"They killed Armenians, who happened to be Christian. And it happened before Ataturk. Certainly they're not proud of it, any more than we are proud of how we treated the aboriginal people in the Americas. How does that prove that they today have an Islamic State?"
99.9% of Turks are Muslim. It is an Islamic state in all but name only and that is because they are clever enough to have played the Cold War card and NATO was and is stupid enough to have bought into it to the detriment of our true allies - Greece etc. Christians live in virtual terror and remain because of the Patriarchate mainly.
Bottom line: You are an apologist for the Turks. AND - For you to compare what happened in the US and Turkey is an abomination! There is no comparison!
I'm not apologizing for them. The slaughter of the Armenians was odious. I'm simply pointing out that they are a secular state with an Islamic populace.
AND - For you to compare what happened in the US and Turkey is an abomination! There is no comparison!
Of course there's a comparison. There's always a comparison--it is illogical to say otherwise. Arguably, we treated the Indians worse than the Turks did the Armenians--at least the Armenians still have their own independent nation. We thoroughly decimated the native American population, through slaughter, disease and destruction of their food supplies. I'm not saying that we should necessarily apologize for it (they were no shrinking violets when it came to killing and torture themselves), but it is an historical reality.