TurkCyp1 wrote:Armenians murdered up to 3 million Turks/Kurds during the civil unrest and admittely, there was a forced evacuation of Armenians but the numbers killed was totally blown out of proportion. 500,000 near enough perished due to civil unrest with the rest deported to what is now known as the Republic of Armenia.
The figures that between 1 million and 1.5 million armenians were killed are widely accepted by most historians internationally. The turkish estimates are mostly based on the Ottoman Archives, with recent calculations by Dr. Halacoglu putting the number of dead at the ridiculously low 20,000. This is a clear indicationsthat Turkish source for the Armenian deaths are not very reliable. There is very significant evidence under the form of eye witness accounts, reports by soldiers, Ottoman correspondence, even the Ottoman archives to suggest that what actually occured was a planned and systematic attempt to relocate armenians when it was clear that this would lead to their extermination. I believe this attempt was concious and the Ottoman administration of the time was guilty of Genocide because of the systematic way it comitted the massacres.
Concerning the Turkish casualties, there is According to the most "optimistic" estimates only 600,000 Turks died as a result of the armenorussian aggression in the East. There are thousands of Turkish eye witness accounts that speak of the horrors comitted by the Russian hords and Armenian gangs. The systematic attempt of the Russo-Armenian army to ethnically cleanse Eastern Anatolia of its muslim inhabitants (like in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece) is equally an instance of Genocide in my opinon.
The rest of the 3 million that you mentioned lost their lives in other parts of the ottoman empire, most notably as a result of the Greek invasion of the Anatolian heartland, many died in the massacres comitted by the Greeks around Izmir, up to half a million of those were soldiers killed at Gallipoli.
Evey life lost is equally tragic, but the loss of 3 million Turkish lives was not nearly as catastrophic as the loss of 1 million Armenian lives due to the small size of Armenia.
Turks have always respected other cultures. In times of war, bad things happen. But to say a genocide occured is utter ridiculous.
Dont you know the saying "Turkun turkten baska dostu yoktur", "A Turk has no other friend but another Turk"?. Unfortunately narrowminded nationalshauvinism still exists in Turkey, most notably in the inability to tolerate the kurdish culture.
By the way most genocides occur during war times so that is not a good argument to say that the events of 1915 did not constitute an instance of genocide. Both Srebrenitsa, Holocaust happened during war time.
Turks are no different than any other people in the Balkans. All committed horrible
