· The Ottoman Empire found itself in WW1 thanks to the idiocy of Enver Pasha, and was under attack from practically all sides. Armenians, influenced by the nationalistic movements of the era, decided they wanted to establish an independent Armenian state and this was a golden opportunity for them to accomplish that dream.
So they collaborated with the Allies, especially the Russians and later with the French, and attacked Ottoman forces from within.
Tashnaks had been a relatively powerful guerilla group and, emboldened by the weakness of the Ottoman Empire, the so-called sick man of Europe, they cooperated with the Russians.
The Ottoman Empire comprised of dozens of nationalities, who co-existed relatively peacefully for centuries. Talat Pasha, the Interior Minister, was understandably furious about the Armenian betrayal, especially because Armenians were long regarded as a "faithful nation." Furious, he ordered a temporary relocation of Armenians to the southern provinces of the empire, away from the Russian border.
Many Armenians were killed on the way by thugs, and many died in the deserts from starvation, poor living conditions, epidemics etc. If one sees only the sufferings of Armenians, one immediately concludes this was genocide, period. But if one also considers the sufferings of the entire population, then one begins to get the real picture. Just to give a sense of how bad the conditions were in the Ottoman Empire at the time, in 1914, 90,000 Ottoman soldiers froze to death in a single night in Sarikamis in northeastern Turkey, because they didn't have winter clothes in mid-December in -30 degree weather.
...And their commander who forced them to march was none other than Enver Pasha, one of the three pashas that ruled the Ottoman Empire at the time. Enver was a total incompetent, a total idiot who put the Ottoman Empire into WW1, eventually causing it to completely collapse. I suppose no one would claim that Enver was performing genocide on his own army.
When asked later how his 90,000 soldiers died, he is rumored to have said, "What difference does it make. They would have died some day wouldn't they" The relocation of the Armenian population to the southern provinces, was, entirely in the spirit of the internment of the Japanese in the US and Canada during WW2.
The big difference was that Ottoman Empire was in ruins, so much so that it could not supply winter clothes to even its army.
So logistics was out of question, and the three Pashas were just too indifferent to the needs of people anyway, be they Turks, soldiers in the Turkish army or Armenians. I think this is the hardest part for Armenians to accept. They think they were systematically murdered, when in fact nothing, nothing in the Ottoman Empire was systematic in those days. There was poverty and chaos everywhere.
Those Armenians, who, despite the odds, were able to make it to Syria, either enlisted in the French army to fight the Ottomans, or left for America or Europe. Some who were able to survive, did indeed come back to Turkey after the war. There is an interesting book titled "The World is enough for all of us" by a Turkish-Armenian writer Sarkis Cerkezyan, who returned to his hometown after the war.
I especially recommend the book, because it conveys a very good sense of the chaos of the time and shows that things are not as black and white as some people are led to believe. There was quite a bit of suffering on the Turkish side as well.
Picture this: Suppose you are a native American living in a reservation, and suppose skinheads, KKK and sick people of that vein from neighboring towns decide to attack the reservation, late at night. The men in the reservation grab their arms and a gunfight begins. They are attacking from every which direction. You begin feeling overwhelmed because they have better guns and they are so many. Suddenly, you see that your neighbor isn't shooting at them but he is shooting at you.
Remember it's a life-and-death fight. So you storm your neighbor's house because this guy is killing your people. But during that fight your traitor neighbor's little babies get killed too.
Obviously you didn't mean to kill the babies, but that's what happened. If somebody calls you a "baby-killer" how do you react?
Technically, the bullet in the baby's head is from your gun so you killed the baby. But are you a "baby-killer" ? You definitely feel sorry that the babies got killed, but then you know that you had to defend yourself. You also know that you'd never kill your neighbor's baby, so you feel you don't deserve that characterization.
It may be very tempting to simplify things to the "good guy bad guy" scheme where madmen like Hitler & Co exterminate defenseless Jews. Add the few hundred thousand votes that could be won/lost in next year's elections, and you have the recent theatrical voting in the US congress. So should those tragic events be labeled genocide? I am not a lawyer and I don't have a sense as to what, technically the word genocide means.
They were certainly tragic events, but seeing only one side of the tragedy and ignoring the rest, is not a stance, that I would characterize as fair and ethical. The Ottoman empire collapsed as a result of WWI, nearly half the territory was lost, millions of Turks died, 250,000 just in Gallipoli, coincidentally enough in 1915 as well. My father was born in 1908 in Saloniki near the Dojran lake, now in Greece, and they too were forcefully emigrated to Asia Minor and lost all their lands in Saloniki. My grandfather fought for nearly 10 years and died penniless. WWI brought disaster to millions of people.
Americans interned some 120,000 Japanese-Americans, Canadians interned 20,000, even though, to my knowledge not a single case of betrayal was documented by these people. After the war, the Japanese-Americans were released of course and returned to their homes.Personally I believe a similar scenario would have taken place for Armenians, had the circumstances been suitable after WWI. But imagine how Americans would have reacted, if the Japanese had invaded mainland US and the Japanese-Americans had joined the Japanese army to establish an independent Japanese state, say in Seattle and California!
Trying to draw a parallel between the Hitler/Jews case and Ottoman/Armenian case is absurd. Turks NEVER thought of Armenians as "inferior" people. On the contrary, Armenians enjoyed the esteemed sympathy of Turks in the Ottoman empire.
Had the purpose of internment of the Armenians been genocide in order to accomplish the "Turkification" of Anatolia, then why wasn't the same internment applied to the Greek and the Jewish populations in Anatolia?
Sometimes a little logic goes a long way.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/soundoff/comment.asp?articleID=335534
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED in 1915 TURKS WHO HAD THE MASS KİLLİNGS THAN ANY OTHERS...
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