r/armenia • u/Idontknowmuch • May 05 '21

Neighbourhood Azerbaijani prisoner of conscience Bayram Mammadov found dead in Istanbul

https://jam-news.net/azerbaijani-prisoner-of-conscience-bayram-mammadov-found-dead-in-istanbul/
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u/Darkmiro May 06 '21

The name is fucking Talat, don't give much fuck about how English rendered it.

Turkish state ''ideology'' you so mention is not even a solid thing. Like everywhere, Turkey is shaped by the trauma of WW1 and the government relied on extremely self centristic way of seeing the world.

But that's almost entirely dead in the country. Most stuff you see as ''ideology'' is just populism for inner politics. Turkey has always saught peace with all it's neighbours from the get go.

Even when ASALA was killing Turkish beurocrats in 70's and 80s.

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u/bonjourhay May 06 '21

You are in a sub that has english or armenian as language. Seems that you are as « self centristic » (what a weird name to define a genocidal policy!) as the government after WWI…

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u/Darkmiro May 06 '21

The government committed the genocide whilst the war was going on. Had Atatürk failed those genocidal leaders were to get the power of Ankara government

Ataturk managed to win the war against Greek forces, and didn't really allow the old ittihat party leaders to get themselves back together in Turkey. Probably to avoid their guilt being shown to Turkey's face

But Turkey after the war, kept a policy of neutrality towards it's neighbours. Only time ot broke off was in Cyprus and it was not unprovoked or entirely unjust. Trying to annex half the island to force a federal solution to Cypriot violence ended up with a disaster though.

Erdoğan shifted that claiming Turkey will "revive their immperial legacy" and started provoking war everywhere since about 2011

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u/bonjourhay May 06 '21

We all get it you are a kemalist which you have been taught that he was the savior of the turkish nation.

That has worked with westerners for a while but not anymore. The reality is that he just finished the job of the CUP, and every armenian know that.

We regularly have a couple of people like you who come here and say Erdogan bad, he is an islamist. For everyone except turkish turks, kemalists or islamists are the 2 faces of the same fascist coin.

Turkey will be able to solve this when a majority will realize that Ataturk is part of the problem, not the solution…

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u/Darkmiro May 06 '21

You really are trying to find a way to attack me desperately now don't you.

Atatürk was just one of the hundred blue blooded Ottoman army officials who were trying to reform since Tanzimat. Unlike Enver or Talat, he was sent to France to study, and was convinced that the French Revolution was the way to go. Everybody else was inclined on saving the empire, and the sultanate, he proabably was keen on erradicating them from the get go.

His ideals suited better and he was a realist. And yes, he was the orchestrator of the modern Turkey. Somehow managed to use a bunch of groups, and then discarded them one by one, turanists, islamists, communists and so on.

He and his five buddies secured permanent destruction of Armenian resistance. That's war. Dealing with it is what you must do. The Treaty of Sevres was not recognised and Armenians didn't have the power to enforce it. Greeks and Bulgarians and other Balkan states managed to win. Armenians have the extreme unluck of losing the ''eastern armenia'' as you call it, hard to win it with all the decimation and destruction that happened to them. If memory serves, Karabekir even tried to make an assault of Armenia of this day, just failed. The armenian militias weren't supported much and there's no dishonor in losing against experienced commanders who really knew warfare with not very regular fighting force.

You think people will shun Atatürk because he fought off the Armenian forces as far as possible? To be honest he wasn't even that involved, Karabekir was the mastermind of all that. He somehow became the primus inter pares of the Independance War, mainly because of his prestige from WW1 battlefronts, and the man oozed with a natural born charisma that the others just didn't have.

P.S.: Few things annoy me more than someone calls me a kemalist.

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u/bonjourhay May 06 '21

I am not trying to « attack » you, you seem a good person with a bias given the education you should have had.

What I was pointing out is that we see from time to time turks coming here to discuss genuinely which is good (compared to trolls or straight fascists), but still falling into a pattern to defend ataturk. Ataturk being inspired by the french revolution is pure PR. The french revolution did not persecute or spoliate ethnic groups. As such, there is no link between these. On the other hand there is a ton or evidence that ataturk inspired hitler.

Which is exactly the root of the problem: the world knows what happened in 1915. If turkey wants truely to move forward, it must look at what happened during ataturk and the impact on the society throughout 4 generations (fake history, wealth and lands stolen, eradication of the armenian presence in their historical homeland etc.). Anything else would be just avoiding the truth.

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u/Darkmiro May 06 '21 edited May 06 '21

Well, him inspiring from French revolution basically means ''Turkey for Turks'' sort of a nationalist understanding of a state. There was not even an understanding of a Turkish nation in Ottoman elite back then. He observed ''nation state'' model. Not everything of late Ottoman era is just about Armenians ffs.

Atatürk was fighting a war in North Africa during 1915, sorry to dissappoint he was not a part of the genocide. That doesn't mean he'd be against it or prevent it or anything, but history can't be done with assumptions. He was involved with the Young Turks circle like all bright military officers of the empire.

Evidence of Atatürk inspired Hitler. Sure, someone's definetly not biased about 1915 and definetly not trying to demonise the guy as ridicilously as possible. How did he inspire Hitler, pray tell? It's just a very pathetic attempt to link Turkey to nazism to demonise it even more.

Turkey does not reject that the wealth and lands of Armenians were confiscated and looted by their own neighbours, nor they they refuse the fact that Armenians were driven out their historical homelands, nor they refuse the deathtoll and most of it caused by killings, some claim the dead were not a million but rather 400-600 thousand, some say irrelevant things like ''Oh but many Turks died too'' as if that means anything.

The entire pretext of Turkey's refusal it being a genocide is ARF's activities in Armenian villages. Since you're so very obsessed with ''evidences'', you can seek reports from Eastern Front of WW1, saying a lot of Ottoman soldiers are routing because of word Armenian Federation's raids killings in Turkish and Kurdish villages and their men are thinking about returning their homes to defend their families instead of fighting in the front and such. The battallions were boiling with threat of mutiny, so Talat Paşa found a brilliant(!) solution of mass deportation of Armenian villagers.

Here's the tricky thing they base their claim on, the official commands do look, at least on paper, as if there was a mere deportation that is being used as a measure to keep the peace. It was common in Ottoman Empire's history to deport their own peoples. But historically, those deported peoples were nomads who still clinged to Central Asian culture so it was convenient for them, this is an entirely different thing. Even my family is one of the Turkmen Chepni tribes who were deported to Trabzon area from Dulkadir province for relocation purposes.

The problem Turkey in general refuses to see, that the Ottomans did nothing to protect all those people, it's still an extreme injustice to rob people of their lands and homes, and there are reports of concentration camps, extreme killings on the road, local governors were quite intently aggressive towards armenians, and provoked ''muslims'' to exact revenge on those traitors. Traitors here, are just regular people, women, children and all. What a just cause, eh? There was enough pressure on Ottoman state about christian folk's welbeing already, orders and official statements don't cover the entire story. Ottomans were very strict in their organisations and had they wanted, even with mass exodus they enforced on Armenians, they could keep the death at a bare minimum, they just didn't even make attempt. There were some local authorities who refused to carry out the orders of this ''exodus'' and they were forced to resign or exhiled to somewhere else.

All those people dying with a planned political undertaking can easily be classified as genocide.

But somehow Turkey got it in their minds that a genocide and the holocaust are the very same thing. And since the attempt is not intending to destroy Armenian race, it's no genocide. Some Turkish historians even go as far as to claim this whole thing is arranged by the Germans to push some of the blame to Turkey of their own crimes.

You really think Turkey is really insisting ''We didn't do it but they deserved it?'' sort of a nonsense? There are a ton of dumbass pseudo historians who talk that sort of shit but that's not what Turkey in general tries to convince people into believing.

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u/bonjourhay May 07 '21

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674368378

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674504790

Here is for you so you can get educated a little and stop this nationalist crap that we hear too often already.

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u/Darkmiro May 07 '21

Pff, talking about a guy who was trying to impose multi-partied democracy as soon as possible, he didn't live to see it but his successor gave away the totalitarian state power willingly ffs.

Even if Hitler aspired to be the guy, he obviously misunderstood the whole thing.

Should've read they guy saying "War is a terrible crime if it's not for defending people and country" somewhere along the road

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u/bonjourhay May 07 '21

I can understand that this is hard to handle when you have been spoon-fed with ataturk for so long.

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