The main part of the genocide occurred under the Young Turk regime (the Three Pashas) but there were still some Armenians left for Ataturk to shoot at. (And on the other end, there were early massacres initiated by the Ottoman regime.)
While the CUP and the GNA fought each other, they both agreed on a few major issues. They both wanted to remove the Sultan from power and they both wanted a government built on Turkish nationalism.
Like Der Trihs said, it was the Iroquois. Granted, many Iroquois were allying with the British. But Washington’s orders were:
When you start talking “destruction and devastation”, “terror”, ruining crops, laying waste, and not listening to any attempts to surrender, you’ve gone past the normal standards of war.
Granted, he did specify that Indians were supposed to be captured and didn’t directly order any killing. But after all of their crops and towns were burned in the summer of 1779, you have to figure a lot of Indians died in the winter of 1780.
I notice in your citation no mention of a genocide on the part of the Grand National Assembly (GNA) in taking over part of Armenia. Could you please provide a citation demonstrating a program of genocide? There must be some quote, somewhere from Ataturk on the matter.
Could you provide a cite for the CUP (Young Turks) and the GNA fighting one another? I don’t see how they could have.
Could you help me discriminate between the strategic goals of Ataturk, preventing the partition of Turkey and preventing the enforcement of rule by the Entente Powers, from his desire to continue to commit the genocide against the Armenians?
Could you provide cites that lay out, step-by-step, the argument that the Turkish War of Independence was only a continuation of the last few decades of the Ottoman Empire?
In other words show me a clear cut convincing argument other than this insinuation you are currently providing.
Somehow, Inbred, I doubt there’s any cite I could make that would satisfy you.
I’ve never seen a ‘Free Tibet’ bumper sticker on a car next to a ‘Free Cherokee’ bumper sticker.
What is different about those circumstances?
You know, if somebody challenged my narrative of history, and I was really sure of my facts, I wouldn’t post what you just posted. I’d just cite every last thing I said. I’m not going to ignore facts. I’ve changed or corrected something I’ve said on many occasions.
More importantly, other people read these threads and have no idea about this history and would like to know more.
People that know what they are talking about do not have to misrepresent their citations. They can just, in a paragraph or two, detail an argument and support it with reasonably objective literature. It’s actually much easier to post a well-informed argument than to play this coy bullshit.
Saving Tibet is still possible. For the Cherokee, it’s too late.
Its just flavour of the month.
When will we be up in arms about the Armenian genocide in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno Karabakh? or depending on who’s newspaer you read the Azeri massacres against Armenians in Sumgayit?
All within the last 25 years
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”.)
I think that as far as the Turks are concerned, they were in the same situation. The general attitude is, “Hey, we were at war and the Armenians were a fifth column actively trying to help the Russians, so we kicked them out. Were there excessess? Maybe, but the CUP people responsible for that all got punished for them anyway. Besides, look at what the Armenians are doing now to Azerbaijan…how come you’re not criticizing them? Huh? They’re just bringing the thing up to justify what they’re doing there, and all the focus on it just is an attack on Turks, who are historically a tolerant and friendly people.”
I think that’s probably the general Turkish attitude about the situation.
<joining the thread as the token ignoramus>
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.
The crimes are unthinkable, which is perhaps a significant factor in their denial.
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, if it was a Jeep the owner might worry about someone taking his car.
Just curious, how do you think “owning up to it” would look like? Who has to say what and where and to whom?
The usual. The PM or President holds a sparsely attended press conference and says that on behalf of the Turkish people he’s very sorry. The less public option is a personal phone call to a foreign head of state.
Its not incorrect either.
Why doesn’t India apologise for the Amritsar massacre. Or India Pakistan for the partition atrocities which were legion? Keeping aside any justification that might be touted, while especially in the latter, the participants are dead, the underlying political issue is still alive. In the example you gave, its ancient history.
Uh… with regard to Amritsar, why would India apologize for a massacre it didn’t perpetrate? 
Same thing to some extent with Partition; the British were still nominally in charge at the time, so any “national responsibility” falls on them (though obviously individual responsibility falls on the perpetrators).
I suppose I take your point, though.
One thing- note that Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, et al, were only de jure part of the Mexican Empire and only for about two decades. Few Mexicans lived there, and the control of the central Mexican government over those areas was at best tenuous.
Though, in fairness to us, it’s perfectly legal to discuss George Washington’s excesses; it isn’t legal in Turkey to state that the late Ottoman/early Turkish state engaged in genocide.
I am still not clear on who, exactly, is asking for Turkey to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. Perhaps all that is needed is for the Turkish head of state to appear at the UN and say “Turkey acknowledges the Armenian genocide occured on our soil before the current state of Turkey was formed”.
While it is important to hold those responsible for atrocities and not sweep them under the rug, we should also be honest in procecuting the correct nation or responsible party. Examples of wrongdoing need to be made public. While it is important to set the record straight in history, more importantly, steps need to be made to ensure genocide that is occurring TODAY is addressed more directly and openly.