Talk:Armenian genocide

Denialists?

Shrigley said: Denialist is a fairly well-established term, firmly in line with the consensus among genocide scholars that it did exist, whereas this attempt at a descriptive title is confusing and leads credence to fringe views.

Genocide scholars? You mean Armenian historians, Taner Akcam? I wonder why one side considered better than the other - why would we listen Armenian historians and completely discard what Turkish historians have to say? Seems very biased! After all there are many historians who are not Turkish and write very objective books. But because the Armenian lobby and nationalists don't like this, they are called denialists. This is where Wikipedia becomes a very handy tool for spreading propaganda. And it does.

They don't deny the Armenian Genocide because they ignore evidence, they deny it because of the lack of evidence for it. As any scientist would reject a hypothesis without any supporting evidence. http://www.armeniangenocidedebate.com/what-do-real-historians-and-experts-say

And this: http://www.armeniangenocidedebate.com/turkish-denial

Thats right, a word deny means they are ignorant and don't want to see evidence what was presented to them. In reality, those historians give arguments why they think events were not genocide. They don't DENY, they DİSAGREE - and it's not the same thing. --Ankara Kedisi 10:05, 11 January 2013 (UTC)Ankarakedileri — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ankarakediler (talk • contribs)

Toxic gas??

It reads, "Toxic gas: Dr. Ziya Fuad and Dr. Adnan, public health services director of Trabzon, submitted affidavits reporting cases in which two school buildings were used to organize children and send them to the mezzanine to kill them with toxic gas equipment." I checked this reference articles and there is no such statement. No toxic gases. This statement has to be improved with a more serious reference. (57th and 58threferences have no relation with statement.) Otherwise the statement has to be removed from article. Entuluve (talk) 10:36, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't have access to the source to check, however a quick internet search found something that appears similar (from http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=6825) the text:

"Here is the first methodical introduction of gas chambers. A testimony of the gas chambers during the proceedings of the military tribunal was published in the Istanbul Newspaper Renaissance, 27 April 1919.
First we didn't realize what was happening. But one day we heard cries that abruptly ceased and were followed by a deathly silence. We then paid closer attention to what was happening. The baskets at the door of the "disinfection" hall told everything. It appears that Dr. Saib trapped the victims in a chamber equipped with some kind of toxic gas equipment with fatal effects. Those baskets were used elsewhere, such as at the Red Crescent Hospital, then the bodies of the dead or dying were disposed by dumping them in the Black Sea nearby."

Dadrian is cited as the source for this (presumably Dadrian's "The Role of Turkish Physicians in the World War I Genocide of Ottoman Armenians") Meowy 19:24, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

This website that you linked here is obviously a racist website. And there is no real sources. Only rumors. Here you can find the source article that i criticised. http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/2/169.abstract

Even this article has not enough citations too, this topic is mentioned only as a rumor. No evidence.

So those are citated are completely weak evidences and must be considered. Wiki is a good foundation but we must check every sources, everybody gives any sources, and we do not know what is inside. Is it true or amazingly fake.

This is not history but only a story here.Entuluve (talk) 19:19, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Since nobody said anything for two weeks, I removed this false information from the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Entuluve (talk • contribs) 14:38, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

The sources cited are both reliable. the last one, that 'you criticized', is an academic article. Gazifikator (talk) 14:52, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

However, it could be argued that the content is there for effect only (to make a rather heavy-handed comparison with the Holocaust), and is a case of undue weight. For every one person who died by toxic gas, how many hundred thousands were burnt alive, or died by blows of an axe, or through forced starvation or dehydration? Meowy 19:23, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Looking at that section again, I think my undue weight verdict was correct. It really sticks out as text just placed in the article for propaganda purposes. Because of that, together with the concern expressed about the citations, I think it is correct to have the section deleted and I have deleted it. In some future version of the article, when it is better written and more organised, maybe a small part of it can be restored. Meowy 17:08, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Dubious tone of a section

The section "study of.." has a sentence that starts: "For Turkish historians, supporting the national republican myth is essential...". This is effectively a statement/opinion in Wikipedia's voice that this is indeed a "myth" (according to whom?), that it is held by "republicans" (which?), and asserting that Turkish "historians" (which ones?)(just historians?) see it as "essential" for unity. All three claims are uncited and the tone is not neutral.

Similarly "The usual Turkish argument..." Who exactly has said what exactly? "The usual arguments" can come across as a non-neutral way of subtly disparaging speakers on one side of an issue, as spoken by the other side.

Can someone rewrite these two sentences in a better style? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 07:19, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 14 August 2012

Template:Disputed title Whatislife2012 (talk) 12:47, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. You can seek consensus merely by beginning a discussion on this talk page; making an Edit Request is not necessary. Before starting a discussion, however, please review past discussions, including the archives linked at the top of this page, and proceed only if you believe there is a reasonable chance of persuading a sufficient number of other editors. Rivertorch (talk) 07:01, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Disruptive edits by Diranakir

Diranakir, you have been indulging in a disruptive low-level edit war on this article. You have repeatedly deleted reference content from the article and have replaced it with your own crudely-worded POV and OR material.

"Great Calamity" must remain as a translation for Medz Yeghern because it exists in a cited source. Is there something about that fact you do not understand? Stop deleting properly referenced content! You have been warned repeatedly about this in the edit summaries. Also, "Great Calamity needs to remain as the primary translation because, as was carefully explained to you many months ago, Google search results suggest that usage of "Great Calamity" is almost four times more common than "Great Crime" (and about 15% of all "Great Crime" usage is in the context of an argument about whether "Great Crime" should be use instead of "Great Calamity").

You have also been deleting accurate content and replacing it with inaccurate content for propagandistic reasons.

You added the text "systematic extermination of the Armenian population its historic homeland in Asia Minor" This is inaccurate. The historic homeland of the Armenian population is not "Asia Minor", and the majority of Armenians who were killed during the Armenian Genocide lived nowhere near their "historic homeland". I think that "Extermination" is also pov and insulting terminology to use (do you consider a word used to describe the killing of household pests suitable for the mass murder of humans?). When inserting your inaccurate content you deleted the accurate content: "systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire". That content also had a citation.

You added the text "was implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and forced labor, and the deportation on death marches to the Syrian Desert of women, children, the elderly and infirm." Not only is this an inaccurate characterisation of the events, you actually give it a fake citation! When adding that inaccurate information you deleted the accurate content: "It was implemented through wholesale massacres and deportations, with the deportations consisting of forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees." That particular sentence was arrived at after much discussion on the talk page and after very many small edit changes: it contains carefully-crafted nuances that you, with your very limited knowledge of the Armenian Genocide, seem incapable of understanding.

You added the text "The word genocide was coined in order to describe these events". This is untrue – the word genocide was coined to describe all such massacres. When adding that inaccurate information you deleted the accurate content "The Armenian Genocide initiated Raphael Lemkin to invent the term genocide to describe such events" but you still kept the citation that went with that content, deceptively using it to support your own inaccurate claim.

If, after reading all of the above, you still decide to continue with your disruptive editing style, I think that sufficient evidence will exist to get you blocked permanently from editing this article. Meowy 16:51, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Response To Latest Criticisms

1. "Disruptive editing" is an accusation and not a fact.

2. Yeghern means crime. Medz Yeghern means Great Crime. That is a fact my sources prove and one that can be proved by many more sources, reputable and scholarly ones. There is no parity between crime and calamity in translating Medz Yeghern. Calamity is simply wrong, and there is definitely no basis for giving it priority.

3. The term "extermination" has been in the lead paragraph for many years but has occasioned no objection from Meowy until now. Furthermore, Meowy has misquoted the phrase containing "extermination" by omitting the very important preposition "from", e. g., "The Armenian Genocide. . . . was the systematic extermination of the Armenian population from its historic homeland in Asia Minor".

Meowy also makes the preposterous assertion that 'the majority of Armenians killed during the Armenian Genocide lived nowhere near their "historic homeland" '.

4. I have provided solid references concerning the two phases of the genocide process. Meowy suggests I have given just one reference and calls it "fake", whereas I have given two, each of them from authoritative sources. Meowy is obliged to prove the accusation of "fake".

5. Meowy erroneously attributes to me the phrase concerning the coining of the term genocide and the reasons behind it. I had nothing to do with that text. Furthermore, Meowy's innovation on that phrase is ungrammatical in the extreme ("initiated Raphael Lemkin to invent. . . ."). 67.169.127.31 (talk) 15:54, 23 August 2012 (UTC) Diranakir (talk) 15:57, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Point 1 - disruptive editing is your repeated deletion of properly referenced content (the "Great Calamity" translation) from the article for don't like it reasons, plus your blind reverting of other edits to do it, and your refusal to accept (or even attempt to confront) facts like the Google search indicating that the "Great Calamity" translation is 4 times more common than the "Great Crime" one.

Point 2 - all that is just OR, as has been REPEATEDLY explained to you in the talk page. You cannot make your own personal translation of a phrase using a dictionary and insert it into an article.

Point 3 - this just reveals either your limited knowledge of the subject, or your aim of placing lies and propaganda into the article. Historical Armenia is not in "Asia Minor", by theend ofthe 19th-century most Armenians in the Ottoman Empire did not live in historical Armenia, and Kayseri, Sivas, Ankara, Mezirfon, Iznik, Samsun, Trabzon, Amasya, Adana, Antakya, and many other sites of massacres and deporations, are not in the "historic homeland" of Armenians.

Point 4 - you "reference" does not exist. There is no book named "Armenia" by Christopher Walker. I imagine you actually mean "Armenia - the Survival of a Nation" but the text in it makes no such specific claim, nor should such a general book be used when specialist poblications abound that give a far more detailed analysis of the process.

Point 5 - thanks to your blind reverting, you have reinserted that text into the article on THREE occasions - so you ARE responsible for that text. Meowy 16:03, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Response To Meowy's 5 points

1. Meowy's repeated attempts to justify the "Great Calamity" translation is paralleled by his/her repeated failure to supply any authoritative linguistic evidence in support of his/her position. References to privately viewed Google results only underscore how far Meowy is from recognizing the nature of a genuine source. In terms of disruptive editing, irresponsibly, recklessly, and repeatedly denying that Medz Yeghern means Great Crime shows a complete disregard, if not contempt, for linguistic accuracy.

2. Dictionaries are the only ultimately reliable sources for the determination of accuracy in translating a foreign term into English. Persistently denying that fact allows Meowy to make up his/her own version of reality on the fly.

3. The historic homeland of most of the Armenians exterminated in the Armenian Genocide was most definitely in Asia Minor, Meowy's word games aside. A glance at any historic map of the genocide will plainly show that. To say that where the Armenians lived for centuries--in the countless towns and villages they created in Asia Minor over the last thousand years--was not their homeland suggests they did not belong there in the first place. One can draw one's own conclusions about the implications of this interpretation.

Meowy has many times accused me of propaganda--and now lies-- but has never specified what that propaganda was, or whom it supposedly served. Another unfounded accusation and epithet from Meowy, nothing more.

4. Meowy is correct: The full title is "Armenia: The Survival of a Nation". The omission did not prevent Meowy from recognizing the source indicated and does not make the reference "fake". The book describes two phases of the genocide, as do the cited pages in the accompanying note taken from Toynbee, as do numerous other sources. That is how the genocide was carried out, though with some exceptions as in the case of the citizens of Chunkoush in Diarbekir province who were all killed by being thrown into the fathomless chasm called the Doudan about two hours walk away from their town.

5. I am not sure what Meowy means by "that text". If the "coining" line is what is meant, I will 1. repeat that I had nothing to do with writing it, and 2. that if Meowy means that in the process of reverting his/her changes to the first paragraph I reverted his/her inept and barely intelligible insertion into the line on "coining", I did no great disservice to the encyclopedia. The notes attached to that passage were already sufficient to describe Raphael Lemkin's role. Diranakir (talk) 12:00, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

AGAIN you have deleted properly cited content from the article. What is it about accepted editing practices that you fail to understand? They have been explained to you often enough. The deleted content has been restored. And would you STOP making separate sections in this talk page for no reason. All related discussions should be contained in the same section. Meowy 18:52, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Meowy's latest edit shows how complete his/her refusal is to acknowledge the clear evidence of two dictionary citations, one from 1920 (Chakmajian) and one from 1970 (Kouyoumdjian). Instead, Meowy brushes the dictionaries off the table in favor of pushing forward a citation from one editorialist and the equivalent of "man-in-the-street interviews" (indeterminate Google results) as a sufficient basis for giving calamity precedence over crime. This is a serious distortion of the history of the Armenian Genocide and the response of the Armenian people to it. Up to this point Meowy has not provided one authoritative source proving that yeghern ever meant calamity in the period from the genocide to the present. A few more weeks should be sufficient for Meowy to find and produce reliable, verifiable proof for his/her notion that calamity is the correct translation of yeghern. I will be waiting to see. Diranakir (talk) 15:15, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Reform implementation, 1840s–80s: "abortive"

I'm confused by the wording of the second sentence of the Reform implementation, 1840s–80s section, specifically, the word, "abortive". It says:

“ Starting in 1839 and ending with the declaration of a constitution in 1876, the Ottoman government implemented a series of reforms, known as the Tanzimat, to improve the situation of minorities, although these were all largely abortive. ”

Is "abortive" grammatically correct? Would "aborted" (or perhaps "unsuccessful") make more sense? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:39, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Ottomans or Turks?

In the article "Ottoman," "Turkish," and "Turk" are used interchangably.

"Turk" or "Turkish" has two meanings:

1. An ethnic Turkic person.
2. A citizen of the Republic of Turkey.

Ottomans were a multi-ethnic peple. They weren't Turk or Turkish. There were many ethnic groups within Ottoman people including Muslim Armenians, Muslim Greeks, Muslim Serbians etc. There were Turks among them, too.

In the article, it is stated that "Turks genocided Armenians." Well, this is not true. If there was a genocide; Ottomans did it. Not "Turks".--85.104.68.206 (talk) 22:11, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Analogously Holocaust did Nazis, not Germans. Am I right?

Cenk Uygur article rebuttal of genocide

There is an old article (1991) by Young Turks presenter Cenk Uygur which denies the existence of an Armenian genocide (http://www.webcitation.org/68YqvmgSY). Conributors to this article may be interested in responding to the points made. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.208.145.20 (talk) 10:45, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

It is difficult to see how 46.208.145.20 , in an unsigned comment on 12 October, can expect any improvement in the article by inviting contributors to respond to Uygur's sophomoric 1991 summation of Turkish government talking points, one in which he does not give readers enough particulars (dates, publication names, etc.) for them to check the accuracy of what he is saying for themselves. The following is a prime example:

Most influential in this line of propaganda was the book that U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgantheau wrote on the matter. Before he wrote his "story" though, he addressed a letter to President Woodrow Wilson asking him if it was a good idea to write a book that would be staunchly against the German and Turkish governments in an effort to rile the American people against them in war. Wilson approved the idea of initiating propaganda against these countries, and Morgantheau went on to write a book that Professor Heath Lowery characterizes as completely contradictory to Morgantheau's memoirs and his letters of the time period.

I am sure "unsigned" has an endless list of such articles to dust off and present here--solely with the objective of improving the article, of course--if there are any takers on the Uygur one. Diranakir (talk) 19:00, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Turkey is not the successor state of the Ottoman Empire

This language needs to be removed from the article. The Turkish Republic and Ottoman Empire coexisted for a brief period and fought as enemies, following World War I, with the struggle ending in the extinction of the Empire and the abolition of the titles of both Sultan and Caliph. The Republic is no more a successor to the Ottoman Empire, than the Ottoman Empire a successor to the Byzantine Empire.

Likewise, blaming the wrongs committed by the Ottoman Empire on the Republic -- its mortal enemy, no less (!) -- is a lot like blaming the wrongs of the Roman Empire, Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire on Ottoman Turkey. This point needs to be clarified in the article and specific attention needs to be added to the detail of what wrongs against the Armenians were committed by the Republic, itself, after the Empire was abolished. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.128.235.10 (talk) 01:53, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

The contributor who created the present section is continuing an improper practice which is turning into a pattern on this page and should be brought to an end as soon as possible, namely, the violation of the two elementary guidelines below:

Keep headings neutral: A heading should indicate what the topic is, but not communicate a specific view about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#New_topics_and_headings_on_talk_pages

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Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes. Diranakir (talk) 12:46, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Change the beginning section

One day, I'll hope enlightenment will prevail on the matter. I am not a specialist, but most serious historians I know are cautious over the term of genocide when it comes to the deportations and massacres of civil Armenians that lived in a region that began to cooperate and sympathize with the Russians. Some Ottomans officials were even Armenians themselves and agreed with this war-time decision of deporting the population that sympathized with the ennemy for religious/nationalists reasons. Both Russians and Armenians were christians of the Orthodox Church. How come this article tends to be so biased in its beginning ? This should let people decide with facts. I consider it as a war crime and a crime against Humanity. But to me genocide really is something else, however ruthless was the deportation which was also a common way of handling rebelous populations in Europe for thousand of years of History. The intro section is thus hardly understandable. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a mass propaganda generator. Give unbiased exposé of facts a chance. A simple reader who sadly feels he has to say he's not turkish or anything.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.0.176.75 (talk) 23:28, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

The creator of section 10, "Change the beginning section" never makes clear what specific change he/she advocates. Instead we are presented with a mixed bag of complaints and accusations about the article, the hint that he is familiar with a host of serious historians, and the implication that just by virtue of living in a certain region all the Armenians there, including women and children who were barely aware of what the Russian or Turkish Empires were, were somehow guilty of siding with the enemy. So much for this contributor's longing for enlightenment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Diranakir (talk • contribs) 19:44, 23 October 2012 (UTC) Diranakir (talk) 20:19, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Further reading

Separating the books or articles by authors that do not support the "Genocide" claim under a subsection titled "Denialist works" goes beyond being a POV but fails to have academic honesty. I am not going to add many WP bluelinks here, not even one, because every editor that works on a contraversial area knows more or less which WP policies, principles, guidelines, rules and good practice are being violated in this article. Tagging as "denialist" any academic source also presents a lack of confidence in one's position. The discussion about "genocide" is not only a question of how many people died in this tragedy and under which conditions but also on what may be considered "genocide" or not from an academic point of view. The writers that may oppose the term genocide do not necessarily deny that thousands of Armenians (other than Turks and Kurds) have lost their lives in Ottoman Turkey during the First World War. Therefore if someone comes and defends an opinion different than "yours" (I am referring to any WP user, we may better say "ours") please do not ask them if they are "denying" that this many people died; because possibly their point is not that. After this introduction, I give a link to a valuable academic article on the issue, in which other than finding some new points of view on the "Genocide", we may also see a major criticism of a few sources we may have used to understand and explain the topic. I prefer to add the link here, in the TP, because I cannot add a valuable paper under a subsection titled "Denialist works" and have no intention to begin a war on changing things fundamentally. Those editors who wish to use the text as a source in the article are most welcome. Here: "The Armenian Question: Conflict, Trauma and Objectivity" by Prof. Dr. Türkkaya Ataöv of the University of Ankara, Faculty of Political Science.

Section for Deletion

I suggest for the sake of sanity and common dicency (this whole article has surpassed all definitions of POV) certain sections to be deleted, particularly those alleding massacres on ludicrous scale for which sources are dubious, biased or based on allegations, furthermore proposing use of toxic gases or morphine overdosing (mind you morphine was probably badly needed else where in 1918) seems to some a good idea to spice it up, the only one thing missing is allegation of canibalism. Total lack of netural point of view. I porpose the below sections to be deleted dueto lack of sufficient third party sources:

- Mass burnings

- Drowning

- Use of poison and drug overdoses

Hittit (talk) 18:34, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Keep them. In the future maybe some of the irredentists will look behind and be ashamed of how they destroyed WP for their petty interests... --E4024 (talk) 10:22, 11 January 2013 (UTC)