Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan offered what the government described as unprecedented “condolences” for the killing of Armenians in the First World War. The “apology” however is likely to be viewed as manifestly inadequate for those who have long demanded that Turkey acknowledge the killings as “genocide.” There remains a sharp historical debate over the killings though countries like France tried to end that debate by criminalizing arguments that this was not a genocide. The overwhelming world opinion however is that this was genocide and that Turkey continues to offer a revisionist history to its students and citizens. This statement comes as the country approaches the 100th anniversary of the killings next year. Turkey continues to deny that 1.5 million people were killed in 1915.
Erdogan expressed regret over the “shared pain” of the 1915 killings — something that is likely to be viewed by Armenians as falsely equating the level of injury between those who killed innocent civilians and the survivors of those victims. Various countries have labeled the deaths as genocide.
Erdogan said “[i]t is with this hope and belief that we wish that the Armenians who lost their lives in the context of the early 20th century rest in peace, and we convey our condolences to their grandchildren . . Having experienced events which had inhumane consequences – such as relocation – during the First World War, should not prevent Turks and Armenians from establishing compassion and mutually humane attitudes among towards one another.” However, he appeared to suggest that Turkey, a Muslim country, is being unfairly treated for the deaths of Armenians who are Christian. He insisted that “[u]sing the events of 1915 as an excuse for hostility against Turkey and turning this issue into a matter of political conflict is inadmissible.”
It is interesting to see how Turkey views these remarks as a breakthrough and unprecedented. I cannot imagine that Armenians will share that view.
Source: Globe and Mail
You can not show photos of the Armenian genocide on the blog. It is like showing child porn photos. The dead people are victims and your are exploiting them by showing their photos just like children in porn films are exploited by anyone who owns a photo or looks at one. So, you owe some heirs of some Armenians some restitution here.
Al Zheimer – I don’t agree that child Porn is a good analogy in this case, thus your conclusion I also believe is incorrect. I think we need to show the results of war to our young people until the can’t look at it any more out of disgust. I know the pictures from the Viet Nam War had a profound affect on me. It’s like taking a child who is misbehaving down to the prison to show him what happens to people who do bad things to other people.
Most wars are unjust and thus are promoted by those in the business of warfare. I believe there actions and results need to be shown to the world. I would want the world to see what happened to my relatives, if they were murdered.
fiver, Wow! A Blackhawk fan and an All Star commenter. I fell asleep watching the Hawks. I truly hope to see you on many more threads. Some folks may not, but I do whether I agree w/ you or not.
fiver, All wars result in atrocities on all sides. The UN was guilty of some in WWII, but to such a lesser degree that to compare ours to those of the Axis is absurd. You miss some important facts in considering what the Ottomans did You have to put it in context for historical accuracy. That is the reason I mentioned other genocides, and the warfare. The US put Japanese Americans into camps with scant justification for that action, even though that action was LEGAL. While the Ottomans were facing an actual armed revolt and mass action of Armenians allying themselves with Russia against the Ottomans. I am unaware of Jews in Europe actively taking up arms against the Nazis prior to WWII or even at the beginning.
Then you simply LIE and say that I deny the genocide. My point is that it is irrelevant for the current government to declare something since as you point out the US has not done the same for the genocide against Native Americans here. The point is also that this is more a political ploy than a historical one which should be done by historians.
randyjet, The world and history portrayed by the oligarchs through their main stream media outlets is not the real world we are led to believe. The book, Hiltler’s Secret Bankers is as interesting as the story of the Warburg Families financing of both sides of WWI and WWII. http://www.scribd.com/doc/2434851/Wartburg-Hitlers-Secret-Bankers
And the more recent book by Adam Lebor of the same title. http://www.adamlebor.com/books/hitler's_secret_bankers/
And here is a story of a bunker built for Hitler in Hollywood, CA had the won the war. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2116684/Hitlers-Los-Angeles-bunker-planned-run-Nazi-empire-war.html
What we have been taught is one thing and the true is another of almost all economic history of the last two centuries. Once States rights was defeated during the Civil War, the centralized political power and their bankers have controlled most of the industrialized world. As an example, the British invaded all but about 30 counties in the world between about 1875 and 1950 and the US and the UN have taken over after them.
It is all about the use of taxation to fund the military industrial complexes of the world and they care not what country provides or buys the arms. Almost all foreign aid is provided and utilized for this single goal.
As an old golf buddy told me, “I was making a very extravagant living as an arms manufacturer in the 1970s, until I was one day entrapped through a government sting operation, using art work, paintings of all things, which I knew very little about, and thrown in prison without lawful due process using perjuring witnesses. I was really naïve.” He was a commercial real estate broker when I met him and a hell of a nice guy. He assumed that he just built his business to large and was starting to step on the toes of his competitors.
It is sort of how the Economic Hit Men work and behind every venture are the central bankers and their cronies.
Aargh! The blockquote was supposed to end after “The Armenians were in revolt against the Ottoman Empire and were relocated as part of suppressing that revolt.”
My html skills are severely lacking.
randyjet,
Two more things:
1) Comparing the foreign aid received by Israel to that received by Armenia (or any other country for that matter) is really kind of silly – qualitatively and quantitatively.
2) Sorry for the late reply: The Blackhawks just won in overtime 🙂
randyjet,
Wow.
Not sure where all that is coming from, and I’ll keep my guesses to myself.
As far as the US not recognizing the crime of slavery: I’m thinking that fighting, and winning, the bloodiest war in American history might negate that point a little bit. You might have been a bit more on point by directing your ire at the lack of recognition of the Genocide of the native peoples of the American continents. In that case, I might agree.
But it’s a bit too late to deny you’ve been arguing as a Genocide denier. You wrote:
You further wrote:
fiver, I suggest reading Lincoln Unmasked to have a better understanding of the major players and their true motives behind the Civil War. I think you will be astounded by both the amount of research and revisionary history it reports. Like much of our history, not everything we were told was truth. Columbus did not discover America either.
As an example Lincoln met with free Black Americans at the White House in an attempt to get them to remove themselves to Liberia. He did not think the races should mingle and favored the Republican Party stance on the fugitive slave laws. He was originally a Whig before the party imploded and it’s members and he joined the Republicans. He was a rich elitist that represented the wealthy railroad interests before gaining political office and fought the war primarily to gain greater central power for he and his corporate and banking supporters/benefactors. Lincoln jailed and executed people, closed down over 30 northern newspapers who criticized him, arrested most of the Maryland legislature and even put out an arrest warrant out for a circuit court Judge and Supreme Court member as some were back then, when he gave a man a Writ of Habeas Corpus after it’s suspension by Lincoln via an executive order. We all know he suffered from mental illness. Imagine that? He was probably just taking a rest from his tiresome despotism.
How many Civilians and their homes did his Generals burn and murder even though his Army had a 2 to 1 man advantage? Is that the mark of a compassionate man trying to rid the world of slavery? The abolition of slavery was already in the works. He and his cronies gave the blacks Citizenship to the District of Columbia where they have been brutalized for decades with excessive taxation and regulation.
It is quite clear, then, that there is a citizenship of the United States** and a citizenship of a State, which are distinct from each other and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the individual.
[Slaughter House Cases, 83 U.S. 36]
[(1873) emphasis added]
The first clause of the fourteenth amendment made negroes citizens of the United States**, and citizens of the State in which they reside, and thereby created two classes of citizens, one of the United States** and the other of the state.
[Cory et al. v. Carter, 48 Ind. 327]
[(1874) headnote 8, emphasis added]
We have in our political system a Government of the United States** and a government of each of the several States. Each
one of these governments is distinct from the others, and each has citizens of its own ….
[U.S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542]
[(1875) emphasis added]
One may be a citizen of a State and yet not a citizen of the United States. Thomasson v. State, 15 Ind. 449; Cory v. Carter, 48 Ind. 327 (17 Am. R. 738); McCarthy v. Froelke, 63 Ind. 507; In Re Wehlitz, 16 Wis. 443.
[McDonel v. State, 90 Ind. 320, 323]
[(1883) underlines added]
A person who is a citizen of the United States** is necessarily a citizen of the particular state in which he resides. But a person may be a citizen of a particular state and not a citizen of the United States**. To hold otherwise would be to deny to the state the highest exercise of its sovereignty, — the right to declare who are its citizens.
[State v. Fowler, 41 La. Ann. 380]
[6 S. 602 (1889), emphasis added]
The first clause of the fourteenth amendment of the federal Constitution made negroes citizens of the United States**, and citizens of the state in which they reside, and thereby created two classes of citizens, one of the United States** and the other
of the state.
[4 Dec. Dig. ’06, p. 1197, sec. 11]
[“Citizens” (1906), emphasis added]
There are, then, under our republican form of government, two classes of citizens, one of the United States** and one of the state. One class of citizenship may exist in a person, without the other, as in the case of a resident of the District of
Columbia; but both classes usually exist in the same person.
[Gardina v. Board of Registrars, 160 Ala. 155]
[48 S. 788, 791 (1909), emphasis added]
There is a distinction between citizenship of the United States** and citizenship of a particular state, and a person may be the
former without being the latter.
[Alla v. Kornfeld, 84 F.Supp. 823]
[(1949) headnote 5, emphasis added]
A person may be a citizen of the United States** and yet be not identified or identifiable as a citizen of any particular state.
[Du Vernay v. Ledbetter]
[61 So.2d 573, emphasis added]
… citizens of the District of Columbia were not granted the privilege of litigating in the federal courts on the ground of diversity of citizenship. Possibly no better reason for this fact exists than such citizens were not thought of when the judiciary article [III] of the federal Constitution was drafted. … citizens of the United States** … were also not thought of; but in any event a citizen of the United States**, who is not a citizen of any state, is not within the language of the [federal] Constitution.
[Pannill v. Roanoke, 252 F. 910, 914]
[emphasis added]
randyjet,
Where to begin? I’ll start with the numbers. Sure, it’s hard to get accurate numbers in this situation. We’re talking about the Ottoman Empire almost a century ago. We’re also talking about the difficulty of counting many, many hundreds of thousand of bodies reduced to bones in the desert. Is it required that we count each tooth?
But discrepancies in numbers are hardly determinative. While many Genocide deniers love to hang their hat on any real or imagined discrepancies – check out Stormfront and other sites delighting in Holocaust denial (sorry, no links to such disgusting filth) – the reality is that one hundred percent accurate statistics are simply impossible to obtain especially when those controlling the information at the time are the alleged perpetrators of these horrific events.
Not sure what your comment on Croatians and Serbians has to do with this discussion other than to distract. Nor do I understand what the straw man of modern Turkey being “responsible for that genocide” has to do with anything.
We are talking about recognition of a horrible crime against humanity. Modern Turkey’s (and the Obama Administration’s and Israel’s) refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide is the issue.
Blowing smoke to cloud that issue gets us nowhere – except for the implicit recognition that deniers of the Armenian Genocide or the Holocaust simply do not have a leg to stand on.
Nick Spinelli,
Thank you.
Nick I don’t think that we have made an apology for slavery in the US either. I fail to see the relevance of the US or Israel, “recognizing” Armenian genocide. This is more a concern of historians, though as I read, the REAL reason is to pump more money into Armenia since they are now the second biggest recipient of US tax dollars after Israel and it is blatantly a political thing rather than a search for truth to have government pass judgments on such things.
The reason I brought up the genocide against the Serbs is that there are LOTS of similar ones of even greater magnitude that have NOT been declared or recognized by the US or Israel. You talk about deniers and since I do not agree with the inflated numbers of some of these rabid Armenians, YOU say I deny the fact of that genocide. Sorry, but if you would READ my post, you would notice that I said killing “only” 600,000 certainly is genocide by any measure. You then make the conclusion that since I contest the 1.5 million number that I deny the genocide. Sorry, but just because I do not think that getting an official statement is of great importance does not make me a denier of that genocide.
I think that the use of the term genocide has been grossly over used to describe many such atrocities and to diminish the Holocaust which was such a massive horror that using the same term for other mass murders takes away from the special horror of that one. Getting Turkey to officially declare that genocide occurred is of small import. I will get more upset when they are the only country in the UN that does not recognize the horrors in their history. I am more upset at the Japanese who whitewash their own criminal actions during WWII and cry about the A bombs while ignoring the Rape of Nanking which killed nearly as many people as the Armenian genocide. There are LOTS of things in history we can demand governments recognize other than this one. Think that will bring those people back or even prevent other such things? Recent history has shown that is not the case.