The Armenian Genocide (1915-16): In Depth | Hacker News Reader

The Armenian Genocide (1915-16): In Depth

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277 pointstomohawk125 comments

My ancestors were murdered both during the Genocide in Anatolia, and in the violence in the years immediately following. I’m also half Jewish. I count both Germans and Turks as friends, but while I have mostly positive opinions of the modern German state, and have gladly visited the country, I can’t say the same for Turkey. The denial of my family’s history is an open wound.

The stories are painful, and the legacy of that pain affects my family even today. My grandparents saw their family members and community murdered and had to rebuild their lives abroad. My grandmother, toward the end of her life, would weep, recounting the violence she endured, reliving the experience in her decline. These scars can persist across generations.

There are two excellent books I can recommend: 1. Black Dog of Fate, by Peter Balakian 2. They Can Live in the Desert, but Nowhere Else, by Ronald Grigor Suny

The first is more of a first person narrative describing the lingering effects of the genocide across generations in the Balakian family, very poetic. It’s a great read, full of life, and poignant in its portrayal of inter-generational pain.

The second is a straight history by a historian, tracing the events, causes, people, etc. It’s a dense, but good read.

This hate is a bit present, still today. In Stockholm, Sweden, 5 years ago:

"Death to the Armenian dogs",

said B. Leylani, who was, back then, the vice president of the Turkish National Association of Sweden. The spectators (Turkish extremists?) were cheering. Later he had to resign (there are also, of course, kind and reasonable people in that organization, who don't want any more genocides, and I presume they didn't like what he said).

Apparently when the genocidal state, the Ottoman Empire, doesn't get defeated in a war (like happened to the nazis), and doesn't get removed / put in prison, then the genocidal ideas can a bit live on and be somewhat strong, 100 years later.

I'm not saying that people in Turkey would be like that. Angry extremists are always few, in comparison to the many more people who are silent, right. I have friends who are Turkish (they don't like Erdagon b.t.w.).

In the Swedish news: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/starka-reaktioner-efter-t...

A video recording: https://www.facebook.com/The-state-of-Turkey-uncensored-1502...

"Annihilate" is another word he was using.

"Angry extremists are always few"

But they are often supported by large portions of the general population, such as widespread support of the Nazi regime among ordinary Germans, widespread support of the Soviet totalitarian regime by their citizens (millions of which were murdered by the same regime), widespread support of Mao's Cultural Revolution, of Pol Pot, of countless civil wars (and just plain wars) all over the globe and throughout time.

Humans have not proven to be a very peaceful species, and it doesn't take much for them to lunge for each other's throats.

You'll find the same sentiments among Russians, Moroccans, Israelis, Japanese, Serbians... The Germans may be almost unique in that they took full responsibility for the crimes their state committed.

Let me continue with that list of countries: USA, UK...

It's usually rare though.

The largest fascist/ultra far right organization in Germany (by far) are the Turkish Grey Wolves, while ethnic Turks make up about 4% of the population. There are approximately the same amount of ethnic Russians living in Germany, but Russian far right groups aren't known to be relevant in Germany.

I grew up with quite a few Turks in Germany, and all but one were extremely nationalistic and supremacist. It appears that Turkish culture and their historical narratives are different from others. You don't e.g. hear about the Japanese today talking about Koreans as vermin, but it's common to hear those tones from Turkey.

I don't know anything about Japanese talking about Koreans as vermin, but do know you can hear Chinese talking about Japanese as devils. I think the dictatorial regimes are (at least partly) to blame. They use nationalism and supremacism to make the people forget internal issues.

I think that's different. The Chinese were invaded and violently occupied by the Japanese, that would be more like Jews (or Poles) speaking of Germans as Murderers.

The supremacist angle is the German concept of "Untermensch" (sub-human) in comparison to the "Übermensch". I believe the Japanese had similar notions, but I don't think they're prevalent (and certainly not voiced) now.

What about Americans btw? I mean maybe they don't talk like that but they went to optional wars in Vietnam, Iraq costing millions of innocent lives. Just saying...

Not a lot of Americans deny the genocide of Native Americans or the slave trade, do they? You have a point, but at least the US president has admitted that the Iraq war was a mistake.

Which president, wasn't Trump right? Or Bush...

As a guy born in Turkey I’m happy that this is finally getting the recognition it deserves.

On the other hand, finding any neutral resource about the First World War in Turkey is hard to come by. The best resource I’ve found so far is written by a German General called Otto Liman von Sanders, he wrote a book called “Five Years in Turkey” [0] talking about 1913 - 1918. It at least has some parts on the events which will end up in the Armenian Genocide and the hate against Greece and Greeks.

Sorry to digress but it’s important to mention that, the hate against Greeks will take an ugly turn in 1955 [1]

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Five-Years-Turkey-Liman-Sanders/dp/18...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_pogrom

It seems the downvote army has arrived. Take note my troll friends: You can’t hide the truth, it will come out. Do not take part in enabling people who cause human suffering.

>Sorry to digress but it’s important to mention that, the hate against Greeks will take an ugly turn in 1955

Almost no one is aware there has been constant armed conflict between the Greeks and Turks in Cypress for over 100 years on ethnic grounds. This includes genocide, terrorism, massacres, kidnappings, executions, and mass graves

*Cyprus

I don't know if you would take this as a neutral resource, but if you are interested in this subject, you may find the writings of Henry Morgenthau Sr. interesting. He was the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the period when the USA was neutral in WWI. He also happened to be a friend of my great-grandfather.

In particular I would recommend "I was sent to Athens" (link: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL6734490M/I_was_sent_to_Athen...) and the section on the 1922 Izmir Fire.

I want to know what will this recognition does to your own country both in short and long term. Will Turkey pay a fee for the genocide or will they have to just give up from Ağrı?

This subject was always used against Turkey in political confrontations for years. Turkey has been better and stronger ally to USA. This recognition is nothing but a political warning against Erdoğan and his latest actions against USA and also this will make Armenian residents in USA happy.

IMHO nothing will change for us (Turkish and Armenian folks living in Turkey), don’t know about Armenians living in Armenia.

So why are you happy?

> So why are you happy?

Because I don’t care if I come from country X, atrocities all around the world have been committed, and still being committed. People have to be responsible for this suffering, we shouldn’t be able to shout “Fake News!” to everything and get away with it.

I think people need another 100 years to forget about it. It's just a toy in the hands of politicians. And now they choose to use it against Turkey. Some day this whole thing will be forgotten.

Nobody living today are responsible or should be responsible for it.

It doesn’t work that way though, Turkey took over debts of Ottoman Empire for a reason, this is the same.

That's what baffles me. If no one today is responsible, why does the present Turkish state deny the facts? My take is, because they are fine with the genocide and do not wish to denounce it, the first step of which is admitting it happened. The authoritarian nature of the Turkish state is nothing new and taking away glory from the imperialism of the past will hurt the legitimacy of their future plans.

This is pretty recent and got good reviews https://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Year-Genocide-Destruction-Chri...

My family is Assyrian and was living in a region of Iran that was at the time still part of the Ottoman empire. During the genocide, the Kurdish proxies of the regime came into my grandmother's village, murdered all the men, and raped the women before deporting them. My grandmother walked 600 miles to the Persian gulf, during which time she had a miscarriage from the rape. About two-thirds of the Assyrian population was wiped out during the genocide. So it's nice to see it being recognized. Would be nice if we got a little mention in the name though.

During the population exchange My mother in law’s Turkish family were forced to walk to Istanbul from their village in Makedonya with nothing but the gold coins they had sewn into their blankets and hid into their shoes. 1/4 of them were killed by Greeks. The same story with my father in law coming from northern Bulgaria.

Nobody brings this up, because it was Christians killing Muslims.

Still the Armenians remained and thrived in Western Türkiye. My neighborhood in Besiktas is 1/3 Armenian and 1/3 Kurd to this day.

Can you tell me more about macedonia/bulgarian turks stories: I am a bulgarian and I want to see how the truth, and to see how turkish history sees the events

I think that's fair. There were definitely purges of Turkish and other European Muslims at the time, and they should be acknowledged. On a related note, I have a friend who is Serbian and he claims there were Bosnian atrocities against Serbs during the civil war that nobody hears about.

Still, I would point out that, just as in the Bosnian war, the scale of atrocities was a lot worse on the side that is more remembered. Over a million Armenians and other minorities were systematically raped, murdered, and purged at the behest of Ottoman authorities. It's unclear to me why Turkey does not want to acknowledge this. You can still appreciate your country while recognizing that people in the past did some pretty bad things. The world is a complicated place.

In college I took a class on Turkish / Ottoman history that was incredible, except for when we covered the genocide. The professor clearly had been thoroughly educated on the subject, but had internalized a very different understanding of the sequence of events, and of course never called it a genocide. What I took away from that class was how ingrained the official Turkish version of events is in the historiography and how even experts in history of that reason don't believe, or want to believe, that a genocide took place.

> In college I took a class on Turkish / Ottoman history that was incredible, except for when we covered the genocide. The professor clearly had been thoroughly educated on the subject, but had internalized a very different understanding of the sequence of events, and of course never called it a genocide. What I took away from that class was how ingrained the official Turkish version of events is in the historiography and how even experts in history of that reason don't believe, or want to believe, that a genocide took place.

How had the professor been educated, and what was their perspective? Were they Turkish?

(A bare sequence of questions can seem confrontational, so let me be clear that I don't mean that—I'm just curious about what the teaching looks like from the "different understanding" point of view.)

It's interesting how some genocides become more politically charged than others. Japan has trouble acknowledging their genocides, but they rarely complain when other countries do. America is generally similar. Germany has conducted a massive campaign to root out genocidal sympathies.

But it's particularly surprising with Turkey, because, unlike Japan or the US, the Republic of Turkey replaced the Ottoman Empire by a violent revolution. They have more of an excuse than most countries to claim they are not the direct political descendants of the genocidaires.

So it seems reasonable to infer that Turkey's rationale for denying the Armenian genocide is not to save face, but rather is rooted in resentment for what Turks see as a long campaign by France and England to weaken them and constrain their influence in the Mediterranean. Turks point to the discrepancies in how we see Christian genocides of Muslims in the Balkans and the Caucasus vs the reverse in Anatolia. For example, nobody mentions the Circassian genocide 40 years earlier, even though it occurred on a similar scale. The original version of the Treaty of Sèvres, which cut Anatolia into pieces, is a particularly sore point.

Your premise is incorrect though. The Ottoman Empire was not directly responsible for the genocide - the Sultan didn't give orders one fine day in WW1 to massacre all Armenians. But the Turkish military men who eventually went on to depose the powerless Sultan and form the modern-day Republic of Turkey were the ones who instigated the genocide, including Ataturk himself. So yeah, the modern Republic of Turkey has every reason to fight against all allegations of genocide, even though it was an integral element in its independence movement.

The general consensus seems to be that the genocide was ordered by the Three Pashas, especially Talaat Pasha, who were the de facto rulers at the time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Pashas

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Circular_on_April_24_1915

None of them survived to see the end of the Turkish Revolution. Ataturk was a mere lieutenant colonel at the outbreak of WWI and did not reach the Caucasus theatre until January 1916, eight months after the outbreak of genocide -- he went on to win a few crucial battles and was then shipped to the Levant.

However, Turkey did go on to deny their crimes and venerate Talaat Pasha, who played some role in the development of modern Turkish institutions. Kieser, who is likely the source of your claims, does not implicate Ataturk directly, but does emphasize the influence of Talaat on modern Turkey:

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uGW1DwAAQBAJ&oi=...

but see also the counterpoint:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2019.1...

Yes, this is what I was referring to. The Three Pashas were all military men who very much influenced the Turkish independence movement and modern Turkey itself.

The genocide wasn't just limited to the World War though. A lot of significant damage happened between 1919-1923, when the Turkish were fighting for independence. And by 1918, Ataturk was already a general in the Ottoman Army.

While the Young Turks clearly had some more interest in making the empire more Turkish, before WW1 pretty much anybody in the government called themselves Ottomans, not Turks. Turk was mostly use for the poor elements.

And they were not military men, they were the civilian government of the empire.

> And they were not military men, they were the civilian government of the empire.

> Mehmed Talaat Pasha (1874–1921), the Grand Vizier (prime minister) and Minister of the Interior; Ismail Enver Pasha (1881–1922), the Minister of War; and Ahmed Cemal Pasha (1872–1922), the Minister of the Navy.

I don't know about you, but their positions sound very military to me. AFAIK, they are military or quasi-military departments in every country I've visited.

You are simply embracing yourself at this point. Prime minister and minister of the interior? Clearly not military positions.

Minister of War and Minister of the Navy is a civilian position as well. Armies are lead by Generals, Navy by admirals, the civilian positions overseeing these institutions in the name of the civilian government.

Again, the Young Turks were in control of the whole government. Whatever their individual positions were, they are simply the government. Denying that is is simply not defensible.

> Ismail Enver Pasha (Ottoman Turkish: اسماعیل انور پاشا‎; Turkish: İsmail Enver Paşa; 22 November 1881 – 4 August 1922) was an Ottoman military officer who formed one-third of the dictatorial triumvirate known as the "Three Pashas" (along with Talaat Pasha and Cemal Pasha) in the Ottoman Empire.

> Ahmed Djemal Pasha (Ottoman Turkish: احمد جمال پاشا‎, romanized: Ahmet Cemâl Paşa; 6 May 1872 – 21 July 1922), also known as Jamal Basha as-Saffah ("the Bloodthirsty") in the Arab world, was an Ottoman military leader and one of the Three Pashas that ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I and carried out the Armenian Genocide.

Notice the common word in those two? Military Leader.

At this point you're just spouting rubbish by calling those positions civilian positions. Also the minister of the Interior is very much a quasi-military position in a lot of countries even today, and especially in a centralized government like the Ottoman Empire. As was the position of Prime Minister/Grand Vizier.

> In the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Military Tribunal convicted and sentenced to death Talaat in absentia for his role in the Armenian Genocide.

I'll leave this one as a tangent.

Tangentially I became aware of the Genocide committed against Germans after WWII that the Allies had a hand in, which isn't well known.

I'm looking for a copy of a book about it

Road of Suffering of the Carpathian-Germans 1944-1946

Here's a hint of it from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Germans_from_Czec...

Since Facebook has agreed to implement censorship on behalf of the Turkish government[1], how long is it until discussion of the Armenian genocide is flagged as hate speech and fake news?

As far as Turkey is concerned, this is fake news. And big tech has agreed to defer to Turkey.

[1]: https://www.engadget.com/facebook-turkey-emails-200407588.ht...

> how long is it until discussion of the Armenian genocide is flagged as hate speech and fake news?

Genocide can be talked about on Facebook, you can even organise it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

I think your links prove my point: Facebook only cares about appeasing the powerful. Whether it is facilitating genocide or covering up genocide, they are the same. If it benefited Facebook, they would just as well deplatform people trying to expose a genocide in Myanmar.

And if the Turkish government tried organizing another genocide, I'm sure Facebook would platform it, and censor any opposition to it.

Why wouldn't they? They've already committed to deplatforming critics of the Erdoğan. Do you think that Facebook would take a principled stand and suddenly choose not to take orders from the Turkish government, and risk losing that market? I don't see that happening.

Your view is very cynical and I agree with you.

Likely it can be removed internally at the behest of the government, I doubt if they will ever censor it in other countries. That should answer your question.

As someone with an Armenian dad and last name, I’ve felt some interest in this story and my country’s (US) refusal so far to acknowledge it since learning about it.

It’s pretty far removed from me, and I’d probably not live here if my ancestors hadn’t fled the Turks back in the day, but it’s also very sad to see that it’s used as a political token over and over again. Obama promised that he’d be the first sitting president to acknowledge it, but then didn’t. I don’t know if Trump promised to acknowledge it but he didn’t and his admin even rejected a specific opportunity to do so.

Now Biden is dangling it, either as a way to buy points with Armenian Americans (heh not likely, he’s got CA and doesn’t need to further lock in the Glendale vote) or more likely to push Erdogan to do what he wants. My guess is he doesn’t acknowledge it.

It’s really a bummer overall — it’s not like anyone in Turkey today had any part in it unless they are like 120 years old but Erdogan is in many ways basically a dictator that just hasn’t worn out his welcome with the rest of the world, I think largely because of geography and his not so thinly veiled threats re: immigration.

Erdoğan thinks himself as the last Ottoman Emperor standing (c.f. The Third Reich), that’s why no way in hell he’ll accept any atrocities that Ottomans committed.

Facebook has shown themselves completely willing to remove content at the request of the Erdoğan government.

If they deplatform critics of Erdoğan, why would they also not be willing to deplatform anything else that Erdoğan does not like, like discussion of the Armenian Genocide?

And maybe this is why we should consider the consequences of encouraging deplatforming of people we don't like.

My other comment pointing out collusion of Facebook and the Turkish government is heavily downvoted, and I am not sure why. If I am mistaken, please someone let me know.

[1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/sheryl-sandberg-and-top-f...

> My other comment pointing out collusion of Facebook and the Turkish government is heavily downvoted, and I am not sure why. If I am mistaken, please someone let me know.

Fellow Turkish trolls are doing extra duty on this thread :-)

> Fellow Turkish trolls are doing extra duty on this thread :-)

If I got something wrong, anyone please feel free to correct me instead of just downvoting.

If I only get downvoted but nobody can tell me what I'm wrong about, it is just brigading.

And that can backfire, because if this is happening to seemingly reasonable comments, it strongly implies that those downvoting me are not capable of countering what I said.

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> And maybe this is why we should consider the consequences of encouraging deplatforming of people we don't like.

But it's as easy to point to the dire consequences of persisting in amplifying the voices of people spewing hateful rhetoric as it is to point to the people silenced to protect the interests of the powerful. I think treating this as a one-sided problem with an obvious answer does it an injustice.

> But it's as easy to point to the dire consequences of persisting in amplifying the voices of people spewing hateful rhetoric as it is to point to the people silenced to protect the interests of the powerful. I think treating this as a one-sided problem with an obvious answer does it an injustice.

I don't think it is as easy to prove that something has been censored, that's the problem. There is not transparency. Maybe if we could examine exactly what was removed and why, that would be different. But we have normalized and legitimized the opaque and arbitrary removal of political content and historical records.

I also don't think it is so easy to prove direct harm from something not being censored, and certainly not enough to outweigh the harm that accepting censorship brings.

The truth is, when you outsource critical thinking to Facebook, it is not just potentially harmful content they remove. You can't say that you only support deplatforming for people you disagree with, because it will never be implemented that way.

In practice, you either you support freedom of speech, or you support billionaires and dictators arbitrarily removing and editing what we say.

> In practice, you either you support freedom of speech, or you support billionaires and dictators arbitrarily removing and editing what we say.

I think that this is a false dichotomy, even if preceded by "in practice", because it follows the practice of conflating the freedom to speak with the freedom to be heard.

I support people's right to say what they please. I don't think that people have any inherent right to be heard saying what they please, even if I personally think that the things that they are saying are important and should be heard.

I support anyone's right not to amplify others' disgusting sentiments. When a private business is used to provide the platform for that speech, I support its right not to host speech that it (not I) finds disgusting, or objectionable, for any reason, even if I disagree with that reason. This is nothing new—it's always been the case, for example, that publishers didn't publish books that they determined to be disgusting or objectionable, and that their reasons for so determining could be lofty, or base, or completely counter to my own reasons.

Given the prominence of Facebook and Twitter as global communications platforms, this gives their owners disproportionate influence over whose voices are heard. That's the problem. Requiring Facebook and Twitter to amplify everyone's voices equally won't fix that problem.

(I have no idea what will fix the problem, to be clear, short of "how about everyone stops using Facebook and Twitter and we switch to a forum that somehow combines global reach with democratic moderation", which only requires (1) someone design the perfect such platform free from any possibility of abuse, and then turns its reins over to the masses, and (2) everyone agrees to use it, and so should be easy.)

In these cases it's a choice to either be pragmatic or completely remove yourself from the country. Which would you choose as the best option for Turkish citizens in a similar position?

The Ottoman empire and later the state of Turkey, have consistently denied this for almost a hundred years. Erdoğan is but a link in a chain.

As someone from the SFV, I appreciate and understood completely the Glendale reference.

The same thought crossed my mind, which is why is this acknowledgment such an important issue and why now? I agree with you and doubt it is to earn points with a super small (albeit wealthy) constituency. I have never even heard people care about this outside of politicians and the news.

Just seems like a very strange hill to die on.

On the other hand it might be worth doing just for a single campaign donation from Alexis Ohanian post-Coinbase IPO ;D

It appears that Biden has acknowledged it since my original post, too.

It only matters in the sense of it being an official statement from the US calling Erdogan a liar and partially deligitmizing his tyrannnical regime, vs US maintaining its up-til-now hypocrisy that the Armenian genocide is irrelevant but the Jewish Holocaust matters.

Interesting article, however I couldn't find primary Turkish sources that detailed the reasoning behind the deportations. Did the Turks institute the policy to remove Armenians from within Turkey or to exterminate them?

Wikipedia is quite thorough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide

> I couldn't find primary Turkish sources

The Turkish government doesn't acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. And because it's punishable to do so there might be no "Turkish" sources at all. I use quotes because obviously there are Turkish people who don't deny it happened and some of them might have written about it.

You don't need to use scare quotes (in fact, you seem to be using them incorrectly). In any case, there are several Turkish scholars who acknowledge the Armenian genocide and have written about it.

Usually with something like that which would be an "open secret" in Turkey people would usually mean the 99% who don't acknowledge it rather than the 1% who do acknowledge it.

Striking how much downvoting on comments with links to more facts about the genocide is going on here. Striking, but not the least surprising...

Yes. Something/someone is hitting very benign comments hard, you can watch comments get obliterated.

These "political" HN threads are often best read starting from the bottom of the page.

I don't if the troll farms and download brigades are limited to China/NK/Russia. There are plenty of mercenaries out there that you can hire.

It takes quite a bit of legitimate activity on HN before your account becomes eligible for downvoting other users' comments. I'd say the downvoting drones are regular Turkish HN users who simply side with Erdogan's policies on the topic and considers censorship an acceptable political tool.

Interestingly this is the second article I’ve seen today about Armenia:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/24/armenia-azerbaijan-war-...

It is (at least in France) Armenian Genocide Rememberence Day. It could be a reason there are a few different Armenian stories out there.

Does France have a "Rememberence" day for this too?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_use_of_chemical_weapon...

Unfortunately, not. And neither Spain does, which is a shame. What is the point of your question?

Biden has recently declared his intention to have the US formally recognize the Armenian Genocide.

responding to an inappropriately-flagged response:

> I wonder when the US will fully recognize the North American Native Genocide and build a monument in DC - hopefully in proportion to the monument in NYC.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened fairly soon. The current Governor of California recognized it explicitly as genocide in 2019, as did the current Secretary of the Interior, while she was in Congress (and before she was appointed the first Native American to serve in a Presidential cabinet.)

That acknowledgement is no longer a universal taboo in the American political establishment, especially for the party currently in power.

Probably related: "Biden tells Erdogan he plans to recognise Armenian ‘genocide’"

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/23/biden-tells-erdogan...

Today is the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide_Remembrance_...

For those interested, Ronald G. Suny is an Armenian born in the US who has written on the genocide and its a much better if you are looking for 'In Depth' information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho9bBn3fqYs

Turkey has consistently rejected the "label" of genocide[1]