There are clearly disingenuous comments from genocide denying trolls throughout this thread. I’m not surprised to see downvotes as well.
In 1915, my father's family was living in Erzurum. While the men of the house were leaving for the mosque after the law passed, they warned the woman at home about not opening the door for whatever reason.
Their neighbors were Armenians for 40+ years and my father's family were their landlords. They never had anything unpleasant, but they wanted to be cautious nevertheless.
After they left, their neighbors came to say farewell. They opened the door. They killed everyone at home. Then the Armenians went to the mosque, killed all men there. Then burned the mosque down.
We recall this incident as war times, shit happens and never make a big issue of it. I personally had Armenian friends (we've grown apart, just life happened, nothing else). I never had any problems with them, and never will, but this "you planned and executed an ethnic cleansing" stuff is one-sided.
It was war, it was ugly. There are other factors at play, but I don't want to dig deeper. It's a big ugly hole which burnt everyone, and as a planet we should leave this ugly thing behind, because it became a political weapon of sorts.
We can discuss if everyone leaves the hate aside and talk over it. Unless that time comes, this is my only comment on that issue.
Also, I want to re-iterate that I don't hate any human being just because they've born under a certain flag, and I don't want revenge or anything. I just want to be able talk about this without being labeled this and that.
Have a nice day.
Edit: Downvoting won't bring my family back, thanks.
This shouldn't be about "this nation is bad, this nation is good". (saying it as a bulgarian, we also had complicated history with the Ottomans, but I think we can say we live peacefully with the ordinary turk people)
However, this doesn't mean we can't talk about genocides/massacres: germans can witness about many soviet atrocities, but they don't have the nerve to deny the Holocaust in the same time. We should seek the truth in both directions.
The thing is, there were many nations at play at that time. I have some documents in an archaic CD-ROM about the issue.
I don't want to name names, but the number of rifles collected from Armenians during that time is enough to form a small, unorganized army at the area. I don't know if I can dig the images but, they were a lot.
Turks and Armenians didn't hate each other, ever. This hate was seeded during the war somehow. To prevent worse things from happening, rulers of that time decided to remove Armenians from that area to somewhere south (IIRC the path), but bad things have happened. During this movement, other bad things have happened to Turks (like to my family).
The sad thing is, Turks don't hate Armenians, even today. We don't hate, our family, friends have no negative emotions about them, but when hate is projected from other side, you mirror it somehow to protect yourself. Having a chat with old Armenian friends were always hard. The emotions were very asymmetric. When a dear friend gives a suspicious look, wondering whether you're planning to hurt him/her is hurting.
The heart breaking thing is, my story is always listened as I'm making this up, but I'm not. I have no reason to. We're border neighbors and this shall end. It's tiring and doesn't have any productive outcome.
I don't tell that Armenians have not died. I do say bad things have happened to everyone, but labeling this as a planned and deliberate act is highly wounding. And dismissing what happened to Turks at that area adds insult to the injury.
The scale of those was small in comparison. That does not negate that the genocide happened, in which the Turk’s goal was to obliterate the Armenians as a people.
WRT the documents you mention, those are probably from the contemporaneous disinformation campaign on the part of the govt. Even at the time many foreign observers noted that the govt was exaggerating the Armenian “threat”.
The claims you are making are thoroughly debunked and not recognized by historians in mainstream academia outside turkey.
> WRT the documents you mention, those are probably from the contemporaneous disinformation campaign on the part of the govt.
I'm not sure. The disc is very old and I only remember the photos. I'm not saying it's not, but I just don't remember. Nevertheless, I use the family account as my information foundation.
> That does not negate that the genocide happened, in which the Turk’s goal was to obliterate the Armenians as a people.
I would like to discuss it in a civilized, and informed manner but as I replied in another comment, I'd like to prepare myself first by supporting my claims by 3rd party sources. The family account tells otherwise, but I can't get more details since nobody is alive from that times, and I don't want to lower the quality of this discussion by not backing my claims with references.
As I've said numerous times, I come in peace and don't want to set the comments section ablaze unintentionally.
Thank you as well, turkish friend !
However it's hard to deny it's not planned and deliberate: you describe in your own words ethnical cleansing in the best possible case. Maybe many people died, because they were left in bad conditions without help, and this aspect was unintentional? I need to educate myself more, so I'd be happy to see those documents.
I don't doubt about the feeling of love to armenians! However part of love is to want to find the objective truth: repentance is crucial for our human nature. I hope all of us can do that(bulgarians, armenians, turks and everyone)
> However it's hard to deny it's not planned and deliberate
I'd love to discuss it further, but since it's such a touchy issue, I'd like to read it from the archives themselves from all countries, but they're not accessible AFAIK from neither party. Proper books with proper sources would also do, but I can't read that fast either.
I'd try to dig the CD-ROM and find the text and images, but I can't make any promises about it. I also want to educate myself further in the issue. The family account provides the base information but, We need to know our history as objective and detailed as possible, so we can make more informed choices and decide for ourselves.
I wish that us or at most two generations down from us can see a more peaceful area around here. I live by "peace at home, peace around the world" motto, but it's getting harder every day, for everyone.