Well, it was kind of black and white issue. It's the Turks who had the gigantic empire, rights to own firearms and tax exemption. They were the oppressor and everyone else living in the Empire were the oppressed. That makes Turkish claims of "our side has suffered too" pretty weak.
Before WW1 it was the time of Abdulhamid and he successfully demonized the non-muslim population of the Empire, you know. Before Armenian genocide there were Hamidian massacres where Armenian, Assyrian and Aramaic peoples got massacred by special forces formed by Abdulhamid for only one purpose: destroy christianity and its adherents. Armenians weren't armed then, peacefully living in their Anatolian homes. Sultan feared them, in any minute they could revolt against the empire just like Serbians, Albanians and Greeks did in west. He chose to destroy them. To wipe them out. That's it. Motives were crystal clear.
Of course muslims got killed in 1915 events but that doesn't mean genocide didn't happened. Expecting people to feel sorry for muslim loses is just like Germans saying "Yes, many jews were killed but you have to accept that German civilians were killed in battle too. We'll recognize holocaust only if people of the world feels bad for our civilian casualties".
The Empire that Turks loved so much that they themselves rebelled from it as well! Let's not ignore this fact. The modern day Republic of Turkey polity is a descendant of a rebel movement against the Ottoman Empire, exactly the same as Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Armenia etc. etc. and the polity that were in charge of where the genocide occurred was not the same polity that led to the modern Turkish Republic.
I don't deny that Turkish and Kurdish on Christian massacres were way more in number due to the fact the Turks were the hegemonic power, but let's get one thing straight here. The Turkish deaths and displacement I'm referring to occurred in territories the Ottomans lost. If only the new nations such as Serbia, Bulgaria, Greeks and Romania were as meek as you claim then perhaps Turks would still live there in the millions, but the reality is that Turks suffered similar fates and that story is not as known worldwide.
That's where my beef lies, that there are millions of people worldwide who look at this issue and literally think only Turks oppressed Christians. Under the Ottomans yes I don't doubt it, but towards the end there were Turks that found themselves in trouble in the newly formed "Christian" nation-states.
I want Turkey to acknowledge the genocide. It's embarrassing that we deny something that has so much evidence behind it. But why doesn't Armenia have to acknowledge the extinction of the Azeri Turkish community of Yerevan? I look at demographics of the Ottoman Empire and see Turks in high numbers in so many places, where they are few and far between now. Why is the extinction of these Turkish communities not talked about alongside the Armenian Genocide as one big multi-cultural recognition of genocide? That would be so much better imo, rather than the current partisan debate with Armenians on one side, Turks on the other, and world states flipping and flopping one way or another depending on what suits their agenda.
I'll conclude and say that it's easy to be a non-Turk and say "Why don't you guys just accept it was a one-way thing and not bring up Turkish deaths". But from this side it's not easy to do. I'll be frank and admit it, it's hard to do. It's hard for me to accept "Yes my people are the evil ones." Is that hard to understand? No one wants to think their ethnic group were bad guys. Perhaps that's all it comes down to, the sickening thought that your ancestors could do such a thing?
FWIW my personal ancestors don't come from areas where the massacres occurred, but obviously I'm talking in terms of Turks as a whole.
If they accept the facts what happens then?
Armenia gets enough money to break free from being a Russian Satellite.
It's pretty stupid to deny a genocide that clearly happened.
There seems to be a lot of this coming from Turkey.
So let's say Turkey accepts the genocide. Will the recognition of Turkish genocides that occurred in the newly formed post-Ottoman Christian states be next on the international agenda? I somehow doubt it.
I mean, you can if you want. We're all civil people here.
