publish in kurdish and may celebrate Newroz freely.
-The youths (from the video they look like youths to me and not children) performed such an action, probably organised.
However to say that “A few kids praying in a church is a provocation? What was provoked? What negative harm could be possible from kids praying?” is playing the naive role, Artashes!! There are few stupid people here, so why?
In conclusion: a society with many unresolved issues – and actually most countries will be like this, more or less – must expect this kind of demonstrations from those who have grievances. I expect more of it, and the action at Sourp Khach seems warranted as a reminder towards Turks that they must go into this dark part of their past, and moreover return the church to the Armenians who are the rightful owners by all standards. It belonged to the Armenian church in 1914. How come it is Turkish property today?
Murat and Robert, kudos to you for staying in the discussion! Dialogue is no panacea but without dialogue everything gets worse in the end.
Apres Gina jan…exactly..
of but of course….we have Robert, Murat and now Jack who had to get on their soap box…. ..
One small correction:
THE PEANUT GALLERY (as you eloquently put it) is YOU, ROBERT, MURAT AND YOUR KIND.. just so that we are clear…
Murat.. you are an idiot.. i am sorry.. really sorry for this but you are.. and Robert too for agreeing with you.. seriously?? are you ok in your Ottoman bred brain? children causing provocation? OH MY LORD..please help these individuals to understand that Aghtamar is NOT THEIRS AND WILL NEVER BE THEIRS..and Armenians are NOT causing problems and HAVE THE RIGHT to pray in their OWN CHURCH.. law is the law?? what stupid law is that? is there a law for harassing children in your country? it seems not because as we saw it, the Gendarms made the kids to leave the church…
Robert… if the exact thing happened in Armenia…You bet your Turkish brainwashed self Armenians won’t treat the children that way.. but if it was you, or Murat or any one like you.. we won’t nicely ask you but we will throw you out..
and to be honest with you.. all i can say is this.. Robert, Murat and those denialists should simply SHUT THE HECK UP as you don’t have the right to even utter a word because you know why? because nothing in your beloved Turkey belongs to you.. that includes our own church that our own children tried to pray and for some reason you are claiming it is a museum and not a church….
I apologize if I sound frustrated but this type of manners/comments that go without punishment or correction just makes my blood boil.
Gayane
Very powerful and emotional.
Even Gods can not steel what is yours.
robert,jack & murat
there is the very well publicised (by the Turkish authorities…mind you )upcoming ARMENIAN MASS/RELIGOUS CEREMONY to be held in the so called “MUSEUM”…if it is a museum why allow a mass?Do you know that our mass/religous ceremony includes candle lighting & incense burning?Let’s see if the the authorities will forbid a religous expresssion.
robert,
why would Turkish kids light a candle in a museum in Armenia?Is it part of Islam religous ceremony?Since when do you light a candle while praying?
mrat,
I answered you in Hurriyet so no need to repeat myself
The problem is not the the candles “staining the wall.” The walls are made of stone and have been stained by 95 years of Turkish destruction and neglect. I lit candles in Ani cathedral with police watching, and had absolutely no problem. The problem was that it was obvious to the turks that a Christian religious service was being held. Jihad means convert them or kill them. Since they can no longer kill us with axes and swords and guns, they want to eliminate our culture, every single evidence of who were are and who we were, and of our contribution to civilization. They saw a new generation of young Christian Armenians returning to the land, bringing with them the religion and the culture turks had hoped to wiped out for centuries. Armenian children praying in a cathedral is evidence of our continued claim, not only on Holy Cross, but on all our churches. And yes, on the land itself. Bravo, children.
Murat, this simple and peaceful act of civil disobedience should not surprise you and you may see more of it. My guess is that it wasn’t intended to “provoke” as much as it was intended to assert the right to express our faith according to our traditions. You only consider it provocation because you fail to understand the Armenian longing for return to their land which has been illegitimately withheld from us for 95 years. Armenian faith and the land are very connected. For us, this land is sacred, not only because of all the blood that was spilled there, but also because our ancient faith took root there in the shadow of the resting place of Noah’s Ark. Calling it a museum and not allowing mass but once a year, does not change this.
As a Jew, I’m astounded by accusations of some Turks here who claim provocation by these children!
These are the kinds of religiously intolerant actions of the backwards Turkish government that will ensure it remains outside the borders of Europe and isolated within its own sphere of Islamic fundamentalism.
murat,
In the past I remember very well that you wrote that your grandparents were killed in Crete…how many grandparents do you have?
Hidden basement?This church has just been restored by the Turkish authorities together with Armenian experts.Very easy to verify.So please stop bs-ing!
Please change your name so that no trace is left behind your comments.
Perouz, the candles are not even attached to the walls. It is clear from the picture that the kids are holding them in their hands. They are standing somewhere in the middle of the hall, not even close to the walls, and singing. I think it’s the kids’ presence in the church as Christian Armenians, not just tourists, that touches the Turks’ nerves. They don’t seem to realize that such overreaction on their part suggests that they must have serious reasons for being so nervous. If the kids did the same thing at a mosque, a synagoge, or in a public place that could disturb others or would qualify it as a political statement, I would be the first one to condemn it. However, it is very private, inside an empty church, in an area that seems to be so deserted, anyway. I don’t see how anyone can be provoked so easily by another person’s religious ritual, as simple as this one, in any democratic country in the world that has nothing to hide.
Murat and Robert should really try to read material outside of the ‘curriculum’ set by their jihadist Imams before returning for their next dose of humiliation on these pages.
I really think organizers should think twice before taking armenian kids to turkey. It’s turkey, how can we trust turkish people. they may have changed their clothing but they are the same. I would never visit turkey until such time it is back under our flag.
We the Armenians, will stay naive till we die
WE ARE SO HONEST AND STUPID
To send intelligent children to give Qurban to the enemies
Gendarme gendarme…gendarme from the same scavengers gene.
I am happy that they arrived safe home
Without being killed… like our 200 martyrs of 1915
What a stupid nation we are
To dedicate our clever children to Akhtamar!
It is not enough we gave to God one and half million of Armenians…
What Almighty and his son did for us.
Armenians awake from caves and think
Not to repeat such a mistake once again.
Sylva
Mother of two sons
On the contrary, Tigran, I think these young people learned the lesson of a lifetime about truth and courage and doing what is right. Priceless.
This act of faith and civil disobedience by the children reminds all of us of an important issue. For decades, the Turks have counted on assimilation to dilute the effectiveness of our political strength. Basically, the crime is comitted and the criminal uses time to get away with it. In our case we have the additional complication of a diaspora and 70 years of Soviey rule. It is clear that although the diaspora has its challenges, the political capability has increased . THIS IS A NIGHTMARE FOR THE TURKS. This a real burden for today’s government l as they have to continue the charade of the past 90 years and we can see the walls are cracking in Turkish society. Every year we see evidence of Turks recognizing the scam.
Despite the benefits of this progress, we have a major challenge in keeping the current and future generation emotionally connected to Western Armenia. We do this through education, family values and travel. i had a great experience this summer teaching young peopelat an Armenian camp geography and history. Building and maintaining a connection to Western Armenia in the absence of our departed first generation(my grandparents) and an indigenous population IS A CHALLENGE BUT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY.
These children remind us of the importance of having an experience with the land and history. That emotional connection is what builds activism, I agree with Boyajian. They will be better for this experience and so will we. I feel a bond with all the regulars
and have learned a great deal. Under the umbrella of our common love of Armenia , oru diversity is a strength.
Bravo to each and every child that stood up for their heritage and religion. To those that wish to remain indifferent, there is no path to salvation.
Where did the video go? Who would do such a thing?
Ragnar.. well of course.. the infameous Ragnar peeking his head yet again.. it is nice to see you again sir.. …even though I don’t know if I want to start with you again..
however, i would not encourage Robert, Murat and their kind Ragnar.. they don’t deserve kudos.. dialogue is a dialogue with two sides understanding each other and not accusing one side of provocation and claiming that Children are breaking the law (an arbitrary law written by Turkish govt for their own benefit).. Turkish govt and people like Robert, Murat and their kind are cowards..
Teoman.. nice to see you again…
You said
TUrks claim that, the state has the legal sovereignty over her territories. Stopping people who do not obey the rules within this territory is the obligation of the state. Hence, turks are also right.
I personally disagree with this argument.. Turks do not have claim on ANYTHING that remotely relates to ARmenians.. and that includes this church.. Turks have NO LEGAL RIGHT to turn this Armenian Church into a museum.. This Church was built before the so called Turks started to sprout like weeds..this Magnificent Ancient Church SHOULD AND MUST remain as a church and not a museum…. who GAVE THEM THE RIGHT to make a church into a museum? can you answer me that???
If you are talking about disobeying State’s law.. then why is it that Turkey does not punish those who kill an Armenian like Hrant D???? Why don’t they punish those who kill anyone that remotely deals with an Armenian, like Hrant D’s lawyer? Why do we have our Church priests in Turkey get murdered? Is not obeying a law as Turkey is soooooo infameously known for the state’s obligation??? i think so.. it should apply with the above examples as well…so no..i don’t agree with your statements and no the Turks are not right…
Perfect example is US. I read and hear many many times over that Muslims have alot of demands because of the religious rituals… IF Christians can’t pray, carry a mass, express their religious rituals in peace and without harassment from the Muslim world, then the Muslims can’t do the same in any other country.. FREEDOM OF RELIGION OR NOT.. enough is enough.. Fair is Fair.. The entire world should adapt a RULE/LAW: Muslims can’t demand freedom of religion in another country if they are not willing to provide the same for those who are not Muslims… PERIOD.
Katia jan.. Mernem yes qo srtin.. as you suggested in another discussion forum.. all those Armenians who have power and influence and can get the word out as soon as possible and with a huge bang..should start doing this.. we are definintely ready for the Perfect Storm..
G
This act of provocation (fine) was civil and non-violent. The Turkish act of provocation against Israel endangered the lives of many humanitarian workers (who were not part of pseudo-terrorist IHH) and resulted in the deaths of nine people. Bravo to Armenians for finally playing some realpolitik and showing Turkey the responsible way to ‘provoke.’
Dear Boyajian:
Our young people don’t necessarily need to risk visiting the land of the unrepentant perpetrator in order to learn about truth, courage and doing what is right. Those same experiences and priceless lessons can also be instilled in our future generations through specifically tailored programs in our own backyard like the ANCA Leo Sarkisian Summer Internship in DC.
Everyone has an opinion on this site
But we should protect our children from enemies
They are still children
It is our responsibility not theirs…
We should never send them a place
Where any tiny danger exists.
Turks are never Muslims and they will never be .
Muslims pray in Armenian churches every place and light candles.
They believe in mother Mariam and Essa ( Jesus)
They have faith in us and continue to exist.
And put their gold necklaces with hanged Quran* on it
give as a gift for our faith to reach their wishes.
_____________________________________
My father Krikor after he retired,he use to be responsible with his friend about the money collected in a small very old Armenian church in Baghdad ,I don’t remember the name it existed behind the famous main street of Baghdad “Al Rashed Street” since Abased era.Muslims came and prayed there, My father use to see gold necklaces with Quran gifted for the church after had been removed from their necks(not a new but old), this means how much precious those are for them to be gifted it to the church.
Also there is an Armenian church in Isfahan… Iranian lady told me, she said, we go and pray there God always give us our wishes… they light their candles and donate money.
If any one knows the name of above churches please let us know.
Please be careful to use word Muslims, Religion nothing to do with Ethnicity.
We are Armenians before we are Christians.
I wish we where not…!
Dear Tigran, Vartan and Sylva, of course I agree that we should not endanger our children foolishly. They are our precious future. And I agree that there are many safe internships and programs that I would prefer to encourage my children to participate in. I only meant to say that these Hai Aspet children who went to Sourp Khatch in Akhtamar, young as they are, will never forget the experience of courageously facing unfairness. I thank God no one was injured and pray that the children will experience no lasting trauma from the event.
This Gaza flotilla is such a poor analogy. Do I need to remind that nine unarmed men, threat to no one, were shot, in their own boats and invading no one and breaking no laws? One, a nineteen year old, not too older than the kids in the church, ended up with a bullet in the head and back. You really think there are similarities between the actions of IDF and Turkish police in these two unrelated cases? Most Turks are smart enough to tell the difference between a religious ceromony or simple act of worshipping and nationalistic demonstration and challenges to sovereignity. I hope the services planned are not sabotaged by folks who are still trying to fight WWI battles.
same old turkish criminals.
I wonder what kind of machete wielding barbaric mob of Turkish zealots would have been awaiting those children at Akhtamar had the Turkish officer known a few days in advance that Armenian children were on their way to Aktamar ‘armed’ with candles to sing in their own Church????
Peace activists are people who demonstrate nonviolently for peaceful co-existence and human rights. The mob that assaulted Israeli special forces on the deck of the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara was not motivated by peace.
Must I remind you Murat that your famed flotilla, which included armed terrorists and Islamic extremists, was a premeditated act of provocation in the face of repeated warnings by the IDF to desist. Remember that minor detail…? If you don’t, feel free to query your nearest Israeli consulate about all the details. I’m sure they’ll be more than obliged to fill you in…
WWI is over Murat. The Armenian Genocide however, that the Ottoman Turks orchestrated behind the veil of WWI continues to this day with your cowardly governments denial of an atrocious crime against humanity. The faster people like you get this through your thick skulls the better off YOUR OWN COUNTRY will be.
Murat, the Turkish sovereignty you speak of with respect to the church on Akhtamar is illegitimate and you know it. Armenians will never accept Turkish sovereignty of their church. That right is God’s alone. But we thank Turkey for their restoration of our church.
Murat,
please give me your reasons for why an Armenian should not be able to worship at an Armenian church. Do you agree that your possession of the church is illegal? If not, how do you justify your taking it away from Armenians who built it and owned it and turning it into a Turkish museum?
Au contraire murat. The similarity between the flotilla attack and this latest Ahktamar roundup of Armenians is Turkish attempts to SPIN their own acts of provocation as false acts of ‘self-defense’.
A dozen candle wielding children minding their own business praying to God in their own Church is going to be a tough sell at “provocation”. I hope these latest developments don’t interfere with your governments big propaganda day planned in a few weeks time…LMAO!
Barev Bolorits,
This Dervoghormia was completly out of tune.
It was particularly painfull to listen to. When you know that a video is going to be broadcated all over the place, you can at least make the effort to sing it properly, if you can’t, fine, let the priest or who ever is capable and keep silent and meditate. This is the rule.
And don’t tell me they are just kids, I was singing the whole armenian holy mass when I was only 12.
Plus when you enter such a holy place like Aghtamar, you have at least to remove your stupid Baseball cap… Chad amot.
Gaza flotilla to break the embargo… Turkey has embargoed Armenia for the last 19 years…What a mockery!
Azad, not sure what your point is in focusing on these less significant aspects of the event. I’m not sure what was in the mind of these children, under their baseball caps, as they sang an “out of tune” Der Voghormia, but are you not moved by the fact that these children showed the true purpose of the space they were in?
to Azad,
oh, give me a break! get off your sanctimonious pedestal and welcome to the real world of real people. the kids had no idea that the “video was going to be broadcast to the world.” they were engaged in an ordinary, innocuous activity. Their beautiful voices ring with sincerety and piety. be careful, your ethereal halo may slip.
To Murat, Robert, and the ilk: I wonder if any Muslim mosques in Turkey have been transformed into “museums” by your “religiously very tolerant” government. Might you know?
To Ragnar Naess: Do you find it normal from humanistic and religious points of view, that the Turkish state (1) forcibly deports and mass murders worshippers of a church on Akhtamar island in the mostly Armenian-populated Van vilayet (out of 3000 Armenian churches and monasteries throughout Western Armenia) in 1915-1923; then (2) desecrates most of them transforming Christian religious sites into mosques, sheepfolds, or just piles of ruins in the midst of Kurdish villages; and then (3) announces that those few that were left intact (with holy Christian relics desecrated inside and outside of them, nonetheless) are now “museums”? When you take a look at this chain of criminal deeds by the Turks, do you think their behavior in regard to a particular ethnic and religious group inhabiting the area from times immemorial is anything less than physical and cultural genocide?
To Boyajian:
Indeed I am moved by this.
Do you want me to be just another armenian voice saying that it’s wrong from the turkish authorities to act this way? ( and it is of course).
I’m just being honest when telling you the feeling I had when I saw the video.
I was genuinly irritated by the outfit and the out of tune Der Voghormia.
Isn’t it fair enough to share my opinion?
To Perouz,
It has slipped several time already, thanks.
Check yours.
Murat, the poor sole who day after day attempts to provoke Armenians on this site with his drivel of hate, is accusing Armenian children praying in their church of “provocation”??? Shame on you Turkish provocateurs.
Unwarranted transformation of a church into a “museum” is an act of provocation against the will of its parishioners.
Perouz, right you are!
To Azad,
Of course your opinion is as welcome as anyone else’s. I just meant to point out that the singing, though not in tune, was nonetheless moving to me because of who was singing, where it took place and the fact that it was done with peaceful dignity.
Dear Azad..
If you don’t have something nice to say about our own children, then please keep your opinion to yourself.. I am sorry to be frank and direct and a bit rude but come on.. really? You are going to put down our own Children for singing our Ter Voghormya out of tune? realllyyy??? is that even a problem what we are discussing here? WOW.. who needs enemies when we have friends that openly put down our own… WOW indeed.
I will make I dont’ sing because I don’t have a singing ability because I don’t want my OWN comrade, fellow Armenian to be angry and annoyed with me…
Have a wonderul day sir..
Gayane
Shoghig jan… you said it right.. Murat, Robert and their kind are poor souls indeed.. they try and try and try by provoking every single time they open their mouth… and yet they turn around and call this young men and women act a “provokation” …..such hypocracy… such arrogance…
But then again, we know them very well.. at least i know how they are very well…. i am not surprised.. they just love the attention.. they crave attention.. or else why would they come here and throw their flavorless comments from time to time..
i have a great way of getting you attention boys: Murat, Robert and your kind…
Why don’t you stand up as MEN, Righteous and Just MEN and admit what happened to the Armenian People was Genocide and apologize for your forefathers brutal, inhumane and senseless murder of half a million plus 1 (Hrant).. I know both of you think the same way as your forefathers so your apology will be as welcomed as your blood stained Govt’s apology… how about that? not only you will get attention but a very positive attention… Are not you tired of always being shot down by the intelligent and passionate ARmenians? Don’t you want to put aside your Anti-Armenian mentality and step out of that murderous mindset? I don’t know about you, but you will get more attention by being understanding, open-minded, and righteous about human rights and justice than how you are now…..
Good Day…
Azad, to tell you the truth, the artistic capability of these children was the furthest thing from my mind when I saw the video. I was brought to tears by the symbolism of young Armenians from the Republic praying ina church in Western(occupied) Armenia. I acknowledge your observation, but the visual impact of their presence was very meaningful.
By the way, this post started as a commentary on the pros and cons of boycotting the September 19 activities. The energy and creativeness generated by this issue is exactly why we need to focus our energy on taking advantage of this event….seeing it as an opportunity. This dialogue is productive and is what will happen if we channel our views into public activism. Why should we be absent and silent…playing right into the Turks hands by allowing them to control the public messaging.
Firstly, I truly fail to understand why some interperet my factual analysis of related topics here, as hateful and inciteful. My intent is not to be offensive as many have been towards me.
Secondly, I am, like many other Turks, totally fail to see why and how turning a non-functioning Church to a museum (as opposed to a night club or barn as they do in Greece often or demolish) or mosque constitues a desecration of the place? If there are no worshippers left to keep the a church going, what is the best thing to do? Does not a museum at least keep the memories and the place alive? Is that bad? Why and how turning a church into a mosque, a house of god, desecrates it as many vehemently claim here? A mosque is place of moral and spiritual significance for Muslims, how can that be a desecration? Unless of course you have an irrational fear or hate towards Muslims and consider the earth they walk on soiled. Christians are considered people of the book and of the same god though by the muslims. I have never heard of a church being demolished or desecrated in Turkey (does not mean it never happened) because it would be against their nature and teachings. In any case, I know personally that many Muslims visit and pray and light candles in churches wherever they still exist in Turkey. I have. Nothing wrong with covering all bets I guess.
Murat, your name and the words “factual analysis” in the same sentence are like having the words “Turkey” and “religiously tolerant” in the same sentence. Its a joke. Its a mockery. Its a sham.
Your more likely than not to be a paid propagandist hired by the embassy to try and play with our minds. Here’s some news for you: you and your ilk are failing miserably at the simple task you were assigned. I hope their not paying you well for this. Their funds could be much more useful in the hands of a PR firm in Washington.
Your logic is laughable at best Murat. You claim that the demolition and desecration of churches in Turkey by Muslims “would be against their nature and teachings” as a possible defense of average Turks who wouldn’t even consider committing the crime. This reminds me of erdogans ludicrous claim about “Muslims being incapable of committing genocide”…
Erdogans comment along with yours is the reason why your country remains the laughing stock of the world!
“If there are no worshippers left to keep the a church going, what is the best thing to do? Does not a museum at least keep the memories and the place alive?”
Murat,
don’t you think that you contradict yourself?
You talk about keeping memories alive. Whose memories do you try to keep alive by turning an Armenian church into a Turkish museum? The memories of our perished ancestors and our ancient homeland? If yes, then why do you get so easily irritated when Armenians try to do the same thing? If not, then whose memories do you want to keep alive? Some imaginary ancient Turks? Where are all the worshippers gone, anyway? How could they all vanish? I guess, we should say “thank you” for keeping their memory alive. That’s reeeeeally nice of you.
Secondly.
“Unless of course you have an irrational fear or hate towards Muslims and consider the earth they walk on soiled.”
Do not generalize and do not make things up. You know very well that Armenians enjoy a friendly and mutually respectful relationship with Muslims, as well as non-Muslims, everywhere else in the world. You will not succeed with your empty accusations.
Murat, you stun me with your lack of knowledge of truth. Or is it utter insensitivity? Or deliberate denial and distortion?
You ask if “there are no longer worshippers to keep a church going” is it not better that it become a museum to keep the memories and the place alive. You make it sound like these worshippers disappeared by simple attrition instead of the forced deportations and barbaric murders caused by your government. Can you really be so naive, so disconnected from the dark past of your history? The Armenians didn’t move away willingly, abandoning there homes, villages, businesses, schools, and churches. And for 95 years they have been hoping, praying, waiting and striving for justice to be done and these lands returned to them. You have the nerve to suggest that you are doing us a favor by preserving what was illegitimately taken from us and you callously suggest that we should be happy that, rather than sit empty, it becomes a mosque or museum. (or a sheepfold or its stones used to build homes for others).
You see, Murat, it is not the idea of a mosque (or museum) replacing a church so much as it is the fact that the act suggests the complete disregard, forgetting, erasing of those to whom the church belongs. It is disrespectful at minimum and the continuation of genocidal intent at worst, to simply behave as if a certain people never existed and have no desire or right of return to their property. And don’t speak to me of sovereignty. What sovereign right allows a government to exterminate its citizens, second class though they may be in the eyes of that government? And once exterminated, what civilized society finds it moral to erase all traces of a people and to claim their treasured historic sites as their own?
Murat, Armenians are still here. We have not forgotten our homeland, have not given up the fight to defend our rights and will never bow to Turks who are capable of such callous disregard of our noble history.
As far as Armenians thinking that Muslims soil the ground they walk on; that is ridiculous. Armenians and Muslims have lived together peacefully many places. It is not your faith we detest. It is Turkey’s unrepentant criminality. Yes Turks are capable of the most heinous of crimes known to man. You are no better than any other humans who are fallible creatures capable of unthinkable cruelty. The proper thing to do is to come to terms with your fallibility and your utter ordinariness; and apologize for your crimes and make reparations. Then you may actually elevate yourselves before your fellow man.
It is ironic that the admiration and respect that Turks so crave will never come to them as long as they refuse to admit their dark past and make amends as civilized members of society. Until then you distinguish yourselves as among the worst of the worst.
Boyajian,
Murat knows all the truth. We should accept that it will take some time before the Turkish society matures. Until then, Murat is going to blow his horn.
So true Gina, the mind-benders are in full-force.
I think Greeks Should demonstrate and get Ayah Sophia back.
Every Arab-Muslim feel ashamed when they visit Ayah Sophia,
They keep silent when I tell them that was a church—Cathedral,
They say,we saw Mariam’s paintings still on the walls.
I have never been to Turkey.
Also they say, Turks stolen the Scimitars of their prophets I think Mohammad or Imam Ali and put in their museums earning income.
Can we change Makka for Christians to pray there.
The letters above can say how the odd people can think.
Once again my comments have been censored and deleted! Can you in the editorial board all say “1984”? Have my letters really caused your laundry bills to go up THAT high that you need to censor/delete even more than the usual 75% to save money?
It was a simple question: If there are no worshippers, no congragation left (a fact) and no one to keep and maintain a church (or a mosque) in a particular loacation, what should the state or regional government do with this structure that is within their sovereign boundries?
Murat, you ask “what the state should do with this structure that is within their sovereign boundaries.”
dear heart, the answer is so simple, that even you should be able to grasp it without asking for our help -GIVE IT BACK TO ITS RIGHTFUL OWNERS – THE ARMENIANS.
see how easy common sense is?
Murat, Perouz has said it all. What more needs to be said? There is no congregation because your people made sure there would be none. Now stop pretending you don’t know this and stop asking such utterly insensitive and ignorant questions of the survivors of the 1.5 million Armenians killed in the genocide. Instead you should tell your friends, family and your government that it is time to admit what your country did and offer an apology.
Murat, you really need to look at what you right before you send it. You are asking the wrong question in your first comment. The question is what to do but, WHY ARE THERE NO PARISHIONERS? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PEOPLE THAT ATTENDED TO THIS PARSIH FOR OVER 1000 YEARS? THAT QUESTION WILL BE ASKED BY THOSE WHO ATTEND AND COVER THIS EVENT AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE ASKED UNTIL THE GUILTY ADMIT THEIR CRIME.
The second part is equally clear. It needs to RETURNED TO THOSE IT WAS STOLEN FROM; NAMELY THE ARMENIAN PATRIACHATE OF ISTANBUL. They will take good care of it and find many uses that have been denied the last 95 years.
Now that that’s clear perhaps we can get to this matter of your admission of the genocide. All of your questions and comments are connected to the same core issue…I understand why it is so difficult to admit it…after all your generation takes the hit for what your grandfathers and great grandfathers did. But look at it this way you deny you join the past. Free yourself and your future., You admit the truth(that should be the easy part) and then deal with the rest of the unfinished business. Remember, it only gets more complicated the longer you take. It should be clear by now that this issue is not going away!!
Murat,
Apparently there is a congregation. Why else the controversy over those candle-lighting kids now?
The question of what happened to the Armenian congregation at Van to my mind is not in itself tied to the massacres of Armenians and the totality of events of 1915 and onwards into the republican period. Of course the totality of events may be called genocide because of the scale of mortality, the many documented cases of massacres, and certainly because of the ittihadist government’s lack of action against the perpetrators of massacres and negligence in caring for the deportees. The question is if the events at Van from the time of mobilization in august 1914 and onwards is a good illustration of genocide, as for instance the CUP reign in Diyarbakir from june 1915 and onwards was. – Now of course one may simplify the debate and simply insist on the application of the term genocide, ask Turks to say yes or no to the question of genocide based on the question of what happened at Van. But most research, including genocide research, is more specific about whjat happened to Armenians in various places. To take another example, it would seem strange to use the case of the Armenian inhabitants of Istanbul or Lebanon in mid 1918 as an example of the genocide, since practically all of these inhabitants survived.
Van and adjacent areas were the areas from which the Armenian population fled when the Ottomans advanced towards the end of the war, and it was also an area with documented massacres on Turks and Kurds, perpetrated by Armenians, so the illustration does not fit very well. There were also as far as I know cases of Armenians returning in 1919, and then leaving for other places because of the devastation of the area, providing less chances for livelihood, and also leaving because of the hostility of the local Muslims. Partly this was due to the actual military actions of the Armenians under the leadership of the ARF, an activity that by Boghos Nubar in 1919 was declared to be part of the war effort in which the Armenians were declared to be belligerents on the allied side, a fact which hardly would ingratiate them to the local Turks and Kurds after the war.
The massacres and mistreatment of the Ottoman Armenians and the criminal negligence of the ittihadist administration are facts which Turks and the Turkish gtovernment should recognise. there is very good reason for Turkey to apologize and pay reparations and return the church to the Armenian Church, but arent we simplifying the debate if this particular place and its history should illustrate the genocide?
to MJM,
your question illustrates my point about an uncritical attitude about what events may illustrate the genocide, what not. You write:Do you find it normal from humanistic and religious points of view, that the Turkish state (1) forcibly deports and mass murders worshippers of a church on Akhtamar island in the mostly Armenian-populated Van vilayet (out of 3000 Armenian churches and monasteries throughout Western Armenia)
The great majority of the Armenians in the Van vilayet were not deported, but fled.
Regards to Ragnar: In your effort to clarify the issue I believe you befuddle the facts. It is true that there were Armenian uprisings in the Van region and it is also true that many Vanetzis fled the region for safer ground in Eastern Armenia and elsewhere. But this did not happen in a vacuum. So what are you saying is the cause of the disappearance of the Vanetzis?
Ragnar Naess:
Your response to my point illustrates that you tend to take out Van events from the general genocidal practice (i.e. forced expulsions + mass massacres directed at one particular ethnic and religious group) that Ottoman Turks unleashed in Zeitun and other Armenian-populated areas of Cilicia two weeks before the Van resistance. It is an exaggeration to state that “great majority” of Van Armenians fled; many did when Russians retreated taking with them as many Armenians as possible. Many others, in tens thousands only in villages surrounding Van, were massacred by Ottoman Turks. Whatever the number of the deported, fled (why would Armenian inhabitants of their ancestral land flee their homes, has it ever occurred to you?), or massacred is, the violence in Van was a part of the CUP inner circle’s premeditated policy at race extermination of Armenians. Proof? Forced deportations and mass murders of Armenians that occurred in Zeitun and Cilicia before Van violence and the consequent events from 1915 to 1923 that followed it. More proof? Where are those 2-2.5 millions of Armenians inhabiting their lands in Western Armenia? Why no one has worshipped in a church for 95 years? Where are the parishioners?
What you seem to intentionally forget that all the Armenian-populated vilayets, including Van, laid within the jurisdiction of the SAME Ottoman Turkish government and that the governor of Van, Jevdet Bey, was brother-in-law of Enver Pasha, one of the three Devil’s Advocates who was instrumental at deporting and massacring the Armenians at the central government level. Taking out events in one Armenian vilayet out of genocidal context typical for all Armenian vilayets in Ottoman Turkey is mere befuddlement of facts. Also, when you answer the question from another commentator, try to avoid taking an excerpt out of it but leave the answer essentially unanswered. This reminds me of Turkish tactics that you seem to inherit. Hence I repeat: “Do you find it normal from humanistic and religious points of view, that the Turkish state (1) forcibly deports (or threatens Armenians’ security to the extent that many of them are forced to flee) and mass murders other worshippers of a church on Akhtamar island in the Van vilayet ; then (2) desecrates most of the churches and monasteries across the country transforming Christian religious sites into mosques, sheepfolds, or just piles of ruins in the midst of Kurdish villages; and then (3) announces that those few that were left intact (with holy Christian relics desecrated inside and outside of them, nonetheless) are now “museums”? When you take a look at this chain of criminal deeds by the Turks, do you think their behavior in regard to a particular ethnic and religious group inhabiting the area is anything less than physical and cultural genocide?”
The first Ottoman town from which Armenians were deported in 1915 was Zeitun, deportations started in April 8, i.e. almost two weeks before the events in Van. I emphasize this in response to Turks’ and their sympathizers’ unfounded arguments about Armenians’ cutting telegraph wires and attacking Turkish gendarmes and police stations in Van that happened two weeks after the forced expulsions of Armenians from Zeitun and other Cilician towns, that were in response to wide-spread violence undertaken by the governor (vali) of Van, notorious and bloodthirsty Jevdet Bey, brother-in-law of Enver. Contemporaries attest that cruelty and a penchant of violence were two of his distinguishing characteristics. When searching for arms at the orders of central CUP government, he conducted a reign of terror in the Armenian villages around Van. The attitude of the Armenian community leaders toward Jevdet was one of great caution in order not to give him a pretext for violence. But in Shadakh, south of Van, there was a demonstration in favor of an imprisoned Armenian, and Jevdet asked a commission made up of four Turks and four Armenians to go there and sort things out. En route, and this April 16, the Armenian members were murdered by government agents. It is about this time when telegraph wires were cut and police stations attacked by Armenians in retaliation to such Turkish slyness. At the same time Turkish terror continued in the countryside and in one incident Armenians resisted gendarmes. This angered the governor and violence in the countryside reached a peak on April 19, when an entire Armenian male population of a village (some 2,500 men) was killed on that day. Throughout the Van province 55,000 Armenian men, women, and children were killed. In the city of Van the Armenians, expecting the Turkish attack, strengthened their quarters. 1,300 men were defending a population of 30,000 in Van. With tenacity and bravery they were able to fend the Turks off for four weeks. The Turks withdrew on May 16 and the Russian army entered the town. But then the Russians were forced to retreat, taking with them as many Van Armenians, as could get away. Even today the claim is made that the events in Van were a ‘revolutionary uprising.’ However, the study of the chronology from Jevdet’s reign of terror in the countryside to the murder of the four Armenian leaders, shows that each time the government took the initiative for violence and confrontation. Clearly, none of Jevdet’s actions was that of a man defending the government against a revolutionary attempt to seize power. Nevertheless, the Ottoman government and the modern-day Turkish denialists took the Armenian defense of Van as a pretext for extreme genocidal measures. However, before the events in Van deportations and killings of Armenians occurred in Zeitun and Cilicia. The conditions in Van in April-May 1915 has been described by Turkish apologists as that of an Armenian ‘uprising,’ but the examination of the events reveals that the Armenians did no more than protect themselves against the brutality of the local government.
Please, let’s not over intellectulaize the facts of this crime. The Armenian “uprisings” in Van were clearly in response to the repression of the government and local khans. Some attacks you , your property and way of life… you defend it. To the establishment , it was revolt .. an excuse to continue to repression. This is the silly argument of the criminals. War is ugly. I am sure during the course of the conflict there were reprisals by Armenians. This is unfortunate, but vastly different than a premeditated plan of extinction. Please do not confuse the two.
Whether they were deported, massacred , abducted or fled, it was a crime.Those that left for eastern Armenia did so as a last resort after all seemed lost. I get incensed when I see characterizations of such a criminal act… the removal of an indigenous people from its native land, spun as they “fled” or “revolted”. We know what happened. It’s called the creation of a diaspora and it is that group which will continue to speak for their silenced ancestors.
Murat (the Turk)….
Here is a simply answer for you.. YOU don’t have to concern yourself….
Who gave you the right to decide what to do with churches that does not belong to you.. So that said.. Keep your bloody hands off and let the rightful owners decide what they want to do with their ancestral monuments and churches.. Is that simple enough?
Gayane
Robert (the Turk)….
Can you say 1915 Armenian Genocide, Turkey guilty of the Genocide, Turkey needs to apologize, Turkey needs to pay back everything they stole, Robert is Anti-Armenian, has very Genocidal thoughts, needs to stop his threats and cry baby manners?
Can you say that????
The young policeman in the photo
His features sound Kurdish and not Turkish
As i lived with both .
But he is trained to hate Armenians
and is Turkified.
Boyajian
neither did the sparing of the population in Istanbul and Libanon happen “in a vacuum”, so I dont know what you are aiming at with this expression. All these events can be considered part of the catastrophy that befell the Armenians, but some of the events point more clearly to the genocidal consequences than other. About the reasons for the disappearance of the Vanetzis I believe I indicated some. Clearly many were massacred, and many – I believe the majority – fled – with good reason. The remaining left, I believe, in the early years of the republic (Niles and Sutherland who visited the place in july 1919 say that there were some 700 Armenians left in the city out of a population of 5000). But of course I have no definite information. – Now again not to be misunderstood, the Armenian fate is by far the most gruesome of all the hardships and crimes the peoples of the time endured, but this general fact cannot be equally illustrated by any fact which we choose to focus on. This was my point. I hope that I can say – without being arrogant and/or condescending – that this has to do with the quality of the debate and our ability to convince others who do not immediately agree with us.
Ragnar, Van’s population wasn’t deported but fled? What a twisted logic! You make it sound like they left voluntarily. What would’ve happened to them if they hadn’t fled? Not all were lucky to make it out of there alive, many got killed. Armenians never massacred innocent Turkish population. Don’t copy paste lies from Turkish textbooks. The only defended themselves against murderous gangs and army. Read what the eyewitnesses wrote. Here is what American doctor at American mission in Van reported:
Dr. Yarrow describes the Armenian massacres as an “organized, systematic attempt to wipe out the Armenians.” The pretext, he says, is disloyalty of the Armenians toward the Turkish government, but the real cause is jealousy and religious differences. As for disloyalty, he declares that many Armenians willingly served in the Turkish armies, but that the treatment they have always received from the Turkish government tends to destroy their allegiance.
Dr. Yarrow describes the attack of the Armenians at Van as regular trench warfare. The first actual bloodshed he witnessed from the mission window. Some Armenian women were crossing a field and Turkish soldiers brutally laid hold of them. When some of their men folk in trying to prevent insult were killed the signal for the hostilities began.
Thereafter cannon were trained on the Armenian quarter, while the Armenians on their side fortified their houses and dug trenches about them. Meanwhile 100,000 to 150,000 refugees from neighboring villages fled to Van before the Turks. Many of these were former orphans housed at the mission. Among them were little children treated at the mission hospital for dagger slashes in the abdomen. Others came stripped of clothing, one women in particular who had wandered in the mountains for ten days without a shred of clothing and who finally died of exposure. All testified that the Turks battered down village after village with their cannon, killing all Armenian inhabitants they could find.
This siege of the Armenians at Van lasted twenty-eight days according to Dr. Yarrow. Then came rumors of the Russian advance, and the Turks fled, leaving some thousand Turkish women and children as well as the Armenians. Dr. Yarrow cities as a proof of Armenian humanity the fact that these Turkish non-combatants were sent to the Armenian mission unharmed by the Armenians and allowed to remain there during the Russian occupation of the city.
As some wise person here said, nothing happens in vacum, there is a context always.
Here is what wikipedia (an Armenian propaganda mouth piece) says about Zeytun for example:
“The Armenians started by conquering the nearby Turkish garrison, taking 600 Turkish soldiers and officers as prisoners and placing them under the surveillance of Armenian women. The prisoners tried to flee, but failed and were killed. Ottoman troops were repeatedly defeated in their engagements with the Armenian militia. During the negotiations which later settled the conflict, a Turkish military commanders expressed his admiration to Aghasi, one of the leaders of the resistance, for the Armenians’ accurate marksmanship and their determination to resist. With the intervention of the six major European powers, the Armenians of Zeitun ended the resistance. The Hunchak activists were allowed to go into exile, the tax burden was eased, and a Christian sub-governor was appointed. Due to the freezing temperatures, thousands of Turks died and many others died in hospitals from wounds sustained in battle. The figures on casualties are heavily conflicting but all agree that the Ottoman forces suffered greatly. The British Consulate reported on January 6, 1896 that “at least 5,000 have been killed though common report swells the number to 10,000.”The Austrian Consulate stated that the Armenians killed 1,300 Turks in the final battle alone. The British consul estimated that combat and non-combat fatalities among all Armenians neared the figure of 6,000. Pierre Quillard, a French writer, estimated that Ottoman losses totaled no less than 20,000 men.”
Well, that is a lot of killing, is it not? Maybe Ottomans had good reasons to be worried, maybe even upset! I like the part where the Armenian women get into the action, don’t you? How is that for context?
Rebellion at Van is well documented. It was the only time Armenians actually engaged Ottoman army in regular battle formation. Context? That monster Cevat bey? Well, the previous governer was replaced by him becasue the Ottoman government because the previous one was not able to contain the insurgency and ARF was arming the poulation, setting up their own adminsitration and very blatantly gearing up for a massive rebellion with direct and overt Russian help. How is that for context? Just before that, ARF had also assasinated the Armenian mayor of the city, who was a loyal Otoman and did not accomadate the whishes of the fedayi.
I agree, nothing happens in vacum.
armen_yan,
you write:
Ragnar, Van’s population wasn’t deported but fled? What a twisted logic! You make it sound like they left voluntarily. What would’ve happened to them if they hadn’t fled? Not all were lucky to make it out of there alive, many got killed. Armenians never massacred innocent Turkish population.
comment: I said they fled with good reason. This was a terrible situation. It was not voluntary.- The first question is a factual question: were they deported? the most comprehensive description I know of, Kevorkian’s 1000 page description, mentions “massacres” and “resistance” but not “deportation”. According to Kevorkian the Armenian population was 110.000. Kevorkian gives (approximate?) numbers for the number of massacres in each Kaza. I have not added all these but evidently the concluding number will be far from 100.000, maybe 10.000. The secription of Ter-Minassian about more than 50 villages in Hayats Dzor wiped out in the first days after april 19 is not substantiated, and sound exaggerated. Cevdet did not have the manposer to do this so quickly. His troops were focussed on Van. Moreover, Kevorkian writes on page 409 that the Russians, after repelling the Ottoman troups, ordered the evacuation of the “whole population of Van”. So the events at Van are not good illustrations of the pattern deportation/massacres/mortality by sickness and attrition witnessed in other parts of Anatolia. And I believe this was the point we were discussing, or at least the point I was making. But I agree that they, according to Kevorkian, did not flee, but were evacuated by the Russians.
then there is the point of “intercommunal warfare”. you claim that Armenians never massacred innocent Turkish population. Now I believe that there is a lot of evidence to the contrary. McDowell tells about Kurdish sources telling about indiscriminate massacre of the local Kurd in the first crossing of the border by troops in 1914. I believe it was in Baskale. The massacres were carried out by Ottoman Armenians in Russian uniforms, it is said. The attitude of some Armenian leaders also testifies to this. For instance, Hartunian in his recollections “Neither to laugh nor to cry” tells – apparently approvingly – that Turks who had been living in the Armenian environment were killed as a precaution when the pressure on the Armenian community mounted. Also read the French descriptions of the behaviour of the Armenian legion in 1919. There also are the testiomonies of the massacres at Zeve, Van in 1915. Even Clarence Ussher mentions killing of innocent Muslim after the departure of Cevdet in early May.But he seems to condone it in the light of the general Armenian catastrophy- Now I have not read much of this in detail, and I will not automatically trust the sources, but the assertion that Armenian armed groups NEVER killed innocent Turks is doubtful, I believe. But the books published by Turkish authors about massacres of Turks are of course heavily coloured by propaganda. – I am also surprised that you are convinced of this, surprised by your “NEVER” because 1) the examples of escalation of hostilities in which members of the different ethno-religious groups killed each other “as such” are rampant in the late Ottoman violence,2) in historical research “NEVER”s are seldom warranted.
Summing up: the Armenians of Van were not deported, but were mainly evacuated and fled. This was my point. Now again not to be misunderstood, the Armenian fate is by far the most gruesome of all the hardships and crimes the peoples of the time endured.
Murat,
When you copy & paste do it properly.
Before your copied & pasted paragraph there is another which is:
The Armenians of Zeitun, which is situated in south-east Turkey in what is today the district of Kahramanmaraş, had historically enjoyed a period of autonomy in the Ottoman Empire. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the central government decided to bring this region under tighter control by settling Muslims in the villages around Zeitun and inciting them against the Armenians.[4] This strategy proved ineffective and in the summer of 1862 the Ottomans decided to send a 12,000-man military force to Zeitun to reassert government control. The force was held at bay by the Armenians and, through French mediation, the conflict was brought to a close.
The Ottoman government, however, was upset with the results of the mediation. In the following years, it once more resolved to bring the area under control by provoking the Zeitun’s Armenians: newly stationed governments troops harassed the population and frequent calls for their massacre were issued by a number of Turks.[5] Between the years 1891 and 1895, activists from the Armenian Social Democrat Hunchakian Party toured various regions of Cilicia and Zeitun and established new branches there. They encouraged the Armenians to actively resist Ottoman oppression. Simulatenously, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Abdul Hamid II, wished to eliminate one of the only strongholds of Armenian autonomy during the Armenian massacres of 1895-1896.[2]
As the governor of the province was removed and replaced by Avni Bey, a man who held a deep-seated hatred for Armenians, orders were given on October 24, 1895 by Ottoman authorities to use the troops to begin razing several of the Armenians villages near Zeitun.[6]
Unfortunately you create cacuums in your brain.
regards to Anahit!
mjm
you write: Your response to my point illustrates that you tend to take out Van events from the general genocidal practice.-
Comment: No, my comment was regarding the assertion that the Vanetzis were deported and more generally on the need to distinguish between different events that to a greater or lesser extent may illustrate and/or prove genocide.
Regarding your main question: yes, agreat crime was committed against the Armenians. Yes, the present Turkish administration should give the church back to the Armenians. No, it was – needless to say – not humanitarian…
—
The Zeutun events may be part of the events triggering the Van development , but the events of Bashkale (alleged large scale massacrews of Kurds by Ottoman Armenians in Russian uniforms) were much earlier, in the autumn of 1914. The official Turkish military despatches, mentioned in Gürün and in McCarthy et al. mention slashing of telegraph wires from an early date, shortly after the general mobilization.
The Turkish side interpret these facts as manifestations of Armenian harassment of the Turkish defense, that is actions not aimed at self-defense but at assistance to the Russian army once it advanced. Other historians claim that all Armenian actions were aimed at self defence.
Ragnar Naess: You methodically and deliberately, I tend to believe, disregard the fact of the Ottoman state policy of repression aimed at her ethnic, national, racial, and religious minority groups, i.e. groups who long before the establishment of the House of Osman in the 15th century AD were indigenous inhabitants of Asia Minor that developed high civilizations long before the name “Turk” has become known to the world as a result of brutal invasions into the area of their forefathers: savage Seljuk and Mongol nomads from the Mongolian steppes and the Altay Mountains. As such, Seljuk-Mongol-Turks by their anthropological definition couldn’t be tolerant toward nobler, more civilized and developed nations. The situation got worse when Seljuk-Mongols converted to Islam thus adding a religious element to their hostility towards Christian Assyrians, Greeks, and Armenians. You also deliberately omit the fact that in Ottoman Turkey ethnic Turks were representatives of the state power, not colonized Assyrians, Greeks, or Armenians. The whole repressive force of the state apparatus: military and “law”-enforcing, was concentrated mainly in the hands of ethnic Turks. I believe what armen_yan meant to say by “Armenians never massacred innocent Turkish population” was not isolated cases of inter-communal, inter-ethnic violence, or cases of rightful indignation of enslaved Armenians against the oppressive regimes of the Sultans who treated them as millet, i.e. misrepresented, second-class group deprived of elementary civil rights as compared to the “dominant” Muslim Turkish group, but that Armenians NEVER committed mass murders of innocent Turks on the scale that the Turks have done during the years of the Armenian genocide. Do not juxtapose two unrelated cases: (1)of resentment of an oppressed ethnic group and national liberation actions of several revolutionaries against the loathed Turkish rule that was widespread in all other parts of the crumbling Ottoman empire and (2)state policy at race annihilation of Armenians carried out by the inner circles of the CUP government. DO NOT juxtapose two divergently different cases. In this context, Armenians, indeed, NEVER committed mass murders of innocent Turks on the genocidal level as Turks have done in regard to Armenians. From this perspective, killings committed by Armenians against the oppressors and genocide of the whole nation by the Turks “NEVER” IS warranted in historical research, because Armenians were not the state authority, nor have they possessed military prowess to commit the crime of such a magnitude, such as genocide of the whole nation, nor Christian Armenians were able to commit atrocities with such a savagery and barbarity as Muslim Turks. Do NOT you EVER try to compare the two incomparable and unrelated cases. It makes erudite people laugh…
Ragnar Naess: You write: “The Zeutun events may be part of the events triggering the Van development , but the events of Bashkale (alleged large scale massacres of Kurds by Ottoman Armenians in Russian uniforms) were much earlier, in the autumn of 1914.” Oh, yeah? Are you serious? Could I humbly have a liberty of going to even earlier period? What would you have to say about wholesale massacres of the Armenians by “Bloody Sultan” Abdul Hamid II in 1894-1896, that is BEFORE 1914? Don’t you think that as a result Armenians could have grown even more wary towards the loathed Ottoman regime and try to organize self-defense? I‘ve got hard time understanding logic behind your assertions. What are you essentially proposing Armenians should have done in the face of Turkish oppression, maltreatment, constant pogroms and pillages by Kurdish, Turkish, and Circassean bands of Armenian villages, and the wholesale massacres of up to 300,000 innocent people by Abdul Hamid? Just shut the he** up and be massacred like sheep? What kind of weird logic is this? And, please, don’t you ever reduce yourself as an intellectual by bringing as references the words of history-distorters like Gurun or notorious genocide-denier as McCarthy. It does you no credit, believe me…
Ragnar Naess: You either intentionally fuddle historical evidence or just parrot Turkish denialist clichés by making this outrageous statement: “Turkish side interpret these facts [Armenian self-defense at Zeitoun and other Cilician towns] as manifestations of Armenian harassment of the Turkish defense, that is actions not aimed at self-defense but at assistance to the Russian army once it advanced.” What a typical Turkish bull***! Do you have slightest idea of where Zeitoun was situated in Ottoman empire? No? The town was situated in the south-central part, adjacent to ancient Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia with Sis as its capital. Have you ever taken a look as to where the frontlines and consequently Turkish defense lines laid during the WWI? No? There were five main campaigns in the Ottoman fronts, as all except Turks and yourself know: the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, the Mesopotamian Campaign, the Caucasus Campaign, the Persian Campaign and the Gallipoli Campaign. NONE of them being anywhere near Zeitoun and NONE of them, except the Caucasus campaign, involving the Russians whom the centrally-situated Zeitoun Armenians could assist. What an insolent distortion of history, a typically Turkish explicit distortion method that some Turk-sympathetic westerners like you buy so cheaply… Shame!
mjm
I am at a loss how to discuss with you. My point is to point to elements in the dynamics leading up to 1915. Of course the Hamidian massacres have a place in this as well as the bloodthirsty revolutionary phrazes of the Hunchak with their talk of the “Bulgarian road”, and the plight of the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia. But I object if you reduce all Armenian action to a mere exusable reaction to Ottoman oppression. this is a simplification to my mind (Read Kachaznounian). But then this maybe is not what you want to say. We seem to agree on what I regard as the basic injustice and crime committed against the Armenians, but I may not subscribe to all the formulas you stick to.
mjm
I am at a loss how to argue with you. Evidently history is a long series of interrelated events which must not be construed as absolving actors from moral responsibility. Regarding Gürün and McCarthy I am not citing their conclusions, but the military documents the authenticity of which has not been questioned if I am not mistaken. But if you have any references regarding the authenticity of these documents I am happy to receive information
Ragnar, what can I say? I think mjm has got it covered.
mjm
I am at a loss how to argue with you. To my mind you simplify things. I never said the Armenians should not revolt or defend themselves. Regarding McCarthy and Gürün I do not refer to their conclusions, I refer to the military documents whiose authenticity has not been disputed as far as I know
Thanks also to Stepan, mjm, VTiger, Gayane and Armen_yan for handling the Turkish propaganda of Murat, Robert and Ragnar so well and sparing me a long rebuttal!
Ragnar, you tirelessly repeat the distorted history you have either naively bought into or have been fed in order to thwart Armenia claims that they suffered a genocide. As I have told you before, you may believe you are serving “truth,” but I think you are aiding the Turks in denying Armenians their due justice. The genocidal results of the CUP policies of “deportation” are undeniable. This is a fact and no “uprising in Van” or “stand-off in Zeitun or Marash” justified the Ottoman Turk decision to “eliminate” the Armenian problem. You claim to want to help Turks come to terms with their “dark history” yet you collude with them in their denial. You place yourself in morally repugnant company. Sorry…but its your choice.
Mjm jan and other commentators jan…
I know Ragnar very very well from the previous second longest and heated discussion form ever.. Mshecy, Boyajian, Katia and myself tried to educate this Norwegian (yes he is not a Turk but from Norway) who claims to be very close to Turks and did extensive fieldwork with Turks; yet did not do the same with Armenians..
I told him to go and spent time with Armenians and especially NON-Armenians to learn about the Armenian Genocide and Armenian History before he throws his confusing, enigma and sometimes unintelligent comments to those who feels, knows, breaths, and lives the history and the Armenian lives… but apparently he did not..
Ragnar.. what happened? could not resist the temptation huh? PLEASE… I just want to put you, Murat and Robert and ship to far far away from here but i guess one can only dream.. i know that can’t happen… but what can happen is you taking our advice from many many moons ago and get over this “i know your history but i don’t know enough to have strong arguments and i just blowing smoke and wasting keystrokes..”……
Just to sum up.. Ragnar does not believe the Armenian Genocide happened and he will take you into a “Alice in Wonderland” ride….into an unknown, lost and confusing world…
Anahit, I inadvertently left you out in my thanks above. I always look forward to reading your comments.
Ragnar, you obviously have a serious problem with facts. Specifically the problem is you know too much of it. More than some people who claim to know better but in their haste and hate, they do not seem to have bothered themselves with those pesky little facts.
Excuse me for three entries on the same issue. I thought the first ones did not get through so I repeated the attempt to send a message. Now all three are there. sorry.
Hi Boyajian
OK, then we are back again at the point where you experience the need to stop answering arguments and repeat the ritualistic classification of those who are right and those who are wrong, those who repeat Turkish propaganda and those who stand for the truth which is what Armenians are saying. And the thanking of other Armenians in the discussion. You have your reasons and I will not judge you.
We might try to get one step forward in situations like this, maybe even conclude on certain points. Maybe even come to the point that we see the situation as one of a group of people discussing a very important issue, both to Armenians and to Turks and to the world at large. Not that we have to see each others as enemies. That is we disagree but I assume we all are well intentioned. The Turks who do not care are not in this discussion. This is what I call dialogue in which the arguments count, and nothing else. I agree that it is tiresome, but……
Let me raise another point. Isnt it strange on your part, Murat, talk of the Sourp Hatch Church as simply some leftover building on an island instead of a place of worship which by its history belongs to another group of people than those who presently claim to own it? – The church is today a very potent symbol, a symbol of the people who lived there before the Turks came, and we all know about the gruesome fate that befell them. So how can you treat it a simply some stone building which the Turkish state should find some use for? The reality is very different. The church was restored by Turkish money, by Turks – and applauded by many Turks who for different reasons have been thinking that they must come to term with their past. Some because of genuine remorse and shame, some because the rest of the world evidently expects it. The way you wrote some days ago (leftover building – why not museum?), doesnt it mean to belittle the whole issue?
Listen, Murat:
Ragnar Naess at least has an elaborate position, however foolish it is, namely, and roughly: “there was no genocidal premeditation by the Ottoman government but genocide of the Armenians happened as a consequence of their actions” or more commonly put: “genocidal consequences sit on the clouds all by themselves swaying their little legs.” Simply put, based on his position Ottoman Turks would have said to their Armenian co-citizens in 1915-1923: “Oops, we really didn’t mean to mass exterminate you as a particular ethnic and religious group, but it just happened, you know.” And note: there will be no “we apologize for that” in the course of 95 past years. A very “convenient” position to deny otherwise proven historical fact that’s being accepted as premeditated genocide by foreign governments, international organizations advocacy and human rights groups, provincial governments, regional organizations, Nobel Prize winners, and the majority of historians and genocide scholars. Most shamelessly, it’s a convenient position to reject what the inventor of the term “genocide” Raphael Lemkin has applied to the race annihilation of the Armenians based on his study of the Turkish exterminatory policies. I guess what I’m trying to say is, that in contrast to you Murat, Ragnar at least has a viewpoint however distorted and weird it is. What is YOUR position on these pages? Mudding the waters? Pocking and needling Armenian commentators for this or that taken out of the context portion of their statements? Is this, in general, the limit of the Turks’ mental and intellectual abilities? Lay out your POSITION if you have balls, don’t act in a typically Turkish, i.e. cowardly manner. State what YOU think has happened to up to 2-2.5 millions of Ottoman Armenians? Elaborate on your position whatever it is. I respect Ragnar for being courageous enough to enter a discussion with Armenians on the denialist platform, but, as someone said here, he’s a Nordic Norwegian, not a sly Turk. So, what is YOUR position? Speak up…
Okay Ragnar, you’re right that I choose not to dispute with you point for point because I don’t understand your motives and in general have little patience for Turkish apologists. Same old story on both sides.
I am not one of those Armenians who believes that the Ottoman Armenians can all be described as poor, helpless, innocent peasants who were victimized by the evil Turk. Don’t get me wrong. I know there were many poor, helpless, innocent peasants among those victimized and that there were Turks (and Kurds) who did evil things. But I also believe that there were many Armenians who were filled with the passion for their nation, the right to self-determination and the wish to throw off the shackles of Ottoman suppression that came over them like a scourge on the land for 500 years. I don’t doubt that in the years and months leading up to the genocide, there were fedayees in many regions who put their lives on the line to defend the rights of their people and the nation at the cost of offending the local governors and the central committee members.
I also know that the zeitgeist of the times was such that nationalism was breaking out all over the geo-region. As successive nations asserted their distinct identities and threw out the Ottomans, the Ottomans in their humiliation comforted themselves with increasing pangs of national pride and the dream of a pan-turanic nation from central Asia in the east to the Turkish mainland in the west. The main obstacle to realizing this xenophobic dream was those pesky Armenians in the highlands who despite all efforts, tenaciously clung to their religion and their possessive love of their homeland and their traditions. Throw into this mix the competing goals of Russia, Germany, Great Britain and France for control of petro-resources and shipping routes, who all fueled the conflict for their own gain. Something was bound to explode. And explode it it did in the form of racist eliminationism against the Armenians and their dream for renewed dignity in their homeland.
This was the stage on which the deportations and massacres took place and the end result was genocidal. I find no value in dissecting the various battles, or asking who threw the first punch. The results of the CUP policies speak for themselves and require Turkey, if it is to be considered a civilized nation, to take responsibility for its crime and to make reparations to the Armenian nation. When a government turns on its own citizens and the end result is the virtual extinction of those people from the land, this is a crime against all mankind that must not be tolerated. The claim by Turkey that Armenians were the unfortunate victims of a civil war in some areas and of unintended calamity during deportations that were conducted for security measures in other areas, is a lame and insulting excuse. It is also unworthy of Turks to suggest that Armenians brought this upon themselves with their rebellious ideas. No people deserves to be eliminated! Humanity as a family should not be asked to tolerate the forceful elimination of one of its member peoples. No one is safe if any one of us is considered disposable. This should be the bottom line for advanced people.
Yet today, Turkey persists in its denial and publication of distorted history and persists in pan-turanic racism evident in the closing of its borders with Armenia as a show of support for its Azeri cousins to the east. Further, the geopolitical power struggle for energy resources has changed very little since the early years of the last century encouraging questionable alliances that have little to do with justice and morality. In the meantime, Armenia teeters in the balance as it tries to defend its right to nationhood.
Armenia wants nothing more than what Norway enjoys. Peace, prosperity, national security and justice for its people.
Ragnar, The church hasn’t been restored, it has been turned into museum. It is nothing but propaganda. Turkey is not trying to undo what it did WRONG but merely to promote itself in the eyes of international community as tolerant country. It has more to do with Turkey’s EU aspirations and attempt to block genocide recognition in the U.S. as with anything else. They also didn’t spent the money out of guild but rather trying to profit from the site as tourist destination.
Raaaggnnnarrrrrrr… you are really pushing my buttons again.. i am surprised that it is you who is asking Boyajian to provide specifics when Boyajian, Mscheci, and Katia gave you ALL the information IN DETAIL and WITH SPECIFIC SITINGS in our previous forum for you to educate yourself.. Did not I point out to you that you what you know and what you represent is completely wrong and utterly ridiculeous? why are you repeating this again here?? i don’t get it.. you will miserably fail as you did in the last forum..
Why are you asking Boyajian to provide you yet MORE detailed arguments? I believe she gave you plenty… don;t you agree?? why are you trying to play your game again? Please spare me the words…
But let me repeat myself.. Ragnar you are nothing but a denialist.. period…
I explained to you in the past.. there are TWO SIDES: PRO GENOCIDE AND CON GENOCIDE.. there is only ONE side in YES.: there was a genocide.. and MANY degrees of NO there was no Genocide… YOU sir belong to the NO side of the equation no matter how much you try to portray your understanding what Armenians went through and how you can help Armenians and Turks to see eye to eye…You are and will remain as someone who denies the Genocide… there is no difference between you or Murat or Robert in that sense… and yes.. you sitations belong to Genocide Deniars as Msheci pointed out to you in the previous forum and how mjm pointed out to you on this forum..you know it, we know it…..
Anahit jan.. apres…
Boyajian jan… Glad you continue to show Ragnar, Murat and their infameous friend Robert that no matter how they twist matters, they will not win…
Oh by the way Ragnar.. i know you are buddy buddy with Murat and them.. as you have off line contact and share many matters.. do you share with them that you don’t believe Turkey is right in denying the Genocide?? Are you helping them to understand what their forefathers did was Genocide? Well of course not.. because you don’t believe that Genocide happened.. do you??
Have a good night
Gayane
gayane
I never said I would leave this discussions for good. What happended in our last diuscussion was however that the answering became so time consuming that I had to stop. Because of other tasks and also simply because I had to stop and reflect. Apart from this, I believe you should look at my posts in our 300 page discussion because you evidently are not referring my position correctly.
Mjm
for your information, I first and foremost emphasize the evident moral responsibility of the CUP and the failure of the Turkish state to relate to the events in an honest way. I have no problems in naming the events genocide, but I only use it with a number of qualifications which you will find in the debate on “What Davutoglu fails to understand”. I do not hold that “there was no genocidal premeditation” or that there was no genocidal intent. hold that the question of the intent of the leading ittihadist cadres – taken in the juridical sense provided by the 1948 convention – is a very technical and difficult question and I have seen many attempts to prove it which to my mind obviously are fraught with difficulties. So I prefer to emphasize the moral responsibility as the core of the matter. But I am sure that genocidal intent may be proven if there in fact was genocidal intent, mainly because the knowledge is out there among the descendants of the various actors: e.g. Turks descending from the officials of the time, and the descendants of the various Kurds who systematically massacred Armenians in places like the Kemah gorge and on the route south of Malatya.
Boyajian
I admit that it is naive to believe to know the motives of people one only knows throught the internet. Apart from this I have some details I disagree on in your description and some additions to make, but in the main I agree
Ragnar Naess: You don’t have to use an evading phrase like “I am at a loss how to discuss with you.” Well, welcome to online discussions, my friend, the fora where commentators share their standpoints and inevitably can find themselves “at a loss” with others who may have divergently different standpoints. This is what disputes are all about, it’s unavoidable and ought to be accepted as is.
The point that I came to despise in your depiction of “the dynamics leading up to 1915” is your unsubstantiated juxtaposition of the prerequisites that are, in essence, absolutely disproportional both in terms of their nature and repercussions. For instance, look at this “magnum opus” of yours: “Of course, the Hamidian massacres have a place in this [the dynamics leading up to 1915] as well as the bloodthirsty revolutionary phrases of the Hunchak with their talk of the ‘Bulgarian road’, and the plight of the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia.” You just can’t use “as well” in these two instances, if you tend to objectively evaluate the dynamics that led to 1915. You just can’t. How can an intentional, centrally-planned mass bloodbath of up to 300,000 members of a particular ethnic and religious group be compared with the “revolutionary phrases of the Hunchak [party leaders]” which you dare to classify as “bloodthirsty”? What is this?! What “bloodthirsty” actions or consequences did their national liberation proclamations have had with regard to innocent Turks on the scale that Hamidian and consequent Young Turk genocidal policies have? Hnchak talk of the “Bulgarian road” was so common in those years in the crumbling empire in many of its parts, that I’d personally feel embarrassed even I mentioned that. Yes, as Boyajian put it, “there were many Armenians who were filled with the passion for their nation, the right to self-determination and the wish to throw off the shackles of Ottoman suppression that came over them like a scourge on the land for 500 years.” Why was it OK for the Bulgarians, or the Serbs, or the Romanians, or the Greeks, or the Cypriots, or the Arabs to choose a road to independence from the loathed Ottoman regime, and wrong for the Armenians? Why their freedom fighters’ proclamations don’t merit your weird interpretation as being “bloodthirsty,” but are defined as such in the case of a few of Armenian revolutionaries? Truly, such absurd juxtaposition of disparate elements of the dynamics that led to genocidal extermination of a whole nation by one of the actors in this dynamics as compared to verbal party program of the other, is something in the realm of your wild fantasy or your excessive proclivity towards one of the Turkish denialist methods: justification of the government-planned annihilation of an ancient civilization with a provision of a party program calling for freeing an indigenous nation from the foreign yoke. Ridiculous!
Yes, most of Armenian action before 1915 was a reaction to Ottoman oppression, there’s no doubt of it in the minds of scores of historians and genocide scholars, whether you epitomize such action as “excusable” or “non-excusable.” Prime-minister of the first republic Hovaness Kachaznouni, himself an Eastern Armenian from Tiflis, having accepted leadership of the republic under unimaginably difficult conditions with continuing Turkish military threat at extermination of Eastern Armenians, hundreds of thousands of refugees fled from Turkish massacres in Western Armenia, disease, poverty, and malnutrition widespread, state infrastructures non-existent or at best ill-functioning, could have noted in desperation that perhaps proclamations for independence by some Western Armenian revolutionaries could have been miscalculated in terms of existing conditions on the ground with the Turks suffering losses in virtually all furthermost corners of the empire and ultimately finding unrelated Armenians as scapegoats for their losses, but you can’t base your arguments on an opinion of one person even in his official capacity. Here’s where scholarly research comes in scrutinizing all-inclusive set of circumstances, the most important element of which is that a few Armenian revolutionaries’ action was mainly a reaction to 500 years of colonization, maltreatment, repressions, constant pillages on their villages, murders and abductions of the peasantry by the Muslim bands, and wholesale physical elimination of 300,000 Armenians by the Bloody Sultan that took place just 19-20 years earlier.
May I ask exactly what you call “oversimplification” on my part? Do I oversimplify the known, documented facts that Armenians, being minority Ottoman subjects scattered mostly in the six Armenian vilayets, as well as in Cilicia and Constantinople, have planned mass extermination of the whole innocent Turkish population? Do I oversimplify the known, documented facts that Armenians were holding state power by 1915 and had the ability or civilizational proclivity towards perpetrating the extermination of human beings on the scale that the dominant Turkish nation could and actually did in 1915? Do I oversimplify the known, documented facts that mostly peasant Armenians in any way represented threat to the mighty Ottoman state as a “fifth column” being well-organized, tidily-mobilized, and armed-to-the-teeth national minority? What exactly am I oversimplifying? That a few revolutionaries issued calls in their party programs to rise up against the loathed Ottoman rule and materialize the centuries-long national aspirations for liberty? Then how could you describe yourself as a humanist if the notions of freedom, liberty, de-colonization, and self-determination are alien to you based on your assessment of Armenians’ actions by 1915 as “not a mere excusable reaction to Ottoman oppression”? Don’t you think such assessment might contradict your stance as the “defender of the rights of the oppressed,” whether Armenians, Turks, or Norwegians under the Quisling regime? National liberation is typical to any nation and Armenian revolutionaries were not an exception to the rule. Call for freedom is not a crime, a word that you so much love when describing Turkish barbarity against the Armenians, genocide is.
I was watching “Lawrence of Arabia” last evening and I am reminded about one of the most corrupt and vile aspects of the Ottoman Empire. The horrific treatment of its own citizens. The subject of this epic, of course , is the Arab community and the emerging Arab Revolt of 1916-18. We can all see, in hindsight, that the splintered Arabs were mainipulated by the Allies seeking to divert Turkish Ottoman capabilities, but what’s relevent to this dialogue is that the Arab nationalisn grew, in large part, as a result of Turkish oppression. Sound familiar.
It incredible for today’s denialist to blame the victims or to identify it an an unintentional genocide. The barbaric and hostile manner in which the Ottoman ruler treated its own citizens, be they Greek, Assyrian, Arab or Armenian, forced self defense efforts and in the case of the Arabs. the growth of nationalism. How outrageous to suggest that the Armenians were the cause or were disloyal. Let’s get the order straight. Years of oppression leads to defensive measures.
The case of the Arabs also shows that the issue of Islam was nothing more than a method of public manipulation against non-Moslims. There are numerous accounts of oppressiona nd reprislas against the Arab population and its leadership. The Turks were politically motivated against all parties. How corrupt a nation to murder its own citizens and then apply subsequent generations to cover up and deny the crime.
The energy, passion and commitment of many on this post (Bravo to Gayane, Boyajian, mjm and others) are one of the many reasons why the truth will always prevail.
mjm, this sentence was a doozie!
” Prime-minister of the first republic Hovaness Kachaznouni, himself an Eastern Armenian from Tiflis, having accepted leadership of the republic under unimaginably difficult conditions with continuing Turkish military threat at extermination of Eastern Armenians, hundreds of thousands of refugees fled from Turkish massacres in Western Armenia, disease, poverty, and malnutrition widespread, state infrastructures non-existent or at best ill-functioning, could have noted in desperation that perhaps proclamations for independence by some Western Armenian revolutionaries could have been miscalculated in terms of existing conditions on the ground with the Turks suffering losses in virtually all furthermost corners of the empire and ultimately finding unrelated Armenians as scapegoats for their losses, but you can’t base your arguments on an opinion of one person even in his official capacity.”
mjm
Well, actually I did not know how to answer you. It was not being evasive. You bring up several points. I will concentrate on one.
you write:
How can an intentional, centrally-planned mass bloodbath of up to 300,000 members of a particular ethnic and religious group be compared with the “revolutionary phrases of the Hunchak [party leaders]” which you dare to classify as “bloodthirsty”?
comment:
to “have a place in a dynamics” does not imply to equalize. The term juxtaposition also is too vague. I will try to give an example of dynamism: the shot in sarajevo in the summer of 1914 killed one man but triggered off a war with 20 million dead.
The uncanny thing about the late ottoman cycle of violence, as I see it, is that the hunchak propaganda apparently had this kind of effect as one of several triggering factors, or one triggering factor against a context of the circassian Caucasian experiences or that of the Turkish Bulgarians, and also the context of the announcement of the intervention of the powers in the treaty of Berlin. This does not mean to allot equal moral blame or responsibility. It simply means to say something about cause and effect, and this was what I, maybe mistakenly, thought we were discussing (about the Zeytun events coming before the Van events, and the Armenian actions from the summer and onwards before that, and your mentioning the hamidian massacres. so I thought we were talking about a interactive dynamism). One important part of this is the developing of a “culture of massacre” which Dadrian speaks of, or the development “from desperation to desperate acts” (Dadrian) on the part of Armenian youths who evidently triggered off muslim reprisals in the form of massacres (in which events by the way also many Turks were killed by Armenians, but at a ratio of 20 or 50 to one). I am talking of this kind of dynamics.
Bloodthirsty: I read a compilation of early Hunchak political tracts and leaflets. It deals with fighting to the last man against the Turks, spilling the turkish blood, having the Turkish, not on only Armenians mothers cry, and so on. Now you may say that they said this as part of a just fight, but I still find it bloodthirsty in its form with the emphasis on uncompromising fight and deaths. To take one example mentioned by Dadrian: the young Armenian leader of the fighting at Van in the summer of 1896 spread a leaflet calling for revolt saying that it was better that only a fraction of all Armenians survived (10% I believe), but won their independence as a result. It portrays frightening attitudes in a frightening era. And in the end the most barbarous and extensive crimes were of course committed against the Armenians. But God forbid using the actual dynamism as a kind of excuse for Turkish acts, or simply blaming the Armenians as if they brought the castrasrophy on themselves. But expositions like Balakian’s “Burning Tigris” in which the dynamism simply is absent and you get more or less a picture of the fight of the Good against the Evil, and the Evil ones simply do as they do because they are Evil, these expositions give a onesided and false picture.
Yes, we disagree, and I am sorry if my expression “I am at a loss” sounded condescending. It was not my intention
Boyajian
kachaznouni’s 1923 critique of aspects of Armenian poilitics after 1900 is much harsher than your citation indicates
It’s strange that people who pray 5 x day to god, would behave like this.
Ragnar, that was not a Kachznouni citation; that was a sentence pulled from mjm’s comment of Aug. 29 above.
I see that you are apparently trying to establish that Armenians were not simply innocent victims, but also fought, massacred and incited retaliatory attacks. Why is this important to do at this time? Nobody doubts that Armenians fought back, aligned with Russians in some areas and perhaps miscalculated the consequences in their rush toward a chance of breaking free from the Turkish yoke (thus sounding there own death knell according to some).
But how does this change the fact that Turkey virtually annihilated my people and has yet to admit, apologize or make reparation. To my mind, priority should be on establishing the truth of who was responsible for what happened to the Armenians and ensuring that justice is done. Yes Turks suffered too, but they were not virtually extinguished. They were not driven from their 3000 year old homeland to the desert to perish, leaving behind their homes, treasures, businesses, farms, schools and churches to be stolen or destroyed by the Turks that remained. This is a crime that has no statute of limitation precisely because it is a crime so abhorrent to civilized society. All other discussions, dissecting the minutia of the events, interesting as they may be to academics, only serve to cloud the issue and delay the required just solution. The international community attempted to provide a just resolution with the treaty of Sevres, but as we all, know, that fell apart for numerous reasons that had little to do with justice. Armenians are still waiting for their just resolution. They deserve no less regardless of what you uncover in your research efforts to spare your Turkish friends the full weight of guilt.
First Turkey should admit what it’s Ottoman predecessors did, not try to wiggle out of responsibility by hiring scholars, bribing politicians and strong-armedly pressuring other nations to collude with their denial.
Ragnar.. please refer to our 300 comments forum to remind yourself that you did not leave because you had things to do.. you left because you were not successful in your attempt to convince us, the descendants of all those who perished by the bloodthirsty (yes in this case, bloodthirsty is the right word to use, and not when you are speaking about Armenians who tried to defend themselves) Turks that what happened to our people was not Genocide but string of events caused by the Armenians which lead to this catastrophy or mass killings (your favorite words that you use to describe the Genocide)…
However, a comment ago I wrote to you stating that you can’t.. absolutely NO NO NO… be in the middle of this equation.. there is only two sides.. YES OR NO……you are not on the YES side of the equation… You can’t be the neutral country in the waters because you lean toward Turkis side more than the ARmenian side.. we have established this already in our 300 comments forum sir..
Your examples as I and many commentators before pointed out are taken from writings written by Genocide deniers… your reasonings and your arguments don’t stand ground… i know you are confused and you not sure about everything as you keep stating in your comments which is why I suggested for you to take a break and educate yourself about Armenians and their history and their culture by spending time with the Armenians.. also.. with non-Armenians to understand that what you have learned and taught by the Turkish State is absolutely distorted… i mean come on, you are not young anymore.. we all know and understand that you can’t defend honor, truth and justice if you don’t stand on the right side of the equation….
My favorite statement to you sir (i hope you remember)was: .. IF YOU DON”T BELIEVE IN A CAUSE, YOU CAN”T BE A STRONG PLAYER OR ADVOCATE OF THAT CAUSE… anyone who is weak or unsure or unclear or just confused can easily be swayed and baught.. YOU sir don’t believe in Genocide..your stand is weak..you can’t say YES TURKS are guilty of Genocide without trying to justify their actions.. and why?? i don’t know but it is annoying… ..until you can set yourself on the YES side of the equation, no one will believe in you… You can’t be wishy washy about this.. sorry….so I say stop trying to portray yourself as someone who sees the pain, feels the pain and understands the pain of my people because you don’t really.. science (which you heavily rely on) can’t always win in cases like Genocide sir.. you seem to forget about that……..
Thanks
Gayane
Boyajian
yes, I see it was not a Kachaznouni citation, but it is a downplayed version of Kachaznouni’s actual works.
you ask:
I see that you are apparently trying to establish that Armenians were not simply innocent victims, but also fought, massacred and incited retaliatory attacks. Why is this important to do at this time?
comment: Why do you qualify your question with the words “at this time?” Please answer!
But to try to answer you: first, it is simply a matter of historical truth. Books that are very biased in this respect, for instance Yves Ternon’s 1977 book and Balakian’s “Burning Tigris” are not truthful. And this again is not good for the Armenian cause, if you excuse me for saying so. It gives fuel to denialist Turks. In a time when Turkey is arming itself with biased researchers – who are learning the game of how to argue in the West – it is poor strategy to fight with the weakest arguments.
Thirdly, I simply try to answer questions. Mjm reacted to my mentioning of the Hunchak propaganda, and I tried to answer. Mjm said that Armenians never killed innocent people and I tried to answer. Since there are questions I guess that these topics are important to Armenian participants in the discussion, and I try to answer. But of course it gives me a bad feeling from time to time to talk about Armenians’ atrocities towards Turks because mainly it was the other way around.
In the last weeks I have posted texts in every discussion on the Armenian fate that I find in Turkish newspapers. I would prefer to discuss with Turks who really hold the key to any progress in the matter, but it is difficult to find the same kind of forum as “Armenian Weekly”. An exception was an article by a German professor Demm in “Daily Zaman” some months ago which led to a quite heated debate in which a number of Turkish participants demonstrated how far they have to go to be able to present a realistic picture on the fate of the Ottoman Armenians. But this is an exception. I have Turkish friends who try to point out arenas for me, but so far there are few discussions like this. Daily Zaman also restricts the length of the texts. So I end up discussing here – discussing with Armenians. But you might also post texts in the daily Zaman in which e.g. Orhan Kemal Cengiz regularly provokes reactions regarding the Armenian issue. More Armenian voices here would be good (there are some).
Gayane
it is difficult to discuss in this way about motivation and my reasons. Also I feel that you do not read my texts properly and you misrepresent my position so I feel it is difficult to discuss with you. I can only say that you are mistaken about my motives, including my motives for engaging in discussions with you. Secondly, I am not trying “to be neutral”, you have completely misunderstood me. I am arguing according to my convictions, and listen to arguments. I am trained in philsophy of science. “Neutrality” has no place in this. If you want to map out the current standing of president Obama, neutrality has not any place. It is no use saying that you adopt a position of neutrality between the Democrats and the Republicans. You must investigate the case as good and objectively as you can and draw the conclusions as correctly as you can. and if there is a strong disagreement between two partners you may of course try to be the conciliator by being “neutral”. But I put no vcalue on neutrality in this way. I am a stickler for long dialogues and insistence on arguments because I believe this will secure the most truthful answer in the end.
Regarding the end of our last discussion, I was preparing an answer to you about method in historical reseach when the moderator broke off the discussion. I wanmted to try to explain my view since you evidently argued against me.
Do you want me to leave the discussion? Yet I am wondering about the kind of forum you would like this to be? A dialogue forum should to my mind help all participants in developing their own thoughts, which may be well done in discussions with those who hold opposite views. IF the dialogue is good. Secondly, of course we may have an influence, which Armenians in this forum have had on me. But would you like me to go away? Why not instead ask Murat to answer the question I asked about his text on the “old building” turned into a museum? How do you see an ideal dialogue forum of this kind? Who should participate?
Ragnar, it seems that “truth” is too subjective at times, no? You call Balakian’s book untruthful. It is not! It is a viewpoint. A widely accepted viewpoint throughout the world. The Armenian viewpoint. Turks would do well to drop their “we would never” defensiveness and begin to see things through Armenian eyes. We Armenians are hearing a lot about the Turkish viewpoint here from you and others. It is time for Turks to understand the Armenian viewpoint and why it is so callous of them to try to get us to see their side when they live in our houses and pen their goats in our church’s and we mourn what was our homeland and our murdered ancestors and our ancient roots.
Ragnar, you also asked Why do you qualify your question with the words “at this time?” Please answer!
I thought this was implicit in my comment to you and what I have said to you many times before. (But it was late, I was tired, maybe I wasn’t clear.) It is a question of priority and urgency. Now is the time for the Turks to say , “Yes, our ancestors did do this, and we as the successor Turkish Republic have not been forthcoming with facing the truth and with apologizing for what happened and for making restitution for what the Armenians lost. We now realize that this was wrong and want to do the right thing as civilized members of society and a nation that respects the rights of all people.”
I realize that I assume quite a bit of a radical self-reflection in suggesting that Turks can make such a statement, as well as a very different Turkish society than exists today. These are changes that are beginning to emerge in some small circles in Turkey and it will take time for them to take root and expand. Gamatz, gamatz, we say in Armenian. Slowly, slowly. However, with the coming of the 100 year anniversary of the genocide, Armenians are saying, “It has been long enough.” There is an urgency to resolve tensions with Turkey and to begin to focus on strengthening diplomatic relations in the region so that Armenia can move forward as a nation at peace with her neighbors. RA has many needs and it is in the regions best interest for this rapprochement to take place. But let’s face it. It is Turkey that is not willing to negotiate without placing conditions on the table. It is Turkey that refuses to take responsibility and let Armenians know that they are ready to live as good neighbors who respect each others rights and property and sovereignty as a nation. And that is why this is not the time to engage in this academic pursuit of dissecting what took place during the genocide. As I said before, doing this just clouds the issue and detracts/distracts from the big picture, which is quite clear and demands a just resolution.
More plainly stated: first things first! Scholars, world leaders and citizens must first call on Turkey to do what justice demands. Do what Germany has done. Face the truth. Once that is achieved, than I say to academics: “Go research to your heart’s content to bring deeper dimension to the understanding of what transpired during those years. We all know it was not black and white, but very complex with many forces at play. It was not the first time in human history that dynamic forces converged in this region to bring about power struggles and radical changes, and will likely not be the last. But with this knowledge and understanding of history, it is all the more incumbent on society to behave as people who have come through the fire and been shaped into something finer and better. Armenian lives and Armenian history should not be disposable. Neither were Jews, Cambodians, Darfurians, etc. How many more times will humanity replay this scenario?
Turkey has avoided responsibility long enough.
To your other point: In a time when Turkey is arming itself with biased researchers – who are learning the game of how to argue in the West – it is poor strategy to fight with the weakest arguments.
I see your point in theory but I ask: Why, after 95 years, are we the victims, still being forced to “argue” our case against the perpetrators when the evidence on the ground in the former vilayets, in the desert of Deir Zor, in the memory of elderly Turks and Kurds, in the rubble of our churches, on the scarred faces of our grandparents, and in the historical archives of many nations is crystal clear? The reason again, is Turkey’s unwillingness to face the truth! And so the genocide continues in the form of denial. And you Ragnar, with your ‘noble’ pursuit of historical truth, are not a part of the solution as long as you buy into this idea that Armenians must provide a better argument. It is a smoke screen!
Your suggestion that more Armenians comment on Turkish websites has merit.
Ragnar Naess: I’d agree that to “have a place in a dynamics” does not imply to equalize, and perhaps the term “juxtaposition” may be vague depending on circumstances and context, but I’d emphasize the general atmosphere in which an event took place and the chronology of consequent events in a dynamics. In this respect, I don’t think I’d accept the example of dynamism that you brought up, namely: “the shot in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914 killed one man but triggered off a war with 20 million dead,” because such a statement sounds more of a cause that brought up an effect: a war, than an element of a dynamics that has much deeper roots. You fail to see the centuries-long internal turmoil within the Austro-Hungarian empire, the rising disgruntlement of her ethnic and religious minorities in the 19th-early 20th centuries, and, as a result, the political objective of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand that was aimed at breaking south-Slav provinces off so they could be combined into a Greater Serbia. You also fail to see the chronology in the Balkan dynamics: that Serbia was incorporated into the Hapsburg and then Austro-Hungarian empires and the shot in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914 was not just “a shot in the air,” it was a culmination of freedom fighting of an oppressed national group. Likewise, in the case of the Armenians, just look how you put the chronology: “The Zeitoun events may be part of the events triggering the Van development.” That simple? In August 1914, at Zeitun uprising, the Hunchaks resisted to the Ottoman military that started the campaign at forced deportation and extermination of Armenians following the government’s previously agreed agenda at the CUP conclave of 1910, held in Thessaloniki, about crushing the non-Muslim communities “by force and by arms”: a scheme to create a new pan-Turkic empire extending from Constantinople to the Caspian Sea and beyond. Armenians, living in central and central-eastern vilayets, clearly were an obstacle in advancing this goal. But even earlier there was Adana massacre of Armenians in 1909. And earlier there were Hamidian massacres of Armenians in 1984-1986. And earlier, during the 16th century, there was colonization of Western Armenia by the House of Osman. You fail to acknowledge that throughout their “history” Turks have been generally intolerant towards national uniqueness of other peoples, their civilizations, distinct culture, their entrepreneurial and creational prowess, their religion, otherwise the notion of millet wouldn’t have been created with Turks elevated to the level of “dominant nation.” That’s why most historians and genocide scholars agree that most of Armenian action was an excusable reaction to Ottoman oppression, massacres, pogroms and pillages, abductions and humiliation. These factors are what triggered the national liberation movements of many subjects of the Ottoman empire and some never-to -materialize “bloodthirsty” proclamations that you found in the Hunchak party program that are only the effects of Ottomans’ maltreatment of their co-citizens. Had there been no maltreatment there would have been no uprisings of the Ottoman Bulgarians or demands laid out in the Treaty of Berlin. Maltreatment of indigenous population by the Turks was a monumental problem in the Ottoman empire, and your problem is that you tend to see things from the Turkish perspective not from the perspective of the oppressed or isolated facts of Armenian youths’ retaliatory murders or the world powers’ condemnation of the barbarous forms of oppression in regard to non-Muslim Ottoman citizens. Another of your problems is that you dare to state: “Armenian youths […] evidently triggered off Muslim reprisals in the form of massacres.” I have hard time following your logic: why would otherwise peaceful, creative, and tolerant Christian Armenians initiate killings of Muslims? Just for the fun of it? Don’t you think that something must have been fundamentally wrong with the treatment of minorities by the Muslims that’d cause Armenians and other Christians to do violent acts? I repeated two times already: Armenians and other Christians were not the dominant ethnic and religious group in the empire. Armenians and other Christians did not possess the military and law-enforcing powers in the empire. Armenians and other Christians did not create discriminatory laws and enact them as state policy. Armenians and other Christians were not allowed to carry arms. Their witness statements did not count. Given this situation which group, you think, is more likely to take advantage and strive to dominate the others in any form: dominant Turks or oppressed Armenians? Lastly, does it seem normal to you that retaliatory actions of some youths can “trigger off Muslim reprisals in the form of massacres”? Is this what a nation that considers itself “civilized” normally would do: massacres? I thought the state would imprison a few “instigators” or “perpetrators”, as it sees them, but not massacre hundreds of thousands as during the Hamidian massacres or 1.5 million as during the Young Turks’ genocide in reprisal. Don’t you think that there’s something much more deep-rooted in such a large-scale crime against humanity? And this is what most of the scholars, organizations, and groups, except you, understand, and I repeat: a Turkish scheme to create a new pan-Turkic empire extending from Constantinople to the Caspian Sea and beyond. Armenians, living in central and central-eastern vilayets, clearly were an obstacle in advancing this goal.
P.S. In your comment addressed to Boyajian: “Mjm said that Armenians never killed innocent people,” you twisted my words that, actually, originally were armen_yan’s. I just expanded on your response to him by stating that yes, except for isolated cases of inter-communal, inter-ethnic violence and retaliation acts that were common all over the oppressive empire, Armenians never killed innocent Turkish people on the scale, in the form, on the state level, and with the degree of indescribable barbarity that Turks did in regard to 1.5 million Christian Armenians and hundreds of thousands of forcibly expelled and mutilated others. You have an objection to that?
mjm, you said it very well.
Ragnar, if you are sincere in wanting to get to the truth, I hope that mjm has been successful in opening your eyes a little more to the centuries of circumstances that preceded the genocide. I also hope that you better understand how ludicrous it is to compare Armenian ‘provocations’ to Turkish reprisals when speaking of unequal combatants, a government against a long-oppressed minority group of citizens. I hope you understand how pan-turanism collided with Armenian aspirations for national identity and dignity. Akhtamar Island surrounded by Turks and Kurds who have no love or appreciation for what she represents other than the tourist dollars that a “museum’ will attract, is a symbol for the isolation that Armenians experience in that sea of muslims. I think as a Norwegian you have no context to understand the experience of Armenians under Ottoman oppression and 95 years of Turkish denial and that you are too close to the Turkish point of view to assume that you have the objectivity to uncover the ‘historical truth.’ But keep working on it.
mjm
sorry for confusing you with Armen. Apart from this I am not sure exactly what you are aiming at. I have no objection to most of what you say except that I believe that Hunchak provocation was a triggering factor along with many other and more deep-set reasons as you say. I also think you overdo the suffering of the eastern Anatolian Armenians compared to other sedentary groups who were harassed by Kurdish tribes.
Boyajian
I understand your desperation that Armenians after 95 years still have to argue their case. I also note that Turkish eagerness to debate is lower now than five years ago.
But as always, either we quit or we go on.
you write:
And you Ragnar, with your ‘noble’ pursuit of historical truth, are not a part of the solution as long as you buy into this idea that Armenians must provide a better argument. It is a smoke screen!
comment: I disagree! The better argument is the more effective. There is no “noble” ivory tower attitude in this. And I see a lot of posts in these discussions, posted by Armenians that I believe are unproductive (Turks not really being muslim. Turks being genetically determined to kill, and so on). Why should I not object to this? Why should you not participate in a dialogue with those you disagree with? So please take my arguments as a gesture of solidarity. I wish you luck and stamina in your fight for the Armenian cause!
Ragnar Naess: I’m aiming at correcting or at least bringing to balance—to an optimal degree—some of your observations. I don’t feel that you explicitly disagree, but some of your remarks in this discussion are still tainted with distorted Turkish clichés, albeit less so as compared to the discussion that you invited me to visit (“What Davutoglu Fails to Understand”). Hunchak “provocation” was a reaction to, and not instigation of hostility between a long-oppressed ethnic minority group and the government representing the dominant group. With the same token, why wouldn’t you mention that in the years before the outbreak of the World War One, the Armenians gave considerable support to the government by fighting bravely in the Ottoman armies during the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars? Even during the World War One, in February of 1915, Enver pasha had publically expressed gratitude to the Armenians for their conduct during the Sarikamis campaign against Russians. I mean to say that since the Ottoman government had a tacit plan at exterminating its co-citizens for their pan-Turanic ambitions, they could always find a pretext to do this, such as the one you keep emphasizing: the Hunchak “provocation.” Did you know that 20 Hunchak leaders (whom the Armenians call ‘The Twenty Martyrs’) that led the Zeitoun resistance were hanged (the picture can be found in the Internet by clicking on this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_resistance_(1914–1918)). So, let’s discuss this for a moment. Although punishment, such as hanging or wholesale massacres of people is typical only to a few nations, Turks of course included, and is ugly, barbarous, and typical to savages, why wouldn’t the Turkish government stop right there in its “reprisal,” as you say, for the “provocation” found in the party program of the Hunchaks? What do 2 to 2.5 million innocent people have to do with this “provocation,” even if we admit it as such? As for “overdoing the suffering of the eastern Anatolian Armenians compared to other sedentary groups who were harassed by Kurdish tribes,” it was never a subject of our discussion, you just brought it up for some reason. I guess I’m supposed to respond: yes, other sedentary groups were also harassed by not only Kurdish tribes, but also by Turkish and Circassian bands: all of them being Muslim.
Ragnar I am not sure what point you are making when you say that Turks are less interested in debating than five years ago.
Also, please know that I have no reluctance to discuss issues with those that disagree with me. I have reluctance to being drawn too deeply into discussion with those whose motives are not clear to me. I like to know who I am dealing with and what their agenda is. Understandable?
As a father of two (8 and 9 years old) kids , I would never let them go to Turkey . I would protect them from damaging their psychics in so early age . I am mad and angry on organizers of this needless trip to Akhtamar and even more mad that the video was posted on internet as another case against turks . Do not use the kids , protect them from fanatics who would run away from battle or sit in the computer room 20 000 miles away , when the others are fighting . It is a provocation and I’m just mad .
Was it possible to bring any group over 30 to pray in that Church ? Just ask this question from yourself . Would I go ? Or You ? Or anybody that we personally know ?
Then why not ? Turkey should be damaged by not going there , ignoring them , but not sending our kids there and then see how they cry all over the internet . It is just stupid …
Ragnar this is a free country and we have a freedom of speech in the United States… so if you believe you have something to say, you can stay and say it but please keep in mind.. i don’t agree with you.. i am not comfortable with your statements and do not feel you are the right person to fight for cause you don’t believe in.
In regards to your question to Murat… i know you communicate off line with Murat and you have ties with him ….this tells that the carrot you have dangled in front of us by asking him the question means nothing to me.. I already expressed how i feel about Murat… and how i see you…… you have been heavily influenced by Turks and I can read between your lines…that is how i see you…what can i say?
your thing is : let me see how long i can annoy Armenians with my comments and discussion points… you have the abillity to get those in discussion with you on a ferris wheel…that goes around and around and around and around …no end….that is what you did in the previous forum..you have exhausted us to death … THANK GOD TO Katia, Boyajian and Msheci for not giving up…but at the end… you remained the same old confused and enigma Ragnar.. no change….
I wish i can get into your head and see how your brain works..to see what Turkey instilled in there that is keeping your to move beyond that and start seeing and breathing fresh air… free of Turkish filth.. but i am hopeful that by communicating with Armenians you will learn something valuable and not just hoard the information and then don’t use it..
Also, you suggested to comment on Turkish site.. are they even such sites? do they even allow people to express their thoughts?
The notorious Robert the Turk keeps complaining how his comments get deleted and omitted by the AW. i know for a fact that not only his but some of our comments were also omitted due to obvious reasons.. and i completely agree with AW’s decision on what to omit….however, Robert also mentioned that Turkish discussion forums (are there such things in such “hatred and phobia of freedom of speech” society) anyone can say anything including profanity and other inappropriate things.. according to him, this is to justify how Turkish sites are.. not realizing that these sites are degrading themselves by allowing such filth to go through… and i personally will not post comments on such sites….
Have a great day sir…
Gayane
yes this is a free country and I must say that you seem utterly confused
mjm
I will try to answer you last post and then the next to last. I will answer between the lines:
you write:
Ragnar Naess: I’m aiming at correcting or at least bringing to balance—to an optimal degree—some of your observations. I don’t feel that you explicitly disagree, but some of your remarks in this discussion are still tainted with distorted Turkish clichés, albeit less so as compared to the discussion that you invited me to visit (“What Davutoglu Fails to Understand”).
comment: Well, I belive your reference to Turkish cliches does not bring the dialogua any further. I believe that you and I disagree on very important points, but I also believe we have some common ground.
you write:
Hunchak “provocation” was a reaction to, and not instigation of hostility between a long-oppressed ethnic minority group and the government representing the dominant group.
comment: yes, I agree, but I am uncertain what point you try to make in our overall discussion.
you write:
With the same token, why wouldn’t you mention that in the years before the outbreak of the World War One, the Armenians gave considerable support to the government by fighting bravely in the Ottoman armies during the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars?
comment:
this is inaccurate. Fikret Adanir, who by the way holds the genocide thesis, says in an article that there was a massive desertion by Christian Ottoman soldiers in the Balkan wars. I will try to find the exact reference for you.
You write:
Even during the World War One, in February of 1915, Enver pasha had publically expressed gratitude to the Armenians for their conduct during the Sarikamis campaign against Russians. I mean to say that since the Ottoman government had a tacit plan at exterminating its co-citizens for their pan-Turanic ambitions, they could always find a pretext to do this, such as the one you keep emphasizing: the Hunchak “provocation.”
comment:
I doubt that Enver was sincere. The reasons given for deportation (which possibly was a mere cloak for extermination) in the military despatches at the time are the Armenian rebellious activities, which obviously is not the whole reason because Armenians from regions with no rebellions or rebellious tradition were deported.
you write:
Did you know that 20 Hunchak leaders (whom the Armenians call ‘The Twenty Martyrs’) that led the Zeitoun resistance were hanged (the picture can be found in the Internet by clicking on this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_resistance_(1914–1918)). So, let’s discuss this for a moment. Although punishment, such as hanging or wholesale massacres of people is typical only to a few nations, Turks of course included, and is ugly, barbarous, and typical to savages, why wouldn’t the Turkish government stop right there in its “reprisal,” as you say, for the “provocation” found in the party program of the Hunchaks? What do 2 to 2.5 million innocent people have to do with this “provocation,” even if we admit it as such?
comment:
Thank you for the link. No I did not know these details about the Hunchak rebellion, but I have not checked Dadrian which seems to be the most detailed description I know. No, the provocation of the Hunchak did not play any role after the 1990-ies, to my mind, as the ARF became the clearly influential Armenian grouping. I only have in mind that the Hunchak provication was one of many factors that influenced the Turkish attitude to Armenians. But it should not be emphasized too much, or exaggerated. But arent wholesale massacres sometimes that countries that are said to be civilized – or not savages – do? What about Belgium in Africa, Germans in Namibia and in WW2? When Bloxham lectured in Oslo in 2007 he said that the British committed extensive massacres e.g. in Basutoland, but the British just refused to anser charges, whereas the Turks insist on loudly defending themselves. So I would use the word “savages” in this context.
You write:
As for “overdoing the suffering of the eastern Anatolian Armenians compared to other sedentary groups who were harassed by Kurdish tribes,” it was never a subject of our discussion, you just brought it up for some reason. I guess I’m supposed to respond: yes, other sedentary groups were also harassed by not only Kurdish tribes, but also by Turkish and Circassian bands: all of them being Muslim.
Comment:
You used the expression “a long-oppressed ethnic minority group” and since it is often said, for instance in Dadrians “history of the Armenian genocide” that the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia were most subjected to atrocities, double-taxation and attacks, I said that I believe the pligh of these Armenians are exaggerated. I meant that they in many ways were comparable to the plight of other non-armenian sendentary groups. I see Dadrian’s exposition as weak on this point. However, I admit to not having read important contributions. It is said that Janet Klein’s phd is important in showing that the plight of the Armenians in the East could not be compared to the plight of the non-muslims. This work is on my reading list. McCarthy et al “The bellion at Van” give many interesting arguments, but I feel they too quickly conclude that the plight was more or less equal for christian and non-christian groups.
Mjm
I respond between the lines:
you write
Ragnar Naess: I’d agree that to “have a place in a dynamics” does not imply to equalize, and perhaps the term “juxtaposition” may be vague depending on circumstances and context, but I’d emphasize the general atmosphere in which an event took place and the chronology of consequent events in a dynamics. In this respect, I don’t think I’d accept the example of dynamism that you brought up, namely: “the shot in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914 killed one man but triggered off a war with 20 million dead,” because such a statement sounds more of a cause that brought up an effect: a war, than an element of a dynamics that has much deeper roots.
Comment:
My point, which I expressed earlier was – I cite – “I believe that Hunchak provocation was a triggering factor along with many other and more deep-set reasons as you say”.
So I cannot see that we disagree, and since I mentioned many other reasons and more deep roots I disagree that I “fail to see” the Balkan dynamism you refer to. My reference to the Hunchaks was explicitly a reference to one and only one factor. But my objection was to Armen’s assertion which I see as typical for some of the historiography in the field, for instance Balakian’s “Burning Tigris”.
You write:
Likewise, in the case of the Armenians, just look how you put the chronology: “The Zeitoun events may be part of the events triggering the Van development.” That simple? In August 1914, at Zeitun uprising, the Hunchaks resisted to the Ottoman military that started the campaign at forced deportation and extermination of Armenians….
comment:
I am not sure what you have in mind regarding the chronology, an event in August 1914 comes before april 1915. I know little about the events at Zeitun in august 1914, but I will go into it.
You write:
….following the government’s previously agreed agenda at the CUP conclave of 1910, held in Thessaloniki, about crushing the non-Muslim communities “by force and by arms”……
Comment:
I dont know about the CUP conclave in 1910. Do you have a reference?
you write:
……a scheme to create a new pan-Turkic empire extending from Constantinople to the Caspian Sea and beyond.
comment:
Thius is very conjectural. Landau in his book on pan-turkism and also Zurcher emphasize that pan-turkish policies were more words than a real policy.
You write:
Armenians, living in central and central-eastern vilayets, clearly were an obstacle in advancing this goal.
Comment: I believe you overdo the idea of premeditation. both Hilmar Kaiser and Donald Bloxham, while supporting the genocide thesis more generally, doubt about premeditation that long time before the genocidal events.
you write:
You fail to acknowledge that throughout their “history” Turks have been generally intolerant towards national uniqueness of other peoples, their civilizations, distinct culture, their entrepreneurial and creational prowess, their religion, otherwise the notion of millet wouldn’t have been created with Turks elevated to the level of “dominant nation.”
Comment: I disagree and believe that most historians will disagree. The Ottoman system was much more tolerant than contemporary systems until the age of nationalism when the combination of pressures by the powers and the nationalism of the christian minoritties contributed to the catastrophies of the late Ottoman era.
you write:
That’s why most historians and genocide scholars agree that most of Armenian action was an excusable reaction to Ottoman oppression, massacres, pogroms and pillages, abductions and humiliation.
Comment: the historians in the main do not look at actions as excusable or not excusable, but try to explain and describe, but of course many of the genocide scholars emphasize this. For me it is sufficient in this debate to assert that the Turks should apologize to the Armenians. Whether Armenians also should apologize to Turks, as Armen Gakavian wanted to do as a response to the “I apologize”-movement, I dont know.
you write:
These factors are what triggered the national liberation movements of many subjects of the Ottoman empire and some never-to -materialize “bloodthirsty” proclamations that you found in the Hunchak party program that are only the effects of Ottomans’ maltreatment of their co-citizens. Had there been no maltreatment there would have been no uprisings of the Ottoman Bulgarians or demands laid out in the Treaty of Berlin. Comment:
I disagree with you and beieve that you are one-sided. What you say may hold for some of the Armenians. Now there is a tradition not to answer Justin McCarthy, but he holds that the situation of Armenians e.g. in the period after 1908 in vilayet of Van and also before and also in other places with dense Armenian population was much better at this time, CUP contributed to the return of Armenian lands to their rightful owners, but that the revolutionary movement continued to import weapons. He pictures the Armenian movement as preparing for the inevitable Russian attack and hoping to profit from this. I have no definite answer to this picture or hypothesis, but I feel that authors like Ter-Minassian in her article “Van 1915” underestimates the active role taken by the ARF. To treat Turkish government as the main cause of the problems, and not point to foolhardy Armenian nationalism is an oversimplification. This does not absolve the CUP, but it means that many Armenian authors overdo the monocausality in their descriptions. This point is taken up by Ara Sarafian who says that there is a suppression of Armenian memoirs that depart from a given shcematism. I am not in the position to way whether this is right or mistaken, but I am doubtful of the way you handle the matter. It sounds more like politics than like historiography.
Comment:
Maltreatment of indigenous population by the Turks was a monumental problem in the Ottoman empire, and your problem is that you tend to see things from the Turkish perspective not from the perspective of the oppressed or isolated facts of Armenian youths’ retaliatory murders or the world powers’ condemnation of the barbarous forms of oppression in regard to non-Muslim Ottoman citizens. Another of your problems is that you dare to state: “Armenian youths […] evidently triggered off Muslim reprisals in the form of massacres.”
Comment: do you mean that the massacres of Armenians in Istanbul after the occupation of Ottoman Bank in 1996 would have happened if there had been no occupation?
you write:
I have hard time following your logic: why would otherwise peaceful, creative, and tolerant Christian Armenians initiate killings of Muslims?
Comment:
they did not initiate, they were part of what is called schismogenesis, a vicious circle, to my mind. Which again does not excuse atrocities.
you write:
Just for the fun of it? Don’t you think that something must have been fundamentally wrong with the treatment of minorities by the Muslims that’d cause Armenians and other Christians to do violent acts?
Comment:
I see your point, but you must contextualize it more. If Turks and Circassians hadnt been massacred and driven out by the powers, the Armenians would not have been seen as a deadly menace by the Turkish generaiton who grew up after 1864 and 1877. This is part of the context and by ignoring it you give a distorted picture of the development of events. Bloxham says in his “great game”:
Though there is no definite causal relationship between the polulation displacement and the coming armenian genocide, it is beyond dispute that muslim suffering on this scale and the indifference of the outside world to it, heavily coloured late ottoman perspectives, providing a model of the ‘solution’ of population problems and accentuating an already brutalized ethos of state demographic policy of the region (p.63)
This is the type of contextualing which is done in serious historiography.
you write:
I repeated two times already: Armenians and other Christians were not the dominant ethnic and religious group in the empire.
comment:
excuse me for not commentin on the section which follows this sentence. I may be mistaken, but to my mind this is not relevant. It was the threat of dismemberment by the powers combined with Christian demands and rebellions which made christian minorities dangerous for the empire.
Comment: what should be the deep rooted causes?
you write:
P.S. In your comment addressed to Boyajian: “Mjm said that Armenians never killed innocent people,” you twisted my words that, actually, originally were armen_yan’s. I just expanded on your response to him by stating that yes, except for isolated cases of inter-communal, inter-ethnic violence and retaliation acts that were common all over the oppressive empire, Armenians never killed innocent Turkish people on the scale, in the form, on the state level, and with the degree of indescribable barbarity that Turks did in regard to 1.5 million Christian Armenians and hundreds of thousands of forcibly expelled and mutilated others. You have an objection to that?
comment: No, I have no objection to that. The barbarity of the ittihadists – I will not say “Turks” – was of a much greater scale than the barbarity of the Armenians. And I will add that the Armenians have been asking for recognition for many years and the Turkish side has mainly been mentioning the Balcans the Caucasus and the Armenian actions when pressed by Armenians and by world opinion. So I am concerned with how I can support the development towards a democratized Turkey which will go into the black spots of its history. But here in this debate I argue against Armenians opinions at attitudes that I believe are contrafinal. They are fuel for the Turkish nationalists.
Oh Ragnar.. you make me laugh…
Look who is talking about confused.. someone who says something and then justifies it with either he does not know about it much or has not read anything about it.. please…
As Boyajian said it so beautifully
Also, please know that I have no reluctance to discuss issues with those that disagree with me. I have reluctance to being drawn too deeply into discussion with those whose motives are not clear to me. I like to know who I am dealing with and what their agenda is. Understandable?
I said the same thing over and over and over and over again to you… this was our WHOLE purpose on the previous forum.. YOU sir do not know what you respresent…you do not know your goal.. you do not have an agenda….all you are here to do is throw some information you learned from The Turks and see what sticks.. well that is not going to work sir….. that is not going to be enough for you to be considered someone solid and educated.. Sorry….
The reason I am impatient with you is because of our previous encounter and i see the same Ragnar here.. confused or not.. I believe we all know has something to fight for and who has something to learn and accept……
Have a good day sir..
Gayane
I mean that the great majority of Turks seem to be feeling much more confident now that they will not have to answer the Armenian claims than they were in 2005. I see this in Turkish acquaintances and in the Turkish papers. So the pressure on Turkey and the assistance to the civil society and the human rights activists in Turkey should be increased.
Ragnar Naess:
Re: “[Armenians gave considerable support to the government by fighting bravely in the Ottoman armies during the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars] is inaccurate.” Of course there were cases of desertion of Armenians from the loathed Turks as it was widespread on virtually all frontlines in WWI and by any side. But that many other Armenians fought bravely is attested by the British Ambassador to Ottoman Turkey, who wrote in November 23, 1912 that “the several thousands of Armenian troops have fought better than any of the other non-Turkish elements.” You can find his memoirs in the British Public Record Office. I forgot his name but will get it for you, if you wish.
Re: “I doubt that Enver was sincere [about publically expressing gratitude to the Armenians for their conduct during the Sarikamis campaign].” Of course he was not, but his public acknowledgment testifies to the fact that Armenians nevertheless fought on the Ottoman side. Also, what “Armenian rebellious activities” do you have in mind? Itemize them for me, if you will, so I learn in my old age that there were Armenian “rebellions” against the Ottoman government… Save yourself from a heavy debate if you choose Zeitoun or Van resistances as they were not “rebellions.”
Re: “I only have in mind that the Hunchak provocation was one of many factors that influenced the Turkish attitude towards Armenians.” Incorrect, shifted emphasis. Turkish attitude towards Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians, as distinct ethnic and Christian groups, was already ascertained by degrading these indigenous nations to the level of voiceless, discriminated, and oppressed millets.
Re: Savages. By the term I meant the known origin of the Turks: tent-living nomadic savages descended from the Mongolian steppes, who invaded and scorched highly-developed Christian civilizations of the Greek Byzantines, Assyrians, and Armenians inhabiting Asia Minor and Europe. Of course, even civilized nations perform savage acts, but only a few nations, Turks of course included, perpetrate premeditated genocides of human beings. Besides, some of those civilized nations who committed savage acts also have an ability to stand up to their civilizational level and apologize for or admit the crime, in contrast to the Turks.
mjm
the conference:
Contextualizing the Armenian experience in the Ottoman Empire. From the Balkan Wars to the Turkish republic. University of Michigan march 8-10, 2002.
The article:
Fikret Adanir: Non-muslims in the ottoman army and the Ottoman defeat in the Balkan war 1912/13
Mjm
thank you for the information. If you have any references on the CUP conclave in 1910 I am happy. Actually in the Adanir article the main targets are the Ottoman Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian soldiers. However he also refers to a source saying that Christian Ottoman soldiers only fought in the beginning of the War. At the later defense lines at Catalca close to Istanbul very few remained…..
have a good day
Ragnar Naess
PS Boyajian, I wish you luck!
Thank you for the good wishes Ragnar (though I wonder what specifically you refer to) and for giving me the term schismogenesis. I think I am currently involved in a schismogenic conversation elsewhere on this website! How do you extract yourself from such a “vicious circle” once in it? How do propose Armenians and Turks extract their nations from a longstanding schismogenic relationship? Yes, I know, dialogue, dialogue, dialogue!
boyajian
well, I might say I wish everybody luck…
in potential or actual shismogenesis, I tell myself that I will try to hold my ground disagreeing, being more and more explicit, clear, and not repeating arguments, but providing new ones. At the same time I try to be polite, continue to be polite. But in actual practice I get angry, express myself muddly, experience that I do not answer the interlocutor good enough, and feel I am arrogant. Then I decide that I just must admit mistakes and try to go on….
Boyajian jan.. lav asetsir….apres lol
If only Turks knew how to listen… we won’t have such difficulty… How can you talk to a nation who thinks they are ALL THAT and then some because they have the cash stashed under their bellies and can buy any weakling or anyone without a backbone by feeding lies and distorted history…a nation who specifically enacted a law to stop any communication between her OWN CITIZEN about the Armenian Genocide and the ARmenian history, culture, lands, churches, monuments…
I know Ragnar is all about dialogue… and I know he is all about lets show empathy to Turks and what they went through, lets forget and forgive and acknowledge that TUrks also suffered from wars and murder perpetrated by their OWN govt… and then maybe Turks will ALLOW us to have a dialogue with them… BS.. all the way…don’t you think Ragnar??
Mjm.. thank you for your detailed and very information … glad you are on our team..:)
Gayane
Ragnar Naess:
You: “…an event in August 1914 [Zeitoun resistance] comes before April 1915.”
Me: Exactly. And I was expecting that you’d expand on this chronological chain by going deeper into chronoloigy: what triggered the genocide that started in April 1915? Or Van resistance of February 1915? Or Zeitoun resistance of August 1914? Or Adana massacres of 1909? Or Hamidian massacres of 1894-1896? You tend to focus on isolated events, such as “The Zeitoun events may be part of the events triggering the Van development” or “Armenian youths evidently triggered off Muslim reprisals in the form of massacres,” whereas by presenting the general atmosphere in which oppressed Armenians lived I’m trying to show that all these instances represent monocausality and that Armenian actions were reactive, not proactive, to maltreatment they experienced for centuries.
You: I don’t know about the CUP conclave in 1910. Do you have a reference?
Me: Well, you should. Already in 1906-1907 rising Young Turk leaders Drs. Mehmed Nazim and Behaeddin Shakir described the Armenians as enemies of Turkish and Caucasian Muslims “to be dealt with.” They called Armenians “tubercular microbes” [doesn’t the Nazi categorization of the Jews come to one’s mind?] that were contaminating the state. The CUP soon banned national minority associations and clubs and imposed a policy of language Turkification. Then on August 6, 1910, during further upheavals in Macedonia and Albania, a secret top-level CUP conclave assembled in Saloniki [note: in the town where many top CUP leaders were initiated as freemasons and where many of them descended from crypto-Jewish families, the so-called Donmeh, including the great falsificator Mustafa Kemal]. Dr. Nazim, who had described the Armenians as archenemies three years before [note the chronology, i.e: already in 1907], served as vice president at this meeting. CUP leader Talaat announced that equality between Muslims and infidels was “unrealizable” [note his reflection on the general anti-Armenian atmosphere factor that I keep emphasizing]. He added: “There can therefore be no question of equality until we have succeeded in our task of Ottomanizing the Empire [note: pan-Turanic programmatic statement of the top Young Turk leaders that you tend to belittle as to being just ‘verbal’],” which was feasible because “[t]he army is solidly ranged in our support … we remain all-powerful.” He called for crushing the non-Muslim communities “by force and by arms.”
Source: Ben Kiernan, “Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur,” Armenian Genocide Chapter, see: bibliographical references and index for Private Papers of Dr. Nazim and Bahaeddin Shakir.
You: […a scheme to create a new pan-Turkic empire extending from Constantinople to the Caspian Sea and beyond] is very conjectural. Landau in his book on pan-Turkism and also Zurcher emphasize that pan-Turkish policies were more words than a real policy.” I could bring you tons of other scholars’ assessments that it was a policy. As you tend to particularly incline towards the denialists’ standpoints, here’s one widely-known conclusion of the most notorious of them, Bernard Lewis:
“For the Turks, the Armenian movement was the deadliest of all threats. From the conquered lands of the Serbs, Bulgars, Albanians, and Greeks, they could, however reluctantly, withdraw, abandoning distant provinces and bringing the Imperial frontier nearer home. But the Armenians, stretching across Turkey-in-Asia from the Caucasian frontier to the Mediterranean coast, lay in the very heart of the Turkish homeland—and to renounce these lands would have meant not the truncation, but the dissolution of the Turkish state.”
I personally would describe the creation of a new pan-Turanic empire as programmatic objective, but in no way “conjectural.” After all, are we blind to see that at least within “the very heart of the Turkish homeland” (which is in reality the Armenian homeland), the pan-Turanic program has in fact been implemented? Or you can point out to any numbers of living Greeks, Assyrians, or Armenians on those lands? Would be curious to know…
You: “Both Hilmar Kaiser and Donald Bloxham, while supporting the genocide thesis more generally, doubt about premeditation that long time before the genocidal events.”
Me: Again, I could bring tons of genocide scholars and historians who would defeat you at the outset in that you think “I overdo the idea of premeditation.” As far as I know, Kaiser himself recently found and published an important account on his findings on connections between the known points in the so-called “Andonian Papers” and some of the dispatches of the Ottoman Interior Ministry, regarding the premeditated character of Turkish atrocities. The prevailing majority of genocide scholars would tell you that it’s beyond doubt that the genocide was premeditated in the inner circles of the CUP.
You: “The Ottoman system was much more tolerant than contemporary systems until the age of nationalism when the combination of pressures by the powers.”
Me: Please refrain from making statements not susceptible of proof. Give me just one aspect of Ottoman system’s “tolerance” towards its ethnic minorities—except for freedom of practicing religion that they simply couldn’t ban in a fear of outburst of major hostilities—that you think can support your argument. Just one. What other civil liberty did those centuries-long oppressed minorities enjoy during the “tolerant” Ottoman centuries?
You: “To treat Turkish government as the main cause of the problems, and not point to foolhardy Armenian nationalism is an oversimplification… It sounds more like politics than like historiography.”
Me: Well, could you precisely point out where politics ends and historiography begins or where historiography ends and politics begin? Or you think that denialist scholars like your beloved McCarthy only base their arguments on historiography? Believe me, we have evidence how the Turkish government through various venues finances these scholars. Your statement doesn’t hold ground. I hereby denounce “foolhardy Armenian nationalism” as a bizarre statement. Patriotic aspirations aimed at freeing a nation from Turkish shackles cannot be described as “foolhardy.” I’d only accept it as you put it, if you typify all similar nationalistic movements in other parts of the Ottoman empire: the Middle East and the Balkans, as such. In that case I’d understand that there’s virtually nothing serious and trustworthy under your characterization of yourself as humanist. If you’re a humanist, then the notions of freedom fighting, de-colonization, national liberation, and self-determination must be connatural to you. Armenian nationalism grew as Turkish government’s maltreatment of this particular ethnic and religious minority group deepened. For a simple reason: Armenians did not represent the government whose prerogative was to define policies towards the minorities, Armenians were a minority.
You: “Do you mean that the massacres of Armenians in Istanbul after the occupation of Ottoman Bank in 1896 would have happened, if there had been no occupation?
Me: No, I mean the occupation of the Ottoman Bank in 1896 wouldn’t have happened had there not been preceding wholesale massacres of up to 300,000 Armenians by the Sultan that started in 1894.
You: [Armenians] did not initiate [killings of Muslims], they were part of what is called schismogenesis, a vicious circle, to my mind, which, again, does not excuse atrocities.
Me: Any circle begins at a certain point when you start drawing it on the paper. Had there not been Ottoman occupation of the Armenian lands and colonization of indigenous people inhabiting them, and the consequent gross maltreatment of Ottoman Armenian subjects, there would have been no ‘schismogenesis’.
You: “If Turks and Circassians hadn’t been massacred and driven out by the powers, the Armenians would not have been seen as a deadly menace by the Turkish generation who grew up after 1864 and 1877.” And where are the Armenians in this “brilliant” conceptualization of yours? Was it the Armenians that massacred and drove out Turks and Circassians to be viewed “as a deadly menace by the Turkish generation who grew up after 1864 and 1877”? Or the Turkish intellectual capabilities are so limited as not to distinguish between the powers who drove them out from Turk-colonized lands and central- and central-eastern Armenians who were living thousands of miles from those lands? From a passage that you brought up from Bloxham’s account I understand that “there is no definite causal relationship between the population displacement and the coming Armenian genocide.” That Muslims suffering on this scale and the indifference of the outside world to it, heavily colored late ottoman perspectives, is not Armenians’ problem nor is can it serve as a cause for mass murdering the Armenians. Homogenization of the Ottoman state by means of forced expulsions and mass extermination of non-Muslims and preservation of as much remnant territory as possible free of ethnic minorities is THE deep-rooted cause. Ha this not been the cause, Ottoman government would simply imprison a few Armenian revolutionaries, but not massacre and mutilate millions of innocent men, women, children and the elders. This is the type of contextualizing which is done in serious Armenian historiography.
You: “[That Armenians and other Christians were not the dominant ethnic and religious group in the empire] is not relevant. It was the threat of dismemberment by the powers combined with Christian demands and rebellions which made Christian minorities dangerous for the empire.
Me: Christian demands and “rebellions” (I’m still waiting for the list of Armenian-initiated “rebellions” against the Ottoman government) were their rightful indignation against the centuries of oppression and colonization of their indigenous lands by the Turks. If you see them from the narrow Turkish perspective , as you usually do, they may be classified as “demands and rebellions,” but from the perspective of world history they fall under the category of de-colonization, national liberation and self-determination movements of the oppressed against the oppressors. Also, pleas provide in what terms the bulk of 2 to 2.5 mln Armenian population was “dangerous” for the empire. You mean all of them were organized into regiments throughout the empire, mobilized to the extent by the sound of a whistle they’d massacre poor outnumbering Turks, and armed to the teeth? As a spokesman of Turkish idiotic arguments, could you tell us where exactly the Turks see danger to their empire from an Armenian Christian minority? Enumerate elements of projected danger, please.
You: “The barbarity of the Ittihadists – I will not say “Turks.”
Me: They were ethnic Turks. While some of them might have been crypto-Jews, but in any case, they represented the official government of the Turkish Ottoman empire. As such, they were Turks.
You: “Barbarity of the Ittihadists was of a much greater scale than the barbarity of the Armenians.”
Me: What?! Where in the world have you ever heard of Christian Armenians, who’ve inhabited Eastern Asia Minor for more than 3000 years and created highly-developed civilization, as being “barbarous”? Conversely, haven’t you ever heard how the civilized world characterizes the Turks: “barbarian Turks”? Might you know why?
You: “But here in this debate I argue against Armenians opinions at attitudes that I believe are contrafinal. They are fuel for the Turkish nationalists.”
Me: I don’t give a d*** what is and what is not “fuel for Turkish nationalists.” I simply present my vision of the centuries-long oppression of the Armenians and their ultimate annihilation by the Turks based on my readings into the subject and a wealth of contemporary witness accounts and Turkish court martials hearings.
Hi Gayane, glad to share a laugh with you!
Ragnar, good luck to you as well. I appreciate your honesty with respect to your comment on dealing with “schismogenesis.”
Thank you for your reference to the 1910 conclave.
No, we see this very differently.
Your first para: yes, the Armenians were reactive, and so were the Turks, reacting to massacres and ethnic clenasing. That the Armenians had no role in the Balkans is no counter argument. Then I believe you confuse the quesion of ethics with the question of what dynamism was present.
That the Turanian policy was mostly window-dressing in WW1 is also repeated by Zurcher. How would a loud Turanian proclamation have afftected some 200.000 Arab soldiers in the Ottoman army.
Ottoman tolerance of minorities: I say compared to contemporary European politics, but hardly an ideal . you twist my words
you write:
You: “The barbarity of the Ittihadists – I will not say “Turks.”
Me: They were ethnic Turks.
comment:
Strange. my point is of course that many Turks were not ittihadists
Fuel for turkish nationalists – for instance the idea that Turks are genetically determined to kill. How will that sound in the ears of Turkish members of the Turkish Human Rights Association, many of whom uphold the genocide thesis?
Ragnar Naess:
“No, we see this very differently.”
Who “we”? You mean yourself and the Turks?
“Yes, the Armenians were reactive, and so were the Turks reacting to massacres and ethnic cleansing.”
Armenians were reactive to actions committed by the Turks. Whose actions were the Turks were reactive to?
“That the Armenians had no role in the Balkans is no counter argument.”
Sorry, but do you consider yourself a sober-minded person? If Armenians’ non-interference and non-participation in the expulsions of Turks from occupied lands in the Balkans is not a counter-argument, then what is the counter-argument?
“That the Turanian policy was mostly window-dressing in WW1 is also repeated by Zurcher. How would a loud Turanian proclamation have affected some 200.000 Arab soldiers in the Ottoman army.”
It wasn’t loud; it was a programmatic provision voiced by top CUP leaders at many events and internal proclamations. Many other scholars (non-Armenian) agree on that. Again, if you disagree, show us a living Assyrian, or a Greek, or an Armenian in the current Turkish heartland.
“Strange. My point is of course that many Turks were not Ittihadists.”
Those Turks who actually were Ittihadists premeditated and perpetrated the genocide of Armenians.
“Fuel for Turkish nationalists – for instance the idea that Turks are genetically determined to kill. How will that sound in the ears of Turkish members of the Turkish Human Rights Association, many of whom uphold the genocide thesis?”
I never said that Turks are genetically determined to kill. I said their forefathers have savage origin as attested in any history and anthropology book.
Mjm
you and I see it very differently. Excuse me for saying so, but if you perceive me as promoting a typical Turkish view, I dont know what to say. It is obviously wrong
the powers prayed on the ottoman empire, for instance russia who aided the bulgarians, and the turks reacted by seeing armenians as enemies who maybe wanted to repeat the “Bulgarian way”. This is cause and effect.
True – you did not say Turks were genetically disposed. By the way,. modern anthropology books don use the term “savage”.
Do you feel that our dialogue is fruitful now? Or had be better stop. I am in doubt
Ragnar Naess: I’m sorry if my comments created an impression that I “perceive you as promoting a typical Turkish view.” In reality, I don’t think that you promote “typical” Turkish view, but I’m puzzled as to why nowhere in your comments, not even once, you cited genocide scholars and historians—who clearly represent the majority vs. genocide denialists or apologists—and tend to almost always rely on Turkish authors or a few disreputable Western scholars known as being bought and paid for by the Turks. Indeed, scroll up and see if at any one instance you cited the works of any of the hundreds of genocide scholars, historians, Nobel Prize laureates, writers, anthropologists, international lawyers—in their individual capacity or representing reputable organizations or associations—all having no doubt, supported by their extensive works on the subject, about the premeditated character of genocide of Armenian by the Ottoman Turkish government. I dislike your being heavily influenced by one-sidedness in your assessments of the crime, not by your “typical” Turkish view. A vivid example of such one-sided influence is found in the statement as follows: “The powers prayed on the Ottoman Empire, for instance Russia who aided the Bulgarians, and the Turks reacted by seeing Armenians as enemies who maybe wanted to repeat the ‘Bulgarian way’. This is cause and effect.” It’s like saying: “A group of policemen entered my neighbors’ house and evicted them, and because of that my neighbors intruded my house and slaughtered all the members of family: newborns, kids, women, and ailing elders.” It’s the most incongruous and essentially derogatory statement I’ve ever heard from a person who’s a non-Turk. I didn’t say that modern anthropology books “use” the term “savage”. I said you could learn about the origins of the Turks by reading modern anthropology books that’d attest that Turks never belonged in Asia Minor before the 11th-13th centuries AD when their forefathers: Seljuks and Mongols, invaded the area, descending from Altay mountains and steppes of Mongolia. Am I incorrect? Prove me wrong. I feel this dialogue is fruitful, but if you stick to your perverted viewpoint that the Turks perpetrated the genocide of Armenians because Armenians played any role in “the powers’ praying on the Ottoman Empire,” then we’d better stop. It’s absurd; it’s anti-scientific, absolutely unsubstantiated and unproven from the historical and simply causal points of view, as well as derogatory for Armenians’ dignity.
Ragnar Naess: I’d like to follow up on your shocking statement “The powers prayed on the Ottoman Empire, for instance Russia who aided the Bulgarians, and the Turks reacted by seeing Armenians as enemies who maybe wanted to repeat the ‘Bulgarian way’.” Let’s assume that a few revolutionaries in the Armenian minority group, just like revolutionaries in other minority groups wishing to throw off the Ottoman colonialist yoke, such as Arabs, Greeks, Cypriots, Serbs, Montenegrins, Romanians, Albanians, Bulgarians, etc., represented the same level of danger for the empire. I must note here that de-colonization movements of groups other than Armenians were more organized and mobilized. Many of them were also explicitly aided by the foreign powers, as you yourself admitted in the case of the Bulgarians. But let’s assume for a split second that Armenian freedom fighters were as organized and mobilized as the others. Keeping this in mind, please recall what the world knows: that on April 24, 1915 the Turks have rounded up more than 250 brightest representatives of the Armenian intelligentsia and, after a short imprisonment, beheaded or shot them to death. These actions of the Turks clearly demonstrate that they understood too well that first the “head of the nation,” i.e. its best and brightest, needs to be chopped off so they easily proceed to the next stage: annihilation of the whole nation. You apparently know the Turks better than me, but I’d claim I know their slyness better than you. Could you give me any explanation in an objective, rational, and balanced manner: if, as you suggest, “the Turks reacted by seeing Armenians as enemies who maybe wanted to repeat the ‘Bulgarian way’,” why wouldn’t they, roughly similar to their April 15 actions–but with no victims and no consequent race annihilation–round up these few revolutionaries, try and imprison them as “initiators” in order to avoid repetition of the ‘Bulgarian way’? If Turkish state repressive machine was able to forcibly deport, relocate, and annihilate millions of innocent Armenian people, why should there be a problem for the Turkish authorities to imprison a few revolutionaries to avoid “repetition of the ‘Bulgarian way’?” I, along with hundreds of witnesses, genocide scholars, and historians, have the answer to this question, but I’d like to hear yours.
mjm is right on the money! It may seem simplistic to ask why Turks didn’t just imprison those Armenian leaders and intellectuals they rounded up on April 24th, 1915, to ‘prevent’ a Bulgarian situation, but beheaded and hung them instead. Think about how a sudden attack to the ‘brain’ of the nation sets the stage for leaving the rest of the body of Armenians without leadership and voice, bereft and unprepared for the slaughter that was about to be unleashed. You can’t lightly brush past facts like this looking for the “smoking gun”. This doesn’t suggest the beginning of a centralized plan to “solve the problem of the Armenians?”
Mjm… Bravo.. BRAVO… i get goosebumps when I read your comments… very very powerful… THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart…
You remind me of Msheci who has the same resilience, knowledge, drive and intelligence who stood firmly against this man Ragnar…I am soooo proud that you represent the Armenian people and nation..plus Boyajian, Katia and few others.. Astvats togh bolorit uj ta…
Ragnar: thinking to bail again sir? hmmm.. deja vu… you bailed on us on the previous forum after realizing that you are not going to win.. the stand you are taking and the ground you are standing on is shaky and weak and it will crumble very soon… however, nothings is unfruitful… anything and everything that is being shared here is for a good cause.. and i hope Mjm’s efforts just like Msheci’s and the rest of the commentators’ efforts can be used to educate yourself and think twice when you start a sentence…but i have a feeling. you will not do much with this.. just like you did not do much with the previous comments from our previous forums…
Mjm was right on the point and i don’t have to apologize for this but only to repeat it.. I personally believe that you promote very similiar and typical Turkish views… you are absolutely one-sided and that side heavily leans toward the Turks……
G