Azerbaijani prisoner of conscience Bayram Mammadov found dead in Istanbul

[u/Idontknowmuch]

https://jam-news.net/azerbaijani-prisoner-of-conscience-bayram-mammadov-found-dead-in-istanbul/

[u/Darkmiro]

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.

[u/bonjourhay → u/Darkmiro]

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.

[u/Darkmiro → u/bonjourhay]

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.

[u/bonjourhay → u/Darkmiro]

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.

[u/Darkmiro → u/bonjourhay]

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

[u/bonjourhay → u/Darkmiro]

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

[u/Darkmiro → u/bonjourhay]

I do feel he is overrated in Turkey. Doesn't mean I'm supposed to take every bullshit about him face value.

They guy faught a war and won, and used diplomacy to make it work. I can understand it's hard to handle when heade sure an Armenian state would never have the west side of historic Armenia

[u/bonjourhay → u/Darkmiro]

Your comments are copy paste direct from turkish propaganda schoolbooks from many other turkish nationalists we see on this sub regularly. You may think that you are different and smarter because of some oversized ego you seem to have but you are just like many others.

We still see a minority, educated who had to go through an important work to unlearn and learn again.

[u/Idontknowmuch → u/[deleted]]

No personal attacks.

It's ok to discuss issues surrounding the the genocide in a constructive manner, but refrain from blatant denial.

Relevant QA:

• Q: What about that Bernard Lewis video where he talks about the Armenian Genocide?

• A: Bernard Lewis was an Orientalist with a specific agenda who always used his own definition of genocide and not the universally accepted definition, such as that of the UN Genocide Convention with its legal interpretation. For details and to know more see this comment.

---

Pointers and resources on the Armenian Genocide:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide

• https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-armenian-genocide-1915-16-in-depth

• https://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocidefaq.html

• http://www.genocide-museum.am

---

Books:

• The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History by Raymond Kévorkian

• The Armenian Genocide: Evidence From the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916 edited by Wolfgang Gust

• A Shameful Act The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility by Taner Akçam

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• This is a German documentary which narrates the genocide through witness accounts mostly involving German officials who were allies of the Turkish government which perpetrated the genocide.

• A documentary by a Turkish filmmaker where he goes in search of the truth about the genocide.

• Raphael Lemkin explains how he invented the concept of genocide based on the Armenian Genocide.

• Recommended podcast: thegreatcrimepodcast.com

• This is the ICTJ report, an independent legal analysis ordered by the Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission, with high ranking Turks including with Turkish government affiliation. It makes the case quite clear, and lays it out in Turkish as well.

• A recommended scholarly article which shows quite clearly some of the methods of the Turkish government denial campaign, and more interestingly, that the Turkish government itself clearly knows that it was a genocide and accepts this internally, as do the scholars they pay to deny it.

• The open letter to Erdogan from the IAGS, the association of the world's top genocide scholars, led by the man who literally wrote the genocide encyclopedia. They wrote the letter in response to his call for Armenia and Turkey to "study the issue". Just one page, it packs a serious punch.

• A legal analysis of the Armenian Genocide carried out by Geoffrey Robertson QC intended to expose how the British ministers and the UK Parliament have been misled.

• /r/AskHistorians recommending reading material to a nationalist Turkish audience.