Armenia 'genocide' row in Swiss court

BBC ^ | Tuesday, 4 September, 2001

[Voronin]

Let's see how the country of Carla del Ponte holds up shall we? The Serbs face the same indignity as the Armenians. The Vatican continues to refuse to open up their archive of documents regarding the slaughter of over 700,000 Serbs, Jews and Gypsies during World War II.

When the British held their first 'Genocide Commemoration'/whatever, neither the Serbs (no suprise) nor the Armenians were invited. The Foreign Office also had its 1915-1916 account of the Armenian Genocide made temporarily unavaliable to the public. As a sign of British government humanitarianism, football supporters from Albania who are coming to support Albania v England have been refused visas.

Justice for ones allies is all that seems to count.

VRN

[Voronin]

Bumpskies!

VRN

[Voronin]

You too.

VRN

[Voronin]

Not forgotten!

VRN

[Voronin]

And the stragglers!

VRN

[denydenydeny]

One of the big problems that the Armenians have is that the incident came to world attention in the second so-called "Bryce report" in 1916, so named for the commission formed by Lord James Bryce to report on the atrocities. Unfortunately, the first Bryce report, on German atrocities in Belgium, was almost immediately debunked as a fraud full of invented stories. As a result, the burden of proof has fallen more heavily on the Armenians than it has the victims of other calamities in this century.

But in any case I do not envy this court, because there does not appear to be any middle ground here. The Armenians and their sympathizers insist that what happened was a planned extermination similar in form to the Nazi Holocaust. The Turks insist that whatever killings took place were localized (they point to the fact that the Armenian sections of Istanbul were untouched throughout the Young Turkish regime), and that larger numbers of Turkish civilians died in similar disturbances in other areas of Asia Minor.

There really is no controversy in history quite like this one, where the basic facts are so completely in dispute.

[Voronin]

Oops!

VRN

[Delchev]

nth

[Pericles]

The genocide of the Armenians was planned by the Ottoman Turkish authorities. The regie that toppled them was set to try fellow Turks for these crimes but as Ataturk set outt o found his semi-facist states (not meant as a dig, that is what the regime amounted to) it was decided that those trials would harm the emerging modern Turkey and the issue was swept away from memory.

[Pericles]

Mant modern Turks do not know that there were Turks disgusted with the holocaust. These men included Kemal Ataturk. His decision to erase it from history was designed to remove all traces of Ottoman legacy as well as possible future claims against his Turkey by Armenians. Early on Ataturk never denied the holocaust.

This page is a good source on Armenian genocide quotes

[prognostigaator]

"There really is no controversy in history quite like this one, where the basic facts are so completely in dispute."

For your information-
Excerpts from remarks by Henry Morgenthau, US Ambassador to Turkey during the time frame in question-

"The final and worst measure used against the Armenians ,was the wholesale deportation of the entire population, from their homes and ther exile to the Desert, with all the accompanying horrors on the way.

Homes were uprooted, families were separated, men killed, women and girls violated daily on the way or taken to harems, children were thrown into the rivers or sold to strangers by their mothers to save them from starvation.

The facts contained in the reports received at the Embassy from absolutely trustworthy eye witnesses surpass the most beastly and diabolic cruelties ever before perpetrated or imagined in the history of the world.

The destruction of of hundreds of villages along with the willfull execution of this whole devilish scheme to annihilate the Armenians, Greek & Syrian Christians of Turkey-will all this go unpunished?"

Would a possible demand for "reparations" be the basis for denial by the present Turkish government ?

Or would it be the shame of being branded for once having despots as leaders the same as German citizens were accused of in the media , but especially publicized accounts by the many Hollywood anti-Nazi films and individual accounts as found in books by Ann Frank and other Jewish victims.....

[Voronin]

Enver Pasha (?)of the Ruling triumvirate recieved official British requests to halt the murder. He claimed that those doing any killing were beyond the control of the authorities though if the British were to contribute a substantial amount of money, they may be bought off...

VRN

[Voronin]

Apparently Brad Pitt didn't know he was playing a Nazi in 'Seven Years in Tibet', not to mention that other Hollywood Icon the Dalai Lama being dropped once he made his view clear on homosexuals. Then again, why should reality get in the way of Hollywood making a good profit??

VRN

[denydenydeny]

If you ask a Turk--any Turk--about this subject, you will hear dispute. For all it matters, I am open-minded on the subject, but Morgenthau's "wholesale deportation of the entire population" is simply not true, as there were entire Armenian communities in Istanbul and other big cities that were not touched. I don't consider Morgenthau--a lifelong Germanophobe who hated everything German, including their allies--an unbiased source.

[prognostigaator]

If you ask a Turk--any Turk--about this subject, you will hear dispute. For all it matters, I am open-minded on the subject, but Morgenthau's "wholesale deportation of the entire population" is simply not true, as there were entire Armenian communities in Istanbul and other big cities that were not touched.

If not Morganthau, what about these quotes from other contemporaries....

"The scheme was nothing less than the extermination of the whole Christian population within the Ottoman frontiers...Nothing remained but to use the opportunity and strike a stroke that would never need repetition.
"After this,"said Talaat Bey, when he gave the final signal," there will be no Armenian Question for fifty years".
Arnold J Toynbee

Or this quote from Norwegian statesman Fridtjof Nansen-

"The whole plan of extermination was nothing less than a cold-blooded calculated political measure, having for its object the annihilation of a superior element in the population, which might prove troublesome, and to this must be added the motive of greed."

Or Millerand ,President of the French Republic...

"The Allies see clearly that the time has come to put an end to Turkish domination over other races.During the last twenty years Armenians have been massacred with unexampled brutality.
The Allies are determined to liberate from Turkish rule the regions inhabited by non-Turks."

Referring back to your description of Morganthau as a Germanphobe,...reminds me of the period immediately and a few years subsequent to the end of WWII when many citizens in the US refused to buy any products, namely Volkswagens and Mercedes automobiles...
[Not that I had the money then, but many 300 Gullwings were available on the used car lots in Beverly Hills and Sherman Oaks for $2500.]

[Alexandre]

3,000 [Western Allies] killed in Serbia is genocide. Ten to fifty times more killed [by Western Ally] is not genocide.

Question: Who shall be called The Backer of Genocidal Regimes?

[Voronin]

Question: Who shall be called The Backer of Genocidal Regimes?

Good rhetorical question, to which my easy answer would be: Whoever the 'victors' choose when they write the history. Plus ca change.

VRN

[crazykatz]

There is a good book about a young girl, a Pontic Greek( the area along the Black Sea in Anatollia) who was exiled along with her family in 1920 by the Turks. It is called NOT EVEN MY OWN NAME. Available through Barnes and Noble.

The girl is in her 80's now and the book is authored by her daughter, Thea Halo. A good book...but VERY SAD STORY.

[Voronin]

Thanks for the info.

VRN