Tragedy of Eastern Anatolia has 2 faces.

During WW1, my grandfathers village was attacked by Armenian bandits and nearly half of the population was killed. Fortunately he had left his village previously.

Personally I have read some of the memories of Armenian civilians. Everone that I have read said that attackers were Kurdish irregulars. Some historians argue that Kurdish irregulars were officially part of Ottoman army. But in reality they were not. They were commanded by their tribal leaders and generally did what they wanted to do.

If you want you can check it yourselves, there are several Armenian books on the subject in the Amazon.com

I re-edited the below letter to generalize the subject, it was about erecting an so called Genocide memorial in Las Vegas USA. In the end various sources of the referenced statements are given . For furher information click on the links.

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We oppose the use of the term genocide in connection with the Turkish-Armenian conflict during World War I. Genocide is a highly charged, technical, legal term, precisely defined by the United Nations in 1948, and can only be used after a "competent tribunal" reaches that verdict after proper "due process". There are no court verdicts, such as Nuremberg, clearing the way for this term to be used in connection with the Turkish-Armenian conflict during WWI [1]  The British had attempted to try the Turkish leadership of the alleged war crimes; failed to come up with any supporting evidence that could stand the scrutiny of a court of law right ; and eventually had to let the Turkish detainees go without filing a single charge. [2]   That is why the British government, to this day, will refuse to regard this human tragedy that engulfed Armenians, Turks, and other inhabitants of the area a genocide despite pressure and threats from the Armenian Diaspora. [3]   Similarly, neither the will bow the intimidating pressure by the Armenian Diaspora to call the tragedy a genocide.

 We shall know the difference between allegations and facts. Armenian charges of genocide are yet-to-be-proven "allegations", not incontrovertible facts. In the absence of a verdict by a competent court, therefore, all the civilized and decent people of the world must use the qualifier "alleged" before the phrase “Armenian Genocide”, let alone erecting a monument it on public land.

 No one is trying to minimize the suffering of the Armenians; but Armenian suffering must not blind one to the much larger suffering of the Turks and other Muslims of the same era and area, mostly caused by the brutal acts of greedy and vicious Armenian revolutionaries supported by invaders bent on destroying the Ottoman Empire ( Britain, France, and Russia and their Ottoman-Christian proxies.)  Calling it genocide would unfairly place all the blame on Turks whereas it was the Ottoman-Armenian revolutionaries that first poisoned the 800 years of mostly harmonious Turkish-Armenian co-habitation in We would not oppose Armenians' recognition of Armenian losses if their memorials were named more realistic "The Armenians’  War Memorial."

  Armenian terrorists in our midst already assassinated four Turkish diplomats on American soil in the last 30 years and tried to justify their heinous acts by the false charge of genocide, while wearing ugly grins and flashing victory signs in American court rooms. [7] 

 Insisting blindly on anti-Turkish biased policies and programs based on partisan Armenian propaganda and un-substantiated historical claims will almost surely offend and anger  the good citizens of the , standing shoulder to shoulder in all conflicts, including but not limited to   Erecting the sop called Genocide memorials around serves no benefit other than further polarizing Turkish and Armenian communities in as well as adding to the apprehension and anxiety felt in Such moves will add to the tension in the already troubled Balkans- Caucasus- Middle East triangle at a time when we need friendly cooperation and support more than ever

 During the Balkan Wars of 1911-1912 that preceded the WWI., Hundreds of thousands  of  Ottoman Turkish children packed into trains and whisked to Most had lost their entire families, relatives, neighbors, and indeed, the entire populations of hundreds of Turkish-villages.  These hundreds of thousands of Muslims  fleeing Ottoman-Christian excesses in the Balkans were confronted  with yet another cycle of Ottoman-Christian violence in   by the  Ottoman-Greeks in the West and by the Ottoman-Armenians in the East.  One might say that those poor, starving Ottoman-Muslim refugees jumped from  the frying pan right into the fire.  Turkish losses were unfathomable:  2.5 million dead; many times that number wounded; in a country left in rubble; starvation and disease everywhere...  And here is the rub:  523,000 thousand of those Turkish dead met their tragic ends at the hands of the Armenian revolutionaries.   And due to endless, senseless, baseless, and fraudulent Armenian propaganda in the West since 1915, like many hate monuments in some countries for example, one hardly ever heard Turkish side of the story, felt the Turk

SYNOPSIS: From Ergun KIRLIKOVALI to several African-American students who wanted more information about the Turkish views after the biased lecture by the Armenian professor :

“Today, you witnessed with your own eyes how the views of a group of people party to a controversial issue were censored by the organizers and the lecturer. Ask yourselves: How can this happen in the 21st Century at an institute of higher learning in the most advanced and richest state in the Union, California? And next time someone gives you a lofty lecture about the freedom of speech in America, please remember today!”

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PART 1: THE MISLEADING INVITATION

It all started with an innocuous looking invitation to the faculty members at El Camino College in Torrance (near Los Angeles, California):

“ The History Department invites you and your students to attend a free lecture:
Dr. Levon Marashlian on the Armenian Genocide
Tuesday, May 9, at 1:00 in the Campus Theater “

Shouldn’t that have read the “alleged” Armenian Genocide? Isn’t Genocide a special legal term with a very precise definition, arrived at after many years of diplomatic negotiations, until it was concluded in the 1948 convention in the United Nations? Isn’t it true that the genocide convention was one of the longest negotiated issues in the UN history? Doesn’t it require that a genocide charge must be proven at a “competent tribunal” after proper “due process” before the label of genocide can be used to characterize a certain tragic event after 1948? Isn’t it true that this law, like all proper laws, is not retroactive?

For example, we know that the Holocaust is an incontrovertible fact, not because of those numerous Hollywood movies, but because the charges of crimes against humanity leveled against the German Nazis were subjected to a proper and rigorous “due process” at Nuremberg Tribunal after the World War II. The prosecutors introduced supporting evidence, facts, figures, eye witnesses and more and the defendants were allowed to cross examine them before the final verdict was reached: what Nazis did to Jews during WWII was a genocide ( as Rafael Lemkin, the creator of the term, intended the term to mean). This term now seems to be deliberately misused by partisans to misrepresent almost every human tragedy. Is every killing a genocide? Is every my-grandma-told-me-story, family photo, or crying eye witness account a genocide? Of course, not. There are other laws that deal with such crimes. Genocide is a very special concept where a government acts with “premeditation” to exterminate directly or indirectly part or whole of a group of people for national, ethnic, racial, and/or religious reasons. While individual can take part in a genocide, only governments can launch and conduct genocide. “Intent” is the key word here. Intent to exterminate must be proven at a “competent tribunal” before anyone can use the genocide label. Just because Armenian lobbyists shout the loudest doesn’t make a civil war a genocide.

Where then was this “competent tribunal” for the Armenian allegations of genocide held? And when? Who held them? Was due process allowed to run its course? How come we didn’t hear about it? After all, Turks are a party to this issue and they must have been heard at such a tribunal, right? Turks should have cross-examined the Armenian evidence and present counter evidence, right? Isn’t this what “due process” is all about? Turks can easily prove that most of the Ottoman-Armenians were brutal insurgents, armed to the teeth by the Western allies during WWI, all of whom were intent on destroying the Ottoman Empire and the Ottoman-Armenians did cause the deaths of 523,000 of their Muslim

You're talking nonsense, Mr Ambassador

All the while, new diplomatic archives are opening to reveal the smell of death - Armenian death

By Robert Fisk - 20 May 2006

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article548977.ece

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13121.htm

A letter from the Turkish Ambassador to the Court of Saint James arrived for me a few days ago, one of those missives that send a shudder through the human soul. "You allege that an 'Armenian genocide' took place in Eastern Anatolia in 1915," His Excellency Mr Akin Alptuna told me. "I believe you have some misconceptions about those events ..."

Oh indeedy doody, I have. I am under the totally mistaken conception that one and a half million Armenians were cruelly and deliberately done to death by their Turkish Ottoman masters in 1915, that the men were shot and knifed while their womenfolk were raped and eviscerated and cremated and starved on death marches and their children butchered. I have met a few of the survivors - liars to a man and woman, if the Turkish ambassador to Britain is to be believed - and I have seen the photographs taken of the victims by a brave German photographer called Armen Wegner whose pictures must now, I suppose, be consigned to the waste bins. So must the archives of all those diplomats who courageously catalogued the mass murders inflicted upon Turkey's Christian population on the orders of the gang of nationalists who ran the Ottoman government in 1915. What would have been our reaction if the ambassador of Germany had written a note to the same effect? "You allege that a 'Jewish genocide' took place in Eastern Europe between 1939 and 1945 ... I believe you have some misconceptions about those events..." Of course, the moment such a letter became public, the ambassador of Germany would be condemned by the Foreign Office, our man in Berlin would - even the pusillanimous Blair might rise to the occasion - be withdrawn for consultations and the European Union would debate whether sanctions should be placed upon Germany.

But Mr Alptuna need have no such worries. His country is not a member of the European Union - it merely wishes to be - and it was Mr Blair's craven administration that for many months tried to prevent Armenian participation in Britain's Holocaust Day.

Amid this chicanery, there are a few shining bright lights and I should say at once that Mr Alp-tuna's letter is a grotesque rep-resentation of the views of a growing number of Turkish citizens, a few of whom I have the honour to know, who are convinced that the story of the great evil visited upon the Armenians must be told in their country. So why, oh why, I ask myself, are Mr Alptuna and his colleagues in Paris and Beirut and other cities still peddling this nonsense?

In Lebanon, for example, the Turkish embassy has sent a "communiquZ" to the local French-language L'OrientLeJour newspaper, referring to the "soi-disant (so-called) Armenian genocide" and asking why the modern state of Armenia will not respond to the Turkish call for a joint historical study to "examine the events" of 1915.

In fact, the Armenian president, Robert Kotcharian, will not respond to such an invitation for the same reason that the world's Jewish community would not respond to the call for a similar examination of the Jewish Holocaust from the Iranian president - because an unprecedented international crime was committed, the mere questioning of which would be an insult to the millions of victims who perished.

But the Turkish appeals are artfully concocted. In Beirut, they recall the Allied catastrophe at Gallipoli in 1915 when British, French, Australian and New Zealand troops suffered massive casualties at the hands of the Turkish army. In all - including Turkish soldiers - up to a quarter of a million men perished in the Dardanelles. The Turkish embassy in Beirut rightly states that the belligerent nations of Gallipoli have transformed these hostilities into g