what excuses will they think of next?

What's an "appropriate response"? History revision?

What's an "appropriate response"? History revision?

How can you "revise history" when you have denied the fact that a "genocide" or a "massacre" ever happened?

The appropriate response would be "Sorry." Followed by cash.

I feel that it really did occur. Though its commemoration shouldn't have the American flag being lowered to half-staff as recently occured in Glendale CA, where the mayor is now under recall as a result.

turkey needs imf loans to stay afloat, they have no cash to pay!

"will trade for land"

I feel sorry for you people. Everyone knows that a 'genocide' did not occur in Anatolia during the deportation of the Armenians there. Even the numbers claimed dead are completely made up. For more than a million Armenians to have been killed, there would have had to have been that many of them there in the first place. You all know that this is a lie created to find an excuse for re-inacting the treaty of Sevres.

Get over it and get a life.

The poor Armenian people who lost their lives during WWI because of the greed and treachory of a minority amongst them fooled by a false promise of a homeland deserve to rest in peace. Their lives and the tens of thousands of Turkish, Jewish, Kurdish lives lost in the region during the fall of the Ottoman Empire must not be used to conspire against a nation with which they lived in harmony with for hundreds of years.

What fact?

How can you allow just your feelings to discrace a nation which has been the symbol of religious and ethnic tolerance for centuries before America was even discovered? What proof has been presented to you justify these feelings? Have you ever heard what the Turks have to say on the matter?

Respectfully, would you furnish proof refuting this lie we all know about? Or must we?

Lived in harmony with until butchered by...right?

If I Get Involved Here Who's Going to Listen?

Why is it that there is an affluent Armenian community in Istanbul?

If there had been a genocide, then how did I have Armenian classmates in Istanbul?


The Armenian Question

A Myth of Terror
Armenian Atrocities & Terrorism
Armenian Forgeries and Falsifications
Armenians in Ottoman Documents
British Government Restates Position on Armenian genocide allegations
Facts and Discussion Points in the Armenian Allegations
Hitler and the 'Armenian Question'
Let Historians Decide on So-called Genocide
Perpetuating the Genocide Myth
Quote by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres
Sworn Statement of Albert J. Amateau
The Armenian Issue Revisited
The Armenian-Nazi Collaboration in WW II
The Deportees of Malta and the Armenian QuestionFor information in Turkish on this issue go to: www.ermenisorunu.gen.tr/index-tr.html
Armenian-Azerbaijan Conflict
Briefing Paper of the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan-Section 907 and Azerbaijan-U.S. Relations
Media Coverage of The Azeri Massacres by Armenians
The Massacre of Khojaly: Armenia's Crime Against Humanity


The Jewish/ Turkish Friendship

Story of Turkish Jews
The History of The Turkish Jews
Turkish Jews -- a Part of the Turkish Fabric
The Jews of Khazaria
Related Links

Thank you.

Won't even bother to respond to the progeny of your pen name who recently arrived with irrational responses on this forum...

The links to sources of information from the "Assembly of Turkish American Associations" that you have provided are interesting. Rebuttals to each and every premise presented , however, can be refuted..

For example ,consider this quote from Winston Churchill.

"The Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out the infamous massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor.
The clearance of the race ,Christians all, from Asia Minor was about as complete as such an act, and on a scale so great, as could well be. "

Or this extraction from a statement by Richard Cardinal Cushing...

"This Armenian Massacre was really 'genocide';it was an attempt to extinguish an entire race of people, as such. The sole crime of the martyred people was that they were Armenians.
Minor campaigns within the larger pattern, notably anti-religious and anti-language drives, became auxiliaries to the persecution to the extent that they furthered its political purposes."

The last sentence is revealing in that it is well known in today's Turkish government that a particular cadre ,[not all], of the Turkish military are in effect the "shadow" government of Turkey. Cross their political aims and see what happens.......

I'm afraid that I am not familiar with Mr. Richard Cardinal Cushing.

I can, however, claim to know a little about Sir Winston Churchill, enough to say that there's quite a difference between his WWI persona, and his more matured WWII one. I have to admit that I am much more impressed with his character during his latter years.

I have little trust in the character of young Mr. Churchill, whose desire for continued war at the end of WWI was shared by Lloyd George but overruled by his King.

I have researched the now world renowned allegations of an Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks. This research was prompted by a deep gnawing desire to know what had really happened. My Armenian friends in Turkey were prosperous and happy, and when approached about the subject, they'd simply say to forget it, that it was an abyss.

It has been some time since I dug up the information I found, and am now going to start to dig up again since you are interested. Let me know if you really are sincerely interested, since this will be time consuming for me.

The geo-ethnic map of the area is such that there are many small pockets of unique nations. Some of these are banded together, others like to be on their own. There happen to be 43 ethnic groups (I read this, can't quote them all) included in the population of the Republic of Turkey. There obviously used to be many more in the days of the Ottoman Empire. Those Greeks which wanted to conquer into the Ottoman Empire, and those Armenians who wanted to carve a country of their own out of parts of the Ottoman Empire could not do this without help from some very strong allies.

If Russia is crubling today and Chechnya were to ask the US for help in gaining independence, there would be a lack of political will. To overcome that, a little intrigue would work. Armenia wants land from Turkey, and that is why this issue is growing and growing, along with the numbers of dead, which exceed the total headcount of the day.

Centuries have been spent to undermine first Ottoman Turkey, and now the Republic of Turkey. Simple really, nobody is going to stick up for a country that is disliked, so therefore one can meddle in her internal affairs, support terror attacks on her, all without drawing the criticism of other nations. We have that today. Europe until very recently provided cover and funding for terror organizations that operated in Turkey, and some of these were/are in kahoots with Greece (terrorist training camps) and Armenia (militants, armaments). Fighting terror costs a lot of money and is a damper on the economy, which makes it difficult to make ones population happy. This cycle was repeated for hundreds of years. Still works.

So, while looking for articles for you to read, I came accross one that speaks to one of the stories that demonize the Turks, namely the "sacking" of Smyrna. I call it the liberation, since we had only lost it for a couple of years, but oh well. The Turks, in sweeping the Greek occupation forces, which had ethnically cleansed western Anatolia, west and out of our mainland, are accused to have torched every town and city they "sacked." In reality, the Greeks torched these, and we had to rebuild. No Marshall plan there. Also no industry, but we are Turks, and we rebuilt. Here's the article.

There is information regarding the Armenians in there, and particularly about one Rear Adm. Mark L. Bristol of the United States, the US High Commissioner at the American Embassy in Istanbul ca. 1920, who disputes the Armenian allegations. Here are some documents authored by him.

If you search the web you will find pages that feverishly discredit Rear Adm. Mark L. Bristol. Here's one by Mumia Abu Jamal! Very strange. Donations? I don't get it.

Let me know if you would like me to dig up more. There are eyewitness accounts by British Secret Service personnel and testimonials describing ethnic cleansing by deportation and murder both in eastern Anatolia by the Armenian contender, as well as in western Anatolia by Greeks.

Nobody disputes that the Armenian public in eastern Anatolia was seriously abused. What we will dispute is that this was an orchestrated systematic undertaking sanctioned by a legidemate state, especially by the Republic of Turkey. What I will accept is that there had been a backlash, which coupled with the deportations wasted many lives. I'd also think that the generous overlap in the maps showing WWI Armenian and Kurdish promised lands may have inspired some segment of the respective populations.

Yet the sort we Turks are, throughout the ages we saved minorities from those who persecuted them. There's a Polish village outside of Istanbul. They came there centuries ago, running away from religious persecution in Poland. There's an Afghani clan in eastern Turkey, which emigrated there when the USSR fell on Afghanistan. Ask the Sepharadim who it was that took them in when Ferdinand and Isabella put them into boats... There are many such cases.

A very good book to read that goes into ARAB-JEWISH conflict is FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL by Joan Peters.

It is full of foot notes and reference to many documents. It has opened my eye to the attitude towards the Jews from the Arabs.

Your reference material is keen and requires reading to effectively answer.

The legitimate question still remains , though. Is there truth to the statement
"Poland's head of state Aleksander Kwasniewski said the "1915 Armenian genocide was real."

Like you , yourself ,had mentioned, that if it is true ,actually happened as described by many notable figures of the world, it is an incident of the past, with psychological scars that remains with the surviving victims, but life in Turkey today for most inhabitants is ok [except for belligerant and fanatic Kurds] , and dating Armenian girls is possible, and ok too.

However , the point is that the Turkish government has never ,ever admitted the sins of their fathers.

As a long term American of many generations, acknowledgement of the many 'sins' committed by my forebears has been acknowledged , eventually corrected, and relieved with legal and compensatory means by the US Government.

This is not the case with the ruling political elements in Turkey.

Whether it is a matter of pride to them so as to not have a stain on their conscience, or whether, which is more likely the case -a concentrated effort for the last 80 + years a reason not to pay reparations to survivors for lands lost during this misbegotten campaign by Talaat Pasha and his associates to rid Turkey of all Armenians-[as was the case in Nazi Germany with the Jews,] the underlying cause for denial of the model for Hitler -"Who remembers the Armenians?"

was indeed a massacre and genocide of an indigenous peoples for economic and political reasons was the root cause of this unadmitted cruel uncivilized pogrum.

Armenians in Turkey [as were the Jews in Germany ]quite successful and prosperous in business, the arts,religion, the military, and the overall culture in both nations.

(In an aside, a young Turkish kid from a remote village in Turkey ,19 years old or so, legally came to California a couple three years back ,to make his fortune, and to return home rich. .
He got a job working as a car wash attendant.One day,after a year or two here, he spent a valuable $5 on a lottery ticket. He won $3 million . He returned to his village saying -" I came to America to get rich , but boy, I didn't think this quick".)

the underlying cause for denial of the model for Hitler -"Who remembers the Armenians?"

For an analysis of the subject with footnotes referencing specific publications (foreign and domestic) please visit the following link: Hitler and the 'Armenian Question'. In the meantime, here is an excerpt:

Hitler is often quoted as having referred to the Armenians in the manner cited above while delivering a secret talk to members of his General Staff, just a week prior to his attack on Poland. I have added to the end of this booklet the original texts of the two Hitler speeches, delivered on August 22, 1939 (Annex 3). They are photocopies of the pages of the official texts, published in the certainly reliable Nuremberg documents. (7) Curiously enough, there is no reference in them to the Armenians. One may rightly assume that Hitler spoke to his generals on that day in German, which is his and their native tongue. The Nuremberg documents are the most authoritative, perhaps the only authentic sources. I am aware of a few English translations, (8) some of which carry an additional sentence that does not occur in the authorized German texts. One wonders whether who might have added it and for what purpose!

On the subject of admitting the sins of ones fathers: The Republic of Turkey cannot make it its business to "admit" to any such sin comitted by Enver/Tala/Cemal, or any of the emperors. The Republic of Turkey does not represent these. A similar request would be to ask the USA to admit to the sins of the UK as a colonial power in north america. That rather would be properly termed an accusation.

On the question about our military.. The Turkish military represents the will of the Turkish people, as every male person in the country is part of it. Being a Turkish male and as such part of this military like all my other brethren, I have full trust in it and the values it guards. These are the same values as those that are guarded by the US Armed Forces. As we enjoy a more hightened sense of ugency about security in Turkey than you do in the USA, which however may have become a false statement since 9/11, our generals are weary of terrorists actually being elected into government. When this does happen they have our full sanction to call for new elections.

You may wonder how a terrorist could be elected into government. Step back if you will, and look at the current war on terrorism. Who is the real terrorist? Is it the fool who hijacks an airplane and crashes it, or is it OBL and his elite group around him? Obviously the real terrorists are the ones who live on. Those are the ones who could get elected into government. My military would never allow that. Without the Turkish Armed Forces, the Republic of Turkey would be run by mullahs today.


Nice story about the kid that won the lottery. I never play. Reminds me of the story about the guy who came to the city and started with one (count it) apple. He found it laying there on the street in Istanbul. He picked it up, polished it, sold it, and with the money bought two apples. He polished and sold them and bought four, and so on. Until one day a courier came running and informed him of the death of his uncle in Egypt who left him a fortune..

Why should I waste my time trying to change the mind of someone that carries so much blind hatred? You are one of the last people on Freep that could judge the rationality of my responses. All of your claims are biased as you have evidently made up your stubborn mind on this issue and it is worthless to try to conduct a civilised discussion with you on this matter. It's obvious that you haven't even bothered to read, let alone understand, a_Turk's posts.