| Skybird |
10-11-07 05:48 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by SUBMAN1
Screwing with something so far in the past where anyone alive at the time is already dead is just stupid.
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Far away past? Germany would not have been integrated into NATO and the European community if it would have tried to defend parts of it's Nazi past, and wouldn't have totally accepted responsibility for the Holocaust. the relations between china and japan are stuill stressed becasue Japan's inability to accept unconditional responsibility for the war crimes and atrocities in China. but turkey, that some in Europe want to see in the EU and that Washington wants to allow US bases on it's soil and flight transfer rights for US fighterplanes should be an exception, forgiven and fogotten?
Again, bush only resists this declaration so bitterly because he wants his fighters being accepted to fly in turkish airspace, and build a logistical chain for Iraq.
And Subman, if your country never thought about considering the processing of human bodies in KZs to be genocide, as you said, - then this is your problem, but not a reasonable argument. It took the US Senate 37 years to ratify the international anti-genocide convention (finally, in 1986).
Quote:
The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց Ցեղասպանութիւն ("Hayoc' c'ejaspanut'iwn"), Turkish: Ermeni Soykırımı) — also known as the Armenian Holocaust, Great Calamity (Մեծ Եղեռն "Mec Ejer'n" ) or the Armenian Massacre — was the forcible deportation and massacre[1] of hundreds of thousands to over 1.5 million Armenians during the government of the Young Turks from 1915 to 1917 in the Ottoman Empire.[2]
It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern, systematic genocides,[3][4] as many Western sources point to the sheer scale of the death toll as evidence for a systematic, organized plan to eliminate the Armenians.[5] The event is also said to be the second-most studied case of genocide.[6] To date twenty-two countries have officially recognized it as genocide. The government of the Republic of Turkey rejects the characterization of the events as genocide.[7]
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Planning
In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers. İsmail Enver, now the Minister of War, launched a unsuccessful military campaign against Russian forces in the Caucasus in hopes of capturing the city of Baku. His forces were routed at the Battle of Sarikamis, and many more of his men froze to death in the retreat.
Returning to Istanbul, Enver largely blamed the Armenians living in the region for actively siding with the Russians.[20] By 1914, Ottoman authorities had already begun a propaganda drive to present Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire as a threat to the country's security. An Ottoman naval officer in the War Office described the planning:In order to justify this enormous crime the requisite propaganda material was thoroughly prepared in Istanbul. [It included such statements as] "the Armenians are in league with the enemy. They will launch an uprising in Istanbul, kill off the Ittihadist leaders and will succeed in opening the straits [of the Dardanelles]."[21]
On the night of 24 April 1915, the Ottoman government rounded up and imprisoned an estimated 250 Armenian intellectuals
Legislation, May 29
Further information: Tehcir Law In May 1915, Mehmed Talat Pasha requested that the cabinet and grand vizier legalize the deportations of the Armenians of Anatolia. On 29 May 1915, the CUP Central Committee passed the Temporary Law of Deportation (Tehcir Law), giving the Ottoman government and military authorization to deport anyone it "sensed" as a threat to national security.[23] Several months later, the Temporary Law of Expropriation and Confiscation was passed, stating that all property, including land, livestock, and homes belonging to Armenians, was to be confiscated by the authorities. Ottoman parliamentary representative Ahmed Riza protested the legislation:It is unlawful to designate the Armenian assets as “abandoned goods” for the Armenians, the proprietors, did not abandon their properties voluntarily; they were forcibly, compulsorily removed from their domiciles and exiled. Now the government through its efforts is selling their goods… If we are a constitutional regime functioning in accordance with constitutional law we can’t do this. This is atrocious. Grab my arm, eject me from my village, then sell my goods and properties, such a thing can never be permissible. Neither the conscience of the Ottomans nor the law can allow it.[24]
The confiscation of Armenian property and the slaughter of Armenians that ensued upon the law's enactment outraged much of the western world. While the Ottoman Empire's wartime allies offered little protest, a wealth of German and Austrian historical documents has since come to attest to the witnesses' horror at the killings and mass starvation of Armenians.[25][26][27] In the United States, the New York Times reported almost daily on the mass murder of the Armenian people, describing the process as "systematic", "authorized" and "organized by the government." Theodore Roosevelt would later characterize this as "the greatest crime of the war."[28]
The Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa)
Main articles: Teskilati Mahsusa and Special Organization (Ottoman Empire)
While there was an official 'special organization' founded in December 1911 by the Ottoman government, a second organization that participated in what led to the destruction of the Ottoman Armenian community was founded by the lttihad ve Terraki.[31] This organization adopted its name in 1913 and functioned like a special forces outfit.[32]
Later in 1914, the Ottoman government influenced the direction the special organization was to take by releasing criminals from central prisons to be the central elements of this newly formed special organization.[33] According to the Mazhar commissions attached to the tribunal as soon as November 1914, 124 criminals were released from Pimian prison. Many other releases followed; in Ankara a few months later, 49 criminals were released from its central prison.[citation needed] Little by little from the end of 1914 to the beginning of 1915, hundreds, then thousands of prisoners were freed to form the members of this organization. Later, they were charged to escort the convoys of Armenian deportees.[34] Vehib, commander of the Ottoman Third Army, called those members of the special organization, the “butchers of the human species.” [35]
Process and camps of deportation
The Armenians were marched out to the Syrian town of Deir ez-Zor and the surrounding desert. A good deal of evidence suggests that the Ottoman government did not provide any facilities or supplies to sustain the Armenians during their deportation, nor when they arrived.[36] By August 1915, the New York Times reported that "the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to certain death. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people."[37]
Ottoman troops escorting the Armenians not only allowed others to rob, kill and rape the Armenians, but often participated in these activities themselves.[36] Deprived of their belongings and marched into the desert, hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished.Naturally, the death rate from starvation and sickness is very high and is increased by the brutal treatment of the authorities, whose bearing toward the exiles as they are being driven back and forth over the desert is not unlike that of slave drivers. With few exceptions no shelter of any kind is provided and the people coming from a cold climate are left under the scorching desert sun without food and water. Temporary relief can only be obtained by the few able to pay officials.[36]
It is believed that 25 concentration camps existed, major under the command of Şükrü Kaya, one of the right hands of Talat Pasha.[38] The majority of the camps were situated near modern Iraqi and Syrian frontiers, and some were only temporary transit camps.[38] Others, such as Radjo, Katma, and Azaz, are said to have been used only temporarily, for mass graves; these sites were vacated by Fall 1915.[38] Some authors also maintain that the camps Lale, Tefridje, Dipsi, Del-El, and Ra's al-'Ain were built specifically for those who had a life expectancy of a few days.[38]
Though nearly all the camps, including the primary sites, were open air, the remainder of the mass killing in minor camps was not limited to direct killings, but also to mass burning,[39] poisoning[40] and drowning.[41]
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The Armenian Genocide is often speculated to have influenced Adolf Hitler, owing to his various references to the Ottoman killings of Armenians.[72] The extent of Hitler's knowledge of the Armenian Genocide is unclear, though he did refer to their destruction several times.[73] The most notable quote attributed to Hitler on the Armenians is excerpted from an August 1939 military conference, prior to the invasion of Poland:I have issued the command -- and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad -- that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness -- for the present only in the East -- with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space [Lebensraum] which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?[74]
There are numerous accounts of Hitler speaking in regards to the Armenians, with at least two similar versions of the 1939 speech coming from the German High Command archives. In 1931, for example, two years prior to his ascension as Germany's leader, Hitler noted in an interview that "everywhere people are awaiting a new world order. We intend to introduce a great resettlement policy… remember the extermination of the Armenians."[75] In 1943, during the height of his attempts to exterminate the Jews in Europe, Hitler demanded of Hungarian regent Admiral Miklós Horthy that he deport the Jews from the country: "Nations which did not get rid of the Jews perished. One of the most famous examples of this was the downfall of a people who were so proud--the Persians, who now lead a pitiful existence as Armenians."[76]
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more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide |
