Talk:Armenian genocide/Archive 26

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numbers in lead

Latest comment: 7 years ago29 comments7 people in discussion

The Armenian massacres enjoys a vast array of research which is not monolithic, and at least the lead has to display that. Lets not turn this into the puritanism Holocaust scholarship suffers from. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 02:51, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Mr. Dolet do you mind to at the very least support the claim you made in your summary?

was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of about 1.5 million[note 4] of its minority Armenian subjects inside their historic homeland, which lies within the present-day Republic of Turkey.[13][14]

There is two controversial statements in the above sentence, while mine actually has none. If the above sentence was to be true, my wording would still stand while the contrary is not necessarily true.

Your wording excludes large array of published scholarship, while mine includes all including what you'd call denialist, revisionist etc... Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 04:40, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia consensus sees the Armenian Genocide as a policy of extermination and not some debatable topic. It's been like this ever since the project started. Denialist opinion has always been in the minority. Please don't try to make amends to denialists in this article. That actually leads to sanctions in the WP:AA2 topic area. Étienne Dolet (talk) 04:59, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Are you Wikipedia? I just randomly checked versions of the article, and found different ranges of figures... but here in talk, I have seen no rational of an absolute number to change ranges.

Where does my version suggests it was extermination or not? It simply avoids the term. The way your version is worded, it entirely excludes relevant scholarship, denialists or not, minority or not; this is arbitrary and largely selective. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 05:09, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

@Yahya Talatin: A) Try reading through the archives; B) There is nothing 'arbitrary' about mainstream scholarship and perceptions... and I seriously suspect that you don't understand what the WP:NPOV policy means. As a further suggestion, beware of WP:FRINGE. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 05:22, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I actually did, also the history of the article... this current wording seems to be new when considering the age of the article (check it for yourself). Arbitrary is to divide scholarship into two distinct group or use constructs to assume what is mainstream and what is not. Besides your reply is loaded with perceptions. More like what I assume rather than what I actually have written. You never in fact commented about the accuracy of the wording I proposed. You made different assumptions, even going as far as warning me about WP:FRINGE. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 05:37, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

We actually have sources within this article that clarifies the fact that most genocide scholars and historians view this event as genocide, alongside the fact that 29 countries (as opposed to just one) have recognized the Armenian Genocide. You are pushing a minority position of denial which is disruptive and can lead to sanctioning. I already gave you an AA2 advisory and I suggest you don't edit-war over this again. Étienne Dolet (talk) 05:47, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

What I was telling you in as polite a manner as I deem to be fit, Yaḥyā, is that you are using this talk page as a soapbox. Take a look at the top of this talk page and read the warning boxes. Now, please desist from your advocacy. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 06:03, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

To Dolet, Your accusation of revert warring doesn't stick scrutiny! Where did I ever write anything about if it was a genocide? I above avoided (and only in the talkpage) the term, because this term is a construct coined for ideological reasons attributed to an author (who holds authority on the word) to be used by authors and jurists, while massacre is an universally known word not attributed to someone and known in every language and nation. I won't take part in this word game which is devoid of any true meaning! But you again failed to tell me where in the wording (you reverted) there is an error! Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 06:12, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

To Iryna, please show me what is the advocacy in question, and where in my above comment, there is any indication that I am using this talkpage as a soapbox, again your reply is irrelevant to the comment it was meant to answer. I am done (made my point)... this alone shows who is the activist. An activist has an ideology to defend, and will never be the one to drop the sword. Actions speak louder than words.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yahya Talatin (talk • contribs) 13:33, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Yahya Talatin, I added that as per the discussion above. False balance is using "above X" when the actual number Y is much, much higher than X. That there were more than hundreds of thousands (which can be as low as 200,000-300,000) is quite uncontroversial. The current number is reported in nearly all prominent media outlets about the subject. That makes it the most accepted. By the way, most languages do have a word for "genocide". In Turkish, this is soykırım. I know the Turkish wiki uses just kırım ("killing") here, but this is not the Turkish wiki. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 09:49, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't change the fact that 1.5 million is an absolute number and it would require a form of selection to present it as actual figures representing the number of victims. The little research which has been done to provide any accurate figures were limited because of such things as the way the Ottoman Empire kept its records. Most British academics I've checked provide figures in the range of 600,000 or 800,000 figures. Why aren't they mainstream? You see where I am getting at? As for the term genocide, if I reply to this, I will probably be accused of soapboxing the talkpage. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 18:29, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

'About 1.5 million' is in no way an 'absolute number'. How could anyone read it as such, let alone push the point? There is no basis for criticism. All the reasoning was duly and patiently presented ahead of time. Diranakir (talk) 22:11, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

You'd prefer a better term? How about, it is the most controversial way the figures could be presented. It isn't even up to but about! There is no room to variations for a wording like this, therefor it is presented as absolute truth. Anyone who doesn't see the problem, is just selectively ignoring. I'd like to see the reasoning which was duly and patiently presented. How does it address the fact that it excludes all those mainstream estimates which aren't 1,5 million? Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 22:46, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Yahya Talatin: As already noted, the precise wording is "...of about 1.5 million". In light of the fact that the reader is rightly assumed to have reasonable cognitive skills, who is going to read this as an 'absolute' figure. You're clutching at straws. Please drop it. An intelligent and logical consensus has existed here for a long time, so it should be clear that persisting with WP:BLUDGEON tactics is not going to change this consensus. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:52, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Iryna, I reworded that (absolute) above (to explain what I have meant by that word), we're not here to find bugs on others writings... I translated that wording (of about) in google translate into several languages (to be sure that I am not missing up some English language rules). ex. French environ 1.5 million. I repeat for the last time, word it the way you want it, but the current wording ignores a large array of estimates which are far away from the of about and which are considered as mainstream. In all the above replies, I have been accused of advocacy, of edit warring (for ONE revert) etc. but not once anyone has directly answered this. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 23:07, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

The "large array of estimates... considered as mainstream" have been reflected in a particular section of the article. Armen Ohanian (talk) 15:24, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Armen,

One sober estimate (just a proposition, as there could be other sober estimates too) would be to take the highest estimate the Turkish side is willing to concede as minima and then the lowest the Armenian side is willing to concede. And present this as probably if it happens that the real number lies outside of the range, we won't make a mistake, because we wrote probably.

Checking the articles on the subject published on Wikipedia (in different languages) and their talkpage... here is what we find.

The highest figure I found from the other side were suggested by Justin McCarthy, I chose it because it is published by The Turkish Historical Society For The Council Of Culture, Arts (Publications Of The Grand National Assembly Of Turkey.

It was an estimate by Justin McCarthy based on figures drawn by the parishes, he claims that if the parishes records are genuine, that he would have to raise his previous numbers with 250,000 more deaths (total: over 800,000 deaths). Given that those estimates appeared in a publication of The Grand National Assembly Of Turkey, I guess we can assume that it is the highest figures the Turkish side is ready to concede. From what can be found on Wikipedia, those are similar to the highest figures the Ottoman Empire (and newly created republic of Turkey) were ready to concede (800,000) back then, so they correspond.

Now, coming to the lowest figures the Armenian side is ready to concede. What I found are those which circulate in France (drafted by the Armenian community), which is 1,2 million. This figure is also what appears in the lede of the French article about the event on Wikipedia.

One is close to a million, the other is over a million.

In this case, it would be something like (feel free to find a better wording) probably close to or over a million or something like that... by excluding any numerals we subject the article to even less controversy. Any estimates out of the range would be included, but not in the lede.

Again, those are just my propositions, since I have never gone so far to explain the rational behind my position. This kind of estimate is more stable, because it generally takes the most reasonable figures from either sides. There will be several other estimates, but the maximum one side is ready to concede and the minimum to other side is ready to concede are less likely to change. They are also coming from official organs from both sides. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yahya Talatin (talk • contribs) 01:11, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Other ranges include 600,000 to 1,500,000, 600,000 to 1,200,000... or 300,000 to 1,500,000, etc. with a higher inclusion criteria...

We could increase the range by being more permissive but wider estimates are worthless.

Interestingly, the means aren't much affected... they all revolve around the million (with expected variations).

I guess we can for all practicable purpose just write probably about a million and clarifying in the notes. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 02:47, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

We could also write: approximatively a million.

Britannica uses of the range: Conservative estimates have calculated that some 600,000 to more than 1,000,000 Armenians were slaughtered or died on the marches. [[1]]

Encyclopedie Universalis (which is published by Britannica for French readers) uses: près d'un million cinq cent mille personnes perdent la vie en 1915-1916, dans des conditions effroyables, victimes du régime jeune-turc.

Average between Britannica two versions: Lowest here: 600,000 (English) to highest 1,500,000 (French), again the mean is about a million.

I'll search more to see if the approximative figure of a million is confirmed. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 14:05, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Another encyclopedia, this time more specific of the Islamic World uses the term: More than a million. [2]

An encyclopedia of the middle East and Africa: 600,000 to 1,500,000. [3]

So seems the consensus are those ranges, with an invariable mean. Encyclopedia's of war crime and genocide are too specific and might be suffering of selection bias, by using the highest estimates.

We can therefor not really be wrong with the approximatively a million. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 14:24, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

To incite editors to take a more sober stance, just reminding them that if they make the effort with the reasonable concessions, the article could become a good article and later even a featured. Note that the last time I have checked, there are no genocide article meeting the good article criteria (not even the Holocaust). This might be the first. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 03:33, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Yaḥyā, I think you are straying into essay writing and OR here. The lede summarizes content. The content being summarized in this case will be the content contained in the Armenian population, deaths, survivors, 1914 to 1918 section. So I think any issues regarding the generally accepted figure should be worked out there first. That section does seem very inadequate at the moment. For example, it has a figure contained in a report compiled on 24 May 1916, and then wording that this report doesn't contains figures after May 1916. Well duh! Talk about stating the bleeding obvious!! There seems also to be too much emphasis on genocide denialist McCarthy's figures in both the amount of content in the section and in his overall position regarding the AG (which is fringe in relation to mainstream AG research). And why only "1914 to 1918"? Surely the section should deal with the entire timespan of the killing phase of the genocide. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 21:27, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

I have changed the date in the section title to 1923. Is justified since 1923 is mentioned in the infobox note for the year 1915. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 22:08, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) While I think that Yahya's approach to 'discussion' has been acerbic from the onset, the fact is that Prinsgezinde himself described eliminating any range of estimates as being a bold move, therefore I'd suggest that there be an attempt to discuss whether a range is appropriate for the lead in a WP:CIVIL manner. Personally, I see a rationale for presenting reliably sourced lower estimates (and this does not mean the use of denialist figures). 'About' is a terrible qualifier where the discrepancy in estimates is literally tens of thousands of people. 'Up to' is equally ineffectual as it can be construed to be anything from 73 people to 1.4 million. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:17, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Iryna, thank you for your feedback. Just to clarify that the point in avoiding numerals (like 1.2 etc.) in ranges (or single absolute figure) is that those will be relying on specific sources (which would require exclusion of other figures). New publications are regularly published and references works are regularly updated with different estimates or ranges provided. This was behind the rational of using more stable ways of conveying information. The proposition of taking the highest of one to the lowest of other was to find if there might by overlapping or close to..., with a range which might be less prone to variate in time, and then check if it is confirmed in reference work (tertiary). The mean seems to remain the same (more or less) regardless of the variations. Rounding up numbers with approximations without numerals (such as 0,6, 1,2 etc.) would make the article more stable; less prone to change each time there is a new reference work or notable book published. Just my opinion. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 01:27, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

I think 1.5 million adequately does that, but I think there needs to be better justification for it given within the content of the "Armenian population, deaths, survivors, 1914 to 1918" section of the article. One issue is that figures, including those you have stated, can cover different periods. This article is about the Armenian Genocide, not just about Ottoman Armenian victims of the Armenian Genocide, or Armenian victims of the genocide killed during WW1. So any overall number of victims needs to include all victims in all territories in which the genocide took place and over the full period of its accepted timeline. 02:19, 30 July 2016 (UTC)Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk)

I see your point, but those dates are too precise (along with selected lede figure), more you add precision more you have to rely on records, which can individually be discarded by further publications. It just isn't stable in time. When you go over the period of 1916/17, then you create even more controversy. You should rather rely on wording such as during World War I (which includes a period from 1914 to late 1918) without specifying dates in category title. Also by widening the range to 1915-23 you downplay the extent of the tragedy... because most victims were reported in the period between 1915 to 17. Also as stated, round numbers which don't require numerals will always remain there.

Besides, precisions of records don't allow to slice more accurately than the million division, and luckily here, this is where the mean lies. A scholar could endorse low figures of victims, he will never be able to reject that the mean of the ranges of estimates is a million, and his own estimates are further from it. In research, the meta-analysis is generally considered the standard rather than one single study, particularly when the study is further from the center. By endorsing the million, you close the door to any later attempt to question it. And by adopting less precise dates, even more.

The level of sophistication of the revisionist material can only be countered by being fully and wholly neutral. The Turkish government can finance scholars, but those individual scholars will never be able to change the mean (it is Earth which gravitates around the Sun, not the other way around; since Earth's mass is insignificant for the Sun). Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 04:09, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Forgot to add (to clarify the analogy with the Sun) on Turkish government financed and Holocaust uniqueness adherents studies and scholars. For each low new biased estimates there will be, they will be balanced with those new other estimates biased toward Armenian side. This is why the mean is the only invariable figure, no matter what a couple of scholars publish, it will remain there. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 15:49, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Tiptoethrutheminefield, I am just providing different figures and check if they correspond. OR concerns the injection of ones thought in the article itself. On McCarthy figures, the reason this much weight is given on his figures, are because it is through him the Ottoman records were published in length. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 00:06, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Encyclopædia Britannica references to the research of Arnold J. Toynbee

Latest comment: 7 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

The reference to it from the article has to be removed. Britannica does not refer to it anymore, the material was removed from its page. [4] This is an example of what I was referring to, it was too far from the mean, didn't resist. I just want users to trust me that I will not mislead anyone. There is currently a shift in the way the Turkish population is perceiving this event; here is the time to invite Turkish editors to contribute and provide their feedback. This article internal structure is to be drafted anew. There just are too much arbitrary divisions and inclusions and exclusions, just one example is why this [5] goes just after the Russian military, and why the Russian military goes there and not elsewhere. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 23:44, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

You wrote earlier: "Average between Britannica two versions: Lowest here: 600,000 (English) to highest 1,500,000 (French), again the mean is about a million" - I think this is invalid as a starting point. If one source says 1 million and 10 say 1.5 million, the mean is not 1.25. We would use the number (or range of numbers) that the majority of suitable sources use, and describe that number in that way. In fact, any talk of getting a "mean" figure is OR because it means you or I doing research to work out that mean! This is what I meant when I said you were straying into OR. I still think 1.5 million is the figure used in the majority of suitable sources, though I don't have general works to hand to cite. Those that initially advocated stating just 1.5 million as the lede figure need to come in to this discussion, with sources. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by the rest of your post, but this article should not be an exercise in "reconciliation" - it should not be written to reflect the shifting perceptions or sensibilities of sets of ethnicities, nor should its facts be artificially softened to make a catch-up-to-the-truth process by Turks easier for them. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 20:14, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

But the thing is that I am not disagreeing with you, I am just disagreeing with your exclusion of some parameters to draw your conclusions.

For instance, Britannica is a very reputable encyclopedia with hight standards. While in the past it had changed its figures of losses to more conservative numbers reportedly because of pressures from the Turkish diplomacy, it was later compensated with it's French encyclopedia Universalis. It has taken the approach to use both figures to convey the less popular number for both sides (million).

It can be considered as established that we can not just use plurality of published secondary sources to compute means. Thousands might be using the same source and have therefor to be rejected to avoid redundancy. More importantly is that most reference works do have ranges closer to a million. Those are generally never used by those who defend or reject the term genocide, because it satisfies neither sides (too low for one, too high for the other). See how when searching Armenian massacres million on google book [6]. All results on top are directly related with the subject of defending the thesis of genocide, and therefor provide the highest ranges (it's selection bias). See Taner Akcam estimates with the others here [7], footnote 35. While Lewy figures there are further from the range (expected, Ottoman books are generally biased toward the other side so they will tend to include the low estimates), Taner Akcam endorses the mean (800,000 to a million, because of the original Turkish figures), even Vahakn Dadrian doesn't provide explicit figures! Also in the list you will find Fuat Dundar (he has works published in the European Journal of Turkish studies) estimates of 664,000, he was the author of Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878-1918). Why he is relevant is that here we have a Turkish scholar who use the official Ottoman records and statistics to compute data and finds a number above the 600,000 range. Quite obviously things seem to revolve around a same mean, one way or another. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 23:17, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

My reason to invite Turkish editors is because they will be more critical and they will be the first to point out which wordings are problematic.

Lastly, what I am doing isn't OR (I am not editing mainspace), I am using three different methods which are being used to compute and treat data, and am finding the same results and this systematically and then compare them with tertiary sources to see if they confirm the results, and they do. While any selection process to choose 1,5 million is either entirely undisclosed or rely on incomplete ways of choosing and polling the data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yahya Talatin (talk • contribs) 21:44, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Sarafian

Latest comment: 7 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion

I changed it, because he applied the undercounting reported by Talaat, the figures used there in the black book (particularly the undercounting) are nothing new, see here [8] Justin McCarthy had used similar correction values then. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 01:37, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

If someone disagree in replacing the name, I won't bother if it is changed back, but it should be clarified it's not exactly Sarafian view... even though it seems he did add some undisclosed extra in it (probably assumptions of Protestant Armenians etc.) That's the problem with scholars in such case is that they always seem to add undisclosed stuff, they're like closed source softwares. :) Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 01:48, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm restoring Sarafian because he is the WP:SECONDARY source who interprets Talaat's figures. Please familiarise yourself with WP:RS carefully. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:52, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Irnya, I won't disagree, I realized later about that. My language skills are limited but I am under the impression from reading the sentence that he thinks there are as much Armenians: Therefore, according to the historian Ara Sarafian, the population of Armenians should have been approximately 1,700,000 prior to the start of the war. I don't know if a clarification is appropriate to clarify that he is presenting Talaat figures. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 02:07, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

There is more, he does not say approximatively but rather close, won't make much differences but still. The actual wording is: based on official figures, close to 1,700,000 people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yahya Talatin (talk • contribs) 02:11, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

I think it's clear without further qualifications (i.e., we could get caught up in pedantry over much of the content in various Wikipedia articles), but other editors may deem it relevant to note that Sarafian used state documentation. If so, they're welcome to discuss it here further. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:47, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Reintroduction of lawyer claim

Latest comment: 7 years ago22 comments5 people in discussion

The edit summary here [9] is weird, the author of this comment should explain his rational to justify it. Why is this man opinion even relevant? An opinion which we don't even know he still maintain, or why it should make any differences if he does. Will it still remain there after Obama was replaced? Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 19:18, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Actually, everyone [10], except the editor who has repeatedly inserted this content, agrees that it needs to go. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 20:18, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

I missed that discussion, tks! Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 21:49, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Okay, I've removed it again. The rationale has been discussed at length and reintroducing the content on flimsy pretexts is not an option when the relevance and WP:WEIGHT of a dated source is dubious. Yes, there is a 'shelf life' as has been explained clearly. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 05:04, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

There is no such thing as 'shelf life' of sources. If there were, all of WP would come unraveled. It is a fabricated standard to avoid content the proponents wish to censor. The statement by the ABA speaks for itself, being the carefully weighed position of one of the top civil bodies of Armenian society about President Obama's statement. Nothing has changed. The WH statement has been the same from year to year. The ABA statement still holds. It doesn't need to be issued each year, as seems to be suggested. Diranakir (talk) 15:28, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Diranakir, all the edit warring on Wikipedia are directly or indirectly related with sources shelf life. We can not overemphasis on individuals positions, because those individuals can change minds, discredited or their inclusions or exclusions can sound arbitrary for others (why Mr. X, not Mr. Y?). I can understand why it might be considered as relevant to some as a statment, but a better approach is to concentrate on the event itself rather than it's wording. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 16:22, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Obama, before becoming president, had used the phrase Armenian Genocide and had stated that the event was a genocide. Thus his "recognition and affirmation of the Armenian Genocide" occurred before his first public use of the phrase Medz Yeghern - so it is deceptive wording to suggest that it had occurred only when he said Medz Yeghern [11]. Many sources have said that Obama's CONTINUED public use of the phrase Meds Yeghern rather than Armenian Genocide was to intentionally avoid repeating his earlier explicit "recognition and affirmation". It is a case of undue weight to introduce a single source, a source that talks only about (and dates from) Obama's FIRST public use of the phrase, in order to imply that those other MORE RECENT sources are incorrect in their opinions about his REPEATED public use of it. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 12:27, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

We are here talking about different views of Obama's use of M Y. No one said that his recognition and affirmation occurred only when he used it. The Armenian Bar Association statement (given in the censored source) said that he described 1915 as genocide and used the Armenian name for it the same as Armenians do. What is called a 'single source' is a statement by the highest professional legal body in Armenia. That is giving INSUFFICIENT WEIGHT to the source. Their endorsement of Obama's statement (which has essentially remained the same until today) was based on close analysis and interpretation of the statement. One may disagree with their conclusion, but it is a fact that cannot be left out of the picture without engaging in crude censorship and preventing a presumably mature readership from reaching their own conclusions. M Y is one of the two principal names for 1915 used by Armenians, a full synonym of Hayotz Tseghasbanutyun, used all over the place in Armenia and outside, used completely interchangeably with HT. To pretend otherwise is to stick your head in the sand. You can do so if you wish, but you shouldn't try to force others to do the same. It is a travesty to have an article on the Armenian Genocide that gives virtually no recognition to the name Medz Yeghern which is commensurate with its importance. If you look at the article on the Armenian Genocide in Armenian Wikipedia, you will see otherwise. The same if you look at the official site for the Armenian Genocide Memorial Complex. Enough of contrived excuses and tortured timelines for avoiding the issue. Diranakir (talk) 03:56, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

You have admitted it - you have one source that is, contrary to what all the other (later) sources are saying, concluding that Obama's use of "Medz Yeghern" is not a genocide negating usage. All the other sources of course have the benefit of seeing Obama's continued use of "Medz Yeghern" (and continued lack of usage of "Armenian Genocide") as evidence to support their opinion. We do not use sources giving inaccurate reportage of or opinion of events when later, more accurate ones, emerge. Yet you continue to pov war on this issue in order to minimize mention of the fact that sources are saying that Obama and others have been using your dearly-held "Meds Yeghern" term as a way of avoiding saying the word "genocide" when talking about the Armenian Genocide. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 20:26, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

What 'other (later) sources' ? I don't see them. Please specify and don't beat around the bush. Diranakir (talk) 04:27, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Ref 201. And cited earlier on this talk page, in discussions you took part in (maybe your conveniently goldfish-like memory fails to remember that) were several more, online media sources such as [12] and [13] and [14]. And an additional dozen or so more can easily be found using google. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 14:33, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

I was wrong: you did not beat around the bush; you faded into the tall grass. In evoking earlier discussions on this talk page, which sources do you mean? Either quote them directly or give me the time and date of prominent examples of what you mean.

You are making up your own rules as you go and to very unwholesome effect. If you have valid sources for your point, you should make them as inline citations so that they can be fairly assessed and responded to, this in accord with accepted WP practices. What is in your head or what you may tactically scrape together after the fact does not count. If that is allowed, then the whole principle of reliable sources and their proper citation is out the window. You are engaged in an effort to prevent presentation of the fact that not everyone in the world shares your crimped view of Medz Yeghern and its implications. I will repeat: you and those who support your stance are engaging in outright censorship. You have no right or justification for keeping the ABA statement out of the article to push the POV that Medz Yeghern is universally condemned as a 'negating usage', when it is in fact a well-known, full synonym for the Armenian Genocide, as reflected in many quotations from government figures and pontiffs in the previous discussions which you conveniently ignore. You are thereby turning the section in question into an 'opinion piece', at best. A very low standard to set for the encyclopedia. Diranakir (talk) 15:22, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Does your goldfish memory not even last two seconds, the time it takes for you to see a link and then decide to click on it? If you can't remember what discussions you took part in, it's your lamentable memory that is at fault. Conveniently lamentable of course, conveniently goldfish-like, since it allows you to resurrect any long settled discussion point you lost and restart it from scratch as if you had never lost the argument and the discussion had never taken place. 21:19, 6 August 2016 (UTC)Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk)

Diranakir, please stop pushing the envelope on goading and drop the stick. Your arguments have ceased to be coherent. Take some time to cool your heels. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:28, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

To Iryna Harpy: Instead of using provocative labels, you might point out how I have 'ceased to be coherent'. Unless you are willing to do that, there really isn't much to your comment. Diranakir (talk) 23:41, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

You've reduced the argument to 'Medz Yeghern' being a full synonym for the Armenian genocide as being a well known 'fact'. Really? Should we put that to the test with an RfC to find out whether the title of the article should be changed to "Medz Yeghern" if they're so interchangeable? Instead of being provocative, please stop this WP:BLUDGEON. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:57, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Diranakir - the article has content that clearly states that "Medz Yeghern" is a term that is used to refer to the Armenian Genocide. So your claim that the article's content expresses the opinion that "Medz Yeghern is universally condemned as a 'negating usage'" is nonsense. The section you are pointlessly warring over details the usage by certain non-Armenians of "Medz Yeghern". Four sources have been presented that give the opinion that President Obama's REPEATED usage of "Medz Yeghern" is to avoid him having to say the word "genocide", and many more sources giving an identical opinion are available. Yet you still insist on edit warring into the article a marginal opinion expressed in only a single source, and an obsolete opinion at that, since it was based on Obama's FIRST use of the term. Would you stop flogging this dead horse. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 00:04, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

"By admitting the facts and labeling the event as 'Meds Yeghern' Obama de facto acknowledges genocide. But the argumentation is manipulative and he thus avoids admitting it de jure" (Zarine Avetisyan, "Speech Impact Realization via Manipulative Argumentation Techniques in Modern American Political Discourse," International Journal of Social, Behavioral, Educational, Economic, Business and Industrial Engineering, vol. 9, No. 6, 2015, p. 1787). So much for the "obsolete opinion," the "dead horse," and the useless nitpicking about the issue. Opinions about the first and the last use of "Medz Yeghern" are equally valid, since the word is the same, whether in 2009 or in 2016. Armen Ohanian (talk) 17:14, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Have you actually given any thought as to what you've reproduced here? "But the argumentation is manipulative and he thus avoids admitting it de jure...". You've just contradicted what you're trying to prove in one fell swoop. Could you please try to come up with an RS that doesn't defy your own logic? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:57, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Incidentally, the PDF of the source you're invoking can be found by Googling it (available at waset.org). I can't paste the URL here because it's blacklisted by Wikipedia. Reading the article will assist other editors to understand the context in which the observation is made. It's a deconstruction of spin-doctoring and, in the context of this article, the complexity of the example of the Armenian genocide is used within a research paper not even examining the subject. What you are presenting as evidence is pure WP:SYNTH. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:12, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

It's an article worth reading (though a bit badly written because its author is obviously not a native English speaker). Backs up what I have always felt - that Obama's supposedly highly praised oratory skills result in amongst the most deceit-filled productions emanating from any politician. Thankfully there is a two term limit on US presidencies - someone that able to (and that willing to) manipulate the masses could do no end of damage without that limit. There has to be some alternative to either the manipulative snake-oil-salesman speak of Obama and his ilk, or the absence of any reasoned argumentation crudity of Trump's utterances. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 16:58, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

It's an excellent read for personal interest. What it lacks in eloquence is made up for in content (in spades). --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:02, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Armen Ohanian's sources defy his own logic regularly. Here he is trying to uncapitalise "Aghet" [15], but his same French source also does not capitalise "Yeghern". Is he going to follow the logic of his own argument and argue it should be yeghern? Probably not. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 02:46, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

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Note repetitiveness

Latest comment: 7 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Can someone please explain why we should have Note 4 when we already have Note 2? It needlessly clutters the first sentence of the article. Étienne Dolet (talk) 16:49, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with the removal and using the references you've left. The note was WP:CITEOVERKILL. It was a remnant of edit warring to prove a point and annoying rather than edifying. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:44, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

I also agree, but this is nit picking stuff really (as is most of the recent talk page content dealing with the lede). The lede is not the main problem, I think. Barely 20% of this article's content details the event itself, and we are 20% into the article's body before that small amount of content even starts, and the bulk (60% or more) of the article's content is aftermath-related material. I believe that this article is in urgent need of massive deletions and a lot of forking of content off into other articles. This article, titled as it is "Armenian Genocide", should be primarily concerned with giving an account of the Armenian Genocide as it happened, of what it consisted of, and not on what peoples, countries, organisations, or individuals have post-event done with the history of, or legacy of, the Armenian Genocide. The actual content detailing the events of the Armenian Genocide is completely inadequate - there is no overall timeline given, no sense of geography, little indication of what exactly happened where and when, overemphasis of certain minor events (such as "Use of poison and drug overdoses"), presentation of certain events as if nobody has challenged them (the alleged mass drownings at Trebizond for example, which modern research suggest may not have happened to that scale), and very little mentioning of what happened in specific places and specific instances (despite plenty of source material being available). The article is so structurally wrong it is hard to know where to begin to start repairing it (maybe that is why most of our attention has been focused on the more easily handled lede) - but I suggest we start by removing or condensing material that is not directly concerned with the core subject. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 14:44, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm particularly concerned about the Portrayal in the media section which is unnecessarily long, and filled with trivial stuff that should be deleted. But it should be done in a orderly and systematic fashion. Proposals concerning which part should be deleted must be brought forth and decided upon accordingly. Étienne Dolet (talk) 17:22, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Addressing the lead, I find the elaboration on the death marches to be too protracted and detailed. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:23, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Errors in lede sentence

Latest comment: 7 years ago63 comments6 people in discussion

The lede sentence contains two very striking errors.

In the first place the historic homeland of Armenia is not contained within the borders of modern day Turkey (possibly an irredentist claim?) The historic homelands of the Armenians comprise the eastern regions of Turkey as well as all of present day Armenia and parts of Azerbaijan and Georgia. About half the historic homeland is contained within Turkey.

Secondly the figure of 1,500,000 fatalities is not confined to Ottoman-Armenians living within the Ottoman empire, but include some 400,000 fatalities suffered post-1916 by Armenians living outside the Ottoman empire during attempts by the Ottomans to expand their empire.

Of course these errors should be corrected. Awen23 (talk) 19:21, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Awen23 is blocked as a sock of banned user Coat of Many Colours.

If you can provide scholar sources for your claim, edit the prose to fit the sources. if not, the article should remain as is. Lipsquid (talk) 19:44, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Hello Lipsquid. I'm surprized by your response because my understanding is that protected articles like these need consensus on the Talk page before an edit can be made in the article. Perhaps you can clarify and meanwhile I can try and get consensus here in the way you suggest. Do you in fact challenge my assertions above? Awen23 (talk) 20:18, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

First of all, regarding the article's own sources for the assertion that the historic homeland of the Armenians lies within modern day Turkey, these are two in number 13 14. These are from CNN and the Huffington Post and while certainly reliable sources, I don't think they would normally be regarded as the scholarly sources you say should be cited. But no matter, because neither in fact supports the assertion that the historic homeland of the Armenians is contained within present day Turkey. Awen23 (talk) 20:36, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

It is therefore the duty of the existing editors to provide scholarly sources for their assertion that the historic homeland of the Armenians lies within present day Turkey. Awen23 (talk) 21:16, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Regarding the 1,500,000 fatalities mentioned by the article, it's quite correct that's the consensus of the sources. But it's important to observe that relates to the whole period 1915 to 1923. The article's sources referenced in its note are newspapers and not scholarly sources and for the most part gloss the situation. Dadrian's standard history, the authoritative source, is perfectly clear on the subject right at the start of his introduction: there were some one million fatalities in the Ottoman empire during the war 1915-1917 and several hundred of thousand more as the Ottomans attempted to extend their empire into Russia Armenia. To quote armenian-genocide.org

It is estimated that one and a half million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923. There were an estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of W.W.I. Well over a million were deported in 1915. Hundreds of thousands were butchered outright. Many others died of starvation, exhaustion, and epidemics which ravaged the concentration camps. Among the Armenians living along the periphery of the Ottoman Empire many at first escaped the fate of their countrymen in the central provinces of Turkey. Tens of thousands in the east fled to the Russian border to lead a precarious existence as refugees. The majority of the Armenians in Constantinople, the capital city, were spared deportation. In 1918, however, the Young Turk regime took the war into the Caucasus, where approximately 1,800,000 Armenians lived under Russian dominion. Ottoman forces advancing through East Armenia and Azerbaijan here too engaged in systematic massacres. The expulsions and massacres carried by the Nationalist Turks between 1920 and 1922 added tens of thousands of more victims. By 1923 the entire landmass of Asia Minor and historic West Armenia had been expunged of its Armenian population. The destruction of the Armenian communities in this part of the world was total.

Of course Russia Armenia was not part of present day Turkey. Awen23 (talk) 22:22, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

It's clear that the lede sentence currently misrepresents the facts. I invite response so that we can build a consensus. Awen23 (talk) 22:27, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

The issue of the inaccurate (or at the very least, misleading) "historic homeland" lede content has been raised in the past. However, expect a conflict at least as long as the recent Medz Yeghern thing to get rid of it. The victim total should be for the entire period of the Armenian Genocide because this is the subject of the article. So it necessarily will include deaths inside Russian territory and Persian territory and deaths that happened after the year 1918, as long as the events are considered to be part of the Armenian Genocide. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 16:55, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

That's right about "misleading". You really have to abuse English quite a lot to construe the sense as talking about the historic homeland of the Ottoman Armenians (as distinct from Armenians in general) as these cannot be said to have an historic homeland as Ottomans. Rather the Ottoman Armenians were an Armenian minority within the Ottoman empire who happened to be Ottoman subjects through conquest. This is how Dadrian describes them in the opening paragraph of his introduction I link in the introduction above.

That's right also that the victim total should be for the whole 1915-1923 period, cited in multiple sources including Dadrian as 1,500,000 fatalities. But the problem is that if you understand the opening sentence as the editors intend, i.e. as about the Ottoman Armenians, then that's no longer correct because the number of victims among the Ottoman Armenians is cited by Dadrian and multiple other authors as of the order of 1 million. It's the 400,000 or so post-1917 fatalities outside the Ottoman empire that brings the total to 1,500,000.

I do think it quite likely irredentist enthusiasm that is at the heart of the matter here. But a reader new to the subject is wholly misled and it should be corrected. I'll wait a few more days to see what established editors here propose. Awen23 (talk) 20:47, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and reworded it. It is not irredentism, imo. It is just the simplified and simplistic sound bite material that Armenians have been dishing out to non-Armenians for decades. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 00:42, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Nice edit, certainly a move in the right direction which is as much succinct clarity in the lede as possible. Lipsquid (talk) 01:20, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes. It's much better and I thank Tiptoethrutheminefield for that. A remaining concern is the reference to the Ottoman government because that of course was not in place after 1918 (rather there were two competing governments during the Turkish War of Independence).I think that needs to be addressed as well.

I'll look back, but I don't really want to get involved editing here. Awen23 (talk) 01:25, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Oh, and while I'm here, I would like to see "Armenian Holocaust" go. That's a neologism due to Robert Fisk and it hasn't gained currency nor is it especially useful I think, much as I admire Fisk. Awen23 (talk) 01:40, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

It's not a neologism, it actually dates back to the 1920s. Whether it should be in the lede is a different matter though. If it was the primary term used to refer to the Armenian genocide before the coining of the word "genocide", then I think it should be there. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 02:26, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Small h holocaust, as a massacre dates from Victorian times developing from Milton's (that great coiner of neologisms) use of it in Samson to mean a consuming fire. Big H Holocaust (by itself) to mean the Nazi genocide of the Jews was used by historians of the 1950s as a translation of the Jewish term shoah and took a while to catch on. Small h holocaust does appear in some 1940s sources describing the Nazi genocide and quite possibly appears in earlier texts describing the Armenian genocide. It's strictly incorrect to talk about the "Jewish Holocaust", but that is what Fisk affects in his piece and it really irritates me. However no great matter. The business of Ottoman Government is a great matter that ought to be addressed. I note the article's wikilink for it states its end as 1918.

Nevertheless, as I remarked, I have no plans to edit here, and I am grateful for the attention you gave my original request. Awen23 (talk) 04:03, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Curiously enough "Armenian Holocaust" has been there ever since the article began, so I suppose it had better stay. The Fisk citation needs repairing (the article is still extant on The Independent site so it shouldn't default to its archive) and I shall do that when I have a spare moment. Those early versions of the article have a certain charm :). I'm not sure in the end they're not more informative. I glanced through the Medz Yeghern debate. See what you mean. Awen23 (talk) 18:29, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

The article Names of the Holocaust cites Winston Churchill using "holocaust" writing about the Armenian Genocide in the 1920s. Awen23 (talk) 00:35, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

I can't access a copy of Churchill's book, but the quote can be verified via the Encyclopedia of Genocideas, "...whole districts blotted out at one administrative holocaust..."^[1]

I can't, however, account for the remainder of the quote in this article (in the "Allied forces in the Middle East" section). I also think one needs to be careful in how the parallel usages of the pre-existing English language word/term 'holocaust' is used as as a descriptor: that is, it is not used in the same way as the later neologism The Holocaust is used. Per the Charny encyclopaedia, it was evident that 'holocaust' was used to describe wholesale organised destruction of a civilian population before Lemkin's coining of the word 'genocide'. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:34, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

References

^ Charny, Israel W., ed. (1999). Encyclopedia of Genocide. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO. p. 42. ISBN 978-0-87436-928-1. Retrieved 31 August 2016.

Ah yes, thanks for that. I hadn't realized it was quoted in the article. I used my unlimited Kindle account with a certain internet provider to collect the two sources in full as follows:

The conduct of the Bulgarians in Serbia excited the extreme indignation of the investigators. As for Turkish atrocities: marching till they dropped dead the greater part of the garrison at Kut; massacring uncounted thousands of helpless Armenians, men, women, and children together, whole districts blotted out in one administrative holocaust— these were beyond human redress.

Churchill, Winston S.. The World Crisis, Vol. 4 (Winston Churchill's World Crisis Collection) (Kindle Locations 2213-2215). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

When Turkey attacked Russian Armenia, the Czar’s Government, fearing that a successful defence of Caucasia by Armenians would dangerously inflame the Nationalist aspirations of the race, conveyed a hundred and fifty thousand Armenian conscripts to the Polish and Galician fronts and brought other Russian troops to defend Armenian hearths and homes in Caucasia. Few of these hundred and fifty thousand Armenian soldiers survived the European battles or were able to return to Caucasia before the end of the War. This was hard measure. But worse remained. The Turkish war plan failed. Their offensive against Caucasia in December, 1914 and January, 1915 was defeated. They recoiled in deep resentment. They accused the Armenians of the Turkish eastern districts of having acted as spies and agents on behalf of Russia, and of having assailed the Turkish lines of communication. These charges were probably true; but true or false, they provoked a vengeance which was also in accord with deliberate policy. In 1915 the Turkish Government began, and ruthlessly carried out, the infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor. Three or four hundred thousand men, women, and children escaped into Russian territory and others into Persia or Mesopotamia; but the clearance of the race from Asia Minor was about as complete as such an act, on a scale so great, could well be. It is supposed that about one and a quarter millions of Armenians were involved, of whom more than half perished. There is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for political reasons. The opportunity presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Christian race opposed to all Turkish ambitions, cherishing National ambitions that could only be satisfied at the expense of Turkey and planted geographically between Turkish and Caucasian Moslems. It may well be that the British attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula stimulated the merciless fury of the Turkish Government. Even, thought the Pan-Turks, if Constantinople were to fall and Turkey lost the war, the clearance would have been effected and a permanent advantage for the future of the Turkish race would be gained.

Churchill, Winston S.. The World Crisis, Vol. 4 (Winston Churchill's World Crisis Collection) (Kindle Locations 6099-6101). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

The first comes from a section on war crimes investigations. I don't know what the context for the second is (trouble with ebooks is that they're hard to flick through). It's perfectly clear, however, that Churchill was quite clear in his mind that this was genocide as it would later be called (likewise Lloyd George later in that interesting source you cite).

I'm content to stay with "Armenian Holocaust" in the lede in the circumstances, notwithstanding your reservation. I honestly thought it was an innovation of Fisk's (which I suppose it strictly is from the capital H point of view).

Thanks for correcting my Fisk citation edit by the way. Indeed I should have cited the first Wayback archive. Awen23 (talk) 03:45, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Re lede error correction: For a while I thought my "expect a conflict at least as long as the recent Medz Yeghern thing to get rid of it" prediction was going to be surprisingly (but pleasantly) wrong. But now the usual suspect has arrived [16]. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 19:15, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

The brilliant historian, author of the previous comment, needs to be asked whether the following statement upholds WP standards and serves the readers: The AG was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of Armenians within its successor state, the Republic of Turkey. Diranakir (talk) 21:09, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

No, that's definitely not what the sentence boils down to after parsing it. There appears to have been a hiccup in your spotting "the Ottoman Empire" (and its successor state). Quite a different kettle of fish. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:54, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Homey images of hiccups and kettles of fish do not obscure the fact that my parsing of the sentence is spot on and that you are, either out of obtuseness or willful blindness, defending fraudulent usage to the detriment of the encyclopedia. I would have appreciated a direct response from the author of the defective sentence, rather than from a surrogate. This only adds to the sense that the issue is not being addressed forthrightly, but rather out of groupthink. Diranakir (talk) 02:41, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

The obtuseness and willful blindness appears to be all from you, Diranakir. Did you read anything of the start of this thread? It was initiated by an editor validly pointing out two glaring errors in the lede; the edit you reverted was my attempt at correcting those errors. Or maybe you did read it, and perhaps an ignorance of the overall history of the Armenian genocide, or a belief that content should follow the very simplified version of that history presented by certain Armenian activist organizations, does not allow you to acknowledge those errors were there. Are you denying that the Armenian Genocide extended into Armenians living in the Russian-ruled Southern Caucasus (including as far as Baku), and into the Armenia that comprised the territory of the first republic, and into Armenians living in northern Persia? If you are not, what valid reasons can you present to support the old "The Armenian Genocide ... was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of 1.5 million Ottoman-Armenian citizens inside their historic homeland, which lies within the present-day Republic of Turkey" wording over the current "The Armenian Genocide ... was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of 1.5 million Armenians, mostly Ottoman citizens within the Ottoman Empire and its successor state, the Republic of Turkey." The current wording is probably not perfect, but it is far better than what existed before. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 13:32, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

In your urgency to avoid 'the simplified version of history presented by certain Armenian activist organizations', you obviously bit off more complexity than you could chew and ended up with a sentence containing an absurd contradiction: that the Ottoman government systematically exterminated Armenians in its successor state, the Republic of Turkey. Why can't you and Harpy just face that fact? Diranakir (talk) 21:16, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

You answer nothing, you propose nothing, you revert to a flawed version that you refuse to even justify. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 13:25, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

And what is the justification for your contradiction that the Ottoman Empire exterminated Armenians within its successor state, the Republic of Turkey? Diranakir (talk) 14:59, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Again, you refuse to actually defend the text version you reverted to, and decline to offer any alternative to either it or my wording. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 21:25, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Read the edit summary. I am refusing and declining nothing. Diranakir (talk) 15:13, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

To Harpy: I need a rational explanation of why you reverted my latest edit. Your edit summary amounts to zero. Diranakir (talk) 01:07, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Diranakir, you have been REPEATEDLY asked to justify your edits on the talk page. You have refused to do so, and you have refused to address the issues which the content you have been repeatedly reverting was written to resolve. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 13:49, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I corrected your error, which was a direct contradiction in the article, I did not revert. You had plenty of time to correct it yourself but didn't, because neither you nor Harpy ever admitted the error. More groupthink. That is the beginning of the problem. You and Harpy do not own the article and cannot dictate the conditions under which an edit is made. You had been unresponsive. Address the merits of my edit rather than shouting about process. Diranakir (talk) 15:01, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Whereas you own the article to the extent that you ignore its 1RR and distain to provide even the smallest talk page explanation. Your edits ARE reverts - they are all removing the same content, replacing it with content that is slightly different every time. The content you are deleting is there to explain that the majority of the victims of the Armenian Genocide were Ottoman citizens, and that the event mostly took place inside the territory of the Ottoman Empire. It replaced content that incorrectly claimed that ALL of the victims were Ottoman citizens and that it all took place inside the Ottoman Empire, all of which was also "historic Armenia". So, for your most recent edit, why are you deleting "citizens" (you seemed happy to have "citizens" rather than "subjects" when it was the old wording) and why are you deleting mention that it mostly occurred within the territory of the Ottoman Empire? There needs to be mention of where the event occurred, and ideally there should also be lede wording found that conveys the fact that the timespan of the AG extended beyond the defacto end of the Ottoman Empire and into its successor state, modern Turkey. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 20:32, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Diranakir, I don't know whether you genuinely don't understand why citizens, Ottoman Empire and Turkey are being used, but I am sick to death of your aspersions, demands left on my talk asking me to justify something that has been discussed and qualified here for months, but please try to 'get it' this one last time. Tiptoethrutheminefield has now elaborated slightly on the section in order to make it absolutely clear that the genocide may be predominantly associated with 1915, but that year only describes the prominent year, and the total tally of victims is gleaned from a more protracted period of time, ergo the victims cannot be described as subjects of the Ottoman Empire alone. Do you comprehend now? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:57, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Harpy, you are inventing things. I did not say victims of the OE alone. That is pure fiction. Point one. Point two: you have still not acknowledged that Tiptoe's version contains a direct contradiction by having the OE carrying out Armenian extermination in its successor state, the Republic of Turkey. Apparently such a contradiction is a small matter to you and can reasonably be overlooked, but it is simply not acceptable to any responsible reader of the English language, I don't care what presumed informational burden or issues its author claims to have taken up. A shabby result. Point three: The Ottoman-Armenian majority of the victims were emphatically 'subjects' of the Ottoman Empire. The term 'citizens' is a completely ahistorical misnomer.

My edit simply removed the contradiction from the sentence. Except for that, the substance is essentially the same. So what's the beef? Why can't you and Tiptoe deal with the merits of what I actually said in my edit of yesterday? And, as to your statement, 'Tiptoethrutheminefield has now elaborated slightly on the section in order to make it absolutely clear. . . ', I see nothing new, let alone 'absolutely clear'. It is still the same old contradictory sentence. Diranakir (talk) 23:22, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Diranakir, you claim you "did not say victims of the OE alone. That is pure fiction". But that is exactly what your edit did here: [ [17]. Regarding "citizens" vs "subjects" - after the 1908 revolution and the empire's resulting new constitution, all the inhabitants of the Ottoman empire became, theoretically at least, "equal citizens without distinction of race or religion" (as one source puts it) and no longer the subjects of the Sultan. So "citizens" is the correct term. You offer no alternative wording to express in the lede that the timespan of the AG extended beyond the defacto end of the Ottoman Empire and into its successor state, modern Turkey. Or are you denying that it did? Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 02:27, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Let's try to stay in the present. We are here discussing Harpy's arbitrary and unjustified revert of my edit here[[18]. It is pure fiction that in it I refer to Ottoman Armenian victims alone.

You accept at face value the reassuring words of an anonymous Ottoman spokesman that Armenians were 'citizens' after 1908. More dreaming on your part. They were Ottoman subjects until they were no more. "The liquidation of 1 million Armenian subjects of the empire", is just one phrase out of many in a prominent contemporary work on the Armenian Genocide that uses the word. Using citizens would be laughable. Finally, you still do not acknowledge the contradiction in your sentence, and with Harpy's help will undoubtedly go on trying to cover it up. Groupthink over and over again. Diranakir (talk) 05:10, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm at a loss over how to explain this any any further. I've been through multiple sources looking for whether 'subject' is appropriate in context: no, it is not; and neither is suggesting that the genocide stopped when the Ottoman Empire collapsed. I'm not claiming that there's an easy way of conveying the complexities of the period for the purposes of the lead, but creating SYNTH out of the scope it should cover is antithetical to what needs to be included in the lead. Did the persecution suddenly stop with the birth of the new nation-state known as Turkey? If that is the case, please provide the RS for this being the case and I will be more than happy for your version to be reintroduced. A million? I see, we need to change the current estimates to a million and exclude all of the sources for post-1915. Well, if that's the compromise you're willing to make. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 05:26, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Harpy, 'explaining further' assumes having explained at all. There is little sign of that except for the few emaciated straw men you have propped up here and there as roadblocks. Also, your readiness to give me the green light if I agree to one million is very revealing. Diranakir (talk) 21:18, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Oh, seriously! Do you really think that was an offer?! The WP:TITLE of this article says it all: it's not an article about the Armenian genocide which did not take place in 1915 alone. The fact that you think that I'm ready to do a deal to present misinformation is indicative of irrational thought processes on your behalf. I'm not prepared to make deals with anyone unless someone can come up with a better way to present the complexities of the entire situation. Subjects of the Ottoman Empire is non-starter, full stop. As has been pointed out to you numerous times (that is, each time you've made the same edit over a period of many weeks), that is what your edit states. Tell me what your rendition of the lead, being "The Armenian Genocide, also known as the Armenian Holocaust, was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of 1.5 million Armenians, most of them subjects of the Ottoman Empire." means if not a WP:SYNTH rendition of a longer term genocide that covers a period of turmoil in the structure of political entities at the end of days of empires as sovereign states? I don't know how many more times you need your rendition to be quoted here by editors before you get it. Your change to the content is seriously flawed, and all you're able to muster as an argument in defence of a flawed description is angry accusations levelled at anyone who gets in the way of your winning an indefensible piece of lack-of-description. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:04, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

My rendition in no way implies the genocide took place only in 1915. 'Most of them subjects' covers other victims in other places. This is one of your straw men. Your 'full stops' notwithstanding, the correct term is subjects when we are talking about the Ottoman Armenians. The consensus of historians on that point is obvious.

You mention your wish that someone could come up with a 'better way to present the complexities of the entire situation'. Certainly the present version is not the answer to your wish and mine comes closer.

The present version has the OE carrying out exterminations in the time of its successor state, the Republic of Turkey (successor state being a very formal term in international law). This is a direct contradiction. The advantage of my rendition is that it contains no such contradiction.

Another question in regard to the present rendition is this: How does saying that the OE carried out exterminations in the time of its successor state further the presentation of 'the complexities of the entire situation'? Is that an effective way to indicate it all didn't happen just in 1915? Not at all.

While there may be better ways to convey the complexities of the entire situation, I think mine is better. It should also be brought to your attention that the information box at the top of the page already makes clear that the genocide was not confined to Ottoman territory. For these reasons I urge you to help resolve the serious flaw in the current version. Diranakir (talk) 15:48, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

The source for "equal citizens without distinction of race or religion" is not "an anonymous Ottoman spokesman", it is Anahide Ter Minassian, chapter titled "Van 1915", page 211, in "Armenian Van / Vaspurakan", edited by Richard Hovhannisian. The same information can be found in many sources. Before the 1908 constitution all inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire were "subject" to an individual (the sultan), so were "subjects", after 1908 the Sultan lost that status and the inhabitants (foreign nationals excepted) became citizens who were protected by the same laws regardless of race or religion. This of course made the resulting genocide even more monstrous - it was not the whim of a medieval-era despot but the product of a modernizing empire purporting to follow enlightenment ideas of liberty and democracy and the rule of law (just as its successor state, Turkey, continues to claim to follow despite all the evidence that it does not). Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:37, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

It is Anahide Ter Minassian describing the ideals of the ARF in the previous century. Subjects is the correct word. Your contradiction remains unresolved and a serious blemish on the article. Try rewriting it if you and Harpy insist on owning the article and blocking anything I do to resolve the problem. Diranakir (talk) 15:58, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Go take it to a RfC, that is the normal route when an editor genuinely thinks they are right and are being incorrectly opposed by article talk page consensus. Or just drop it and stop wasting everyone's time. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 14:08, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

You complained a few days ago that I had REPEATEDLY been asked to justify my position. Now that I have done so, it is apparently TOO MUCH. More of your contradictions. Diranakir (talk) 15:28, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Repeatedly stating "I am right" is not justifying your position; repeatedly stating "I want this" is not justifying your position; repeatedly stating "it should be subjects" is not justifying your position, I have presented a source that uses "citizens" and I have explained the political circumstances that mean "citizens" is the correct term to use post-1908. You delete mention of Turkey's involvement in the AG in the lede, criticizing the wording that was used in it; yet you decline to offer any alternative wording that would retain mention of Turkey or, alternatively, explain why you think mention of Turkey should be deleted from the lede. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:46, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

I categorically refuted your use of the source for 'citizens' above (re: Anahide Ter Minasian). It pertained to the previous century and was describing the ideals of the ARF. No answer from you. Instead you told me to stop wasting everybody's time.

Here are a couple of sources on the matter: 'The testimony of the principal authors of these mass crimes, corroborated by the evidence given by high-ranking officials and officers as well as Armenian survivors and other Ottoman subjects, constitute the fullest body of information we have for a single region' (page 471, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History, Raymond Kévorkian); 'Mehmed Cavid pointed out that in 1917 he had helped restore the rights of Ottoman subjects who had disappeared more than a year earlier' (page 726, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History, Raymond Kévorkian).

Now you're doubling down with nonsense about my deleting mention of Turkey's involvement in the genocide, an absolute absurdity. I did no such thing. I eliminated the obvious contradiction that the Ottoman Empire carried out exterminations under its successor state, the Republic of Turkey. How many times does this have to be presented before you finally get the point and we can move on to a better formulation. Your stonewalling is contributing nothing to the quality of the article. Diranakir (talk) 22:39, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Would both of you agree to avoid either terms? Both terms are are state imposed and therefor legal binding, and therefore subject to be disputed in the future. A less controversial term would be its Armenian population or its Armenian inhabitants or something of the sort. Both of you have to discuss about this without me though, I return to my long pause. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 00:59, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Ah, Yaḥyā, where have you been?! Sounds like a promising direction to go. Now, if we can just convince Tiptoe. Diranakir (talk) 04:19, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

NO, they have to be called something and citizens is sourced and is the correct definition used to define their legal status post-1908 constitution (as opposed to loose wording like "subjects"). Of course I understand where Yahya Talatin is coming from - there is no concept of universal "citizenship" in Islam - you are either a true Muslim, a slave, or to be killed as soon as is convenient. However, given that they do have to be called something, I wonder what strange alternative will be suggested? "Ottomans", as in a piece of furniture? Again I am asking you, Diranakir, to take it to a RfC - but given your quickly arrived at willingness, expressed above, to drop advocating for the term "subjects", I think you are just making conflict here for the sake of making conflict. The newly-acquired "citizenship" status of the Christian inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire was a major contributing factor behind the genocide, and was probably the primary one for the ordinary Muslim population (I can cite a Kurdish tribal leader, European educated, speaking in 1914 in an interview in Ararat magazine, stating that the result of this forced equality of status between Kurdish Muslims and Armenian Christians will be the massacre of the latter by the former because they could not live with such an outrage to their honour). Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 14:14, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Just a last clarification, I was not discussing which of both terms is more appropriate, because to me this is irrelevant. Neither of you two is disagreeing in essence. Reason is that both subject and citizen in this particular case convey about the same message (that Armenians were members of the Ottoman family, by force or not), both words mostly diverge on forms only. The concepts of citizenship or subject aren't necessarily exclusive. This means that just because it is sourced that they were subjects does not mean they were not citizens and vis versa. There is no explicit set of unmovable rules to place them as either exclusively one or the other. Because what is a citizen or subject is decided by authors and relies on some set of changing parameters. The controversy exist mostly because after 1908 it was still an Empire, which assumes that there was a group (Muslim-Turks) ruling on others. I think both of you should be presenting what you are willing to concede and someone else has to cut in the middle. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yahya Talatin (talk • contribs) 17:00, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

But after 1908 the assumption of Muslim Turks ruling (by right of them being Muslim alone) over others was abolished by the 1908 constitution. The Ottoman Empire after this had a constitutional monarchy, the sultan's right to act as an absolutist monarch ended (removing most of his influence as caliph), and all the empire's citizens / subjects were now equal under the law, had voting rights that were not restricted by their religion, were taxed equally, and had the same obligations (such as conscription). So there was a material change. To me I think it is useful to use "subjects" before 1908, and "citizens" after 1908. I also think "citizens" more accurately defines the legal status of Ottoman Armenians in the years running up to the genocide, especially since "subject" carries with it the implication of subjugation. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 20:53, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just stating that there are sources using the term subject too... with stated reasons. I am not assessing any of either, but I am understanding why each are using one term over others depending on what they are covering and why. Using citizen or subject doesn't affect in anyway the understanding of the article, for most people they mean about the same thing. But it could be argued by some that the notion of Empire contradicts with the concept of citizenship as it is understood, by its modern use and that is what caused the dissolution of the empire. This is contextual and would fit well in a section dealing with the background. But in the lede, we're not yet there because space is lacking to contextualize it.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yahya Talatin (talk • contribs) 22:00, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Yahya, what happened to your idea of using 'Armenian population' or 'Armenian inhabitants'? That seems to be gone now for some reason. And one more question: Do you find anything wrong with saying the Ottoman Empire carried out exterminations under its successor state, the Republic of Turkey? That is really the central question. Diranakir (talk) 19:44, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi Diranakir, I still maintain wordings which are constructs (such as citizens, subjects) will never achieve long term consensus. This is particularly true when those words are in the lede, where we have limited place to put things in context. I prefer not to reply regarding your question on the Republic of Turkey, because the conflict in that case arise from the way articles in general are written. I found a solution, I am working on it and will return once ready. Right now, my replies aren't constructive, because they are still tainted by my opinions. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 21:51, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

You refuse to offer any alternative wording that retains mention of Turkey. AGAIN I ask you - are you disputing that the Armenian Genocide continued after the de facto end of the Ottoman Empire's control over most of its territory. The Ottoman Empire was not responsible for massacres of Armenians in Cilicia in the post WW1 period, nor the massacres that took place during the 1920 invasion of Armenia, nor the many small scale massacres and deportations that took place throughout the territory that was still, de jure, the Ottoman Empire. These were the responsibility of the Turkish nationalist Ankara government that in 1920 had declared itself to be the government of Turkey. Are you disputing that victims of these events are part of the Armenian Genocide. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 21:07, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

To Tiptoe: I asked Yahya two important questions and you jumped in. Why is that? Diranakir (talk) 21:32, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Because it is not a matter of compromise between you and Tiptoethrutheminefield. Yahya Talatin has suggested a compromise and has made it clear that s/he prefers to return to watching from the sidelines. Tiptoethrutheminefield has explained his position on why the choice of citizen is the correct form. I appreciate that Yahya Talatin has tried to find a compromise to suit all, but I don't actually think it's appropriate as it suggests that the Armenians were somehow 'other' within both states, which is not the case. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:52, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi Iryna, see here [19] for instance. Fact is that even scholars such as Kamuran Gurun (mouthpiece of the Turkish government in the past) do cover such an othering. It was the thesis postulated as the reason behind the tragedy which got consensus universally and by every sides (even those who reject the thesis of genocide) since several decades of scholarship. That you interpret the wordings as meaning Armenians being others between two states further straighten my alternative. The reason I broke silence after months on that particular question is because this element is central, most important point having been raised in the talkpage. I was just attempting to show that by excluding conceptual words which rely on constructs we expose a genuine consensus in the academia, regardless of the sides. Your reply and interpretation of my wording you disagree or not is sufficient.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yahya Talatin (talk • contribs) 23:22, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Yahya Talatin. Thanks for the link. I've only just taken a quick glimpse at it, but it looks like an interesting read. I'll get to it as I have to head out for a couple of hours. What is evident is that you're reading my use of 'other' too literally as being a postmodern 'self' and 'other' argument. I used the term simplistically to reflect my position on the context in the lead. 'Otherness' can be applied broadly to the non-ruling ethnic groups living under empires/nation-states, etc. in any epoch. In terms of the construct of the lead, such application suggests to the reader that Armenians were an enclave living outside of the laws of the OE and Turkey: that they possibly even were privy to self-governance in some form. I know it would be nice to find a less clumsy way of conveying their status, but I believe that your suggested compromise takes us further away from a satisfactory resolution. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:46, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for contaminating my reply with my opinions.

I am wondering, does everyone agree that:

It happened during a transitional period, from subjects to citizens? Can this not be included very shortly, max one phrase in lede? This way the spectrum is included.

The major event happened during WWI and within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire... without having to exclude what might have happened later and beyond the boundaries?

Can we not deal with the major-minor (majority vs minority) relationship the way it is done in music, like in a type of Chord substitution, major-minor :) Music isn't biased and it's universal... it follows natural rules, and less subjected to constructs. It has beautifully dealt with the transitioning from the natural tonal to the more human friendly major-minor transition. Beethoven found the solution in the 9th symphony 4th movement with the D minor-D major. As a matter of fact, it wasn't by accident that he chose Schiller's "Ode to Joy", seems that he really found the solution for All men shall become brothers, and that This kiss is for the whole world! :)

OK now, I really return to my pause before I go off-topic. But the above was a hint to the solution I am working on. :) Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 03:43, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

I apologize to everyone with the way I placed my replies. Feel free to move them, I just get lost with all those replies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yahya Talatin (talk • contribs) 21:56, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

I fixed what I could. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 22:00, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

General Improvements

Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Fairchia (talk) 00:21, 2 November 2016 (UTC) This article as a whole is solid, with a multitude of unbiased viewpoints and facts backed by sources on multiple aspects of the genocide. Even the pictures provided assisted in providing a visual aid to the atrocities committed during this time period. An improvement could be to add a segment on Turkey's thought process on being able to commit these crimes under the falsehood of war. Turkey believed that it was justified in the genocide not only in ethical considerations but also that it was war, and certain occurrences happen. Another improvement could be to provide a generalized timeline to put in to reference the major historical events that occurred.

Dates

Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Could anyone supply sources for the dates mentioned in the infobox? Is there any particular reason for us to prefer the time-span 1915-23 in the infobox (and not 1918, for example); is this the most widely accepted timespan in the literature or the one accepted by influential scholars in the field? If not so, should we not reflect this in our presentation rather than present it as if it is the most widely accepted timespan (indeed we do this with the number of deaths but that the figure of 1.5 million is the most published is supported by sources)? Is there any literature evaluating these alternative timespans? If not, is the figure 1923 substantiated by the sources using it, by which I mean, is there any specific incident cited as genocidal activity that took place in 1923? Apologies if I am asking too many questions, I am aware that many here will be much more familiar with the literature than me and will hopefully be able to provide an insight on the issue of the start and end dates and settle it. --GGT (talk) 00:09, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi GGT, I already somewhere above raised those issues. I proposed to drop the 1915-23 for two reasons. First because no one disputes that most victims (dead and non dead) were reported in a relatively shorter period, something like from 1915 to beginning of 1917. Also, I reported that terms such as "mostly during the course of WWI" may be more appropriate. As for the figures representing the losses, I also proposed some changes. It seems the most reasonable wording would be something like "more or less a million" or "about a million" died. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 19:55, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

@GGT: Well, with the establishment of the new republic, the genocide under the Young Turks was effectively over. The incidents in Izmir, the war against Armenia in the 1920s, and the assault on the French-Armenian Legion in Cilicia are often cited as the icing on the cake when it comes to the end of the Armenians in Turkey. A lot of sources can debate the timespan. After all, Turkish leadership and policy changed quite frequently from 1915 to 1923, but the intent and process of eliminating the Armenians and solidifying a new Turkey remained the same. One of the main goals of the Kurtuluş Savaşı was to finish what the Young Turks started. That means get rid of the Armenians, forcefully Turkify and Islamisize the remainder, nullify the Treaty of Sevres which granted Armenians land and property, restore supremacy over French-Armenian Cilicia, and push the Armenians out (literally into the sea) and thereby establish Turkish supremacy once more. So it is only up until the end of the Kurtuluş Savaşı and the establishment of the republic in 1923 where we can firmly say that the genocide ended. However, some historians go even further and argue that it continued decades after the traditional timespan and some even argue that it continues till this day (see: White Genocide). In fact, some legislation directly related to the Armenian Genocide was in effect all the way up to the 1980s. One such legislation, concerning the abandoned Armenian property, remained in effect for 73 years until it was finally abolished on 11 June 1986 (see: Üngör, Uğur Ümit; Polatel, Mehmet. Confiscation and destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property. Pg. 57). So the timespan stuff can and will always be debated but I think to play it safe, it's best to just leave it as is with a note saying that there are other timespans that are also considered. Étienne Dolet (talk) 00:47, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Denialist literature and talking points

Latest comment: 7 years ago12 comments6 people in discussion

I must say, Iryna Harpy, that I'm quite disappointed in your recent revert. There has been a long-standing consensus to remove denialist talking points from this article. Michael Gunter is a well-known denialist. The stuff on Seljuk Turks is bizarre, even under denialist standards. I've also never heard a denialist ever say that the reason why the AG didn't happen was because Armenians lived well under the Seljuks. That's just apples and oranges. All denialist sources and talking points should be dumped in the Denial of the Armenian Genocide article. Étienne Dolet (talk) 02:50, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

@EtienneDolet:, that was a

Facepalm moment when I realised what I'd reverted to, however I don't think that this is the appropriate venue in which to berate me. Nevertheless, given that there's been no discussion of the recent string of edits introducing Gunter, I do feel that it's a good idea to use this as an opportunity to have it on record on this talk page that Gunter is not good coin for this article, therefore any attempts to reintroduce his arguments need to be understood as being off-bounds. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:11, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Reading helps. --92slim (talk) 03:24, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

That's fine. I do believe your edit was in good-faith. But I was pretty shocked that you reverted to reinsert into the Further reading section a source entitled: "A Study of Contemporary Armenian Terrorism". I mean, there's really nothing to discuss here. In general, when it comes to denialist sources, we simply remove them outright, especially in areas like the Further reading section. I don't know precisely what 92slim's reasons were, but we should all keep this in mind. Étienne Dolet (talk) 03:28, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Oh, and apologies to you, too, 92slim. Frankly, I was hit with a virus a couple of days ago, and one shouldn't edit when one has vertigo... It's an impoverished excuse, but I've probably gone trigger-happy with twinkle. The fact that I restored such blatant WP:FRINGE acts as both an indictment, and as a timely reminder that I should rest and leave well enough alone until I know the difference between my feet and my ears. Consider me humbled and chastised for editing while incompetent. I'm dragging my sorry tail to bed to rest up until I'm certain that I'm alert. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:15, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Don't worry about it. I've so gotten used to so many editors adding revisionist information that I can't distinguish impartial editors from clear revisionists anymore. Get better soon :) --92slim (talk) 04:19, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

If you're removing it then put it on the denial page BM Tornado (talk) 10:24, 6 December 2016 (UTC) BM Tornado (talk) 10:24, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

It's already there wise guy. Étienne Dolet (talk) 04:54, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Étienne Dolet, your edit to (correctly) remove an unsuitable further reading title (the Michael Gunter book) removed much more: [[20]]. Turks saving the Armenians from the nasty Byzantine Empire is a claim straight out of a typical Turkish genocide-denialist's playbook, so arguably has a valid place here. If you have really never come across this claim before, you can't have looked at many such works. Its "bizarreness" is irrelevant, almost everything in denialist literature is bizarre or ludicrous - all that matters is that it is being presented as a reason why the AG didn't happen. So the argument for it being here or not should be based on whether it is significant enough in the context of denialist claims to be here in this article or to be on the main article (Armenian Genocide denial). If it is already there on the main article, would you tell me where, because I don't see it. I disagree with your "all denialist sources and talking points should be dumped in the Denial of the Armenian Genocide article" assertion. There must be some sort of summary of them here. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 17:37, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Tiptoe, I was talking about more notable denialist talking points being added to this article (i.e. the Armenians died of hunger, died of disease, etc. etc.) The Seljuq/Byzantine stuff is just out of the ordinary and not a denialist argument. Obviously, we can't just add every denialist argument here. We need to be very precise as to what we should add. And yes, not all denialist sources and talking points should be dumped there. I agree that I went a little overboard there. But most of them should with the exception of the notable ones. Étienne Dolet (talk) 17:58, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that. I was worried you were advocating for the removal of ALL such stuff. I do actually think that particular "claim" is a bit too marginal to be included here - though it should have a place somewhere on the denial article. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 19:19, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Would a link to the movie "Denial" not be appropriate? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_(2016_film) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wellsdm (talk • contribs) 18:46, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Inaccurate total number of countries that have recognized Armenian Genocide

Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I don't think the "To date, 29 countries have officially recognized the mass killings as genocide,[28]" part is accurate, it uses a source from 2015, and http://asbarez.com/162565/czech-republic-parliament-recognizes-armenian-genocide/ just happened a few days ago for example. I don't know what the current total is but it's obviously more than 29. I don't have a Wikipedia account so can't edit this page but hopefully someone else will. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.54.107.200 (talk) 18:08, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

The source is indeed outdated (it claims only 22) but the number of 29 is correct: see Armenian Genocide recognition. I have removed the source as the article it links to is fully referenced. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 13:37, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

GA Review

Latest comment: 6 years ago79 comments9 people in discussion

This review is transcluded from Talk:Armenian Genocide/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Jclemens (talk · contribs) 02:33, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	Improved markedly during the course of the review, could still stand more work throughout.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	Lead section is too short and doesn't adequately summarize the article.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	No issues noted
	2c. it contains no original research.	No issues noted
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	Everything seen on Earwig's tool appears to be appropriate quotations (them by us with attribution, us by them, or both of a common historical source)
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	I don't have to go beyond the skimming stage to see that this is not an issue here. The next (focus) will be the more challenging to evaluate.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	Still very detailed, but it is an important topic and Summary style is in use.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	Not bad for how emotionally charged a topic this is, but likely still some room for improvement.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	No current edit wars. I get that this is an historically contentious topic in certain corners of the globe, but do not intend to hold that against the editors working to improve the article.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	Only one fair use image noted, rationale appears appropriate, but will evaluate it in-context later.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	There are plenty of historical images. I suspect the gallery at the end overdoes it. These are clearly historic and important images, but a gallery with captions deprives them of their respective historical context. Might a smaller, more focused number of images work as well for this article?
	7. Overall assessment.

Jclemens' Good Article Review expectations for Vital Articles.

This is a vital article. As such, it requires an appropriate amount of scrutiny, because being wrong is just that much worse, so being right is just that much more important.
This is a collaborative process. I offer suggestions, which editors are free to implement, ignore, reject, or propose counter-suggestions. If there's simply no meeting of the minds, there will be no GA pass from me, but please feel free to tell me to take a flying leap if I propose something stupid or counterproductive.
I do not quick fail vital article GA reviews. In general, even if there is no clear path to meet all the GA criteria, working with conscientious editors is almost always going to improve the article and benefit our readers--just not to the extent all of us had hoped.
This is not a quick process. Estimate a month, depending on my availability and the responsiveness of the nominator and other editors collaborating on the process.
I am not a content expert. I generally have a reasonable background in the topic under consideration, often at the college undergraduate/survey level, or else I wouldn't have volunteered to review it. Thus, I depend on the content experts to help focus the article appropriately.
The more the merrier. While many unimportant GA articles can be adequately reviewed by a single nominator and a single reviewer, Vital Article GA's can use more eyes, based on their increased importance. I always welcome other editors to jump in with suggestions and constructive criticisms.

Comments

Thank you for your time! I am by no means the primary article contributor here but became involved after I worked intensively in June last year on trying to counter the revisionism in Armenian Genocide denial (it was bad; see before and after). I was pleasantly surprised to see that the main article on the genocide was actually in a very good state. Plenty of references and little edit wars due to the page's semi-protection. It's been three years since the failed GAN and editors have worked tirelessly on improving it. Calling first on those users who have contributed the most over the last 1-2 years - @Tiptoethrutheminefield: (seems to be blocked for a few more days), @EtienneDolet:, @Iryna Harpy:. I'd also like to notify @Diranakir: and @Armen Ohanian: but I'm not sure they'll be able to join the discussion as their last contributions were already a while ago. I'll be available pretty much every day myself. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 15:20, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Ah, yes. It seems to have fallen off my radar since the big POV-push in 2016. I have heavyweight commitments IRL, and have been overstepping the limits of wiki time, but I'd be glad to pitch in. Could you ping me again in a few days as a reminder? Cheers for now! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 06:16, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Sure, I'll give a shout. Would highly value an experienced user's attention. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 15:22, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't see a very significant change between the article as it is now and the article as assessed in the last GA review. Yes, a lot of content issues have been addressed and improved, but I think the article still falls short of being a correct and understandable account of the Armenian Genocide: it is still very badly structured, it (despite its length) still misses out much vital content, and it still includes a large amount of material that would be better placed in fork articles. Last year I gave the opinion in the Talk page that "Barely 20% of this article's content details the event itself, and we are 20% into the article's body before that small amount of content even starts, and the bulk (60% or more) of the article's content is aftermath-related material. I believe that this article is in urgent need of massive deletions and a lot of forking of content off into other articles. This article, titled as it is "Armenian Genocide", should be primarily concerned with giving an account of the Armenian Genocide as it happened, of what it consisted of, and not about what peoples, countries, organisations, or individuals have, post-event, done with the history of, or legacy of, the Armenian Genocide." [21]. I think it currently does not make the best of attribute 3a, though maybe enough to pass, but that it fails attribute 3b, and (mainly in the images section) possibly 6b too. I also worry if the article does attain GA status now, that status may be presented in the future as a reason not to make major changes to the article (since I think major changes are needed). Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:42, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

But Tiptoethrutheminefield, one must consider if this is a problem regarding the article or regarding the sources we have. The truth is that it's still a big thing today, and it has played a huge role in political discourse. Unlike the Holocaust, which was extensively documented and never really disputed outside of the fringes, the Armenian Genocide had less (though still plenty) documentation at the time and wasn't a focus of historians until more recently. I think the timeline and events themselves are quite well described. Do you want more attention to detail on the way the genocide was executed and organized, or perhaps the actions of those involved in it? Let's see what @Iryna Harpy: thinks. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 11:12, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

@Prinsgezinde: You nominated this article for GA. I have yet seen you do some work to achieve it that status. Why nominate an article for GA if you're not going to work on it? Étienne Dolet (talk) 18:57, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

I had been cleaning the article shortly before submitting it. Since then, I haven't had the time for any extensive editing at all and see little point in quick visits and drive-by advice. Besides that, the reactions were somewhat negative from the start. People who I thought might agree on its quality said it likely wasn't ready. The process of evaluation itself also took a while, understandably, so the amount of free time I thought I would've had at the start quickly made way for a busy end of the year. And I nominated it because I found it to be a good article. I've said from the start that I haven't been the primary editor and the problems largely regard areas where a someone well-read on the subject (or a very experienced editor) would be more helpful. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 18:51, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Part of that delay is solely my fault. It is such a heart-wrenching topic, I cannot work steadily on it, I have to come back to it in bits and pieces. This is a century ago, and so, so important to have the story told well... but I can only read it for a while at a time. So I do not mind going slow and taking the time to do it right. Jclemens (talk) 20:34, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

FYI, I would welcome responses to my ongoing (albeit slow) commentary. I welcome asynchronous work: you can clean up sections I've reviewed, while I'm still reviewing later sections of the article. Jclemens (talk) 18:27, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

First Read Through

Lead

I get this is a controversial topic, but it strikes me that there are a lot of references in the lead. Do we really need so many in the lead itself?
- No, probably not. Only the notes are kind of useful. I'll check which refs are repeated in the article and if they aren't, if they could be moved.
The lead is short; only three paragraphs, which is not enough given the size and scope of the article.
Thankfully, there's many different sections in the article outline that are not represented in the lead at all. Thus, the simple correction is to expand the lead by mentioning things (e.g., background, memorials) covered in the article body but not in the lead.
- Will work on that.
"officially recognized the mass killings as genocide" seems to be a quite long piped link. Maybe cut the wikilink down to 'officially recognized' while preserving the text? Jclemens (talk) 05:18, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
- I think the key there was that even Turkey recognizes the event as well as that "many people died" but doesn't call it a genocide, which is what's perhaps the most important detail of such recognition. Could still tone it down. Would "recognize it as a genocide" work? Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 11:07, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Background

"Ottoman census figures clash with the statistics collected by the Armenian Patriarchate." The article goes on to elaborate on the latter, but not the former.
"Although there were no law mandating religious ghettos" laws?

Done Fixed. Étienne Dolet (talk) 05:34, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

There are too few references in the "Reform implementation, 1840s–80s" section, specifically towards the end.
"whose influence was limited to Van" Van? The Turkish province? Should be Wikilinked here, rather than in the "Hamidian massacres, 1894–96" section, below.

Done Étienne Dolet (talk) 05:34, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Actually, the inline referencing for this entire section seems light. Let's pick apart the last sentence: "While the Great Powers vowed to take action and enforce new reforms,{{cn}} these never came to fruition{{cn}} due to conflicting political and economic interests.{{cn}}" I added the CN tags to this copy to show what I would expect for this sentence: there are three separate assertions: vow, inefficacy, and underlying cause. If one reference includes all these things, great, add it at the end of the sentence. Jclemens (talk) 05:38, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Prelude to the Genocide

"On 24 July 1908, Armenians' hopes for equality in the empire brightened once more when a coup d'état ..." When did they previously brighten?

Done Removed "once more" Étienne Dolet (talk) 05:29, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

"That the Armenian population formed a significant minority in this region later figured prominently in the calculations of the Three Pashas, who carried out the Armenian Genocide." That parses correctly, but as someone not intimately familiar with the topic, I am not sure what it means.

Done Not sure what that means either, so I removed it. Étienne Dolet (talk) 05:29, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

"As many as 850,000 of these refugees were settled in areas where the Armenians were resident from the period of 1878–1904." Misplaced modifier: I'm sure the Armenians lived in these areas longer. Jclemens (talk) 03:22, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Done Yeah, not need for those years. Étienne Dolet (talk) 05:29, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

World War I

"this was later used as a factor to involve radical masses" involve seems a peculiar verb here. Incite, perhaps? Provoke?

Done Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:51, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

The text refers to Constantinople, but on the nearby map of massacre locations it is labeled Istanbul.

I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about that for now. The map needs to say Constantinople with (ISTANBUL) underneath or something. Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:51, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

The first full text paragraph in Deportations is uncited.

Done Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:51, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Shouldn't "western world" be capitalized?

Done Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:51, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

"A relief organization for refugees in the Middle East helped donate over $102 million (budget $117,000,000) [1930 value of dollar] to Armenians both during and after the war." The current and/or historical value of this donated amount is unclear. Is this in U.S. dollars?

Yes, it is because the relief organization was based in the USA. Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:51, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

"This organization adopted its name in 1913 and functioned like a special forces outfit, and it has been compared by some scholars to the Nazi Einsatzgruppen" I would think the comparison would be the other way around, since the Special Organization came first chronologically. "You look just like your grandson" would be an odd compliment.

That's a good point. I thought about removing it. Maybe we could reword it somehow? I still think it should remain because the Einsatzgruppen is far more well-known in the academic world than the Special Organization. I think it'll help our readers to give them an example in history that as to how it operates and its role in the event. Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:51, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

"According to the Mazhar commissions attached to the tribunal as soon as November 1914," Cite this sentence, please.

Done Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:51, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

"Admiral Sir Somerset Gough-Calthorpe was in charge of the operation, together with Lord Curzon; they did so owing to the lack of transparency of the Turkish courts-martial" The lack of transparency is mentioned multiple times, but never adequately explained, and in this instance is not cited.

I'm going to have to look into this and get back to you. Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:51, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Overall, this section is huge, with lots of subsections. I'm not sure it's properly named, as the vast majority of the Armenian deaths are discussed here. I have no particular better organizational suggestion, but note that this one seems awkward to me as an outsider. Jclemens (talk) 04:43, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Armenian population, deaths, survivors, 1914 to 1923

If the estimates range from 800k to 1.5m, then saying greater than 500k died seems an understatement.

Done Yeah, I don't get how that number got there. Étienne Dolet (talk) 20:15, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Explain who McCarthy is in the process of giving us his statistics, please.

Done Étienne Dolet (talk) 20:15, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

"...and some modern scholars estimate over 2 million." Needs a citation and more specificity. Jclemens (talk) 23:16, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Done Added a source. Étienne Dolet (talk) 20:15, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Reports and Reactions

"This was to give justification for the deportation of Armenians, which is still argued by genocide deniers to this day." Needs a cite.

Done Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:11, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

"Richter admits the deportations were intentionally meant to cover up the slaughter of Armenians:" Admits is a curious word to use, and likely suboptimal in this case.

Done Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:11, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

"One photograph shows two unidentified German army officers, in company of three Turkish soldiers and a Kurdish man, standing amidst human remains." Cite, please.

Citation is at the end of the paragraph. Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:11, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

The section on Bodil Biørn needs to be condensed and may need additional citations. Jclemens (talk) 23:16, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
"Hundreds of eyewitnesses, including the neutral United States and the Ottoman Empire's own allies, Germany and Austria-Hungary, ..." Nations are not eyewitnesses. Rephrase, please. Jclemens (talk) 06:43, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Done Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:11, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Studies on the Genocide

No issues noted. Jclemens (talk) 06:43, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Recognition of the Genocide

"However, the fact that the charges had been brought at all was still a matter of contention for European politicians." ... "Kerinçsiz, the leading lawyer behind the prosecutions, has been accused of plotting to overthrow the government as a member of the alleged Ergenekon network." Needs citations, as do several other uncited sentences.

Done I removed one of the sentences. Added a citation on the other. Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:04, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

"The rhetoric leading up to the onset of the conflict, which unfolded in the context of several pogroms of Armenians" BY Armenians or AGAINST Armenians? Of is ambiguous. Jclemens (talk) 06:43, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Done Against, per sources. Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:04, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Cultural Loss

No issues noted. Jclemens (talk) 06:43, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Reparations to the victims

"The United Nations Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law provide in part, that reparation may be claimed individually and where appropriate collectively, by the direct victims of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, the immediate family, dependants or other persons or groups of persons closely connected with the direct victims." Yes, it's a legal sentence. No, it's not a good idea. Break it up, please.

This is hard for me to break up actually. Or, do you have any suggestions? Étienne Dolet (talk) 21:05, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

This first few paragraphs appears to be an essay on why Turkey should pay Armenians, rather than relying on what RS'es have said about it.
We don't need de Zayas' CV inline.

Done Étienne Dolet (talk) 21:05, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

The Sevres Treaty? What's that? Seriously, it needs a wikilink for the non-specialist.

Done Étienne Dolet (talk) 21:05, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

The lawsuit for life insurance needs to be fleshed out: dates, court dockets, etc. It's probably the only thing in this entire sections that should be expanded. Jclemens (talk) 06:59, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Commemoration

In Memorials, it looks like an article on the Museum was merged into the third paragraph. Ditto the second paragraph about the bombing. The section could flow more smoothly and logically.

Done I removed the bit about the bombing one. That memorial shouldn't get singled out just cause of a bombing. I also reorganized the paragraph so that it flows better by combining two paragraphs that are related to one another. Étienne Dolet (talk) 22:28, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Many of the 'portrayal in the media' examples are uncited. Regardless, they're just plopped in without coherent organization.

Done Combined some paragraphs. Removed some non-notable stuff. Provided introductory sentences before the start of some paragraph to lessen the incoherence. Étienne Dolet (talk) 23:27, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Jclemens (talk) 06:59, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Images

This is not appropriate in its current form. Might I suggest a link to a Commons category? Jclemens (talk) 06:59, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Done Merged with c:Հայոց Ցեղասպանութիւն BillHPike (talk, contribs) 07:26, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Stability

Looking at the recent history of the article, and the comments here, I don't think the article is yet stable, and therefore is not ready for GA. Even if there is no current edit war, most likely there are long-standing controversies that are still unresolved - edit summaries like "please stop adding muslim/christian qualifiers" and "many left voluntarily" - multiple recent edits and reversions from recent editors removing "Islamic" or "muslim' etc. Seraphim System ^(talk) 22:29, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

It's unfortunate, since this subject (and Armenian history in general) is one of the few which was both written by both the victors and those who were defeated. The potential with some concessions for this article to be an archetype is there. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 00:33, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

I haven't really been following the current editing of the article, just going through and looking at it a section at a time. I fear unless there's a concerted effort to address the areas I've already outlined, this isn't going to make GA status, which I agree is unfortunate, because this story is important and needs to be told. Jclemens (talk) 05:42, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Honestly though, things such as that are easily undone. I don't think that would qualify as unstable. But I'm going to address the concerns now and will ping @Iryna Harpy:. Even if it doesn't make GA, it still deserves attention and improvement. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 10:19, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. It's one of the cornerstone articles for the subject of genocide as there are no ambiguities about intent and methods deployed. I doubt that it's ever going to be understood as 'stable'... but how many GA status articles from the past have been trashed, and how many merely created the illusion of being worthy, but were based on poor scholarship, synth, and every other kind of sin against encyclopaedic content? Controversial, emotive subject matter is always going to teeter on the edge so long as this remains an active, ongoing project. For me, GA status is a bit of a means-to-an-end aspiration: editors are more vigilant as to content changes once the 'yeah, that's where it should be at' benchmark has been set. Perhaps that's a mercenary position to adopt, but this genocide is virtually an unknown quantity in the footnotes of the Anglophone world's comprehension of history. That's a sad state of affairs for an horrific event which was so vital to the formation of the moral codes of the contemporary world. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:18, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

@Iryna Harpy: I respectfully disagree that this article is unstable. And to all the users involved in this GA nomination, I'd like to emphasize that just because some drive-by account shows up to needlessly change a few words they see fit doesn't make it unstable. The AG is the most researched genocide after the Holocaust so there's going to be a few "know-it-all" accounts here and there that are going to add in their own understanding of the event into the article. That's totally fine. But I can assure you, I have edited this article for almost a decade and can safely say that there's never been massive changes. The consensus on this article is quite strong, especially when it comes to the lead. It's for this reason why the lead hasn't changed much over the years. I can also add that it's technically impossible for a 1RR article to be unstable. One revert a day is easily manageable and the disputes on this article almost always ends up at the TP and is subsequently resolved there. Étienne Dolet (talk) 05:08, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

@EtienneDolet: You make a good point. Occasional outbreaks in POV editing have probably created an illusion of instability rather any form of changes in consensus. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:47, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

I am going to take a break from editing, so I wanted to leave a message to have at least this addressed while I am not here. I already brought this in the talkpage of the article. As a reference one might use the German and French versions (both are featured articles). The estimate of victims on English Wikipedia takes the highest range of estimates in the lead (1.5 million) without providing the lower ones. The French version takes 1.2 million and the German version from 300,000 to 1.5 million. I have already addressed this here [22] (See my answer starting with Hi Armen). The only answer I have received which directly answer the figures I have provided was that the date of the tragedy would extend to 1923. But most victims can be recorded prior to 1918 (according to most sources). If Wikipedia holds a position which is significantly far from means or medians (if the mean is imposed by exterior factors) extra energy will be required to maintain this position as things always regress to its most stable form. There are many other issues with the article, but this at least should be addressed if this article is going to be promoted. The most reasonable wording without including ranges or long sentences would be approximatively a million and I welcome everyone to read that link (starting from Hi Armen) and answer if I have dismissed or forgotten any sources there. I can now take my break, bye. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 19:24, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Status Check

Where are we now? Jclemens (talk) 07:12, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

EtienneDolet, Prinsgezinde? Jclemens (talk) 03:55, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

@Jclemens: I say we clear out all the stuff that's been handled and leave the stuff that still needs to be handled to make it easier for everyone involved. Étienne Dolet (talk) 04:16, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Feel free to collapse/hat anything you consider done. Jclemens (talk) 04:20, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

@Jclemens: I've already added Done tags to everything I've completed. Did you want me to collapse the sections? Étienne Dolet (talk) 06:42, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Prinsgezinde and Jclemens, any chance you could either finish up the review process or close this thing down? From what I see, there have been no posts in over 2 weeks. Display name 99 (talk) 5:43, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been dragging my feet on this. Sorry, I find it emotionally taxing to work in the topic. Jclemens (talk) 18:22, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Where we are now

The Lead still needs to be expanded and reorganized. (GA criterion 1.b.)
The text is in much better condition. A couple of the above notes still should be dispositioned, and more copyediting would be welcome, but not essential.
The image gallery still needs to be dispositioned. (GA criterion 6.b.)

Overall, this is much closer than it was, and has been getting better, but the lead and image gallery are the things that keep me from awarding GA status. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 19:29, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

@Jclemens: Must the gallery really go though? I think the proposal for its removal should be at least suggested in the talk page. The gallery has been part of this article for a long time and is essential for our readership to attain a visual grasp of the subject. I also don't think that a gallery goes against GA guidelines. Étienne Dolet (talk) 20:57, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

The general rule I've seen applied for GA is that every picture must have a specific encyclopedic purpose--individual commentary as in "This is a picture of X, as authors Y and Z talked about". I'm perfectly happy to ask on WT:GAN, as I agree that the visual evidence of the genocide is appropriate. Jclemens (talk) 22:29, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

@Jclemens: In any other case, I would agree with you. But the gallery is important in this case, especially considering the controversial subject matter and the importance of photographic and visual evidence when it comes to genocide. I looked into the gallery guidelines under Wikipedia and stumbled upon this (Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Image_galleries):

Images are typically interspersed individually throughout an article near the relevant text (see WP:MOSIMAGES). However, the use of a gallery section may be appropriate in some Wikipedia articles if a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images. About 2% of articles at the English Wikipedia use galleries. The images in the gallery collectively must have encyclopedic value and add to the reader's understanding of the subject. Images in a gallery should be suitably captioned to explain their relevance both to the article subject and to the theme of the gallery, and the gallery should be appropriately titled (unless the theme of the gallery is clear from the context of the article).

So I think it's just a matter of relevancy. The bottom line is that pictures can be used to portray aspects of the genocide wherein which text cannot. We can ask WP:GAN, but I don't think that should trump the consensus that this article has had for quite some time. I'd suggest getting the community involved first before making such a drastic change that appears that have not been under any such contention for the life of this article. Étienne Dolet (talk) 00:08, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

I already DID ask at WT:GAN, but I agree that you've found a good argument for this use case. Since the lead still needs work, we've got time to see how other GA reviewers see things. Jclemens (talk) 00:23, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

@Jclemens: I'm willing to work on the lead once I have the time. Étienne Dolet (talk) 03:59, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Given the recent round of nonsense accusatory reverts over improving duplicate poorly written information and cleaning up excessive citation and the amount of work that still has to be done concerning the article length (which is over twice what our guidelines suggest) - not to mention the review has been open since May and still not closed, I am wondering if there are any plans to close this? I've also had to template the article for NPOV, because the issues are considerable - following the standard "if you can tell what the position of the authors are from reading it, it fails NPOV" standard this article clearly fails. It's not easy to adhere to NPOV on controversial topics - I'm not very emotional about this one (or any history articles in general) - I'm glad to see it's been nominated in the appropriate section, but since recent attempts to improve the quality of the article have been reverted, and several times I have seen the word "denialist" used by ~~the nominator and other~~ editors here (including in reverts), I'm not very hopeful. I think this review should be closed without prejudice to renomination when these issues are resolved. Seraphim System ^(talk) 12:56, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Further indication of the NPOV issue is that Hrant Dink is mentioned only in the negative context of his trials in Turkey. There is not a single mention of his message of reconciliation, though he is one of the most prominent and best known writers and thinkers on this topic. Very disappointing. Even with a 5 month allowance, this article is no where near passing GA standards. Also removal of templates and hasty edit warring (Revert says I did not justify on talk, but it was justified here in the review, one only had to check or ask.)

I don't think this article is ready and of GA quality yet, and I don't think it should be passed until it is. Seraphim System ^(talk) 23:45, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi Seraphim, regarding this: "if you can tell what the position of the authors are from reading it, it fails NPOV", I have never seen on Wikipedia any article which does not fail this. So I guess when users add the tag or remove it, they compare it with the average article. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 19:34, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Jclemens, there has been no progress here in well over a month, and there is apparently some sort of unresolved content dispute going on as well. I think it's clear that this review has to be failed. Pinging the nominator, Prinsgezinde. Display name 99 (talk) 13:17, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. It's an important topic, but one where I fear progress towards GA remains inexorably stalled at this point. Jclemens (talk) 01:59, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. For what it's worth, and especially towards Jclemens, I apologize for the way I handled this. I clearly misunderstood the GA nomination process, underestimated the size of such an undertaking and most of all overestimated my own free time. My studies simply wouldn't allow me to spend the time I needed on this. I'll take care not to do something like this again in the future. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 13:57, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

No apology is needed. This is an important topic, and even if the criteria are not yet fully met, I do believe the article is substantially better off than when we started working on this together. It has not been a waste of anyone's time. Jclemens (talk) 15:53, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Is condoning, denying or grossly trivialising the Armenian genocide a crime in the European Union ?

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

According to Article 1 of the Council of the European Union Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA of 28 November 2008 on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law, each Member State shall take the measures necessary to ensure that publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide is punishable, at least when the crimes has been established by a final decision of a national court of this Member State and/or an international court, or by a final decision of an international court only. In the Order of the Court of First instance of the European Union of 17 December 2003 in Case T-346/03, about compensation for the non-material damage suffered by the violation of the resolution of the European Parliament of 18 June 1987 on a political solution to the Armenian question, that Court considered : “In this case, it appears from the arguments put forward by the applicants that the alleged non-material damage is the result of the refusal by the Turkish Government to acknowledge the genocide in question (Armenian genocide) rather than of the conduct of the defendant institutions complained of”. The Court of First instance didn’t write : “the refusal by the Turkish Government to acknowledge the “ ‘ ‘ alledged ‘ ‘ ” genocide in question”.

By Order of the Court of Justice of the European Union the appeal against the Order of the Court of First instance of the European Union of 17 December 2003 was rejected. The question is if publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising the Armenian genocide should be a crime in a Member State of the European Union where the publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising a genocide is a crime when that genocide is established by a final decision of an international court. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LucLamineRot (talk • contribs) 16:40, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Armenian

Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

This edit request to Armenian Genocide has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

change ((Armenian)) to ((Armenia))n — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:541:4305:c70:e99d:bade:9a88:a4d9 (talk) 14:27, 30 April 2017‎ (UTC)

Done Please be more specific with your requests, to let us know exactly where in the article a change should be made. I found an instance of "Armenian Christians" at the top of the article, and changed that one from the Armenian disambiguation page to Armenian. If there is something else needing attention, please identify it. Thanks. Murph9000 (talk) 15:00, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Just FYI, I scanned the article for every instance of "Armenian" that was incorrect and could find none. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 13:39, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Ramsay

Latest comment: 6 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion

Why is the "Armenians under Ottoman rule" section featuring a presentation of earlier history taken from a 19th century source, which is not only outdated but also written by a non-specialist? Among modern history texts discussing pre-reform times (which is what much of this section seems to be about, for unclear reasons), there are some that place more emphasis on injustices suffered by Ottoman Christian subjects and their discrimination in absolute terms and some that place more emphasis on peaceful coexistence and tolerance relative to those times, but this inflammatory rhetoric falls far beyond the limits of mainstream historical writing. Eperoton (talk) 15:28, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Here's a passage I propose to use as replacement for that Ramsay quote: "Muslims as well as non-Muslims lived without the predictability of enforced laws. Their property and person were subject to the arbitrary and unchecked power of state officials and local lords, but non-Muslims bore the additional indignities of being infidels." (from "Reading Genocide" by Ronald Grigor Suny, in A Question of Genocide, 2011 OUP, p. 25). This is about as negative a generalization about Ottoman rule as I've seen in a recent book from a major university press. On the other hand, it provides a bit of corrective to the impression one gets from this article that it was only non-Muslims who suffered abuses. Eperoton (talk) 04:00, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

All eyewitness sources on the conditions of non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire will be pre-WW1 sources. A specialist in that context would be someone who had traveled extensively in the Ottoman Empire and was writing as an academic - Ramsay fits that category. I see no "inflammatory rhetoric" in its content (that word reminds me of Turkish prosecutors who state that accusing Turkey of genocide is a crime because it is "inflamatory"), it is an accurate assessment. I think your alternative is far too vague. It gives no sense of what those "indignities" were. Would one of them be the indignity of being periodically and unpredictably under the risk of being massacred by your Muslim neighbors perhaps? The issue about whether that entire section should be there is, however, a legitimate question. There are some scholars on the genocide who consider the event to be strongly connected to past events and to be part of a continuous process, and there are some who do not. Of those who do, there are some who see a very strong influence from Islam in that continuous process and there are some who do not. See Explaining the Unexplainable: Recent Trends in the Armenian Genocide Historiography by Bedross Der Matossian. But please, don't try on the "peaceful coexistence and tolerance" stuff - this isn't an EU pro-migrant propaganda tract. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 17:00, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

This is not an eyewitness account. Ramsay quotes an eyewitness account before that, which we shouldn't be using per WP:PRIMARY, unless they're quoted by a RS (no more than Ramsay's "typical" examples of "the narrow, sordid, tyrannical Armenian traders" just before that). In this passage he simply shares his understanding of what life was life in earlier times and "the brutality of which Oriental nature is capable". If he was a historian of the Ottoman empire, we would be giving undue weight to an antiquated source. This quote is informal speculation about Ottoman history by a biblical scholar and so not a RS at all.

What we should be using is current scholarship on the AG. There are two topics getting mixed up both in this discussion and the section itself: background on pre-reform history and details about Armenian experience in the period preceding the genocide. Mixing these topics leads to the false suggestion that the latter was governed by the Pact of Umar. Pre-reform history is relevant because it gives background for discussion of the halting reforms and their discontents, as it is presented by Suny and others. Akcam in A Shameful Act likewise outlines the pre-reform system on pages 19-24, starting with "In addition to the general subjugation of all its subjects, the Ottoman state specifically oppressed and discriminated against non-Muslims" and ending "In sum, the pluralist Islamic model rested on both humiliation and toleration. It was expected that non-Muslims would willingly accept this status; acting otherwise was violation of the dhimma agreement. The non-Muslims’ demands for equality in the nineteenth century were indeed seen as a violation of the agreement, and the Muslim communities of the Ottoman Empire had no intention of acquiescing. This cultural-legal framework, forming as it did the basis for the separation of Muslims and non-Muslims, would prove decisive in the clashes between Armenians and Muslims at the end of the nineteenth century." These descriptions cover the various forms of discrimination and restrictions which are already described in the section. They do not include any language in Ramsay's vein.

This general discussion of dhimma is getting mixed up with specific relations in 19th century eastern Anatolia (I know you object to this term, but I'll stick with it since it's used seemingly by all the sources I have). Suny's book has a separate section on that, starting from earlier times ("Kurdish chieftains subordinated and exploited both Christian and Muslim farmers, taxing them, wintering in their houses, and stabling their flocks in their barns." p.15), moving on to the land reform of 1858 which unintentionally gave rise to a semi-feudal relationship between Armenians and Kurdish chieftains (pp. 17-19), and to further depredations at the hands of Muslim refugees (pp. 21-22) and the Hamidiye (pp. 23-24). If you want to quote a primary source, here's one we can actually use without OR, because it's quoted by Suny:

A British consul, who like many of his European colleagues took a special interest in the Armenians, reported in the 1870s, “The people in the Armenian provinces suffer under the following provincial evils: Firstly, robbery, exaction, and oppression at the hands of the Kurds. In some parts nomad Kurds make raids on villages, carrying off flocks and herds and other plunder, and sometimes burning what they cannot carry away. In other parts influential Kurdish families parcel out the villages (especially Christian) in their neighborhood among their various members, and regard them as their property. The inhabitants have to pay them black-mail, cultivate their lands, pasture their flocks, and give and do for them anything they may demand.”  Suny, Ronald Grigor. "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History of the Armenian Genocide (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity) (p. 19). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

I'm not sure why you think a non-polemical characterization of the pre-modern Ottoman empire is "propaganda". It's simply mainstream historical writing. I'm seeing the same thing in George Bournoutian's history of the Armenians: "At its best, during the Ottoman golden age, the millet system promised non-Muslims fairer treatment than conquered or non-Christian subjects enjoyed under the Europeans. At its worst, during the decline and fall of the empire, the Christian minorities were subjected to extortion and pogroms." (p. 131) Suny quotes a similar statement on p. 17. He even makes this qualification for the Kurds ("Relations between Kurds and Armenians ranged from coexistence and tolerance to the most vicious cruelty." p. 19). To be clear, I'm not proposing that we include rosy language about the Ottoman golden age here. I'm proposing chiefly that we reflect how the subject is treated in the current mainstream scholarship on the AG. Eperoton (talk) 02:48, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

The alternative quote (the British consul cited in Suny) is better in that it has some specifics (but is incomplete, what additional "evils" came after the "firstly"?). It's also overly geographically specific, concerning just "provincial evils" in the "Armenian provinces": Balik baştan kokar. I think all recent academic writing concerning Turkish history and derived from Europe is tainted to some degree by EU propaganda. The EU considers the Ottoman Empire to have been a sort of proto-EU that worked perfectly until "nationalities" reared its head. So the idea that there was always something fundamentally wrong with the Ottoman Empire is taboo (that would imply a similar flaw within the EU). This means that whatever abuses that empire committed on its people are required to be always blamed on external pressures - and those who got "tragically" murdered basically got it for not being good Ottoman citizens (in this case in persisting in being Armenian or Greek) and need to just face up to that and be reconciled (hence the EU's extensive support for the imposed-from-above concept of "Turkish Armenian reconciliation"). Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:49, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

@Tiptoethrutheminefield: I held off with my reply until I got my hands on the cited Barsoumian chapter and finished Suny's book. Before we get into discussion of other issues, I just want to make sure we now agree that the Ramsay quote doesn't belong in the article.

In terms of organization, Barsoumian also separates a general discussion of the millet system from the discussion of depredations, which is located in the section The Armenians in the Provinces, subsection The Rural Population (the urban subsection talks about the decline of traditional trades under the pressure of foreign competition). In fact, the next section begins "While such were the deplorable conditions in the provinces, in the capital the leadership of the millet was engrossed in an internal struggle, albeit a reforming one." (p. 195) I'm not insisting on using the primary source quoted in Suny, and I would personally prefer to condense more detail from secondary sources into this limited space, but this is the portion he quotes. I don't know if he stopped it where he did because the continuation wasn't relevant or because he didn't judge it to be appropriate, but we need to follow secondary sources in our treatment of primary sources. Eperoton (talk) 03:05, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 May 2017

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Texas has recognized the Armenian Genocide, making a total of 46 US states the recognize the genocide, not 25 as stated on the current page. Here is the link to a source: http://asbarez.com/163544/texas-becomes-46th-u-s-state-to-recognize-armenian-genocide/ Konoisia (talk) 18:46, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Question: Does passage of a resolution by one body within a bicameral legislature constitute recognition? Rivertorch^FIRE _WATER 04:41, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

@Rivertorch: That's a good point and I presume it does. We've had a similar concern when Brazil recognized it. It was decided that since one part of their legislature recognized it would mean that it is recognized at a federal level. Same in this case. To simply say it hasn't been recognized at all would be a disservice to our readers, even if it's just one body of a bicameral legislature. Besides, we should use the language sources use. We shouldn't be dismissing what the sources are saying due to what we think recognition at a local, state, and federal level looks like. Étienne Dolet (talk) 16:26, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

As long the source meets WP:RS for its reporting on the matter, I agree with your last two sentences. Rivertorch^FIRE _WATER 05:46, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Already done – Train2104 (t • c) 17:19, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

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Non state actors and their involvement in events

Latest comment: 6 years ago14 comments4 people in discussion

Yerevantsi, Kurd and Azeri militias were involved, especially Kurdish ones. The Ottoman state could not have carried out the extent that it these events without their assistance, as was done with Hamidan Kurdish cavalry some decades prior in the massacres of the Armenians. Removal of content even though it is cited in scholarship removes key players that were involved in those events. The.Ottoman state gave the orders though these units were autonomous and could have refused and they did not. On another issue, you wrote the Turkish state [23], during these events Turkey did not exist until 1923 and after the events. It was under the Ottoman Empire that events transpired. Its important to be precise here.Resnjari (talk) 18:10, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

No, you're muddying the waters and shifting the blame. If ethnic Croatians, for example, were involved in living in the killing of Jews during the Holocaust, we don't say they were the perpetrators. That's just wrong. The Croatians, or the Kurds and Arabs in this case, were not involved in the systematic annihilation of the Armenians which is what genocide actually means. So you can't put Kurds and the Turkish state in the same basket. And where does it stop? Obviously we have a whole list of ethnic minorities who were involved in the killings: Azeris, Arabs, Kurds, and Cherkes. You name it. In fact, there were ethnic Armenians involved in the killing of their own kinsmen (who were subsequently killed during Operation Nemesis). Should we add Armenians too? No, this is just silly. Étienne Dolet (talk) 18:38, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Unlike the other ethnicities the Kurds formed distinct cavalry units harnessed by the Ottoman Empire and of all non-state actors were most involved alongside official Ottoman troops. I am not referring to peasants who participated for their gain. At the very least, it should be cited that autonomous Kurdish cavalry units which were a prominent part of the events that occurred.Resnjari (talk) 19:01, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

No, the Hamidiye cavalry was disbanded by the time of the AG. There may have been distinct Kurdish militias, but they were almost always under the command of the local, provincial, and central Ottoman government to conduct mass killings. There were some circumstantial incidents, such as rape, robbery, and killings, that may have not been under command of the Ottoman government, but that was just because they were opportunists. Étienne Dolet (talk) 19:11, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Two problems with inclusion of Kurdish and Azeri militias to the infobox:

Kurdish tribal militias acted upon orders and/or indifference from the Ottoman government. The Kurdish militias did not have a plan of systematic extermination of Armenians, unlike the Ottoman government.
The government of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic and Azeri militias did not operate in the Ottoman Empire, but in the Caucasus. These massacres of Armenians by Azeri government/militas are not usually considered to have been a part of the genocide. --Երևանցի ^talk 19:12, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

ok, fine on the Azeris. On Kurds though many of those militias were part of the Hamidiye cavalry units is what i had in my head when i wrote the comment. Still, just having the Young Turk government in the info box kind of limits the scope. At the very least there should be an addition of and its allies like with the Holocaust page (with the addition of (i.e local militias). The Ottomans were aided by non-state actors even if directed by it, as akin to WW2 with Germany directing its allies. The killings were not just done by official troops.Resnjari (talk) 20:01, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

No, we can't add Kurds as allies because Kurds were Ottoman citizens. They did not form an independent nation-state. When it comes to the Holocaust, Italy was very much perpetrator just like Nazi Germany. Germany and Italy were two independent nation-states who were allied with one another during the War. Étienne Dolet (talk) 20:06, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

The info box needs to have something more than just the CUP government. Something in brackets that includes or says alongside that :(i.e: government, troops, local militias, other civilians). Something of that kind. Its too limited the way it is now as those militias were involved, even if not specifying the their ethnicity for the sake of not muddling it up.Resnjari (talk) 20:14, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

The infobox doesn't need anything like that, especially in the perpetrators part for reasons I've aforementioned. If readers are interested in who, what, and how the killings went about, they're free to read the article. Étienne Dolet (talk) 20:21, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Ok then, its fine by me as this will form a precedent for other articles.Resnjari (talk) 20:54, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

ED, infoboxes summarize articles' content - and this article's infobox has sections for perpetrators and locations, so I think the perpetrators - including Kurds - and the locations - including territories that were part of the Russian and Persian empires - should be listed in this infobox. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 23:17, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

The Kurdish stuff? No way. They were tools and were not part of the larger scheme of annihilating the Armenians. You can hire Kurds to do the killing for you but that's just how things operated. It does not mean they were intent on destroying Armenians as a race which is what genocide means. As for the location issue, I opened up a new section. Étienne Dolet (talk) 23:21, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

If relating the actual history of the Armenian Genocide happens to complicate the simplified sound-bite press-releases of Armenian organisations in the US, so be it. If it upsets the new Kurdish best-friends of those same Armenians, so be it. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 23:24, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

To think I care whether or not I'm upsetting "Kurdish best-friends" is not only silly, it's beyond the issue. The fact of the matter is there's a difference between those who perpetrate genocide and those who are ordered to perpetrate massacre. This article is about a genocide above anything else. Therefore, placing the Kurds in the same basket would be misleading in that regard. Étienne Dolet (talk) 23:30, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Recent edit regarding location

Latest comment: 6 years ago13 comments4 people in discussion

I consider Tiptoethrutheminefield's recent edit of GF an improvement from the previous wording which I had removed. The most important part about a genocide is intent. We shouldn't imply that the Ottoman government had an intent to annihilate the Armenians of territories it occupied outside of the OE. That would confuse matters for our readers. The article can provide information on how massacres have spread, but to conflate genocide with unintentional spread of state-sponsored massacre is something that needs to be thoroughly discussed. Nevertheless, I can see why someone would want it added to the infobox. So instead of going back and forth, we should start an RFC? Étienne Dolet (talk) 23:15, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

The Ottoman government DID have an intent to annihilate Armenians in territories it occupied outside of the OE! The Ottoman Empire entered WW1 with the intent to expand its pre-war territory - so why would it pursue different policies in captured territory when it concerned people it wanted rid of? The Ottoman invasion of Persia in 1914-1915 was characterized by widespread genocidal massacres of its Christian population - anyone who couldn't flee was killed. Is Kars full of Armenians today? Is Igdir? Is Oltu? Is Urmia? Are we seriously going to remove the fate of the Armenian populations in these regions from the narrative of the Armenian Genocide. Plenty of sources writing about the AG do include the events in these places as part of the genocide. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 23:40, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

I'd much rather adhere to the initial intent of the AG as outlined in the Tehcir law. That is, the Armenians of the OE are to be deported, liquidated, and etc. After all, it all started from there and like I said, the most important aspect to consider in genocide is intent. Kars, Persia, Urmia, and other places weren't part of this plan. Yes, it's undeniable that the Ottoman Army was hell-bent on annihilating the Armenians outside of the OE, but then proving that as part of the initial plans of genocide is impossible. Now, there are going to be people interested in this topic that are going to think the same way you are, and I don't blame them. So I suggest a compromise. We should add the Ottoman occupied territory stuff as a note and succinctly explain that it spread to those territories as well. Is that okay? Étienne Dolet (talk) 23:54, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

I think you are actually engaging in OR. No such "Initial intent plan" evidence exists. Not a single Ottoman document exists that explicitly states an "Armenians of the OE are to be deported, liquidated, and etc." intent. The intent was revealed in the process and the end result - and we have numerous academic works on the AG that detail and have studied that process and end result and have commented on it. No RS sources exist that I know of express the opinion that you are expressing. The fate of the Armenian populations in Kars province, etc, in 1918 and in 1921, are considered part of the Armenian Genocide in all the sources I know of on the AG that cover that period. If you have sources that say they are not considered part of the Armenian Genocide, could you cite them. The infobox just summarizes article content, that content is derived from what is contained in RS sources. So you cannot remove RS sourced location information from the location field in the infobox that is specifically there to list the locations. The only way you can legitimately propose what you are wanting is to propose to have the location, date, and perpetrator fields removed completely. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 02:43, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm talking about the Tehcir law wherein which the Ottoman government authorized the deportations on the only citizens they could have deported: their own. Obviously, I'm not going to use the Tehcir law as a source because of WP:PRIMARY. But there are many secondary sources that word it as such (i.e. "Under the so-called Tehcir Law of May 27, 1915, which authorized the deportation of the Ottoman Empire's Armenian population"). With that said, the massacres happened simultaneously. The people who were deported were the ones that got massacred through secret channels of communications. So the Tehcir law is the basis of the AG since it highlights the government's intent. This aspect of the genocide has nothing to do with Russia or Persia or whatever. To put them into the same category would imply that it does. So to avoid that problem, I suggest just adding the word spread as in the campaign of genocide also spread into Russia and Persia. A simple note should do the trick. Étienne Dolet (talk) 03:16, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

You are giving too much importance to the Tehcir law, which followed the institutionalized need to justify the laws regarding properties (not applicable for those outside of the Empires realm). The Tehcir in its equivalent form can be found in works treating state behaviors and their dealing with their minorities claimed goods. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 16:33, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Also, the infobox category is "location", it is not "originated in". An alternative could be "The Ottoman Empire and within territories under the occupation of Ottoman forces during WW1" - but I think that is too vague and it is better to be specific and just say those territories under occupation were parts of the Russian Empire and Persia. The Tecir Law was passed AFTER the massacres in Van, events which are unquestionably part of the Armenian Genocide, - so that law's passing was not plan for the simultaneous start of a genocide - it was just regularizing the property disposal aspect of something that was already ongoing and providing a baseless excuse for the already intended and already ongoing extension of the genocide to all areas of empire. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:21, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

For the record: I don't believe that the timeline of the genocide, or the start of it for that matter, should be limited in scope to the Tehcir law. I am merely pointing to the Tehcir law as an official declaration of the OE government's intent that will pinpoint which Armenians they felt the need to eliminate. Also, on a more general note regarding the Tehcir law, it was not a "baseless excuse". Rather, the Tehcir law was part and parcel of the genocide and the elimination of the Empire's Armenians couldn't have been done without it. Indeed, there were massacres prior to the Tehcir law, but there was no full-on attempt at annihilating all the Armenians of the Empire in such a comprehensive and systematic procedure (i.e. from Edirne to Aleppo). Étienne Dolet (talk) 03:09, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Etienne, do you not think that massacres committed by Ottoman forces outside the Empire indicate an informal(as far as we know) understanding that any and all Armenians were to be exterminated regardless of location? --Kansas Bear (talk) 02:30, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, of course. But my underlying argument is to highlight the intent of the OE since it is the intent that justifies genocide above anything else. The OE, upon its planning of the systematic annihilation of Armenians, did not plan to deport or kill Persian and Russian Armenians. So we must be careful in putting them in the same basket. The massacres in Russia and Persia were events that occurred outside of the OE government's initial scope of intent even though it didn't prevent it from happening. But like I said earlier, I don't mind adding a Note saying something like "the campaign of genocide also extended into Persia and Russia" next to the location bit. We should also refrain from adding to much textual information to the infobox. There's a reason why we have two notes in the infobox already. Étienne Dolet (talk) 03:20, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Ok. Got it now. Thanks, Etienne.--Kansas Bear (talk) 03:39, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

My point remains. There is an infobox category named "Location". It is not named "initial scope of intent" or "starting point". The "Location" category is obviously there to define where in the world the genocide took place (for example, that is how "location" is used in the WW1, WW2, and Holocaust articles). No sources are presented expressing the opinion that the massacres of Armenians within territory held by the Ottoman empire that was officially part of the Russian or Persian empires were not part of that wider genocide. There is also content on the killings in those areas in the article's content. So I maintain that Russian and Persia must, under some wording, be returned to the location category in the infobox. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:28, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

It is arbitrary to believe that the policies weren't to push away|get rid of the Armenians as far as the expansion could reach. To claim otherwise is to claim that the Ottoman behaved differently than any other Empire in history. The onus to provide material is therefor on the side which claims a version which is so unnatural to the documented history of Empires in general. On the other hand, just a reminder that the machine of state is devoid of any intentionality, it just react. Claiming that the Ottoman Empire had an intention to do X or Y is to attribute to machines things which are human. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 15:55, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

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GA review and recent reverts

Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I don't know if editors here are deliberately trying to sabotage GA review by removing citation needed tags - reverts of the type I have seen here stall article improvement. I removed Ba'at Yeor because it is in the wrong section entirely and a GA article should be well organized. Probably be terminology section should be moved somewhere to the beginning of the article, and additional sources should be added to justify inclusion of Ba'at Yeor's theory that this was jihad, which is rather an interesting and extraordinary hypothesis. If it is going to be ibcluded it should be explained. You can't edit war away the considerable problems with this article, which is a long way off from GA (and twice the recommended length according to our guidelines, though Hrant Dink is only peripherally mentioned) - it is sad that an article of this importance is being held back from reaching GA, and that editors are quick to blame those trying to improve the article as being "denialist" - really sad. Seraphim System ^(talk) 01:39, 14 October 2017 (UTC) Seraphim System ^(talk) 01:39, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Background section

Latest comment: 6 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Seraphim System brought up the subject of the background section in the preceding talk section. I'll develop this discussion under this new section for clarity. It continues an unfinished discussion we've had above at Talk:Armenian_Genocide#Ramsay (that section may be about to be archived). I've been distracted and then too busy to pick it up, but I'll try to find the time to do so now, as I think our current treatment is quite problematic. As I wrote above, there are in fact authors who present the dhimma system and the Pact of Umar as background for the processes that influenced the AG, as does for instance Akcam in the chapter I quoted there ("... The non-Muslims’ demands for equality in the nineteenth century were indeed seen as a violation of the agreement, and the Muslim communities of the Ottoman Empire had no intention of acquiescing. This cultural-legal framework, forming as it did the basis for the separation of Muslims and non-Muslims, would prove decisive in the clashes between Armenians and Muslims at the end of the nineteenth century.") The problem with our background section is that instead of presenting this argument of influence, it simply conflates the pre-modern dhimma system with the socio-economic developments of the late 19th century. These developments were quite complex and had significant regional variation. There are authors who describe them in detail (e.g., Suny in his book), but this is a distinct subject which should be presented the way it's presented in RSs (though more concisely) and not be mixed up ahistorically with the Pact of Umar. Finally, regarding Seraphim System's mention of jihad, there are indeed some issues with how the term is treated in the article, but it doesn't appear in the background section, and this would be a separate discussion. Eperoton (talk) 03:30, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Seems that many ignore that under the Ottoman Empire, both Muslim and Christian communities had specific roles to play. Islamic state management (for instance in the 15th, 16th centuries it was the avariz hanezi) was used because it was cost effective. Previously, the Tax unit was the head of the household... For that reason we have little info on nineteenth-century Ottoman manufacturing women. Average reported household size decreased more and more, as the European state management (nation based) penetrated deeper in the layers of Ottoman society. Previously, every smaller divisions which were culture specific (education, religion, etc.), were mostly managed by Parishes for Armenian Christians. When the Young-Turks started incorporating foreign state management (increase governmental control),... the Ottoman crumbled on its own weight (more resources needed than it will ever be available) because the Islamic system was not adapted for that. It's easy to throw terms like Jihad, but fact is, that those terms are open to interpretation and meaningless... the context I outline above, suffice to say that Islamic state management was not solely imposed by force... it was the most efficient for the region. Yaḥyā ‎ (talk) 16:44, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

With the Armenian Genocide you are dealing with the "Three Pashas" - it is hard at this point to identify "Nationalists" "Turks" "Ottomans" "Circassians" etc. because the entire social order is collapsing. I think we have to be clear that the entity in power during this time is generally called "the Three Pashas" - The Three Pashas are not even mentioned until the "Trials" section. The background facts should be directly related without straying too far off topic. Seraphim System ^(talk) 04:13, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

I agree about the Ramsay quote though, it is primary. We should follow the analysis of current expert secondary sources.Seraphim System ^(talk) 04:40, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't even call it primary, since Ramsay was sharing his thoughts about what life was like in a more distant past he didn't witness himself. It's just not reliable, since this is a memoir written by a biblical scholar and not historian of the period discussed in that passage. Eperoton (talk) 20:00, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

[1] Charny, Israel W., ed. (1999). Encyclopedia of Genocide. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO. p. 42. ISBN 978-0-87436-928-1. Retrieved 31 August 2016.

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