User talk:Cannotpick

A belated welcome!

Here's wishing you a belated welcome to Wikipedia, Cannotpick! I see that you've already been around a while and wanted to thank you for your contributions. Though you seem to have been successful in finding your way around, you may still benefit from following some of the links below, which help editors get the most out of Wikipedia:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Again, welcome! Pbritti (talk) 19:21, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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Discussion on talk page

I have reverted this edit [1] based on this source [2]. I have posted here per WP:BRD. // Timothy :: talk 15:12, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Utilisation of muslim subjects to suppress Christian subjects by the ottoman empire.

"rv, stating 'all of which *they themselves* had been inflicting on Christians' in reference to the persecution of Muslim *civilians* in ex Ott. lands is ridicilous. These Muslims were not some uniform blob who all engaged in atrocities, many of the persecuted were men, women and children who had personally never committed atrocities against Christians; a generalization such as '*they themselves* were doing these before' implicates tens of thousands of innocent people in crimes they didnt commit"

I recommend you read "ECONOMIES OF VIOLENCE, BANDITRY AND GOVERNANCE IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AROUND 1800" (2014) and "War, State and the Privatisation of Violence in the Ottoman Empire" (2020) By Tolga U. Esmer. Your comment is not wrong inasmuch as of course not all muslim civilians were harrying their Christian neighbours but it is not entirely correct either. The Ottomans delegated suppression of local Christians to their muslim subjects in many cases, most famously to the Kurds during the Armenian genocide, of whom the Albanians were a part in the Balkans and Albanians were settled in formerly Armenian regions (Although at various points they were also suppressed by the State.). An example is Armatoles fighting klephts: "Albanian armatoles were employed by Ottoman authorities, and in particular in the latter half of the 18th century, during the administration of the Ottoman Albanian ruler Ali Pasha of the increasingly independent Pashalik of Yanina he replaced Greek armatoles, making the regions armatoles almost exclusively Albanian. The thus deposed Greek armatoles became klephts and their subsequent anti-armatoloi activity was not only brigandage, but also a form of resistance against Ottoman rule." Furthermore in the Armenian genocide case there seems to be some evidence that muslim civilians also partook in massacres. This again is not a justification for massacring civilians especially as not all, the majority most likely, of them partook. John Not Real Name (talk) 13:40, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings! Before I discuss your comments, let me specify what article the edit summary of mine you quoted came from, as you didn't include from where it originates. I heavily recommend in your future comments on account talk pages that you specify which edits on which articles directed you to someone's talk page, as outsiders will be left without context for the discussion if you do not do that. Anyway, on the 9th of October I reverted an edit by 86.33.82.194 on 'the Persecution of Muslims during the Ottoman contraction' page, with the aforementioned edit summary. The concluding sentence of the lead paragraph was edited from 'These populations [various groups of Muslims] were subject to genocide, expropriation, massacres, religious persecution, mass rape, and ethnic cleansing.' to '... mass rape, and ethnic cleansing, all of which they themselves have previously been inflicting on the local Christian population during centuries of Ottoman occupation'. The two main reasons for the reversal of this edit were a) faulty generalization and b) placement. The generalization one should be obvious: who exactly is the 'they themselves' in this sentence? It refers to hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslim civilians who were massacred, raped, exiled, etc. and groups them together with war criminals who committed war crimes against Christian populations in the past, on the basis of the two sharing a religion. This is obviously ridicilous; as you yourself stated the vast majority of the Muslims persecuted during the Ottoman contraction were, as it has been so often the case in the history of warfare, civilians, people who personally hadn't been involved in war crimes against their Christian co-locals. Simply equating the two and stating that the oppressed Muslim civilians had previously done the same against Christians is a gross generalization and misrepresentation of reality that's unacceptable on Wikipedia. This was no different than someone going to the Rwandan Genocide page and editing the lead section to say 'They (the Tutsi population) were subject to massacres, rapes and genocide, all of which they themselves had inflicted on the Hutu population previously.' in reference to earlier crimes committed by some Tutsi radicals. That would be rightfully edited out, and so was the anonymous edit reverted by me. Another issue other than the generalizing phrasing of the sentence was its placement. The Wiki is not a 'oh who suffered more?' competition; there are pages dedicated to crimes suffered by both Christian and Muslim populations. Editing the concluding sentence of the lead paragraph in a page about the suffering experienced by Muslims and turning it around to make it be about Christian suffering instead is misplaced. Hope this clarifies the context for my revert that caused this talk to be opened.

Now to move to your comments. I am familiar with the historical events you mentioned, and there is a level of truth to your argument. However, as with anything, history is not so white and black. I can also provide examples of the contrary as well, where the Ottoman government used Muslim troops to ensure their Christian citizens' safety or protect their rights. As an example, Konstantin Mihailović's memoirs paint an interesting grey picture of Ottoman relations with Christians, where he claims the Ottomans were quite brutal in their military conduct against Christian states, however generally treated the Jizya-paying Christian population under their rule fairly. He states that you were more likely to be oppressed by a provincial lord far away from the central Ottoman government's supervision compared to if you lived directly under the authority of the Sultans. Mihalovic's describes incidents such as a Christian peasant woman complaining to Murad II about a Muslim soldier stealing her milk and the Sultan executing the soldier as punishment to back up his claims about Dhimmi tolerance. You could say well that was in the 1400s, but I can count numerous later examples as well. For example, starting from the 1500s and continuing well into the late Empire, there was the legal concept of 'Protégé', a practice tied to Ottoman capitulations where foreign diplomats and Christian clergy could receive certain special priviliages and protections that would be enforced by the Ottoman state. The system initially just covered certain foreigners; however, it was later expanded to be participable in by some local Ottoman Christians and Muslims as well. Similarly, the system required the payment of a sum of money initially; however, it was later made participable free of cost in many cases. (ı recommend reading Belkıs Konan's paper on this) Even during the siege of Van (1915), there are reports of Kurdish soldiers responsible for particularly harsh atrocities against Armenians being punished for their actions by Ottoman troops (Kloian, Richard Diran, (1980), The Armenian Genocide, p. 11). What all of this demonstrates is the level of sophistication within history. The same state that significantly oppresses its minority populations can also paradoxically protect its minorities in a different context or year of the state's existence. Likewise, members of the same larger group identity (Muslim in this case) can vary significantly in their interfaith interactions, which cannot be generalized into being uniformly negative or positive, which I remind is the reason why this discussion happened in the first place.

To finish up, I have a couple of things to add. Your comment reads as if the Armatoles are an example to your point about the Ottomans using Muslim civilians to suppress Christians. If that was actually the implication then that would a categorical error, the Armatoles would not classify as civilians per the definition of the word, as they were irregular soldiers/combatants. I am also reviewing your edits on the Persecution of Muslims page, to see if any errors or other problems are present that need to be improved upon. Although I am not done yet with my review, I will say that your critique of Justin McCarthy's Death and Exile as an inappropriate source that needs to be replaced with higher quality sources, particularly on the basis of number inflation, is misplaced. Firstly, even scholars who criticized MccCarthy's controversial stance on the Armenian Genocide such as Donald W. Bleacher praised Death and Exile as a 'necessary corrective' on Western historical narratives on late Ottoman history, stating his work successfully demonstrated the existence of large-scale suffering by Muslims in the period. In general, Death and Exile is a very well-sourced publication that uses extensive Muslim and Christian documentation together to minimize bias. I recommend reading the book if you haven't already in case you are skeptical of this claim. When it comes to accusations of number exaggeration in the book as you insinuated, even that is a claim disputed amongst scholars. Some historians, such as Hakem Al-Rustom, state that he could have exaggerated the Muslim death toll on the grounds of his claimed bias; however even the highly critical Al-Rustom refuses to argue that MacCarthy definitively did as such, rather using the words 'He thus might have exaggerated', accepting the possibility of the accuracy of his estimates. Dennis P. Hupchick on the other hand supports the accuracy of MacCarthy's numbers, stating 'the statistical data appear generally valid'. Robert Olson holds a similar position, calling MacCarthy's demographic work 'solid'. That's not all however, there are scholars particularly from the Turkish side who claim McCarthy's number estimates are actually too conservative. Their argument is based on the methodology adopted by McCarthy in his work, where he states in Death and Exile that in cases of more than one estimate being present in the primary sources for the Muslim death toll in a massacre, he generally accepted the lower estimate to avoid accusations of bias or exaggeration. When all of these are taken into account, McCarthy estimates are actually not on the most liberal end of the range given for late Ottoman Muslim casualties, with both higher and lower estimates existing. Thus I see no reason to replace it as a cited source as long as other estimates are also presented alongside it with due weight given to each. Cannotpick (talk) 18:46, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am replying to you not anyone else. You somehow managed to completely misunderstand my comment. I am aware that there were attempts to protect dhimmi populations (Ottoman soldiers in the Armenian Genocide participated. They are not guiltless. Some did help.) but my point focused on the practice of using muslim populations to police minorities after the 1690s when the Serbian population rose up. It is not a one-way process and these muslim bands were also themselves under a ban when they got rowdy (Both of these pieces of information are in the cited articles.). The Armatole example was about an armed band policing their neighbours but I never wrote they were civilians, I prefaced the conversation with this.

On overall casualties, the book in question has been criticised by everyone even those who use it like Hakem Al-Rustom. He uses it but with a proviso. Also writing that there are those with higher casualty lists is not a good argument. People who have looked into it criticise it and his backing by the Turkish state is emblematic of his position. Now I did not alter most figures because I did not have competing sources (Except in cases where the reading of the source by the person who used the source is evidently wrong.). Furthermore we do have other sources which I did not remove and the figures they give are rather low compared to McCarthy's. John Not Real Name (talk) 13:33, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]