Facebook Twitter
  • Home
  • Perspectives
  • Articles
  • Columns
  • Platform
  • Poetry
  • Literature
  • Write for us
Search
Facebook Twitter
71.7 F
Los Angeles
Monday, June 23, 2025
Sign in
Welcome! Log into your account
Forgot your password? Get help
Privacy Policy
Password recovery
Recover your password
A password will be e-mailed to you.
Media Monitors Network (MMN)
Advertise with MMN
  • Home
  • Perspectives
    • Jerusalem Israel Palestine Dome of The Rock Golden Dome

      The Abraham Accords undermined much-needed peace with Palestinians

      World Map

      Global disturbing disparities

      Globe Algeria Niger Mali Africa

      There is always a price to pay for befriending the Zionists

      Illegal Israeli Settlements

      Antisemitism claims mask a reign of political and cultural terror across…

      The Flower - Pakistan Monument at Night

      Israel in the vanguard of India’s mounting conflict with Pakistan

  • Articles
    • Man studying religious book

      Ishmael and Isaac: An Essay on the Divergent Moral Economies of…

      Mahmoud Abbas

      May Your Home Be Destroyed

      Netanyahu Lighting Hanukah Candles with His Wife and Sons

      Bibi’s Son or: Three Men in a Car

      The Map of Greater Israel

      The Man Who Jumped

      West Bank - Palestine

      Cry, Beloved Country

  • Columns
    • Progressives Must Fight With -- and In -- the Democratic Party

      Steps Left for Electing Progressives and Defeating Republicans in the Midterms

      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      Nancy Pelosi Could Get Us All Killed

      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      ‘Fortress Mentality’ Among U.S. Leaders Has Trapped Us in a Cycle…

      Progressives Must Fight With -- and In -- the Democratic Party

      Grassroots Organizing Should Dump Biden and Clear the Path for a…

      Corporate Media Are Focusing on Race -- and Dodging Class

      Biden Refuses to Mention the Worsening Dangers of Nuclear War. Media…

  • Platform
    • Hanukkah Lights

      Hanukkah is not hypocrisy

      The Washington Post

      “Preemptive war could risk millions of casualties. But….”

      When they shout: "We strongly condemn…"

      68

      Why Iran won’t attack Israel

      Is One Iraqi’s Self-Hatred Newsworthy?

  • Poetry
  • Literature
  • Write for us
Home Perspectives Of genocides, massacres, and tragedies
  • Perspectives

Of genocides, massacres, and tragedies

By
Gwynne Dyer
-
August 30, 2001
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
WhatsApp
Linkedin
ReddIt
Email
Print
Tumblr
Telegram
Mix
VK
Digg
LINE
Viber
Naver

     

    Eighty-six years late, the Armenian massacres of 1915 are at last forcing themselves onto the international agenda. For a long time it was a private quarrel, with most Turks in deep denial about it while Armenians passionately claimed that they were the victims of the 20th century’s first genocide, but now the whole world is getting drawn in.

    The Turkish government fights back hard: When the French parliament unanimously adopted a declaration last January “recognising the Armenian genocide of 1915”, Ankara promptly cancelled defence production deals with France worth $349 million: By now, however, the momentum of the Armenian campaign for recognition is unstoppable: France did not even blink.

    Yet what actually happened 86 years ago is still open to dispute. There was certainly a great massacre of Armenians in the eastern part of what is now Turkey in 1915, early in the World War I. Even the most conservative estimates put the Armenian death toll of that year at 600,000, though most Armenians prefer the figure of 1.5 million.

    The Turkish authorities don’t deny that many Armenians living in the Ottoman (Turkish) empire were killed in 1915, but they claim that the deaths were triggered by an Armenian uprising in which there were massacres of both Turks and Armenians in the then-intermingled communities of eastern Anatolia. They are being highly economical with the truth here – and yet they do have a point. The killing in 1915 was so great that the word `holocaust’ might well apply, but it was not the premeditated, industrialised genocide that befell the European Jews under Hitler.

    It is a fact that some Armenians in eastern Anatolia conspired with the Russians to launch an uprising behind the Turkish lines in 1915 to coincide with a Russian offensive into the area. The Russian archives document it fully.

    Other Armenians, further south, were plotting with the British in Egypt to start a rebellion to coincide with a planned British landing on Turkey’s south coast. The British archives document it fully. But then the British switched the landing far to the west, to the Dardanelles, for a direct attack on Istanbul – and it would appear that they failed to get news of the change of plan through to their Armenian allies in southern Anatolia in time.

    So there were scattered, ineffective Armenian uprisings, and then the `Young Turk’ army officers who ran the Turkish empire (many of them barely out of their twenties) panicked. The Russians were flooding into eastern Anatolia, the British were about to break through to Istanbul, and they had stupidly led their country into a war that would destroy it – quite literally, for their enemies had already agreed to carve it up into colonies after victory.

    So they ordered all Armenians to be “deported” from the threatened regions of eastern Anatolia all the way south to Syria (knowing full well that many would be killed or die of hunger and exposure). As the Armenian death toll soared, they did nothing to rescind their orders. Many probably welcomed it, for by now they were in an apocalyptic frame of mind. But they hadn’t planned it, and they did pay for it: most of the surviving Young Turk leaders were killed by Armenians in the years just after the war.

    There are only 70,000 Armenians living in Turkey today, and the country has much to be ashamed of. But Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was not just toadying to his Turkish allies when he said in an interview in April that “Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. It is a tragedy what the Armenians went through, but not a genocide.”

    The problem is the word. Nowadays the survivors of any mass killing see `genocide’ as the only word adequate to describe their ordeal, but every use of the word evokes the premeditated extermination programme of the Nazis’ “Final Solution”. Common sense says that while all mass murder is terrible, there was a real distinction between the Nazis and the Young Turks, but the descendants of the Armenian victims won’t settle for less.

    And though the Turkish government still tries to keep the past buried by bluster and threats, there is a new spirit of honesty abroad in the country as a whole. As a Turkish historian, Dr. Taner Akcam, said on a remarkable debate televised nationwide in Turkey in March: “If you can’t bring yourself to describe it as genocide, call it a massacre. But it was a crime against humanity … Ask forgiveness from the Armenian people.”

    On the same day, in the newspaper `Milliyet’, Yavuz Baydar wrote that “these men (the Young Turk leaders) are our Pol Pots, Berias and Stalins, and the sooner we call these crimes to account, the better our chances of redeeming ourselves from this scourge of being accused of genocide.” Much too late, and with great reluctance, the Turks are starting to come to terms with their past.

    Mr. Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries. He contributed this article to the Jordan Times.

    Back to Top 

    Like this ? Vote for it to win in MMN Contest

    • TAGS
    • about
    • abroad
    • account
    • accused
    • actually
    • after
    • against
    • agenda
    • allies
    • already
    • ankara
    • apocalyptic
    • appear
    • apply
    • april
    • archives
    • armenian
    • article
    • attack
    • authorities
    • barely
    • based
    • behind
    • being
    • better
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Pinterest
    WhatsApp
    Linkedin
    ReddIt
    Email
    Print
    Tumblr
    Telegram
    Mix
    VK
    Digg
    LINE
    Viber
    Naver
      Previous articleUsing and abusing Arafat
      Next articleUnited Nations Conference should tackle Israel’s human rights violations
      Gwynne Dyer
      Gwynne Dyer

      RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

      Jerusalem Israel Palestine Dome of The Rock Golden Dome

      The Abraham Accords undermined much-needed peace with Palestinians

      World Map

      Global disturbing disparities

      Globe Algeria Niger Mali Africa

      There is always a price to pay for befriending the Zionists

      Google Search

      MMN @ Google Play Store MMN @ Amazon Appstore

      MMN @ TwitterMMN @ FacebookMMN Feed

      EDITOR PICKS

      Progressives Must Fight With -- and In -- the Democratic Party

      Steps Left for Electing Progressives and Defeating Republicans in the Midterms

      August 31, 2022
      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      Nancy Pelosi Could Get Us All Killed

      August 1, 2022
      Tax Revelations and Corporate Media Won’t Defeat Trump

      ‘Fortress Mentality’ Among U.S. Leaders Has Trapped Us in a Cycle...

      July 25, 2022

      POPULAR POSTS

      Top 6 thủ môn Real nổi tiếng được nhiều người yêu thích

      Top 6 thủ môn Real nổi tiếng được nhiều người yêu...

      May 27, 2023
      167

      The Origin of Freemasonry: The Crusaders & Templars

      April 23, 2003

      Sharon to Peres: We Control America

      November 20, 2001

      POPULAR CATEGORY

      • Perspectives13563
      • News7538
      • World6111
      • Asia4341
      • Africa1651
      • Columns1370
      • Health1072
      • Australasia1020
      • Articles786
      ABOUT US
      Media Monitors Network (MMN) is a non-profit, non-partial and non-political platform for those serious Media Contributors and Observers who crave to know and like to help to prevail the whole truth about current affairs, any disputed issue or any controversial issue by their voluntary contributions with logic, reason and rationality.
      Contact us: [email protected]
      FOLLOW US
      Facebook Twitter
      • About MMN
      • Disclaimer
      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms and Conditions
      • Contact
      Copyright © 2000 - MMN International Inc. All rights reserved.
      Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
      All other brands, logos, and product names are registered
      trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
      ResponsiveVoice-NonCommercial licensed under 95x15
      MORE STORIES
      Tobacco control efforts protect 6.1 billion people – WHO’s new report

      Tobacco control efforts protect 6.1 billion people – WHO’s new report

      June 23, 2025
      Bearing the brunt of war: UNICEF chief meets some of Sudan’s 700,000 child refugees crossing into Chad

      Bearing the brunt of war: UNICEF chief meets some of Sudan’s...

      June 23, 2025