Posted on 03/18/2006 7:54:38 PM PST by Cornpone
LYON, France, March 18, 2006 (AFP) - Several thousand people joined a boisterous rally in this southeastern French city Saturday organized by Franco-Turkish associations opposed to the construction of an Armenian genocide memorial.
The meeting turned rowdy when another group, students staging their own protest against a controversial new employment contract for youths, began throwing bottles and police stepped in with tear gas to separate the two groups. Police estimated the pro-Turkish gathering at about 3,200 protestors, who carried signs claiming "There never was an Armenian genocide".
"We do not want a monument erected. It is a verdict without a judgment," said Sevda Gog, a representative of the Franco-Turkish committee, which plans to petition the Socialist mayor of Lyon, Gerard Collomb.
In 2001 France declared to be genocide against Armenians the events that took place under the Ottoman empire from 1915 to 1917, leaving 1.5 million dead, according to Armenian estimates. The French decision angered Turkey.
In 2003 Collomb announced that Lyon would build an Armenian memorial, though plans were suspended on the advice of the regional commission.
Armenians say their kinsmen were slaughtered in an orchestrated genocide under the Ottoman Empire, a theory many countries have endorsed, much to Ankara's ire.
Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that between 300,000 and half a million Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife during World War I when Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with Russian troops invading the crumbling empire.
Islamofascism and Nazism combined together
It's historical fact that more than 650,000 Armenians (about 40% of the total population of 1.75 million) were mass murdered by the Ottomans in 1915-16. Incidentally, the term "genocide" was coined by the Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to describe Hitler's on-going holocaust. But what first drew his attention to the horrors of holocausts was the one conducted by Turks against Armenians. He used the term holocaust to describe any planned attempt to destroy an entire people or ethnic group - and that describes what happened to the Armenians. In fact, that catastrophe is often desrcibed as "the first genocide of the 20th century". In the early 4th century Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion. By the early 16th century most Armenians had become subjects of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Even though Turkey has always denied a genocide (which always presupposes a planned, premediated onslaught), even they can't dispute the reality of the numbers.
Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that between 300,000 and half a million Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife during World War I when Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with Russian troops invading the crumbling empire.
Apparently Turkey does not deny the deaths. For the life of me I cannot understand why a similar number of Ottoman Turk deaths matters not. Probably most of those deaths were at the hands of Russia and their Armenian allies. It was war -- W.W.I-style.
Another point that has me flummoxed is why is the modern secular Republic of Turkey founded in 1923 blamed for the crimes of the Ottoman Empire. I'd understand it more if modern Germany was being blamed for the crimes of the National Socialists. Go figure.
I'd appreciate any explanation preferably with nonpartisan sources which would allow me to do additional research. I have much respect for the Turks I've known and worked with in years past. Thanks.
Not related to you but yet another similar puzzle is Turkey is blamed for 30,000 Kurd deaths in Eastern Turkey. The Marxist PKK revolutionaries were just trying to get Kurd "rights" -- yet the current government of Kurdistan (northern Iraq) has no use for the PKK and wants nothing to do with them and to the best of my knowledge the Kurdistan government backs Turkey is Her efforts to destroy the PKK. Nevertheless from time to time someone posts accusations against Turkey and for the PKK.
Discombobulated in California.
I don't know if this is the sort of material you're looking for but there's a recently published book by the widely acclaimed author Guenter Lewy, "The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide". I've read some reviews of the book and intend to order it. I've also read some articles and essays by Lewy. Relative to Turkey, to the best of my knowledge it formed the bulk and driving force of the Ottoman Empire although following WWI,part of it was dismembered by the allies to form some other states (such as Iraq). No wonder Woodrow Wilson thought his doctrine of the right to self-determination was being ignored!
The Turks-both within the Ottoman Empire, and in the subsequent republic-massacred Armenians, Jews, and Greek Orthodox minorities, with the assistance of the Kurds (Chets).
The Pashas and their successors laid waste to the remnants of Eastern Christianity in the Anatolian peninsula under the pretext of a jihad that was declared at the beginning of WWI by the head of the Caliphate.
The people who attempt to refute this ineluctable, amply-documented historical phenomenon are in the same camp as Ernst Zundel, John Irving, Norman Finklestein, and other notorious Holocaust-deniers and revisionists.
America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915
Series: Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare (No. 15)
Edited by Jay Winter
Yale University, Connecticut
View list of contributors...
Hardback (ISBN-13: 9780521829588 | ISBN-10: 0521829585)
DOI: 10.2277/0521829585
Published January 2004 | 332 pages | 228 x 152 mm
In stock (Stock level updated: 17:52 GMT, 17 March 2006)
£40.00
Before Rwanda and Bosnia, and before the Holocaust, the first genocide of the twentieth century happened in Turkish Armenia in 1915, when approximately one million people were killed. This volume is the first account of the American response to this atrocity. The first part sets up the framework for understanding the genocide: Sir Martin Gilbert, Vahakn Dadrian and Jay Winter provide an analytical setting for nine scholarly essays examining how Americans learned of this catastrophe and how they tried to help its victims. Knowledge and compassion, though, were not enough to stop the killings. A terrible precedent was born in 1915, one which has come to haunt the United States and other Western countries throughout the twentieth century and beyond. To read the essays in this volume is chastening: the dilemmas Americans faced when confronting evil on an unprecedented scale are not very different from the dilemmas we face today.
http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521829585
Muslims killing Christians and indigenous peoples is nothing new - they've been doing it since mohammad picked up his first sword and stole a camel...
For photographs and documents:
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/photo_wegner.html
Take notice. It won't be long before it's our turn, if we don't stop them.
Thanks for the link.
Guenter Lewy was mentioned as a good source. Here's an article he wrote (an excerpt from his new book) He says there was little evidence of genocide. http://www.meforum.org/article/748
Like Lewy, there are other historians who disagree that what happened was genocide. Another example is prominent Jewish historian and author Bernard Lewis, who President Bush invited to the White House to speak with.
The pictures do not lie. Muzzies brag about their slaughters amongst themselves but lie about them to those they seek to deceive and murder next.
Read the Documents in the US and UK Archives:
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/sampledocs.html
Thank you very much!
Thank you very much for the Guenter Lewy article!
---------------------------
Bernard Lewis the well respected historian of the Middle East and Ottoman Empire disagrees that it was a genocide.
For expressing this view, he was found guilty in a French Court for the crime of denial of crimes against humanity and fined one dollar.
http://www.ataa.org/ataa/ref/armenian/lewis.html
Yeah, and the holocaust didn't happen either. Sorry, Turks, when you live by the sword, expect to die by it.
Thanks for those facts. I didn't know Armenia was the first Christian state. Was it the Armenians who invented the device we call the Crusader's cross?
You pose an interesting question and I don't know about the "crusader's cross". The only thing I do know is that they had what is called the Armenian Greek cross which is in the shape of a "plus" -- + . The history of the many shapes and forms and symbolisms of various crosses is very prolific. I'd be very interested to discover the answer. Regards,
Yes, that was the cross I was thinking of - the + sign.
Well said. Some very reputable historians have challenged the Armenian claims. The fact is there was a war and the Armenians, although within the Ottoman Empire, were fighting for for the other side. War is brutal and people inevitably kill each other. During the 1970s and 80s, the Armenians committed acts of terrorism against Turkish consular staff. For example, in 1982, the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide assassinated the Turkish Consul-General in Sydney and his bodyguard. The same group also attempted to bomb the Turkish Consulate in Melbourne. Turkey has good relations with the US, Britain and Australia and is a member of NATO. These countries that form the 'coalition of the willing' have not recognised the Armenian 'genocide'. I believe the same applies to Israel. For anyone to use events that allegedly happened almost a century ago to perpetuate hatred is beyond belief. There was horrendous suffering and loss of lives on both sides. Countries such as Australia suffered heavy casualties fighting the Turks and the Japanese in two world wars but have made their peace with both. Expressing bigotry and hatred towards Turkey will do nothing to help the cause of the US and its allies in the Middle East.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.