Talk:Greek genocide/Archive 8

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

Archive 9

Archive 10

→

Archive 14

Mass grave of Pontic Greeks found

in Yazılar village of West Pontus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG4Q3dS9LeU&eurl=http://pontosworld.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=614&Itemid=1&limit=1&limitstart=1 --Eagle of Pontus (talk) 18:41, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Same news in Greek http://www.alphatv.gr/index.asp?a_id=90&news_id=28823 http://www.alphatv.gr/index.asp?a_id=90&news_id=28843

and Turkish http://haber.mynet.com/sayfali/guncel/Samsun-da-toplu-mezar-bulundu/22Mart2008/A2203050/3

Apparently the Turkish article refers to the find as a Christian graveyard that somehow got mixed up and moved, and does not refer to it as a mass grave. How surprising...this isn't.Xenovatis (talk) 12:56, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Article title

See Talk:Greek genocide/Archive 7#A modest proposal for an earlier discussion

Lead

See Talk:Greek genocide/Archive 7#Lead for current discussion

Apart from insisting on putting over a point of view that "Between 1914–1923 the Ottoman government conducted a campaign against the Greek population/communities of Pontus (and Anatolia) [that was a genocide]." [Xenovatis ] You still have no explained what you object to in my suggested wording of a first sentence. Why is it necessary to put the word genocide in the first sentence of the article? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 22:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Because they have an interest in pushing this particular pov Phillip. I know WP:Civility says we should not accuse people of pov pushing, but come on, this is getting ridicolous now. Xenovatis's idea of compromise is to widen the scope of this article to encompass all Greeks and elevate their plight to that of the Armenians based on a single resolution. --A.Garnet (talk) 09:29, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

As I explained it is not a POV but lifted almost verbatim from teh IAGS resolution. You still have not replied why this is equivalent in significance to the Turkish govt's POV. Further my proposla doesn't even do that. As explaiend and still not commented on by you even that govt is referring to the events with the word genocide and the first sentence is merely reflecting that.

The Greek Genocide (unbolded) refers to the Ottoman (not Turkish) campaign of deliberate (intent) and systematic (we can discuss this) destruction of the Greek population (we can discuss communities) of Pontus and Anatolia in the period 1914-1923.The question of whether these incidents constitute a genocide is a matter of dispute between the governments (avoids implicating the populations) of Greece and Turkey. Turkey, the succesor state of the Ottoman Empire under whose rule these events took place, (clarifies that modern Turkey was not the actor of these events) similarly contests (avoided denies which connotes genocide denial) the historicity of the contemporaneous Armenian and Assyrian genocides, both of which have also been recognized by the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

Xenovatis (talk) 10:53, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Xenovatis to reply to your question in the next section. "what exactly would it take to meet their personal and as we saw strict criteria of genocide, has still not been answered." You do not know it was a genocide you only think it was because some people (who you trust) have told you that it is. That is a perfectly reasonable opinion to hold, but from the construction of an article on Wikipeida, because it is a minority topic (in the English speaking world) and because there two and possibly three opinions (lawful pacification, crimes against humanity, genocide) the construction of the article will be better if we present those views and do not take sides. By better article I mean one that complies with WP:NPOV. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 10:51, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

The same rational can be applied to all matters on which those people whom we trust have pronounced. We do not know the earth is round, some people whom we trust, the relevant scientists, have determined that it is. I do not contest that it is a low notability topic neither that there is another POV (the Turkish govt's). What I do however contest is giving undue weight to it by elevating it to the same level as the opinion of the majority of scholars in the field. Also please answer the point about even that governmetn refering to the events using the term genocide which is all the lead is doing as well. Xenovatis (talk) 11:00, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

No one is suggesting "undue weight to it by elevating [the Turkish government's view] to the same level as the opinion of the majority of scholars in the field" -- There can be whole sections devoted to presenting the evidence as to why so and so think it was a genocide (let the facts speak for themselves) -- What I am trying to do is present a summary in the introduction laying out an introduction that presents the article with a neutral point of view. Like it or not the Turkish governments view on this issue is a significant one and as was seen with the fuss over A United Nations exhibition, entitled "Lessons from Rwanda". Two major English language news agencies, Reuters and AP both report the issue using what is called a "neutral point of view" on Wikipedia [1] [2] [3] . Notice both of them state that the events in Rwanda were a genocide -- presumably because there is near universal agreement including the judgements of an international tribunal -- but both then go on to describe the dispute over the Armenian entry that the Turkish government called "mass killings" and which is "widely viewed by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century" (to quote from the AP article) --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 11:49, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

It is not just the Turkish governments view though, consider Mark Levene for example who states "Historians, perhaps concerned not to magnify these events by comparison with those of 1915-16, tend to avoid the term genocide to describe them". So we can in fact source the view that most historians do not use the term genocide to describe these events. Can Xenovatis source the claim that most historians do use the term genocide as he keeps telling us? --A.Garnet (talk) 12:05, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

AGarnet is omitting for some reason the most important reference from Levene's quote, namely where he explicitly terms the events a genocide. Below is the full quote from the Journal of Holocaust and Genocide Studies:

Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1998 12(3):393-433; doi:10.1093/hgs/12.3.393 Mark Levene Creating a Modern "Zone of Genocide": The Impact of Nation- and State-Formation on Eastern Anatolia, 1878–1923

Historians, perhaps concerned not to magnify these events by comparison with those of 1915-16, tend to avoid the term genocide to describe them. In my formulation, however, these events would constitute partial genocide

In any case this explains why some historians don't use the term genocide as we have seen from the quotes we had already provided (referring to it as massacres, holocaust, ethnic cleanising) but doesn't refer to the majority of historians.Xenovatis (talk) 13:01, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

He terms a partial genocide, not The Greek Genocide or the Pontic Greek Genocide. But I dont consider that important, I consider important his claim that historians tend to avoid using the term genocide. In the article we could therefore state something along the lines "The IAGS, Greece and Cyprus have passed resolutions recognising the events as genocide. On the state of academic recognition Levene notes that historians tends to avoid use of the term genocide, concerned not to compare the plight of Pontians to the events of 1915.[cite Leven here]." Since you cannot find a quote which states the majority of historians DO recognise a genocide then you would have no real grounds to oppose this. --A.Garnet (talk) 13:23, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

How about this:

During and in the aftermath of World War I the Ottoman government conducted a campaign against the Greek population of Pontus. The campaign included persecutions, massacres, expulsions, and death marches during which the number of deaths that occurred according to various sources ranges from 300,000 to 360,000 Anatolian Greeks. The survivors and the expelled took refuge mostly in the nearby Russian Empire (later, Soviet Union). The few Pontic Greeks who had remained in Pontus until the end of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) were exchanged in the frame of the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations in 1922–1923.

The Turkish government (Turkey is the successor state to the Ottoman Empire) maintains that there was a large scale pacification campaign carried out in the region because the Greek population was seen as sympathetic to the enemies of the Ottoman state and a potential fifth column. The Allies of World War I took a different view condemning the Ottoman government sponsored massacres as crimes against humanity. More recently the International Association of Genocide Scholars have passed resolution that Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire, including the Pontian Greeks, was a genocide. Some other organisations have also passed resolutions recognising the campaign as a genocide including both the parliament of Greece and that of Cyprus.

It explains what happened (at leas as far as is currently mentioned in the article) and it mentions the three major POVs. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 11:15, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Could we please have the sources claiming it was a pacification campaign? Thanks.Xenovatis (talk) 13:07, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

A legitimate one at that.Xenovatis (talk) 17:04, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

AGarnet's Complaint

Apart from insisting on putting over a point of view that "Between 1914–1923 the Ottoman government conducted a campaign against the Greek population/communities of Pontus (and Anatolia) [that was a genocide]." [Xenovatis ] You still have no explained what you object to in my suggested wording of a first sentence. Why is it necessary to put the word genocide in the first sentence of the article? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 22:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Because they have an interest in pushing this particular pov Phillip. I know WP:Civility says we should not accuse people of pov pushing, but come on, this is getting ridicolous now. Xenovatis's idea of compromise is to widen the scope of this article to encompass all Greeks and elevate their plight to that of the Armenians based on a single resolution. --A.Garnet (talk) 09:29, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I just want to point out that AGarnet has just placed this debate on a slipery slope of accusations and recriminations which will probably not end well. Needless to say I will not be following him in his personal attacks and I suggest others don't either.Xenovatis (talk) 09:56, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

The question has still not been answered by either AGarnet or PBS of what criteria exactly the events should meet to fulfil their definition of genocide if the statement of the organization of scholars on genocide fails to meet them. It might be useful to address this issue since neither PBS nor AGarnet consider the Armenian Genocide to fulfil these criteria even while it is recognized by the majority of scholars. AGarnet has been very active in the Armenian Genocide talk pages promoting a "sympathetic tone" for the Turkish government's genocide denial Talk:Armenian_genocide/Archive_5#Turkish_government_position_-_lack_of_sympathetic_tone.3F (and he has been active with many comments on many of the other 18 archived talk pages) while PBS [4] has referred to the AG as the aledged genocide. Clearly there is a difference in the criteria employed by the discussants and from the above it would seem more likely that one side is using very strict criteria rather than other using very loose. This should probably be resolved and some common ground established in order for consensus to be achieved.Xenovatis (talk) 09:46, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

My friend, your whole contribution to this debate has been marked by constant incivility. Your first contribution to this dispute was to call those who opposed the state of the article "genocide denialists and Kemalist apologists". You've accused me of being a "borderline racist". You've accused me indirectly twice of stalking you and still refuse to apologise. Now in what looks like an attempt to smear my name, you're selectively quoting passages from past contributions in the hope of discrediting my arguments here, most of which you are utterly incapable of providing a reasonable answer to. I see PBS is also unhappy that you have done the same with him, despite his extreme patience and civility. You have even contacted an Iranian user (User:Rosywounds) and urged him not support my arguments because Turks were not "very good or devout Muslims" and that "I can understand a Turkish nationalist like AGarnet defending such crimes but from the POV of a Muslim they are not worth it, since the people who perpetrated them were anti-Islamic".

That is a misrepresentation of my statements. I explicitly stated that "the people who commited these crimes", implying the genocide, were not very good or devout Muslims, both as perpetrators of genocide and as Kemalists, which is an ideology hostile to Islam. You may think otherwise but that is not to invalidate my statement by which I stand.Xenovatis (talk) 10:34, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Now in light of this conduct, to accuse me of placing this article on a "slipery slope of accusations and recriminations" for stating the obvious sounds like a bad joke. If you indeed feel I have attacked you personally, then report me to an admin, because from what I can see it is me who should be reporting you. --A.Garnet (talk) 10:24, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

As I said A.garnet, now making threats, is probably hoping to derail the thread. I will not be following him and i urge others not to either.Xenovatis (talk) 10:34, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Also notice that the main question posed in this thread, what exactly would it take to meet their personal and as we saw strict criteria of genocide, has still not been answered.Xenovatis (talk) 10:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

This conversation should be on your user pages. It has no direct relevance to the development of the article. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 10:42, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

It is not a conversation since I studiously avoided replying to A.Garnet's self admitted incivility and also urged others to ignore it as well.Xenovatis (talk) 10:45, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

My criteria has been repeated for almost two years. If you want to state Pontians suffered a genocide and pass that off as the majority pov, then provide evidence of a large body of scholarly work whichs suggests as much. In the futre, if you want to create a section which directly attacks one of the disputants, then do it on my talk page. --A.Garnet (talk) 10:50, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I merely sectioned off A.Garne'ts self admittedly uncivil comment which appears on top.Xenovatis (talk) 10:55, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Why archive?

The talk page was active and you archived it without consulting anyone. Please restore to previous version with several debates active and important information presented. THis is the second time you archive without consulting and I would appreciate it if you did us the courtesy of discussing in the future. Archive 7 is not half as long as the other pages. Thanks.Xenovatis (talk) 10:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Size of 160K is still far too long for a page on Wikipedia. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 10:42, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Museum exhibit and Memorials

There is an exhibit on the Greek Genocide at the New Mexico Holocaust and Intolerance Museum http://www.nmholocaustmuseum.org/exhibits.html#Greek A reference could be included in the article.Xenovatis (talk) 13:45, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

In addition to the several memorials in Greece there are two in the US, one in Canada, one in Germany and one in Kazakhstan. These should also be included in a memorial section on the main article.Xenovatis (talk) 13:49, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Turkish attempts to silence Encarta

This is about turkish denialism of the Armenian Genocide but it might be worth a mention on the section discussing the Turkish government's record of genocide denial.

The Chronicle of Higher Education August 18, 2000 (page 20)

The Other Side of Genocide:

Covering up genocide is a tricky business. Probably the best place to start is with the word itself. Coined in 1944 to describe Nazi Germany's systematic murder of millions, it's since been disputed in nearly every other usage, from the U.S. government's early waffling on whether Rwanda's Hutu annihilation of the Tutsis qualified, to the Turkish government's continuing campaign to convince the world that several hundred thousand starved Armenians does not a genocide make.

That's where Microsoft's Encarta comes in. Helen Fein, executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Genocide, says the online encyclopedia almost helped deny the genocide.

In 1996, Encarta asked Ms. Fein to write an entry on genocide. Her short essay, which included a brief mention of the murder or deportation of at least 1.1 million Armenians by the Turkish Ottoman government during World War I, was accepted and published.

But this past June, Encarta called Ms. Fein and asked her to revise her entry, in response to "customer complaints." She learned that Ronald Grigor Suny, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, had been asked to revise his entry on Armenia as well.

Ms. Fein says Encarta wanted her to include a few lines on the "other side of the story" - the Turkish government's side, that is. Mr. Suny says an Encarta editor named Frank Manning explained to him that the revision would leave the facts in place, but remove the word "genocide."

"Their proposed changes suggested that all narratives are equal, that we can't know for sure whether or not the Armenians brought the massacres on themselves," says Ms. Fein.

According to Mr. Suny, Mr. Manning told him that the Turkish government had threatened to arrest local Microsoft officials and ban Microsoft products unless the who, what, and why of the massacres were presented as topics open to debate. Microsoft representatives would neither confirm nor deny the threats, but Namik Tan, a spokesman for the Turkish Embassy called the charge "so ridiculous I cannot speak." He acknowledged that the embassy wrote at least two letters to Microsoft urging it to remove the term "genocide" from the two entries, and to cite Armenian rebellion as the cause of any suffering, but he insists that the Turkish government "does not make threats."

When Ms. Fein and Mr. Suny threatened to remove their names from the article and to publicize Microsoft's censorship, however, Encarta editors backed down. Ms. Fein and Mr. Suny agreed to add that the Turkish government denies the genocide, but held firm to the facts of its occurrence.

When the Chronicle attempted to reach Encarta's editors, a publicist from the company said they were all on vacation. A second publicist added that every story has two sides, even one about genocide.

Indeed, Ms. Fein notes that the Encarta entry on Turkey, which is unsigned, still does not mention the Armenian genocide at all.

Xenovatis (talk) 17:02, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Still the same

After a couple of months off from Wikipedia, I still see that this article suffers from a broadening of the genocide. Many statements here reflect the overall genocide in Anatolia rather than the specific one in the Pontic region, which is the sole reason for differentiating it from other genocide articles. I would have hoped that all of these total numbers would have been replaced by actual numbers in Pontus alone. Does anyone else not understand this I guess? Monsieurdl ^{mon talk-mon contribs} 13:05, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

In the heat of editing, many editors to seem to forget what an encyclopedia is for, and what an encyclopaedic article should look like. Maybe also it is an admittance that Wikipedia is not really an encyclopedia. Articles on controversial but obscure subjects on Wikipedia tend to read like badly written press-releases intended for lazy journalists. They are loaded with unneccesary details that would better placed in separate articles, and they attempt to enhance their significance by attaching themselves to more readily-recognised subjects (in this case the Armenian Genocide for example - rather like the Armenian Genocide article in turn attempts to make connections to the WW2 Jewish Genocide). Meowy 20:01, 23 May 2008 (UTC)