Not at all, Armenians were also an integral part of the Ottoman society and that’s how you still have plenty of Armenian cultural heritage dating back to Ottoman times in modern Turkey. You must be referring to the events around WW1 that led the loss of huge numbers of the Armenians through atrocities committed by the Ottomans which some say that it was a genocide, others say it was poorly managed suppression of a rebellion in a dying empire. Still unresolved issue unfortunately.
On the other hand Bulgarians and Turks teamed in wars after the forming of the new Bulgarian state.
True, I'm also inclined to believe that it started as a suppression attempt that ended up being a genocide as "an easy solution" to make a problem go away as the dying empire wasn't able to contain it.
I recall reading the communications of some Ottoman officials trying to cash out the life insurance policies of the Armenians. Pure evil, honestly.
In that sense the Holocaust was also the "easy solution" to "make the problem go away" when deporting Jews (and other minorities) became too much of a hassle for the Nazis.
They didn't start with the idea of "let's kill everyone", it built up from the 1930s process to deport "undesirables", when it became too much work they decided to kill everyone instead.
Genocide is genocide, doesn't matter the seed that started it.
The difference is that the the ottomans didn’t have an anti-armenian culture going on and the Ottoman rule wasn’t being legitimized over stuff like “fighting a war against sleazy Armenians who infiltrated us”. It was quite the opposite, with rise of the nationalism in Europe minorities in the empire were the “anti”.
Ottomans didn’t do that because they believed in the inherent evil of the Armenians but because they were responding to those nationalistic movements. The distrust towards Armenians developed with the rebellions that were supported by Russia etc. Armenians weren’t targeted for their Armenianness. In other words none of this would have happened if there were no rebellions. It was done to address a specific problem, can you say the same for the holocaust? Was Hitler trying to address actual troubles that the Jewish minority caused?
Do you know who were/are targeted? The Alawites, it about the people would say things similar things like an anti-semite would say for the Jews. It’s also how you get instantly cancelled in Turkey.
“ We have been blamed for not making a distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [To do so] was impossible. Because of the nature of things, one who was still innocent today could be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other concerns.”
Could be, I agree. I'm inclined to believe that it become a genocide once the incompetent administrators failed to address the core reasons and thought that it would be easier to make these troubles go away by killing everybody.
