Armenier und andere Christen: Ein “overall genocide”?
Ob das Massaker an den Armeniern eben “nur” ein Massaker oder doch schon ein Genozid war, ist die eine Frage. Eine weitergehende Frage stellt die Armenien-Spezialistin Tessa Hofmann: Waren die Massnahmen der osmanischen Regierung auch systematisch gegen andere Christen gerichtet? Frau Hofmann glaubt, genügend Indizien für die These von einem “overall genocide against the Ottoman Christian co-citizens” zu haben:
Taking into account the above described and discussed flaws of Ottoman statistics, as well as the difficulties of precisely estimating demographic processes under conditions of war and massive flight, it does not seem unlikely that 3.5 million of the indigenous Christian population of the Ottoman Empire perished in the period 1912-1922, among them 1.5 million Armenians and Greeks each and half a million Aramaic speaking Christians (Arameans, Assyrians, Khaldeans and other denominations). [...]
Contextualising the genocidal events of the late Ottoman history may become psychologically helpful if a society has developed resistance against any coming to terms with the black pages of its national history. It may enable a more critical study of modern Turkish history if Turkish scholars know about the awareness of the international community of genocide scholars of the reality of Muslim victims in the Russian Empire or during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During this period, the history of Muslim Christian relations in the Near East was influenced by the Russian Turkish conflict and the attempts of both Empires to reduce the share of Christian or Muslim populaces under their realm by expulsion and oppression up to genocide, while at the same time trying to use their co-religionists in the hostile empire as partisans or volunteers. Such real or attempted manipulations, however, never fully explain or even justify the domestic state crimes, committed against the own citizens of a state.
Auf die Diskussion darf man gespannt sein. Die ganze Studie “Co-Victims in Genocide: The Christians during the last decade of Ottoman Rule” gibt’s hier.
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