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Old 05-21-2007, 09:34 AM   #58 (permalink)
deadkenny
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"Big K", perhaps you believe that you can 'bury' the past via volume of text. You're wrong. If your intent was truly to provide information, you could have provided links rather than cut and pasting. Of course, that would then provide information on your 'sources'.

Just a couple points regarding the well established genocide. You questioned why would the Turks have 'turned on' the Armenians 'suddenly', after living with them 'peacefully' for so many years. Well, the fact is that a war was going on at the time, and as we've already discussed the Turks were getting their butts kicked by the Russians on the Caucasus front (in fighting, not just the weather, I hope we can agree now). They were afraid that the Russians would use the presence of the Armenians as a reason to annex a large chunk of territory to the Russian Empire, where there was already a population of Armenians. Thus, the Turks decided that the Armenians had to go so as to remove any reason for the victorious Russians to take the territory in question.

Relocation? The Nazi's said exactly the same thing about the Jews. The Nazi's claim that the Jews weren't intentionally exterminated, they were simply being 'relocated' to the east. In fact, to some extent, the Nazi genocides were modelled on the Turks extermination of the Armenians. At the time the Nazi's were deciding the fate of the Jews, Hitler was quoted as referring to the Armenian genocide.

It is very illuminating that you try to justify the 'relocation' / extermination of the Armenians by the Turks by referring to alleged crimes committed by Armenians. So you believe that it is justified to punish an entire population en masse for the crimes of members of that population? Ignoring the fact that anything done by Armenians was likely retaliation for what was being done to their people, you argue that these alleged 'crimes' justified subjecting the entire population to a 'death march' and then finally shooting or lynching the few survivors when the soldiers decided that the 'relocation' areas were too far to bother going all the way to?

The one interesting point out of all the 'garbage' that you've cut and pasted is the number of non-Turkish 'academics' that study Turkish / Ottoman history and have apparently joined in the denial. Unlike Germany, the modern Turkish government continues to deny the truth about the Armenian genocide. These so called 'scholars' know very well that their continued access to sources inside Turkey depend on denying, or at least remaining silent, regarding the extermination of the Armenians.
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