well end of the day, what happened in 1915 binds us all Turks..
Because it is our history, because we have to know the truth. And knowing the truth is quite important because ´what went there´ happened to be at the time of start of our nationalism which kind of still rules the country.
The same nationalism (say it was necessary at the time, say it was a self defence, say there was no other way etc) is still seeing the major problems of Turkey from the same angle.
Now lets look at what went there at the time..
I think everybody accepts that it was the time of disintegration of ottomany empire. End of 19 centry most of the balkans were left with the nationalist movements( Greeks, Bulgarians etc.)
And also everybody accepts that Armenians wanted to leave too..(btw.Their nationalism started long before Turkish nationalism.)
It is also well known that they collaborated with the Russians specially and Armenian groups started to kill Turkish civilians.. (If I am not wrong, totaly they killed between 12 to 25 thousands civilians)
And what went after that was the backlash from young Turks goverment..(which I gave some brief info about them here http://www.turkishclass.com/forumTitle_30435)
They decided to move almost every armenians out ouf Anatolia. (Basically, it was a war and ottomans were losing everything. Young Turks who were in the government were in a panic. They thought if the main part of Anatolia was lost to Armenians, we ,Turks would have no place to live! That was the main psychology of Young Turks at the time)
And they decided to move every single armenian to Syria, although the rebels were mainly active along the Russian borders.
This went on almost 17 months. Ermanians young/old/women/babies etc from east and west they were forced to march!
The result?
We dont know how many Armenians died exactly..
but according to a report from a committe which was formed by the Ottomani goverment to investigate the war crimes said that 800.000 Armenians died during WW1.(Vakit, 15 Mart 1919). In 1928 in a report from the army head quoter said that 800.000 Armenians and 200.000 Greeks died (Aktaran Hikmet Bayur, Türk Ãnkilap Tarihi, C. III, Kýsým IV, Ankara:Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayýnlarý, 1991, s.787.)
Even our offical historian Kamuran gurun said the number was 300.000.
(A few years ago, Orhan Pamuk said something like ´there were 1.000.000 armanians 40.000 kurds died on these soils and we should be able to discuss. He got nearly killed for those words)
And in 1992, we invented the phrase ´so called armenian genocide´..(it was not referred as ´so called´ before)
Anyway..now we are at this moment..in 2008.
We, Turks never wanted to talk about this issue.. Our archives were closed for a long time and when it was open officially, anybody who wanted to investigete had some serious problems!! And now many important parts of the archives gone missing!!
Anyway, this is an important issue..Authorities who LIED to us about kurdish issue (bye saying that -no kurds, only mountain Turks-) are the same people telling us what is ´our official explanation is about the armenian issue´ (that is the brainwashing part btw haha )..I will always be spectical about it.
It is important. Hrant Dink was killed because of this issue..
It is important because we need to know the truth..
btw.. I m not implying that it was a genocide.
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