The Armenian Genocide

[Die Rote Fahne]

I'm not extremely informed on this subject, but I do believe it to be a legitimate historical occurrence. I knew nothing about it until System of a Down was raising awareness.

What's your guys take on both the genocide (it's causes and after-effects) as well as Turkey's refusal to recognize that it occurred?

[Barry Lyndon]

Basically the cause was multifaceted: by the early 1900's the Ottoman Empire was falling apart because it had fallen behind the European powers technologically, economically, and militarily. In 1909, there was a coup de tat by a group of ultra-nationalist army officers who called themselves the young Turks. The Ottoman sultan was still officially in charge, but in reality he was politically powerless(the Ottoman sultan was literally in a straitjacket at that point, I believe, due to all that inbreeding). Real power became concentrated into the hands of a military junta, led by two men-Talat and Enver Pasha. Being nationalists, they also sought as scapegoat for Turkey's problems, and chose the Armenians, a conspicuous large Christian minority in a Muslim-dominated state.
The Armenians, much like the Jews in many parts of Europe, did not live exclusively in one location but were scattered all over the Ottoman empire in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Turkey itself. Like the Jews, too, they were successful as merchants, bankers, academics and intellectuals disproportionately to their numbers. For centuries, they were tolerated and had flourished under Ottoman rule.
When the Ottoman Empire entered World War I, however, the Young Turks were afraid that the Armenians were a potential fifth column that might join up with their closest adversary, the Russians. Therefore, the decision was made to exterminate the entire Armenian poppulation. The massacres began in April 1915 when hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and political leaders were rounded up and executed. Having decapitated the Armenians leadership, the authorities moved on to deporting the entire Armenian populace from their homes.
Needing military manpower at the front, the Ottoman government released theives, rapists, and murderers from the prisons and employed them as mercenaries to round up the Armenian population from all corners of the empire, where they were sent on death marches to the Iraqi desert, where countless numbers were beaten, killed, robbed, and raped along the way. At the end of the march the survivors were interned in wretched concentration camps to starve or die of extreme heat or cold. Any resistance to deportation was met with a massacre, and tribesmen such as the Kurds were encouraged to plunder the abandoned Armenian villages.
In some places, such as the city of Van in eastern Turkey, the Armenians did take up arms and successfully held off the genocidares long enough to be relieved by advancing Russian forces, but this was unusual.
The genocide was well-documented by the Young Turk officials themselves, the American amabassador to Istanbul Henry Morgentheau, and British troops advancing into Iraq and Syria, who saw mass graves and heaps of dead bodies. This was such common knowledge that when the Jewish legal scholar Raphael Lempkin coined the term "genocide", he specifically referred to the Armenian massacres, which he mentioned in the same breath as the Nazi extermination of the Jews.
It is estimated that the Ottoman authorities and their collaborators starved, executed, or tortured to death 1.5 million Armenian men, women, and children. The slaughter only really ended in 1923 when the Ottoman state was overthrown and was replaced by a secular republic under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who described the massacres as "a shameful act"(in a statement censored by the current Turkish authorities).

[Die Neue Zeit]

I like to know how Ataturk became so fervent about denying the Armenian genocide occurring under the old empire, how Soviet Armenia was active or passive in spreading the information on the genocide, and how the regime in Moscow treated it.

[pastradamus]

I like to know how Ataturk became so fervent about denying the Armenian genocide occurring under the old empire, how Soviet Armenia was active or passive in spreading the information on the genocide, and how the regime in Moscow treated it.

Indeed, what I cant understand is how Turkey is so fervent about denying it today. Nobody holds the average modern Turkish man or woman responsible for this in much the same way people don't hold the average modern German man or woman responsible for the holocaust. I cant understand why its this difficult to admit - today.

[Devrim]

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who described the massacres as "a shameful act"(in a statement censored by the current Turkish authorities).

I have never heard this, but then if it was true I am pretty sure that you are right and the Turkish state would censor it, which could be the reason why.

Could you source it please?


Indeed, what I cant understand is how Turkey is so fervent about denying it today.

In my opinion one of the prime reasons that they can't admit it is that if the genocide took place, which it obviously did he says breaking the law, then the army was certainly involved and there is no way that the secular God of the Turkish state, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a senior commander at the time, is not implicated and therefore guilty and a mass murderer, he says really breaking the law.

Devrim

[bricolage]

Devrim, to the extent that it is ever talked about what do people in Turkey tend to think about the Armenian Genocide, do people generally buy into the revisionist line or is there a discordance between government policy and common opinion? Also what effects do you think a hypothetical admittance of it would cause in Turkey, my immediate thoughts are in regards to Turkish nationalism?
Cheers.

[Devrim]

to the extent that it is ever talked about what do people in Turkey tend to think about the Armenian Genocide, do people generally buy into the revisionist line or is there a discordance between government policy and common opinion?

Most people buy into it. Actually over the past few years there has been a change in the official line. It used to be that it never happend. Now people died, but on both sides. The most comical estimate I saw was ten times more Turks died than Armenians.


Also what effects do you think a hypothetical admittance of it would cause in Turkey, my immediate thoughts are in regards to Turkish nationalism?
Cheers.

I think it is important part of the state's ideology. I don't think it will change without large scale changes in the state.

Devrim

[The Idler]

Weekly Worker covered it this week (http://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1003851)

[Die Neue Zeit]

Indeed, what I cant understand is how Turkey is so fervent about denying it today. Nobody holds the average modern Turkish man or woman responsible for this in much the same way people don't hold the average modern German man or woman responsible for the holocaust. I cant understand why its this difficult to admit - today.

But why the silence of Soviet Armenia and Moscow? I mean, Turkey joined NATO at the beginning of the Cold War, right?

[Red Commissar]

But why the silence of Soviet Armenia and Moscow? I mean, Turkey joined NATO at the beginning of the Cold War, right?

I've been trying to dig through that as well, and the only thing the Soviet Union did in regards to recognizing it was building a memorial in Yerevan following protests in the 1960s. I'd be interested in what the soviet stance on the situation was as well.

[Devrim]

I mean, Turkey joined NATO at the beginning of the Cold War, right?

1952, as a 'reward' for participation in the Korean war.


But why the silence of Soviet Armenia and Moscow?

The Russia state recognised the genocide in 1995. I think in the Soviet period they didn't want to stir up ethnic tensions in the Caucuses.

Devrim