Armenian genocide: open and shut case, or no?

Great Debates
61

Had you even heard of Zurcher before your original post?

Yes, he’s an expert, though I don’t think he’s remotely in the same class as Bernard Lewis.

If you read from the part you linked to he seems far more critical of the pro-Armenian position claiming they grossly exaggerated the number of people killed. He also notes that they were never a majority or even a plurality in a single province in Anatolia which proved that the links Brainglutton provided earlier were typical wikipedia crap.

Furthermore, while he’s critical of the Turkish authorities, he doesn’t conclude that the Ottoman government engaged in genocide though clearly some officers engaged in war crimes.

Finally, I think he’d be shocked at the suggestion that his view is somehow substantially different than Bernard Lewis’ since his account is nearly identical to that Lewis gave in The Birth of Modern Turkey.

Sorry dude, but you have yet to produce a single Ottomanist who’s willing to say that Lewis is a denialist.

Please do so or stop foolishly claiming that Lewis’ views on the subject constitute “a minority report”.

If you really are right and Lewis’ views represent “a minority view” amongst Ottomanists then you shouldn’t have any problem finding ones who attacked him for his Le Monde interview(I trust you’re aware of what I’m referring to).

Those are remarkably foolish statements.

First of all, I haven’t referred to any newspapers. I referred to the opinions of men who are considered, in the words of Tamerlane “heavy hitters” in the field of Ottoman Studies.

If you can produce some “heavy hitters” who say Lewis is full of shit, then please do so.

Secondly, your comment about “the tactic of using newspapers” shows remarkably little self-awareness and is actually quite humorous since you began this by referring first to a comment on the history channel website and then CBS News before desperately scouring the net to find some expert who might classify it as a genocide.

You came upon Zurcher, whom it’s pathetically obvious you’d never heard of before today and who’s book you haven’t read and triumphantly brandished him ignoring the fact that he doesn’t substantially disagree with Lewis.

In fact, his account of the massacres is actually almost identical to that of Lewis’ from The Birth of Modern Turkey.

If you’re genuinely interested in that subject, I recommend the book. It’s a fascinating look at the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of a westernized, secular state in it’s aftermath.

62

Please stop resorting to fallacies, the point was that it was misleading to claim that it was a big deal that the Turkish government opened the records, omitting the detail that the key records were destroyed was misleading so the important thing was to find who made that claim to you, I need to point at laugh at them.

And once again, that is why I looked at him, but lets see what you posted after I mentioned him:

So yeah, it seems that you are the one that is not discussing in good faith here.

63

And… what you did to the Southern Poverty Law center was just shooting the messenger, you also willfully ignored the experts they cited.

They encountered already that indeed the position of Lewis is in the minority.

64

Fair enough.

Please present the names of some Ottomanists who have publicly criticized Lewis’ stance regarding the Armenian massacres.

You’ll find many who’ve criticized him for his opinions on modern topics and more than a few fans of Edward Said who question other aspects of his scholarship and accuse him of “Orientalism” but I don’t know of any who applauded when the French government disgraced itself by prosecuting for “genocide denial.”

If you’re correct and his position is “a minority opinion” then you should have no problem finding those who publicly disagreed with his assessment.

65

Is this the article you’re talking about?

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2008/summer/state-of-denial

The only Ottomanists and Middle Eastern experts in it that they cite are those they accuse of denial.

Show me a single scholar they cite who’s specialty is the Ottoman Empire.

In fact, show me a single one they cite who can read and write Ottoman.

Just because people are scholars of the Holocaust, such as Yehuda Bauer or Raul Hilberg doesn’t mean they have any specialized knowledge about the early 20th Century Ottoman Empire.

Eric Foner is a brilliant American historian and one of the most if not the most respected authority on the reconstruction period, but we wouldn’t expect him to be an expert on Afghanistan in the 1970s.

66

Well yes, if you’re going to claim that distinguished Ivy League professors who are renowned as being the tops in their field of study(as is the case with Heath Lowry, Bernard Lewis and Norman Itzkowitz) then yes, you’ll need to present some strong evidence that they’re wrong.

And yes, how could one be considered an expert on the Ottoman Empire if you can’t read or write Ottoman?

How seriously would you take someone claiming to be an expert on Mexico who couldn’t speak Spanish?

If Lowry had lied about any of those men and women and falsely passed them off as experts in that field, as he explicitly claimed in his letter, than the pro-genocide forces would have jumped all over it. You’ll notice that in all the polemics you’ve unearthed slinging mud at those scholars none have questioned their expertise in the matter.

You’ve yet to present a single shred of evidence that the overwhelming majority of Middle Eastern scholars support your position.

In fact you haven’t presented a single one.

67

Just moving the goal posts, the point remains, the consensus among historians is that there was a genocide, the fact that you have to create the division of “Ottomanists” to deal exclusively with the issue shows that they are indeed a minority.

That does not mean that we can then look at the evidence and eventually change the mind of the majority, something that if you had looked carefully you would had seen that I mostly agree. Affirming that the consensus is not there just makes serious research harder.

But once again, you should notice that I do think that the vast majority of Turks are innocent of this.

68

You really ought to read through a thread before accusing someone of “moving the goal posts”.

The goalposts were set by Jack who upon finding out what 69 Ottomanists said claimed:

You have yet to produce any “knowledgeable specialists” who disagree with Lewis.

And yes, the opinions of people who are acknowledged experts in the early 20th Century Middle East, and have made their careers studying it are what matters.

When someone claims that “the overwhelming majority of historians” believe X about some medieval Japanese rulers what matters is not what historians of American history or French history think, but what scholars of medieval Japan think.

Sorry, but you seem to be conceding that most Middle Eastern scholars do agree with Lewis yet still insist on blindly insisting they must be wrong by insisting that just because most people who know little to nothing about that time period and region think that the Ottomans were guilty of genocide they must be.

As mentioned earlier, you’re like one of those idiots who squeals that he doesn’t care what climatologists claim about global warming because of something some guy on Fox News said or because of some poll that shows substantial numbers of Americans don’t believe in global warming.

For a guy who until recently didn’t seem to understand the difference between the Ottoman authorities and the Turkish authorities and who before this thread didn’t appear to have read anything about the Armenian massacres you’re being extremely presumptuous.

69

Direct insult noted.

You also don’t seem to read carefully at the writings of Zurcher.

In fact there is a method to what I’m doing, I wanted to see if you would aknowledge how he does not shy away from using the genocide term in the book and elsewhere. (I looked before I referred to him)

So, yes, from a few posts back there is already an expert that by your own standards agrees with the majority.

70

In the part you linked to he specifically says there’s no evidence that the Ottoman government intended genocide though he thinks some officers and officials did.

That is substantially different from what the pro-Armenian forces claim.

Also, if you really had read him rather than simply finding him on the internet a little while ago, why were you completely ignorant of the fact that the Armenians in Istanbul(roughly 100,000 of them) weren’t deported.

I haven’t read his book, but I have an extremely difficult time believing that he’d leave that out.

Furthermore, what he says is completely consistent with the views expressed in the letter and by Lewis. He lays the blame on both the Dashnaks and the Ottoman government.

Now, since you seem to be all fired up about the Turks refusing to recognize their “genocide” do you feel the same about the British not recognizing their “genocide” against the Boers and the various Balkan groups who killed vastly more Muslims and engaged in a much wider reaching ethnic cleansing than the the Ottomans ever engaged in.

For that matter are you outraged that the Armenians have never apologized for the Dashniaks nor denounced the current Armenian government invasion and ethnic cleansing/genocide(for the record I don’t consider it genocide but by the standards of calling the Armenian massacres a genocide the actions in NK are) against Azerbaijan.

I also assume you’re outraged that Bulgarian government was able to strip all of its Turkish citizens of their citizenship and expel them without an eyebrow being raised.

Once again, you have yet to provide any credible evidence that most specialists disagree with Lewis. All you’ve done is present the views of one man who is certainly an expert but we’ve yet to see any proof he’s remotely comparable to Lewis in stature or that he even disagrees substantially with Lewis.

At this point, it’s perfectly obvious you shot off your mouth when you claimed that the vast majority of Middle Eastern specialists disagreed with Lewis and now you can’t back it up.

So once more, give me the name of a single prominent Ottomanist with a prominent university who claims Lewis is full of shit regarding the Armenian massacres.

Even then that wouldn’t prove your point since you’ve claimed “the vast majority” believe it.

71

Full Stop. That is what I also claimed, the rest is just straw manning and insults from you.

72

Then why are you attacking Lewis and the writers of the letter and accusing them of being denialists because that is essentially what they argue?

They merely argue that we can’t determine if the Ottoman government intended genocide or not and that’s what Zurcher says.

Zurcher’s arguments are substantially different from what Balakian and others have claimed and are not substantially different from Lewis, Lowry, Lewy or others accused of being “denialists”.

For myself I find all the wailing about the Turkish government somehow apologize for or “recognize” a genocide while not making such demands of the various Balkan governments who were vastly more brutal to Muslims than the Ottomans ever were regarding the or the to be quite disgusting and hypocritical.

It seems to me and many Muslims that the message being sent is that atrocities committed by Christians against Muslims aren’t taken as seriously as atrocities committed the other way around.

The fact that the world completely ignored the way Bulgaria in the 80s ethnically cleansed it’s Turkish population and that Armenian invaded and engaged in genocide(by the standards of those who claim the Armenian massacres constituted a genocide) against Azerbaijan is disgusting.

Nevertheless people are vastly more concerned about what a government that wasn’t even Turkish did almost a hundred years ago than an Armenian government piling up bones right now does.

73

Pointing out that they are in the minority does not mean that I automatically agree with all the other things Armenians say, use logic. The only item of interest for me is the realization that most historians do see a genocide, they disagree on the level of involvement by the authorities, but most do not shy away of reporting a genocide.

http://edoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/HALCoRe_derivate_00003223/ejz28_how_europeans_adopted_anatolia_and_created_turkey.pdf

How Europeans adopted Anatolia and created Turkey
Erik Jan Zürcher

74

Sigh,

Even if Zurcher does believe the Ottoman Government was guilty of genocide, which it’s not clear from the excerpts from the first book you pointed to, how does that prove that “the majority” of Ottomanists believe that.

Furthermore, I believe the above was a Dutch article translated into English. How do you know that the translator didn’t change “the Armenian massacres” to “the Armenian Genocide” or that he may have just used the phrase “the Armenian Genocide” because that’s how it’s popularly called?

75

And that is called reaching for straws..

BTW you do need a cite for that “Ottomanist” term to see if it seriously used elsewhere.

Really, if there was no consensus historians elsewhere and not only “Ottomanists” would not make reviews of new books on the issue without noticing that the historian/writer should not use the term, as it is, most historians do not worry about the Ottomanists.

(PDF file from the World History Association)
http://www.thewha.org/bulletins/spring_2010.pdf

What is noticeable is that that is how the thing is going in academical circles, going for my experiences against global warming deniers, it is one of the best evidences of what the consensus really is: what is being offered in lessons at the university level.

76

Dial it WAY back. Such “comparisons” are much too close to direct insults to be permitted.

[ /Moderating ]

77

Ibn, with all due respect, I don’t see how systematic murder and forced deportation under deplorable means is not genocide.

Just because some were ‘left alone’, does not make it ‘not genocidal’. I mean, we left some members of native tribes alone and that does not make the U.S.'s actions towards first tribes any less horrible. Re: Hitler and Jews: the so-called mischling could testify in court about disputed paternity or try to ‘buy’ their way into protections. And many fled and were able to obtain passports or leave via kindertransport.

There is a line between ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’, but it is very thin. Do you think that because the methodology was different, than, say, Rwanda, it wasn’t genocide?

Are we using the UN definition or ‘the systematic destruction of a people’?

78

Grudgingly, I think this is a fair point.

79

I don’t get it, he has 2 points actually, one is that it is a translation error, the other that it is just Zurcher being popular, in the later case he will be “expelled” from the recognized historians by most of the people that insist that genocide should not be used, period.

By the context of other situations, I would have to say it is clear that Zurcher is more “popular” now.

Hard to claim that Zuercher would not be aware of the title and the context.