Shocked by friend's email about the Armenian Genocide

[Louloubelle]

boskysquelch

thing is I've got a lot of friends whose political beliefs are different to mine, however there is usually some common ground we can agree on and we can keep a debate going.

I don't believe that people / countries / governments are all good or bad, things happen in shades of grey.

if my friend has been raised to believe X, Y and Z then it's not surprising that she has these views. Maybe, through friendship, we can talk things over and both learn something?

While I find her views on this subject abhorent, she is a warm, honest, decent and genuine person in many ways. I was completely shocked to receive this email from her as it seems so out of character.

If people can't talk about this stuff then there's no hope for anything or anyone, surely

 

[Orang Utan]

I would either ignore the email (I have ignored friends' emails protesting the congestion charge), or I would send a less conciliatory email - the email you posted might have the opposite effect to what you intend - you are implying that your friendship is at risk and further implying that you are willing to risk it. I don't think it's a good idea to overtly acknowledge this. Maybe's it best to keep it simple and say you disagree. If they she gets the hump with you merely for politely disagreeing with her, then screw her, frankly, she's not worth the bother.

 

[Louloubelle]

well I sent it anyway

I love her (in a non fumbly business kind of way)*

I'd rather talk to her about it than not. If she's not up for even discussing it then I don't think we can be friends. I don't believe that you can blame someone for holding strong beliefs that they were fed with their mother's milk.

I hope we can talk about it and stay friends, if not then so be it.

* I think
she's the spit of Cate Blanchett in LOTR

 

[Mrs Magpie]

Robert Fisk has a superb chapter on this in "The Great War for Civilisation"

He's the castaway this week on 'Desert Island Discs'.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Not all the Turks.
Orhan Pamuk, who's just won a Nobel Prize, and many others, have been speaking out about it for a while, much to their suffering.

Isn't Pamuk currently awaiting trial for supposedly sullying Turkey's honour or summat?

 

[Orang Utan]

Isn't Pamuk currently awaiting trial for supposedly sullying Turkey's honour or summat?

Not any more - the charges were dropped - they are out to get him though

 

[rhys gethin]

I used to have Zionist friends, now I don't - if you tell the truth about crimes, that does tend to happen. But making it an offence to DENY something is Inquisition theology, not sense - keep arguing with the friend, if she'll argue, and leave the French politicians to their usual bullying and bossiness. Not long since Breton parents couldn't give their children Breton names, for instance. That's about the bloody French mark!

 

[Louloubelle]

Just got a very friendly email back saying that she would like to discuss it, along with a rant about how england and france and lots of other countries do terrible things but don't apologise or own up (can't argue with that) and a link to a turkish newspaper article denying the holocaust

http://www.turkishweekly.net/comments.php?id=2319#top

Looks like I'm in for a whole load of discussion and debate

edited to add, she's from the Laz group of people, who she says are not completley Turkish, but she's very loyal and proud about her turkish identity

anyone know much about the Laz (other than what's on Wiki)?

 

[hipipol]

Hmmmmmm

I'd tell her you think the French actions reeks of populism, that until France comes to terms with its Vichy past and also passes laws against dnying the viscious bastards to their north Belgium committed genocide in the Congo that they - the French - are beneath contempt
However, it was deliberate the slaughter of the Armenians but that it was the actins of the old Ottoman empire and fuck all to do wtih Turkey - Attaturk didn't do it was the last be-Turbanned one, Mehmet the whatever
Fudge and compromise
The true test of friendship

 

[trabuquera]

You may find some common ground in agreeing that the new French law is a) denying freedom of speech and b) more fundamentally about dicking the Turks around and frustrating their accession to the EU (in France's interest), than it is about any genuine national concern on France's part about the Armenians.

Talk to her about Orhan Pamuk and Robert Fisk's chapter.

Fisk wrote a VERY interesting editorial/rant on the whole thing in Saturday's Independent: he's got a Turkish translation of "The Great War for Civilisation" coming out soon and says his Turkish publishers already emailed him saying (more or less) 'don't worry you're not going to get sued'. Fisky sounded almost wistful about that, saying he just couldn't wait to stand up in a Turkish court and present his evidence. viz:

"The Armenian Holocaust, now so "unmentionable" in Turkey, was no secret to the country's population in 1918. Millions of Muslim Turks had witnessed the mass deportation of Armenians three years earlier - a few, with infinite courage, protected Armenian neighbours and friends at the risk of the lives of their own Muslim families - and, on 19 October 1918, Ahmed Riza, the elected president of the Turkish senate and a former supporter of the Young Turk leaders who committed the geno-cide, stated in his inaugural speech: "Let's face it, we Turks savagely (vahshianein Turkish) killed off the Armenians."

Dadrian has detailed how two parallel sets of orders were issued, Nazi-style, by Turkish interior minister Talat Pasha. One set solicitously ordered the provision of bread, olives and protection for Armenian deportees but a parallel set instructed Turkish officials to "proceed with your mission" as soon as the deportee convoys were far enough away from population centres for there to be few witnesses to murder. As Turkish senator Reshid Akif Pasha testified on 19 November 1918: "The 'mission' in the circular was: to attack the convoys and massacre the population... I am ashamed as a Muslim, I am ashamed as an Ottoman statesman. What a stain on the reputation of the Ottoman Empire, these criminal people..."

How extraordinary that Turkish dignitaries could speak such truths in 1918, could fully admit in their own parliament to the genocide of the Armenians and could read editorials in Turkish newspapers of the great crimes committed against this Christian people. Yet how much more extraordinary that their successors today maintain that all of this is a myth, that anyone who says in present-day Istanbul what the men of 1918 admitted can find themselves facing prosecution under the notorious Law 301 for "defaming" Turkey. "

(all of the above (c) Robert Fisk/The Independent

 

[Random]

heh, at first I thought this thread was about the American genocide No one bothers denying that one, because it's usually presented as 'the indian wars' rather than a series of mass killings.

 

[phildwyer]

There was no "Armenian genocide." There was a war between Armenians and Turks, and there were horrible massacres of civilians commited by both sides. The Turks won the war, and were therefore able to carry out an absolutely massive massacre. Which they did. But to compare this to the holocaust of European Jewry, a delibetarely planned extermination of an unarmed population, is absolute insulting bollocks.

 

[phildwyer]

How would you deal with this situation? TBH I now feel very differently about my friend than I did before. I feel so strongly about this that I will talk ot her about it and from the tone of her email I think it's possible / likely that I will lose her as a friend.

I think that is very likely. Turks don't usually like uninformed foreigners lecturing them about their history. They especially resent this coming from Brits, a nation whose history is not exactly free of aggression and atrocities, not least against Turks. They tend to see such people as hypocritical, patronizing and ignorant. I would not send that e-mail if I were you.

ETA: Ah, I see you didn't send it but sent another one. Much better.

 

[JonnyT]

There was no "Armenian genocide." There was a war between Armenians and Turks, and there were horrible massacres of civilians commited by both sides. The Turks won the war, and were therefore able to carry out an absolutely massive massacre. Which they did. But to compare this to the holocaust of European Jewry, a delibetarely planned extermination of an unarmed population, is absolute insulting bollocks.

Not every genocide has to be compared to the holocaust, nor should it be. if anything, constantly referencing the holocaust not only devalues other mass exterminations by acting as tho it was the only one of note, but also devalues the holocaust itself, making it simply a reference point or debating tool.

The systematic and deliberate nature of what happened, plus the sheer scale of it, qualifies it as a genocide to me and a fairly large part of the world.

- Jonathan

 

[phildwyer]

Not every genocide has to be compared to the holocaust, nor should it be. if anything, constantly referencing the holocaust not only devalues other mass exterminations by acting as tho it was the only one of note, but also devalues the holocaust itself, making it simply a reference point or debating tool.

The systematic and deliberate nature of what happened, plus the sheer scale of it, qualifies it as a genocide to me and a fairly large part of the world.

- Jonathan

Well I think we need to ask about the motives of that "large part of the world." One motive in the case of the French is to keep Turkey out of the EU. It was war, and there were massacres of civilians on both sides.

It is the French government who have drawn an analogy between the massacre of the Armenians and the holocaust of the Jews by making it illegal to deny the former, as it is to deny the latter.

 

[Louloubelle]

heh, at first I thought this thread was about the American genocide No one bothers denying that one, because it's usually presented as 'the indian wars' rather than a series of mass killings.

I've been reading up about the genocide of the native americans since colonialsim

a conservative estimate of deaths of 1st nations peoples number 26 million

 

[nino_savatte]

I've been reading up about the genocide of the native americans since colonialsim

a conservative estimate of deaths of 1st nations peoples number 26 million

Careful, phil will tell you there was no such thing as the genocide of the American Indians.

 

[Louloubelle]

Not every genocide has to be compared to the holocaust, nor should it be. if anything, constantly referencing the holocaust not only devalues other mass exterminations by acting as tho it was the only one of note, but also devalues the holocaust itself, making it simply a reference point or debating tool.

The systematic and deliberate nature of what happened, plus the sheer scale of it, qualifies it as a genocide to me and a fairly large part of the world.

- Jonathan

agreed

however the french need to come clean about their own exploits in africa and algeria (sudders at the memory of seeing photographs of algerians being tortured by the french, blowtorches in the face etc. ) IMO and their recent evil nuclear tests on other people's homes

no nation has clean hands, least of all out own and this is one thing I will agree with my friend about 100%

 

[Louloubelle]

Careful, phil will tell you there was no such thing as the genocide of the American Indians.

if he does I'll prove him wrong with links and everyfink

 

[phildwyer]

Careful, phil will tell you there was no such thing as the genocide of the American Indians.

Nino, if you think there was a genocide of the Armenians, argue the case. If you persist in resorting to pathetic jibes such as this, people will conclude that I am right in denying that there was an Armenian genocide.

 

[nino_savatte]

if he does I'll prove him wrong with links and everyfink

Kick his arse!

 

[phildwyer]

Kick his arse!

That would be difficult, Nino, since I have no intention of denying that there was a genocide of American Indians, for there obviously was. There was *not* however a genocide of Armenians. In fact you would probably find a comparison between the two cases to be most salutary in reducing the woeful ignorance in which you currently languish.

 

[trabuquera]

<deep sigh .... I continue, against all better judgement>
phil, when will this cheap contrarianism end? Personally I find it pretty distasteful to be legally splitting hairs over where massacres end and genocides begin, but anyway...

If you ever took the trouble to read the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as recognised in 1948, you will find the following definition:

"any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Raphael Lemkin, the [European Jewish] Holocaust survivor who began to work on the issue, argued for this new definition and the recognition of genocide as something OVER AND ABOVE the "usual" war crimes of massacres, rape etc, precisely because of that targeted, ethnic/religious/regional/national ambition, to wipe out a group entirely. I.e., that genocide is not simply 'massacres gone wild', but a PLANNED POLICY aimed at extermination of a group.

With two-thirds of the Ottoman Empire's Armenians killed and most of the remainder deported, wouldn't you say that that end was in fact achieved as far as the Armenians in Turkey go?

What WOULD you qualify as a genocide - do you recognise the concept has any validity at all?
And if you do - what about the Turkish/Armenian case disqualifies it from being genocide, in your view?

It seems to me that by your definition (state killings preceded by civil war/political unrest = NOT GENOCIDE, but something rather more accidental and procedural) then you are skipping very close to arguing that, say, what happened in Rwanda and what is happening right now in Darfur is not genocide either. Care to comment?

 

[phildwyer]

<deep sigh .... I continue, against all better judgement>
phil, when will this cheap contrarianism end? Personally I find it pretty distasteful to be legally splitting hairs over where massacres end and genocides begin, but anyway...

If you ever took the trouble to read the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as recognised in 1948, you will find the following definition:

"any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Raphael Lemkin, the [European Jewish] Holocaust survivor who began to work on the issue, argued for this new definition and the recognition of genocide as something OVER AND ABOVE the "usual" war crimes of massacres, rape etc, precisely because of that targeted, ethnic/religious/regional/national ambition, to wipe out a group entirely. I.e., that genocide is not simply 'massacres gone wild', but a PLANNED POLICY aimed at extermination of a group.

With two-thirds of the Ottoman Empire's Armenians killed and most of the remainder deported, wouldn't you say that that end was in fact achieved as far as the Armenians in Turkey go?

What WOULD you qualify as a genocide - do you recognise the concept has any validity at all?
And if you do - what about the Turkish/Armenian case disqualifies it from being genocide, in your view?

It seems to me that by your definition (state killings preceded by civil war/political unrest = NOT GENOCIDE, but something rather more accidental and procedural) then you are skipping very close to arguing that, say, what happened in Rwanda and what is happening right now in Darfur is not genocide either. Care to comment?

I don't think Rwanda or Darfur are genocides either. Why? Because they are not aimed at the total extermination of the ethnic group to which their victims belong, but rather to the removal of a sizeable proportion of them from their current place of residence. In the pursuit of this purpose, large-scale massacres are used as a means to that end. But they are *not* an end in itself. As with the Turkish massacres of Armenians. In sharp contrast, the Nazis aimed at the total elimination of all Jews everywhere. I suppose one could argue that cases like the American Indians or the Australian aborigines were genocides, because those popoulations had nowehere else to go. The Armenians, the Fur and the Hutu do.

 

[nino_savatte]

Hmmmm, is it worth taking phil off ignore?

Nah.

 

[Idris2002]

There was no "Armenian genocide." There was a war between Armenians and Turks, and there were horrible massacres of civilians commited by both sides. The Turks won the war, and were therefore able to carry out an absolutely massive massacre. Which they did. But to compare this to the holocaust of European Jewry, a delibetarely planned extermination of an unarmed population, is absolute insulting bollocks.

You what?

This is the first time ever I've heard it alleged that the Armenians massacred Turks.

In fact, my bullshit detector is emitting a loud 'whoop, whoop' sound, and giving off my smoke.

If you've damaged my bullshit detector, dwyer, you'll pay big.

 

[phildwyer]

You what?

This is the first time ever I've heard it alleged that the Armenians massacred Turks.

In fact, my bullshit detector is emitting a loud 'whoop, whoop' sound, and giving off my smoke.

If you've damaged my bullshit detector, dwyer, you'll pay big.

Idris, you know a lot about Africa but evidently *nothing at all* about Turkey. My gf is Turkish, and I spend a couple of months there each year. I've travelled throughout the country, including to the areas where the alleged "genocide" is supposed to have occured. I've seen sites where the bones of Turkish victims of massacres by Amrmenians are still on display.

It was a *war,* one of several independence struggles waged by minorities in the Ottoman empire after WW1. The war was started by the Armenians, and the Armenians were the first to commit massacres of civilians. From Wikipedia:

"The single event that started the chain is most likely the Russian victory over the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. At the end of the war the Russians took control over a large swath of territory inhabited by Armenia but ceded much of it after the Treaty of Berlin was signed. The Russians claimed they were the supporters of Christians within the Ottoman Empire and were militarily superior to the Ottomans. The weakening control of the Ottoman government over its empire in the following 15 years led many Armenians to believe that they could gain independence from it.

Armenian bands of raiders started a campaign of ethnic cleansing of Turkish villages. Their aim was to drive the Turkish villagers out of Armenian areas and establish Armenian strongholds throughout the region. This led to an ethnic conflict that left thousands dead on both sides."

Alright? I think, with all due respect, that you owe me an apology. I also think several posters on this thread owe an apology to the Turkish people.

 

[zoltan]

To be fair, genocide / holocaust are snappier sexier words than the more mundane pogrom or ethnic cleansing. they may not be factually accurate, but they sort of get the message across....

( Diversion - why does everyone feel the need to apologise for things that happened a hundred years ago ? *shrugs* )

 

[phildwyer]

why does everyone feel the need to apologise for things that happened a hundred years ago ?

The Turks certainly don't, nor should they. But this myth of an "Armenian genocide" is being used for geo-political purposes today. It is part of a general campaign to demonize Turkey in Western eyes. It shouldn't be hard to work out the motives behind this campaign.

 

[Idris2002]

Idris, you know a lot about Africa but evidently *nothing at all* about Turkey. My gf is Turkish, and I spend a couple of months there each year. I've travelled throughout the country, including to the areas where the alleged "genocide" is supposed to have occured. I've seen sites where the bones of Turkish victims of massacres by Amrmenians are still on display.

It was a *war,* one of several independence struggles waged by minorities in the Ottoman empire after WW1. The war was started by the Armenians, and the Armenians were the first to commit massacres of civilians. From Wikipedia:

"The single event that started the chain is most likely the Russian victory over the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. At the end of the war the Russians took control over a large swath of territory inhabited by Armenia but ceded much of it after the Treaty of Berlin was signed. The Russians claimed they were the supporters of Christians within the Ottoman Empire and were militarily superior to the Ottomans. The weakening control of the Ottoman government over its empire in the following 15 years led many Armenians to believe that they could gain independence from it.

Armenian bands of raiders started a campaign of ethnic cleansing of Turkish villages. Their aim was to drive the Turkish villagers out of Armenian areas and establish Armenian strongholds throughout the region. This led to an ethnic conflict that left thousands dead on both sides."

Alright? I think, with all due respect, that you owe me an apology. I also think several posters on this thread owe an apology to the Turkish people.

I'm still suspicious of the veracity of your claims. . . and even if what you say here is true, that is not enough to get the Turkish state (not the same thing as the Turkish people) off the hook.

The insurgency of the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front in Rwanda from 1990 onwards does not diminish the status of the Hutu power government's crimes; what they did after the shooting down of Habyarimana's plane remains a genocide, regardless of the military or political situation in Rwanda at the time.