Hi Groznan, this is interesting reading. By the way, my article was published in today's Volkskrant and you are mentioned in it.

'The Armenians in the Late Ottoman Period', edited Türkkaya Atatöv, Ankara, 2002 is het eindrapport van een Turkse studie naar de beweerde genocide op de Armeniers die vele jaren heeft geduurd,en waarvoor honderden mensen zijn opgeleid om documenten uit de Ottomaanse archieven te vertalen.
Vrijwel niemand beheerst de Ottomaanse officiele taal nog.

Er zijn ook opgravingen verricht in massagraven in NO Anatolië, het rapport bevat tientallen verwijzingen naar documenten in westerse diplomatieke archieven.

Er was geen genocide OP Armeniers, maar DOOR Armeniers, de Ottomaanse Armeniers maakten gemende zaak met hun broeders ten noorden van de grens nadat de 1914 oorlog was uitgebroken.
In de massagraven liggen Moslems.
De Ottomanen reageerden als gebruikelijk, de opstandelingen weren en masse gedeporteerd.
Dit ging uiteraarde te voet, wegen en spoorlijnen ontbraken, het was winter, Moslems probeerden vergeldingsacties uit te voeren , en zo kwamener een 15.000 Armeniers om voor ze in Syrië aankwamen.

De mythe van de genocide is in de wereld gebracht door de VS joodse ambassadeur bij de Ottomanen, Morgenthau sr; hij had Armeense secretarissen.
Tot ver in de dertiger jaren colporteerde Morgenthau de beweerde genocide.

Of Morgenthau bewust loog of geloofde wat hij zei is niet meer na te gaan, Morgenthau was ook de man die de Duitse schuld voor de 1914 oorlog in de wereld bracht.
Al vrij kort na 1919 Versailles, waar Duitsland werd opgelegd de kosten van de 1914-1918 oorlog te dragen, waren historici het er over eens dat Morgenthau had gelogen over de Duitse schuld.

Een motief voor Morgenthau om de genocide te verzinnen zou geweest kunnen zijn dat een groot christelijk rijk in NO Anatolië gunstig had kunnen zijn voor de nog toekomstige joodse staat in Palestina.

De Britten gaven in 1917 weg wat ze niet hadden, Palestina, om door de VS gered te worden voor capitulatie aan de Duitsers in 1917.

Profesor Justin mcCarthy has written this piece of testimony:
"Fewer and fewer historians are willing to write on this (Armenian issue). A very senior and respected scholar of Ottoman history, Bernard Lewis, was brought to court in France for his denial of the Armenian genocide. After a long and successful career... he could afford to hire the lawyers who defended him. Can a junior scholar afford the same? Could someone who depends on university rectors, who worry about funding, afford to take up such a dangerous topic?

I myself was the target of a campaign, instigated by an Armenian newspaper, that attempted to have me fired from my university. Letters and telephone calls from all over the United States came to the president of my university, demanding my dismissal because I denied the "Armenian Genocide." We have the tenure system in the United States, a system that guarantees that senior professors cannot be fired for what they teach and write, and my university president defended my rights. But a younger professor might understandably be afraid to write on the Armenians if he knew he faced the sort of ordeal that has been faced by others. ??To me, the worst of all is being accused of being the kind of politicized nationalist scholar I so detest. False reasons are invented to explain why I say this — my mother is a Turk, my wife is a Turk, I am paid large sums by the Turkish government. None of these things is true, but it would not affect my writings one bit if they were. The way to challenge a scholar's work is to read his writings and respond to them with your own scholarship, not to attack his character.
Maybe Jan-Pewter Balkenende and Wouter Bos could do well if they read a bit more about the Armenian nacionalists and their ante!

Maybe this is also interesting to mention.

"Armenian Journalist Hrant Dink: Honest Historians Wanted

Tuesday , 21 February 2006

Ankara - Hrant Dink, Armenian journalist and editor of the Armenian weekly Agos, argued that there is no honest historian in both Armenian and Turkish side on Armenian issue. “Both sides are not honest on the Armenian issue” Mr. Dink added in his interview to Radikal, Turkish daily.

According to Hrant Dink about 300.000 Armenians returned to the Anatolian territories after the Relocation campaign. Mr. Dink says “Armenian historians do not mention the Armenians who survived and returned to Anatolia. The number of Armenians returned is 300.000. 130.000 of them returned Istanbul, and 170.000 returned to various cities in Anatolia. However we have no data on how many Armenians could save their own identity or how many Armenians were assimilated under Muslim identities.”

Some of the Turkish historians like Yusuf Halacoglu argue that the number of Armenians who returned to Anatolia after the Relocation Campaign is 600.000.

Dr. Sedat Laciner, head of the International Strategic Research Organisation, pointed out that the number of Armenians who returned to Anatolia cities and villages is not less than 500.000. Dr. Laciner further told the JTW that:

“If half a million people returned to Anatolia how can you talk about a genocide? If these people had experienced a genocide campaign and saw more than 1,5 million killings, why did they return to the Turkish territories? Is there any Jewish who returned to the Nazi state or even to Germany after the Nazi rule? If more than 500.000 Armenians returned to Anatolia and they could survive under Turkish rule, it means that the Armenian killings are exaggerated. I do not ignore the communal killings. More than 520.000 Turkish and Kurdish were massacred by the Armenian gangs and Turkish and Kurdish gangs attacked the Armenian villages and immigrants during the First World War. However no one could hide the fact that many Armenians were saved by their Muslim neighbors, and most of the Armenians survived after the Relocation Campaign. Even they preferred Turkey to live instead of Armenia, Europe or the Middle East. Armenian historians show great effort to curtail the returned Armenians fact”.

JTW
21 February 2006"

According to the german historian and orientalist Prof. Udo Steinbach during and after World War One, 2.5 mio. moslems, 600.000-800.000 armenians and 300.000 greeks lost their life (source "Die Türkei im 20. Jahrhundert", Bergisch-Gladbach 1996, Page 121).

@ Hi, Research, This is an argument plus athough I personally believe that numbers of anything as delicate as casualties of civil wars, uprisings and persecutions (especially in regions without much proven evidence in detailed previous research on the subject) are more often approximations, estimates. My point is that the Armenians enjoyed exclusive status within the Ottoman Empire. Why was it lost? Did they really engage in partizan warfare as claimed by most trustworthy US scientists?
One thing is a huge number of casualties another is a genocide.
Hope that your contribution will be usuful to those who will be interested in this thread. Thank you so much.