It's May 23, 2024, 09:28:21 AM
Check this, I'm not going to say the Armenian genocide didn't happen, but I do want to make a couple points about this....-Generally whoever wins a war gets to write most of the history we end up reading about that war. The Ottoman's were devastated by World War 1, so much so that the whole damn Empire was dissolved and they were temporarily occupied by Western Powers. Had Germany/Ottoman Empire won World War 1, then the history would say that the Ottoman's had been benevolent in giving Armenians refuge in Turkey prior to the War, and then later the Armenians stabbed them in the back and became agents for their co-coreligionists; the Russians. Therefore the Turks, fearing imminent defeat, panicked and removed the Armenians, but excesses were taken by soldiers against the Armenians but it was not a reflection of the policy of the Turkish government.-Second point I want to make is about the Islamic vs. Jewish factor. The Ottoman Empire had been the one force that had prevented the Jews from capturing Palestine for 400 years prior to World War 1. They also remained the last remnant of Islamic influence in Europe, and had been a thorn in the side of the Europeans ever since they sacked Constantinople and swallowed up the Byzantine Empire. So there definitely was a great effort to demonize the Turks, and glorify the Armenians, as the Armenians were a large Christian minority amongst the Turks, and were often used as inside agents to bring about the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.-Third point is that by the time of the genocide, the last real Islamic Kalifah of the Ottoman Empire; Sultan Abdul-Hameed had already been removed from power in 1909. The remaining Sultan-Khalif's were only symbolic at best, much the same as the Royal family in Britian was merely symbolic. So the Islamic government was actually replaced with Turkish nationalism. It was the Turkish nationalism that employed racist policies such as the one that lead to the genocide of the Armenians.