being civil vs. not putting up with shit

My grandparents's generation of Anatolian Greeks were decimated in the same genocidal spree that murdered, by conservative estimates, four times as many Armenians. It happened. The Greek deaths get even less attention than the Armenian. But still, it happened. I'm not angry about it, though, and maybe remember that if these people bother you. You don't have to treat genocide denial like a valid viewpoint, but you don't have to get angry at people who lie, either. Let them make fools of themselves. That's a more effective tactic.

If this is really an important issue to you, seek out, say, Stanley Fish's work about Holocaust deniers.

This might be of interest to you.

http://www.fpp.co.uk/Legal/Penguin/docs/FlyingCircus.html

Those people are beyond the pale. Fish tears them apart with wisdom and eloquence in a 2000 or 2001 issue of the Valparaiso Law Review, in an article entitled "Holocaust Denial and Academic Freedom." Unfortunately it's not online.

thanks for the help. i will maybe be able to find that article through the school library website.

my big fear is that they won't look like fools. i'm afraid people will believe them. that would make me sad.

no need to get angry, esp. as moderator your duty is to be above the fray. i would imagine some of your presenters/speakers would have plenty to say to refute their claims, if they even materialize.

maria: if i am not mistaken, the turkish government has never acknowledged what happened to the armenians during WWI as genocide. it is possible that the turkish students that you mentioned have only heard one side -- that of the turkish government -- and have never heard, or have never REALLY heard, the armenian side. i don't know if that is true in this instance, but you may want to keep that in mind.

i've mentioned elsewhere here on ILX, but my grandmother had been deported by stalin to siberia at the beginning of WWII as part of the soviets' plan to purge the eastern half of poland of its intelligentsia, professionals, and landed gentry. i don't know if i would go so far as to call it "genocide" -- perhaps "ethnic cleansing" is the better term. what the soviets did to the poles is something that isn't all that well known in the west even now -- talk about it -- or the katyn forest massacre -- was forbidden when poland was communist, the soviets never acknowledged their role until 1989, and even now the russians aren't exactly very forthcoming w/ information about what they did. i know that i would NOT be very happy (to say the least) if someone said that what happened to people like my grandmother hadn't really happened, or made excuses for it.

stand your ground, try to remain calm, and state the facts as best as you can. perhaps you should tell your teacher your concerns, and he or she can help you out.

not that it matters much, but the turkish gov't in place now (and since ataturk really) doesn't have much to do with the ottomans, who i assume were in charge of the genocide.

ethnic cleansing = genocide

ataturk did some pretty nasty things, too -- esp. to the anatolian greeks (all of whom were deported to greece sometime during the 20s). the greeks had been living there all the way back to the days of alexander the great. i also think that some of ataturk's government may have been complicit in the armenian genocide (yes, back when they were still ottoman). i also think that the turkish government may see it as an attack upon their legitimacy (even though it happened pre-ataturk).

i really don't know enough about the history over there to get further in it.

but yeah i think the UN defines even moving people as genocide, or something. i could be wrong.

The figures I've heard are two million Armenians and half a million Greeks. The stories I've heard are that they'd be told they were being moved from their villages but not where to. They ended up just being killed. And a lot died in forced migrations.

This was done for many reasons. The Turks were tired of the Greeks and Orthodox Christians in general after the Greeks got uppity following Turkey's defeat in WWI. They didn't want to just "ethnic cleanse," though, they wanted to provide new room for Turkish settlers. It's a bit like what white Americans did to Native Americans, if you look at the relationship historically, from 1453, when Ottoturk conquered Constantinople, all the way up through 1922, when the Christians were "removed" from the homeland they'd cultivated centuries before Christ was even born.

Several years ago my father's cousins went to visit the village their parents' generation was kicked out of in the early 20s. The Turks there threw them a celebration and everyone got along famously, from what I understand. 'This is OUR village, Muslim and Christian, Turk and Greek,' I believe was the sentiment, and they were encouraged to visit again and often. Condemning atrocities isn't necessarily condemning the present-day citizens of nations who committed them; it's condemning the governments who'd be capable of such inhumanity.

If Turkish students don't want to feel condemned for what previous generations did, I think they have every right. But if they want to deny what happened, then their actions disrespect the murder of two and a half million Armenians and Greeks (or Hellenic Byzantines as they probably would have preferred to be called) and four centuries of on-again off-again persecution, in the same way that rednecks in this country deny what our government did to Native Americans as well as the legacy of that injustice, or insist that it was good for them.

Anyways, I'm longwinded, aren't I. Good luck dealing with this most sensitive of issues, Maria. We are in denial in this country somewhat about what we're doing to Iraqi citizens. A hundred thousand dead and counting. It's very difficult to accept genocide, especially genocide committed in your name; it's infinitely worse to experience it.

Yo Maria, I was able to Lexis-Nexis that Fish article. Let me know if you want me to email it to you.