War of Attrition not Lemkin's Genocide

No, It was not the genocide, it was the attrition warfare - a vicious fight for existence with tooth and nail. Millions of local villagers in the eastern Anatolian provinces, (excluding army officers and soldiers) perished due to the atrocities of a back-stabbing Armenian para-milita, Dasnaksutyun, a rebel group who fought alongside with Russia, conducted a guerilla warfare against non-Armenians and Ottomans. Ottomans were in and out of the wars in the last 15 years at the turn of the 20th centrury, lost vast territories in the Balkans and pressed hard to find a solution, however drastic and inhumane, at the brink of annihilation as they were cornered, Ottomans ordered the Armenian force-migration from the east to the western Anatolia. And yes, along the migration route, they were attacked by the angry villagers, grudged army officers and certainly due to the famine and hunger, they lost scores of innocent souls whose fates were very similar to the unfortunate-many, muslims, non-muslims, Turks, and non-Turks and for this reason: No, It was not the genocide, it was the attrition warfare exercised by all sides. After all, why the wait, had Ottomans really wanted, they would have exterminated Armenians centuries ago. One needs to look into the conditions of the time and the chronological events that led to the reasons causing the tragedies of the era, objectively.



Fast-forward, Ottomans lost WWI. Allied forces dissected the Ottoman territory and finally ended up invading Istanbul, without shooting even a single bullet, sailed alongside the Strait of Dardanelles where they had lost miserably four years ago in one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century almost around the same time as the Armenian human tragedy was happening in the Eastern front. As the plan for devouring Ottoman empire was working like a clock and the puppet Ottoman sultan was miserably obedient to the allied wishes, they forgot one major factor; the sheer determination and the will-power of the Anatolian Turks who were largely abondoned and humiliated during Ottoman centuries. Turkish identity is established and the nation is pulled together to have the right to determine its future by the legendary commander of Gallipoli, Mustafa Kemal, who not only won Turkish independence against the millitary support and the power of the victorious allied forces, but also built a new, western looking, secular nation over the misery of the Ottoman human condition.



Fast-Fast-forward, Armenian migration from Anatolia had already began before the tragic events in 1915, scores of Armenians fled and got asylum to the USA, France and found refuge in major European nations. The Ottoman Armenians were the handy-men of the crippling Empire: They were involved in almost all economic sectors and held the highest levels of responsibilities. In the 19th century, various Armenian families became the Sultan's goldsmiths, Sultan's architects and took over the currency reserves and the reserves of gold and silver, including customs duty. Sixteen of the eighteen most important bankers in the Ottoman Empire were Armenian. They fled and formed the diaspora, the Armenians living abroad, who invented themselves a life-long mission to remind the new generations who they were and how they were massacred by the Turks. The storyline, historical facts all that did not matter - all that mattered was the spread of the seeds of hatred to be carved to the new generations' hearts and minds so that the Armenian church could uphold the power over the Armenian community abroad. The mission is partially salvaged to the terrorist organization ASALA, an Armenian assasination group who targeted and killed many Turkish diplomats in the periods of 1975-1985 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_by_ASALA). They threatened local authorities, international competitions, film directors and directly the heads of states to show animosity to anything being Turkish.



We have now come to the 100th year turning point: one full century has passed, an empire is gone, WWII is over, cold war is over, the problems of capitalist world economy and globalism makes a mark in rising religious fundamentalism, atrocities are still wide and common. Yet, Armenians are still full of hatred and in pursuit of scoring point after point in convincing the nations acknowledging it as a "genocide" where they have the political influence and power and where they can find warm feelings to the detriment of the Turk at all cost regardless of its historical perspective. They can achieve it, and they have already managed genocidal claims affirmed by many nations and even had them passed laws in which expressing otherwise is considered as a crime to the contrary of free-speech and all that, but was it enough ? What did they really achieve beyond recognition? Can recognition bring reconciliation towards answering questions such as why Ottomans decided to part with Armenians, why the Turks do not and will never accept it as a genocide. Turks consider Armenians as friends, wifes, sisters, uncles with similar customs in life, and most Armenians feel the same way. It is never late than never for the diaspora to realize that this hatred has to stop. The real question is if diaspora desires to be predictable for another 100 year as a society still burning with hate or not ?