So I fell down a rabbit hole of reading about the Armenian and Greek genocides, and the population exchange of '23 and I think Turkey might not be so great y'all. I've always been a fan because cooked properly and with decent gravy it's a beautiful holiday treat, but i think Turkey may be bad y'all.
For real, what's up with Turkey, enlighten me please!
you cant have a fair take on the genocides without understanding what the ottoman empire was in the late 19th and early 20th century in the context of European development.
theres an article written by Rosa Luxemburg titled 'on social democracy, and the national struggles of Turkey'. she wrote it in 1896 after the hamidian massacres. she describes the pathetic state of the ottoman economy and the futility of any attempts at industrialization. she concludes more or less that the lands and the people have no realistic path towards modernization without a modern state, and that the turk was just as burdened with the existence of the empire as any christian minority. in the end she advocated for socialists to support armenian independence.
look at the Crimean war in the 1850s; russia decides to take a large chunk of the empire, and possibly put the ottomans down for good. France and Britain intervene and keep the wretched beast alive. why? none of the powers could agree upon how to carve the thing up. the balance between the powers must be kept and all that bs.
take a look at the treaty of Lausanne signed at the conclusion of the turkish war for independence, and compare it to the treaty of sevres signed at the end of ww1. that's what the genocides were about. and in my opinion, in these ethnic conflicts mass deportations and killings are inevitable.
fucking Mussolini's Italy of all empires was gonna get modern day southern turkey as a colony lmao.
the tragedy of the story is that the empire and all the inter-ethnic conflicts could have been resolved violently in an age before the mass production of rifles and heavy artillery...that way the killings would have been less efficient.
but yes modern turkey is a fucking joke. dont take a trip. who knows what it would look like if not for the purging of leftists throughout the entire cold war. that you can thank the cia for.