# Armenian Genocide - what the hell is Turkey's problem? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 20, 2012, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331 "2012-03-20T17:11:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2012, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/41 "2012-03-21T17:14:26Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > I am still not clear on who, exactly, is asking for Turkey to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. There’s a resolution in the U.S. House which would recognize the events as a genocide. It’s been tangled up in opposition which is essentially motivated by geopolitical concerns and the U.S. relationship to the Turkish government. Adam Schiff is behind it, and not surprisingly, his district includes Glendale, which has a very large Armenian population (that is, a large Western Armenian population, more of whom can vote. Fewer Eastern Armenians, who tend to live here in East Hollywood, or ‘Little Armenia,’ can vote, as they tend to be more recent immigrants. What’s the difference? Oh, don’t get me started…) ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2012, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/42 "2012-03-21T17:38:37Z")
I had relatives that escaped the genocide and came to live in America. Turkey’s continual denials are definitely a sore point with me. Also frustrating is how close the U.S. has come to making an official resolution describing the massacre as genocide, only to be blocked by Turkey threatening to close off its airbases, which we need in our various actions against Middle Eastern targets. However, I’ve spent a number of years in Viet Nam. While there, I spoke with an agency aiding agent orange victims, and I visited some of the affected families. As far as I can tell, the U.S. still officially denies that agent orange caused any of these problems, including problems reported by our own G.I.s. We demand the Vietnamese prove the connection through expensive blood tests on each affected individual … something simply beyond the means of most people there. So, Turkey isn’t the only country to be in official denial. ---
**Author:** ![Intolt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ec9cab/32.png) [@Intolt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intolt)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2012, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/43 "2012-03-21T17:41:30Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Turkey jerky, or jerked Turkey? A Turkey Jerk…? ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2012, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/44 "2012-03-21T19:26:09Z")
I would say the real question is what’s the deal with western politicians trying to do the job of historians. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2012, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/45 "2012-03-21T21:14:58Z")
> [@Greg\_Charles](#): > > Also frustrating is how close the U.S. has come to making an official resolution describing the massacre as genocide, only to be blocked by Turkey threatening to close off its airbases, which we need in our various actions against Middle Eastern targets. ISTM the US will make resolutions for whatever it wants up to the point where saying something may impact our economic plans, morals be damned. When oil is in the equation there is always a new game board brought out. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2012, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/46 "2012-03-21T21:42:59Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > I would say the real question is what’s the deal with western politicians trying to do the job of historians. Historians don’t exactly have the power to change laws, like making it not illegal to claim, in Turkey, that what they did was genocide ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2012, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/47 "2012-03-21T21:45:18Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I’m not saying a genocide should be a happy event, what I mean is that in other cases killings have often been done such that most of the people involved most of the time don’t feel personally responsible for murdering civilians. In this one the incredibly sadistic and callous way that people were executed went beyond what I thought you could get a group of human beings to do. Look up Rwanda, 1994. And there are many similar stories from Bosnia, etc. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2012, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/48 "2012-03-21T22:11:49Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > Yes, it’s this. Armenia is not a dead issue, and Turkey has a similar problem with Kurdistan. There are large Armenian and Kurdish minorities in eastern Turkey, who would really like to unite with the other Armenians in Armenia, and with the other Kurdish people in Iraq, but Turkey would lose about one third of its territory if that happened. That’s the real reason why it’s so sensitive. (In American terms, it would be like the U.S. losing Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to a “Greater Mexico”.) But the only party in Armenia that seriously demands those territories is the [Armenian Revolutionary Federation,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Revolutionary_Federation) which is only a minor party in Parliament. And, is there any active movement among Turkish Armenians for secession-and-reunification? And aren’t all those territories Turkish-majority by now? As for the Kurds (whose ancestors, some of them, participated enthusiastically in the Armenian Genocide, BTW) . . . they’re still a majority in SE Turkey, and it’s going to shake things up in Turkey every time things are shaken up in a neighboring country with a Kurdish minority. That happened with Iraq, and soon, what happens to/is achieved by Kurds in Syria will have effects washing over the border. (Iran and Iranian Kurdistan all stable, for now, AFAIK.) ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2012, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/49 "2012-03-21T22:46:58Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > Historians don’t exactly have the power to change laws, like making it not illegal to claim, in Turkey, that what they did was genocide I think those laws are quite odious, but when the French prosecute the world’s most respected scholar on the Ottoman Empire for giving his professional opinion on the subject in an interview with Le Monde and when they push for laws making it illegal to “deny” that it was a genocide, they don’t have a leg to stand on. I think most French Ottomanists and other French Middle Eastern scholars are probably not all that happy about their government telling them what is the “proper” story and letting them know they’ll be prosecuted if they disagree with the official line and I suspect their Turkish counterparts feel the same. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/50 "2012-03-22T01:24:03Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > The Iroquois; they called him “The Town Burner”. I had never known about this until just a couple weeks ago, when I read the (fictional) story, “The Hidden Children,” by Robert W. Chambers. It’s sort of Fenimore Cooper for literate people, and goes into detail on the destruction of Iroquois villages and farms and croplands. This is the sort of thing we should have been taught in school, alongside the good things George Washington did. But some people apparently feel that “balance” in education is unpatriotic. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/51 "2012-03-22T04:39:52Z")
> [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](#): > > That’s pretty much it. > > Maybe if people compared the result of Washington being at war with the Iroquois with CUP being at war with Armenians it’d be more clear what a genocide is. Well, let’s see, the individual who coined the word “[genocide](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide#Etymology)” was was inspired by the events in Armenia. So why don’t we start from there? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inbred_Mm_domesticus)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/52 "2012-03-22T05:12:25Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Well, let’s see, the individual who coined the word “[genocide](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide#Etymology)” was was inspired by the events in Armenia. So why don’t we start from there? 😉 That was my point. There was an attempt to say the events were equivalent earlier and I think that is preposterous. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/53 "2012-03-22T05:29:07Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > \ > > I had a vague idea of the armenian genocide, but I just read the wiki page and I was really shocked and saddened. > I’m not saying a genocide should be a happy event, what I mean is that in other cases killings have often been done such that most of the people involved most of the time don’t feel personally responsible for murdering civilians. In this one the incredibly sadistic and callous way that people were executed went beyond what I thought you could get a group of human beings to do. With all due respect, using wikipedia as your primary resource for information regarding a controversial historical event, particularly a controversial event from Middle Eastern history is extremely foolish. The wikipedia page on the subject is an utter mess. You’ll notice that most of the sources and links aren’t scholars but activists. Moreover, the idea that 1.5 million Armenians died during it is preposterous and not supported even by any of the original propaganda reports. In reality, the actual figure is more likely around 600,000, which is obviously still too much. In the several decades prior to the Armenian tragedy Europeans had rather rutheless been expelling Muslims with far greater brutality than the Ottomans would later show towards the Armenians and the Ottomans were understandably terrified at seeing their Empire being carved up and Muslims being put to the sword or expelled. The Armenian tragedy occurred in the midst of WWI when the Ottomans were fighting to survive against the allied powers who were striving to rip them apart and followed a bloody revolt in which the Armenians were trying to claim as a state of their own a territory in which around 70% of the inhabitants were Muslims and they were engaged in wide scale ethnic cleansing/genocide to accomplish this. Their revolt was crushed and the Ottomans decided to forcibly remove most of the Armenians from Eastern Anatolia, which while appalling was in the midst of a war for their survival. Most of the Armenians who died were not massacred, but died of starvation which wasn’t so much malice as incompetence, comparable to the way vast numbers of Afrikaners died in British concentration camps during the Boer War(something which is not called a genocide). Those who were murdered were, with rare exceptions, not massacred by Turks or Ottoman troops, but by Kurdish bands who wanted revenge for atrocities committed by Armenian terrorists/guerillas. I know there’s a tremendous amount of disinformation to suggest that most Middle Eastern scholars consider this a genocide and agree with the standard Armenian version of events, but that is simply not true. It’s also worth noting that around 100,000 Armenians living in Istanbul, in the very heart of the Ottoman Empire weren’t expelled, which makes the Armenian tragedy almost unique among ethnic cleansings in which a large portion of the ethnically cleansed weren’t expelled or molested. To the best of my knowledge, the only thing comparable is the Naqba, when most Palestinian Arabs were expelled during the Israeli War of Independence, while a large number were allowed to stay(which has since swelled to around one million). Here’s a petition organized by Heath Lowry of Princeton University, from back in the 80s objecting to Congress attempting to argue that what happened to the Armenians was comparable to the Holocaust. > [@](#): > > The undersigned American academicians who specialize in Turkish, Ottoman and Middle Eastern studies are concerned that the current language embodied In House Joint Resolution 192 is misleading and/or inaccurate in several respects. Specifically, while fully supporting the concept of a “National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man,” we respectfully take exception to that portion of the text which singles out for special recognition: “… the one and one half million people of Armenian ancestry who were victims of genocide perpetrated in Turkey between 1915 and 1923…” > > Our reservations focus on the use of the words “Turkey” and “genocide” and may be summarized as follows: > > • From the fourteenth century until 1922, the area currently known as Turkey, or more correctly, the Republic of Turkey, was part of the territory encompassing the multi-national, multi-religious state known as the Ottoman Empire. It is wrong to equate the Ottoman Empire with the Republic of Turkey in the same way that it is wrong to equate the Hapsburg Empire with the Republic of Austria. The Ottoman Empire, which was brought to an end in 1922, by the successful conclusion of the Turkish Revolution which established the present day Republic of Turkey in 1923, incorporated lands and peoples which today account for more than twenty-five distinct countries in Southeastern Europe. North Africa, and the Middle East, only one of which is the Republic of Turkey. The Republic of Turkey bears no responsibility for any events which occurred in Ottoman times, yet by naming “Turkey” in the Resolution, its authors have implicitly labeled it as guilty of the “genocide” it charges transpired between 1915 and 1923; > > • As for the charge of “genocide:” No signatory of this statement wishes to minimize the scope of Armenian suffering. We are likewise cognizant that it cannot be viewed as separate from the suffering experienced by the Muslim inhabitants of the region. The weight of evidence so far uncovered points in the direction of serious inter-communal warfare (perpetrated by Muslim and Christian irregular forces), complicated by disease, famine, suffering and massacres in Anatolia and adjoining areas during the First World War. Indeed, throughout the years in question. the region was the scene of more or less continuous warfare, not unlike the tragedy which has gone on in Lebanon for the past decade. The resulting death toll among both Muslim and Christian communities of the region was immense. But much more remains to be discovered before historians will be able to sort out precisely responsibility between warring and innocent, and to identify the causes for the events which resulted in the death or removal of large numbers of the eastern Anatolian population, Christian and Muslim alike. > > Statesmen and politicians make history, and scholars write it. For this process to work scholars must be given access to the written records of the statesmen and politicians of the past. To date, the relevant archives in the Soviet Union, Syria, Bulgaria and Turkey all remain, for the most part, closed\* to dispassionate historians. Until they become available the history of the Ottoman Empire in the period encompassed by H.J. Res. 192 (1915—1923) cannot be adequately known. > > We believe that the proper position for the United States Congress to take on this and related issues, is to encourage full and open access to all historical archives, and not to make charges on historical events before they are fully understood. Such charges as those contained in H.J. Res. 192 would inevitably reflect unjustly upon the people of Turkey, and perhaps set back irreparably progress historians are just now beginning to achieve in understanding these tragic events. > > As the above comments illustrate, the history of the Ottoman-Armenians is much debated among scholars, many of whom do not agree with the historical assumptions embodied in the wording of H.J. Res. 192. By passing the resolution Congress will be attempting to determine by legislation which side of a historical question is correct. Such a resolution, based on historically questionable assumptions, can only damage the cause of honest historical enquiry, and damage the credibility of the American legislative process. Here are the Middle Eastern specialists who signed the petition. > [@](#): > > Rifaat Abou-EI-HaJ > > Professor of History > > California Stale University > > at Long Beach > > Sarah Moment Atis > > Associate Professor of Turkish > > Language & Literature > > Univ. of Wisconsin at Madison > > Karl Barbir > > Associate Professor of History > > Siena College (New York) > > Ilhan Basgoz > > Director of the Turkish Studies > > Program at the Department of > > Uralic & Altaic Studies > > Indiana University > > Daniel G. Bates > > Professor of Anthropology > > Hunter College, City > > University of New York > > Luke Bates > > Professor of Art History > > Hunter College, City College > > of New York > > Gustav Bayerie > > Professor of Uralic & Altaic > > Studies > > Indiana University > > Andras G.E. Bodrogligetti > > Professor of Turkic & Iranian > > Languages > > University of California at > > Los Angeles > > Kathleen BurriIl > > Associate Professor of Turkish > > Studies > > Columbia University > > Timothy Childs > > Professorial Lecturer > > SAIS, Johns Hopkins University > > Shafiga Daulet > > Associate Professor of Political > > Science > > University of Connecticut > > Roderic Davison > > Professor of History > > George Washington University > > Washington. D.C. > > Walter Denny > > Professor of Art History & > > Near Eastern Studies > > University of Massachusetts > > Dr. Alan Duben > > Anthropologist Researcher > > New York City > > Ellen Ervin > > Research Assistant Professor > > of Turkish > > New York University > > Caesar Farah > > Professor of Islamic & Middle > > Eastern History > > University of Minnesota > > Carter Findley > > Associate Professor of History > > The Ohio State University > > Michael Finefrock > > Professor of History > > College of Charleston > > Alan Fisher > > Professor of History > > Michigan Stale University > > Cornell Fischer > > Assistant Professor of History > > Washington University (Missouri) > > Peter Golden > > Professor of History > > Rutgers University, Newark > > Tom Goodrich > > Professor of History > > Indiana University of Pennsylvania > > Andrew Gould > > PhD. in Ottoman History > > Flagstaff, Arizona > > William Griswold > > Professor of History > > Colorado State University > > Tibor Halasi-Kun > > Professor Emeritus of Turkish > > Studies > > Columbia University > > William Hickman > > Associate Professor of Turkish > > University of California, Berkeley > > J.C. Hurewitz > > Professor of Government Emeritus > > Former Director of the Middle > > East Institute (1971-1984) > > Columbia University > > John Hymn > > Professor of History > > Glenville State College > > West Virginia > > Halil Inalcik > > University Professor of Ottoman > > History & Member of The > > American Academy of Art > > & Sciences > > University of Chicago > > Ralph Jaeckel > > Visiting Assistant Professor of > > Turkish > > University of California > > at Los Angeles > > Ronald Jennings > > Associate Professor of History > > Asian Studies > > University of Illinois > > James Kelly > > Associate Professor of Turkish > > University of Utah > Kerim Key > > Adjunct Professor > > Southeastern University > > Washington, D.C. > > Metin Kunt > > Professor of Ottoman History > > New York City > > Frederick Latimer > > Associate Professor of History, > > Retired > > University of Utah > > Avigdor Levy > > Professor of History > > Brandeis University > > Bernard Lewis > > Cleveland E. Dodge Professor > > of Near Eastern History > > Princeton University > > Dr. Heath W. Lowry > > Institute of Turkish Studies, Inc. > > Washington, D.C. > > Justin McCarthy > > Associate Professor of History > > University of Louisville > > Jon Mandaville > > Professor of the History of > > tire Middle East > > Portland State University (Oregon) > > Michael Meeker > > Professor of Anthropology > > University of California > > at San Diego > > Rhoads Murphey > > Assistant Professor of Middle > > Eastern Languages & Cultures > > and History > > Columbia University > > Thomas Naff > > Professor of History & Director, > > Middle East Research Institute > > University of Pennsylvania > > Pierre Oberling > > Professor of History > > Hunter College of the City > > University of New York > > William Ochsenwald > > Associate Professor of History > > Virginia Polytechnic Institute > > Robert Olson > > Associate Professor of History > > University of Kentucky > > William Peachy > > Assistant Professor of the Judaic & > > Near Eastern Languages & > > Literatures > > The Ohio State University > > Donald Quataert > > Associate Professor of History > > University of Houston > > Howard Reed > > Professor of History > > University of Connecticut > > Dankwart Rustow > > Distinguished University > > Professor of Political Science > > City University Graduate School > > New York > > Ezel Kural Shaw > > Associate Professor of History > > California State University, > > Northridge > > Stanford Shaw > > Professor of History > > University of California > > at Los Angeles > > Elaine Smith > > PhD. In Turkish History > > Retired Foreign Service Officer > > Washington, D.C. > > Grace M. Smith > > Visiting Lecturer In Turkish > > University of California > > at Berkeley > > John Masson Smith, Jr. > > Professor of History > > University of California > > at Berkeley > > Dr. Svat Soucek > > Turcologist, New york City > > Robert Stash > > Assistant Director of the Middle > > East Center > > University of Utah > > June Starr > > Associate Professor of > > Anthropology > > SUNY Stoneybrook > > James Stewart-Robinson > > Professor of Turkish Studies > > University of Michigan > > Dr. Philip Stoddard > > Executive Director Middle > > East Institute > > Washington, D.C. > > Frank Tachau > > Professor of Political Science > > University of Illinois > > at Chicago > > Metin Tamkoc > > Professor of International Law > > & Relations > > Texas Tech University > > David Thomas > > Associate Professor of History > > Rhode Island College > > Margaret L. Venzke > > Assistant Professor of History > > Dickinson College (Pennsylvania) > > Warren S. Walker > > Horn Professor of English & > > Director of the Archive of > > Turkish Oral Narrative > > Texas Tech University > > Donald Webster > > Professor of Turkish History, > > Retired > > Walter Welker > > Professor of Political Science > > Rutgers University > > John Woods > > Associate Professor of Middle > > Eastern History > > University of Chicago > > Madeline Zilfi > > Associate Professor of History > > University of Maryland As you’ll notice, we’re not talking about a few hacks, but respected academics and Middle Eastern specialists from prominent universities. What happened was a horrific ethnic cleansing, but as near as I can tell, the vast majority of Middle Eastern specialist dramatically disagree with the claims put forward by those who want to compare this to the Holocaust. While awful, it wasn’t dramatically worse than what happened to Turks in Greece or Muslims or Hindus during the partition of India. ---
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/54 "2012-03-22T06:45:12Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > As you’ll notice, we’re not talking about a few hacks, but respected academics and Middle Eastern specialists from prominent universities. > > What happened was a horrific ethnic cleansing, but as near as I can tell, the vast majority of Middle Eastern specialist dramatically disagree with the claims put forward by those who want to compare this to the Holocaust. > > While awful, it wasn’t dramatically worse than what happened to Turks in Greece or Muslims or Hindus during the partition of India. They know which side their bread is buttered. They get a lot of funding from Muslim countries and interest, so they can hardly be counted to be impartial. (okay, I know that the genocide was led by secularists, but it still superficially looks like an issue of Muslims being slandered by Christians) I’m unfamiliar with what happened in Greece, so I can’t comment. I don’t want to threadjack, so I won’t talk about partition, but to put it short, allowing it to unfold so carelessly was one of Britain’s most horrible mistakes of the 20th century. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/55 "2012-03-22T07:24:51Z")
> [@Namkcalb](#): > > They know which side their bread is buttered. They get a lot of funding from Muslim countries and interest, so they can hardly be counted to be impartial.(okay, I know that the genocide was led by secularists, but it still superficially looks like an issue of Muslims being slandered by Christians) Uh-huh. The most prominent and respected Middle Eastern specialists can’t be counted on because they’re all the lackeys of evil Muslims. I’m reminded of tales of the Elders of Zion and how we shouldn’t trust all those scientists who talk about global warming because they’re controlled by evil environmentalists. > [@](#): > > I’m unfamiliar with what happened in Greece, so I can’t comment. So you confidently dismiss all the historians who don’t agree with the Armenian version of events as being lackeys of evil Muslims out to destroy Christians, but you’re completely unfamiliar with the situation in Greece which occurred just a few years earlier than the Armenian tragedy and was intimately connected. What’s next, someone dismissing all the historians claims on why WWII turned out the way it did but confessing they know nothing of Pearl Harbor. Moreover, I nearly pissed myself laughing at the idea that the Kurdish raiders who murdered Armenians were “secularists”. For your sake, I hope you’ve never ridiculed people who don’t believe in global warming. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/56 "2012-03-22T10:14:00Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > With all due respect, using wikipedia as your primary resource for information regarding a controversial historical event, particularly a controversial event from Middle Eastern history is extremely foolish. Well I did already imply that I was fairly ignorant on this subject, but I’m here to fight it. > [@](#): > > The Armenian tragedy occurred in the midst of WWI when the Ottomans were fighting to survive against the allied powers who were striving to rip them apart and followed a bloody revolt in which the Armenians were trying to claim as a state of their own a territory in which around 70% of the inhabitants were Muslims and they were engaged in wide scale ethnic cleansing/genocide to accomplish this. The wiki page makes several specific claims of persecution by the Ottomans against the Armenians. Most can’t be explained as a response to Armenian aggression (e.g. Christians and Jews could not testify against Muslims in court. Why did this rule exist)? The allied powers issued a number of resolutions / treaties concerning the Armenians, and the Ottoman government ostensibly implemented reforms (e.g. the Tanzimat). But each time the reforms promised much the same things as the last ones. These seem like easy facts to objectively check; do you dispute them? > [@](#): > > What happened was a horrific ethnic cleansing, but as near as I can tell, the vast majority of Middle Eastern specialist dramatically disagree with the claims put forward by those who want to compare this to the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands dying is more than just an ethnic cleansing. The term “genocide” does not specify killing to the last man every member of a group, so it’s still genocide even if some armenians were allowed to live in Istanbul. > [@](#): > > While awful, it wasn’t dramatically worse than what happened to Turks in Greece or Muslims or Hindus during the partition of India. Mass burnings, drownings, typhoid inoculation, not to mention the “incompetence” of marching thousands of people out into the desert seems pretty horrific to me. These events didn’t happen? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/57 "2012-03-22T13:12:24Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Uh-huh. > > The most prominent and respected Middle Eastern specialists can’t be counted on because they’re all the lackeys of evil Muslims. I don’t know about Muslims, but Heath Lowry is certainly a hack for the Turkish government. He ghostwrote a Turkish ambassador’s protest letter. > [@](#): > > While awful, it wasn’t dramatically worse than what happened to Turks in Greece or Muslims or Hindus during the partition of India. Not sure how you define “dramatically worse”, but the Partition killings were happening on _both sides_. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/58 "2012-03-22T16:58:32Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > snip So to recap, you’re dismissing the views of over 80 prominent Middle Eastern scholars from Princeton, Columbia, NYU, and similar schools because of a wikipedia page that has been put together almost entirely by activists with axes to grind? What’s next, saying “I don’t care what all those fancy scientists say, here’s a website called the [climatefraud.com](http://climatefraud.com) which claims they’re wrong.” ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/59 "2012-03-22T17:06:10Z")
To really recap, repeating an old list of scholars where most now are not willing to sign again is silly, repeating that and expecting a different result is also silly. [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13930366&postcount=53](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13930366&postcount=53) In any case, a more recent petition was a good counter point to that out of date denialist petition from the 80’s. [http://www.chgs.umn.edu/histories/turkisharmenian/publicPetitions.html](http://www.chgs.umn.edu/histories/turkisharmenian/publicPetitions.html) > [@](#): > > 126 Holocaust Scholars Affirm the Incontestable Fact of the Armenian Genocide and Urge Western Democracies to Officially Recognize it. > > At the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Scholar’s Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches Convening at St. Joseph University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 3-7, 2000, one hundred twenty-six Holocaust Scholars, holders of Academic Chairs and Directors of Holocaust Research and Studies Centers, participants of the Conference, signed a statement affirming that the World War I Armenian Genocide is an incontestable historical fact and accordingly urge the governments of Western democracies to likewise recognize it as such. ---
**Author:** ![Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inbred_Mm_domesticus)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2012, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331/60 "2012-03-22T17:08:33Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > So to recap, you’re dismissing the views of over 80 prominent Middle Eastern scholars from Princeton, Columbia, NYU, and similar schools because of a wikipedia page that has been put together almost entirely by activists with axes to grind? > > What’s next, saying “I don’t care what all those fancy scientists say, here’s a website called the [climatefraud.com](http://climatefraud.com) which claims they’re wrong.” Could you perhaps offer up a website or two, or a decent book on the topic? Something more neutral than Wikipedia? Especially if the book deals with ethnic expulsions/cleansing/genocide in the region in the late 19th to early 20th century (Greece to Armenia)? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/armenian-genocide-what-the-hell-is-turkeys-problem/616331.md?page=4)