Let's try and get 1,000,000 replies to this post

Oh yes! Especially when they say there's gonna be a big blizzard and I expect school to be closed the next day, and there isn't a blizzard.
 
I get that they can't predict EXACTLY what it's going to do but don't tell us that we're definitely going to get something and it ends up being little to no anything. Damn those weather people. ::)
 
It's way too easy to say that when someone's forefathers have suffered, or when someone has studied, or even when others with perception of events in history suffer from bias.

I don't want to downplay anything Perun has said. He has read a lot, is qualified and has spoken with many people. The point I want to make is that many people outside Turkey who have not done all this can judge this as well. They can balance facts, they can see with there own eyes on the television how an author who writes about genocide has not a fine treatment in Turkey. In Turkey it's illegal to refer to the mass killings. Doesn't that raise some eyebrow?

The thing is, there are facts. There are studies. The problem is that in Turkey they are too proud, too nationalistic to take a decent look at the blackest pages in their history.

There is a Wikipedia page called "Armenian Genocide".
I know Wikipedia is something some people don't trust and there are indeed some pages that contain disputable substance without sources or anything. When that happens, one can expect to find a comment above such a page, especially when it's about an event in history. This page is clean of such comments.
A page on such a serious and heavy subject, surely would get moderation.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide

The Armenian Genocide[4] (Armenian: Հայոց Ցեղասպանություն, [hɑˈjɔtsʰ tsʰɛʁɑspɑnuˈtʰjun]), also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, traditionally among Armenians, as the Great Crime (Armenian: Մեծ Եղեռն, [mɛts jɛˈʁɛrn]; English transliteration: Medz Yeghern [Medz/Great + Yeghern/Crime])[5][6] was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of its minority Armenian subjects from their historic homeland in the territory constituting the present-day Republic of Turkey. It took place during and after World War I and was implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and forced labor, and the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches to the Syrian Desert.[7][8] The total number of people killed as a result has been estimated at between 1 and 1.5 million. The Assyrians, the Greeks and other minority groups were similarly targeted for extermination by the Ottoman government, and their treatment is considered by many historians to be part of the same genocidal policy.[9][10][11]

It is acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides,[12][13]: p.177[14] as scholars point to the organized manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians,[15] and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust.[16] The word genocide[17] was coined in order to describe these events.[18][19]

The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day when Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople.[20][21] Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace.[22] The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of the Armenian genocide.

Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies the word genocide is an accurate description of the events.[23] In recent years, it has faced repeated calls to accept the events as genocide. To date, twenty countries have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this view.

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The whole page is pretty large and it contains more than 200 links to read more on the subject.

I don't want to force anyone to read this whole page. I don't want to force anyone to believe a word of it. One needs to make up their own mind, even though I can imagine that's very difficult in a country where one is indoctrinated on the denying of the subject.

Still, such denying is less convincing than a well documented, studied and acknowledged black era in history.
 
Ah, Somewhere in Time!

Thanks for the info, Foro! I've read a book about the Armenian genocide and what happened there was just as appalling as what happened 25-30 years later during the Holocaust. But the international awareness level and the exposure of the two events is ridiculously contrasting.
 
Ariana said:
Ah, Somewhere in Time!

Thanks for the info, Foro! I've read a book about the Armenian genocide and what happened there was just as appalling as what happened 25-30 years later during the Holocaust. But the international awareness level and the exposure of the two events is ridiculously contrasting.
Click to expand...

There are several reasons for that: During WWII, Germany was the main enemy of the allies, and almost every country under German occupation saw Jewish residents taken away to Germany, never to return. The Armenian genocide happened in a war theatre which saw less attention from the Western powers because they didn't take part in it. It was a much more geographically limited thing.

I'd agree that it's wrong that the Armenian genocide has not received more attention in mainstream Europe. For example, my own history books during secondary/high school did hardly discuss that part of WWI at all. In fact, only the Western Front and the Russian revolution got attention. I'd say four topics took 90% of the time spent on world history:
  • Colonization era, from the European discovery of America onwards
  • The industrial revolution
  • World War II
  • The cold war
Some time also on the founding of the United States, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars and World War 1. For example, the massive death toll of Lenin's and Stalin's reign in the Soviet Union did hardly receive any attention. And the afore mentioned Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which otherwise is discussed daily in Norway, was hardly an issue in history class.
 
There are also proofs that say otherwise, Foro. There are studies that say otherwise. Take a look at some papers from Russian archives. (I've seen them before, don't know the exact name of them)

You see, I'm never afraid of criticising our history. I do that all the time and you can't make a generalization about me that I'm too proud to take a look at the blackest moment in our history. So-called Armenian Genocide is not one of them. Yes, we forced them to leave their place (after THEIR damage to local Turkish people) but we gave safety opportunities to them. We gave them places to stay once they reachd the finish of their path. There was illness and of course there were some people who weren't fond of Armenians. But that is the case everywhere. If a government tries to protect a group of people but fails to do so, it's not right to call it a genocide.

And also, you CAN say that you believe in the existence of an Armenian Genocide here. It's not illegal, in fact there was a petition online back in 2008 if I'm not mistaken that said 'We apologize' to Armenians here and president supported it in the sense of 'freedom of speech'. Not that he knows so much about freedom, though.
 
If it's not a genocide, how do you call the systematic killing of a million people belonging to the same ethnic group? Because you can't deny the fact that those people were exterminated.
 
Your question was a sign of unawareness not sign of disagreement. I say it wasn't a systematic killing therefore not a genocide, you ask me how can you call a systematic killing of a million people of the same ethnic group other than genocide. I denied systematic killing in the first place therefore you were unaware of the main thought behind my post.

You could say 'It WAS a systematic killing', that's disagreement.

- You can't prove that any historical knowledge is true. That's the thing with them, they present themselves to observe and to write home about. Who holds the pen, who knows ? Maybe it was a drunk maniac who wrote stuff about Armenian Genocide, maybe not.
 
What makes you think you are aware of the facts and not me?
I disagreed with what you called an attempt to protect that group of people because this is plainly arrogant.
 
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