It was not just the Turks at fault here but almost everyone; during that period of history?

I mean, how many Turkish soldiers wounded at Gallipoli, made it to allied prison camps?

The world at large was a bloodbath and whole nations, ethnic communities were basically murdered by the new technologies, and generals who thought they could win by just throwing more troops at the enemy than the enemy could afford to match/sacrifice; in full frontal assaults, that was their sole strategy.

A. B. Facey, Author of a fortunate life and who served at Gallipoli as a machine gunner, described it as murder bloody murder; as his gun scythed through hundreds of Turks.

Nor are we able to condemn an entire nation for the decisions of a few!

Or the minority that carried out official if officially denied, orders. [Apparently the Nuremberg defense was okay for our Breaker Morant?]

Nor can we any of us apportion any blame for previous atrocities on current citizens; none of who were alive when those monstrosities occurred!

Be they the highland clearances, the virtual genocide committed by the black and tans against the Irish.

The taming of the American west, and the elimination of entire races, none more so than the Mahicans?

And we decimated Tasmania, and parts of the mainland, some of it with musket and sabre and some with introduced diseases for which there was no local immunity.

And lets not forget the numbers we slaughtered as transportees.

Some captains seem to report arriving with one third of your original human cargo, as some sort of success?

Should we take current Australians to task for any of that history; as Robertson seems to want to do with today's Turkey and our WW11 ally?

Not all of Germany was Nazi, nor was the average Russian complicit in the Stalinist pogroms/disappearances; of around 25 million or more Russians, more than died in WW11; or the brutalities of successive USSR dictators; or the Nipponese!

And lest we forget, we're talking about a time when the Ottoman empire was virtually collapsing before its very eyes?
Rhrosty.

Nobody can blame the present Turkish people for the Armenian genocide. However, the Turkish government should acknowledge the acts of previous Turkish governments rather than continue to deny the Armenian genocide. The German government of Konrad Adenauer admitted German responsibility for the Holocaust and paid reparations to the German victims even though Adenauer himself was not a Nazi and was not complicit in the Nazi acts.

The current Turkish government continues making denials of acts of the past governments.

Kevin Rudd apologised for acts done to Aborigines in the past. He personally had done nothing wrong in that area, but as head of a successor government to the government committing the wrongs he apologised for acts of the past government.

There is no excuse for genocide. It cannot be undone, but it can be acknowledged by those whose predecessors committed the act.

As an Australian I live on land taken from the Aborigines. I belong to ANTaR (Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation). Although I came here as an immigrant I recognise what my government has done in the past. A similar recognition from the Turkish government would be reasonable.

It's my understanding that the Australian Government does not acknowledge that the Armenian genocide. took place.

Rhosty,

I may be only nit picking but you do somewhat exaggerate at times,

"Or the minority that carried out official if officially denied, orders. [Apparently the Nuremberg defense was okay for our Breaker Morant?]"
No, it wasn't, he was found guilty and executed.

"Be they the highland clearances, the virtual genocide committed by the black and tans against the Irish."
The numbers killed by the Black and Tans in Ireland hardly made a dent in the population and their crimes were on the far end of the scale from that of genocide.

My Irish ancestors would dispute the claim that the invasion and dispossession by the black and tans wasn't genocide?

There was no revealing before and after census, but such Church records as can be found, appear very revealing; as did shipping manifestos.

If all that kept a family alive was removed to pay an illegal tithe or British imposed rent, then many would and did starve to death.

I don't know what you'd call that, but for mine, murder or genocide by another name, as was the highland clearances, which saw people evicted with what they stood in; in the dead of winter, as their humble hovels were burnt to the ground; which wiped out whole villages. And given population percentages, genocide on a massive per capita scale!

As did transportation with its up to two thirds death toll.

And given one could be transported for stealing a loaf or as in the case of a forbear, a pair of shoes?

Hardly just, even if you actually survived the ordeal or a later even more infamous for an almost 100% death toll, Sarah Island.
Not all genocide occurred at the business end of a barrel!

Lest we forget, at the start of WW11, the Brits controlled an enormous empire, upon which the sun never set; and little of it willingly handed over by awestruck natives, from who their natural wealth was plundered.

Why, even all our gold mined while were were still an official colony, found its way to England.

Around a hundred years after the Boer war, a party of Australian historians tried to have the (colonial cannon fodder) breaker Morant conviction overturned; on the grounds he was just obeying orders/a scapegoat? And his Australasian war department approved legal defense at the time.

Others who did the same escaped the firing squad!

Why? I say old boy, British soldiers don't shoot civilian prisoners.

And all that proves is the British colonial public service brought with them a superior sense of common decency, fair play and impartial British jurisprudence, than that routinely dispensed to alleged "British" citizens!
Rhrosty.

‘morning Rhrosty,

This response to one of your posts is a first for me. Mostly because you seem to be all over the place on a variety of topics. You seem to count being a “first responder” as significant?

Whilst I don’t dispute your Irish Ancestry, I am entitled to dispute your interpretation of Irish history, which seems more focused on mythology rather than fact. Nothing new of course as Irish history is riddled with “inexactitudes”, just like Islam, British Colonial, Israeli and American history.

What concerns me, indeed offends me, is that you seek to offer a jaundiced interpretation as fact. Perhaps the most telling historical analysis of conflict in Britain, from as early as the Roman invasion, is a book called the “Tribes of Britain”.

Academic Research over the past 2,000 years shows a very different picture to the one you paint based on “popular myths”.

From the period of 1640 and the Civil Wars to Charles Trevelyan in the 1800’s, there is little distinction between any of the civil conflicts. In fact we can go back as far as Edward I and his conflicts with the Welsh, the Scottish and the Irish to confirm that life in those days it was all about the horrors of regional conflict.

What matters is the “perceptions” of history and the realities of history as the foundation for what we today call terrorism.

The Irish were victims of their own Irish Lords and Barons, not the English. The potato famine was caused by Irish farmers who insisted on continuing to store potatoes under a thatch of hay during the winter months, whilst the rest of Europe opted for “dry storage”. Hence the Irish created “potato blight” that not one other European nation experienced.

As a result the Irish suffered famine on a huge scale.

This lead to a perception that someone else was to blame for the “Irish Problem”, Just like the “Islamic problem”.

Cont’d