As a Turk with very little interest to History, would like to share my guesses about viewpoints of these characters have.
First of all I am very impressed about how modern the ambassador is for 192X. He is Liberal exactly like someone from USA would be today.
Now! Liberalism is not a idea that is easily accessible back then. Let alone find a any group of people that will backup you in this way. Even in current Turkey's politics: only 2-3 parties are viable in election and they are all about deciding whether country should go Muslim-National (Auth-Right but Muslim Traders Only) or National-National (Auth-Left)
Considering that Ottoman Empire was multi-cultural gaint and considering that literacy of people of Ottoman Empire were about low as %10. People from same culture/race/religion lived near together and even tho there have been problems here and there, they were probably doing fine like humanity of today.
But when once-in-a-life-time event occurs and you find yourself survived a war but your old government is colepsed; and the New authority (politicly) doesn't look anything different from a group of revolters/rioters from at your standpoint. Who can you trust in the middle of all this chaos other than people of your race/culture/religion.
Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, Muslims Cults/Sheiks, Old Ottoman Government's supporters, all rioted and tried to overthrown the new authority of TBMM (team Ataturk/Republic) within very near time spans.
At that point it must have been normal to react to these 'issues' with this much aggression.
Calling it 'Ptsd of an authority' would sum it maybe.
Still the whole event is presumably a overkill/genocide when we take a look at from the current perspective.
"Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, Muslims Cults/Sheiks, Old Ottoman Government's supporters, all rioted and tried to overthrown the new authority of TBMM (team Ataturk/Republic) within very near time spans.
At that point it must have been normal to react to these 'issues' with this much aggression."
Your timeline is off, The new parliament (TBMM) was established in 1920 and new republic in 1923. The events described in the article happened in 1915. Ambassador's letter was written in 1916.
> At that point it must have been normal to react to these 'issues' with this much aggression.
Not really, all empires were multicultural, e.g. russia, but while the Bolsheviks went to war, they did not genocide them. The modern state of turkey otoh is the result of 3-5 genocides, not one. Britain did not go on to genocide indians because it wanted their land
The modern Russian state is the product of several genocides too, so this particular example is probably not correct.
From 1915 to 1945, probably over one million Russian Germans perished from unnatural causes under three successive Russian governments—those of Tsar Nicholas II, Lenin, and Stalin—chiefly by means of mass executions, forced labor, deliberate starvation, and brutal deportations.
The Holodomor in the Ukraine took place in the 1930.
In addition there was large scale deportation of ethnic groups, which effectively also amounted to genocide due to harsh living conditions forced on the deported.
A similar case could be made against Britain, with the difference that they were (mostly) done with genociding by 1930.
you are right it s the worst example. Imagine if the british, french, spanish, portuguese went on genocides in order to keep their colonies, and we justified that 100 years later because "it's what they did at the time". The whole point of the nationalist movement was emancipation and the creation of new countries for former empire populations.
“In Leningrad, the NKVD reviewed local telephone books and arrested almost 7,000 citizens with Polish-sounding name with the vast majority of such nominal "suspects" were executed within 10 days of arrest”
First of all I am very impressed about how modern the ambassador is for 192X. He is Liberal exactly like someone from USA would be today.
Now! Liberalism is not a idea that is easily accessible back then. Let alone find a any group of people that will backup you in this way. Even in current Turkey's politics: only 2-3 parties are viable in election and they are all about deciding whether country should go Muslim-National (Auth-Right but Muslim Traders Only) or National-National (Auth-Left)
Considering that Ottoman Empire was multi-cultural gaint and considering that literacy of people of Ottoman Empire were about low as %10. People from same culture/race/religion lived near together and even tho there have been problems here and there, they were probably doing fine like humanity of today.
But when once-in-a-life-time event occurs and you find yourself survived a war but your old government is colepsed; and the New authority (politicly) doesn't look anything different from a group of revolters/rioters from at your standpoint. Who can you trust in the middle of all this chaos other than people of your race/culture/religion.
Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, Muslims Cults/Sheiks, Old Ottoman Government's supporters, all rioted and tried to overthrown the new authority of TBMM (team Ataturk/Republic) within very near time spans.
At that point it must have been normal to react to these 'issues' with this much aggression.
Calling it 'Ptsd of an authority' would sum it maybe.
Still the whole event is presumably a overkill/genocide when we take a look at from the current perspective.