You're absolutely right about the possible real-life repercussions for people who fail to toe the official Turkish line when it comes to the Armenian holocaust Oscar.
But I wonder how strong the anonimity of the tr.wiki's users is, and whether their servers are based inside Turkey? If their identity is secure, what reason is there for the minority of the Turkish citizenry to not stand up for the overwhelming verification in scientific historical literature? Though this may sound like the presumptuous generalization by another arrogant American, it is my impression from news and personal accounts from regular business visitors to Turkey that the vast majority of the Turkish public continues to vehemenentely deny the clear international historical consensus of the events. In other words, I fear this slant may be the result of an ignorant or apathetic body of users, and not fear of any real negative affect on user's real lives.
On 7/13/07, oscar van dillen oscarvandillen@wikimedia.org wrote:
the armenian holocaust is at this moment a rather *hot* political issue inside turkey itself, with possibly legal consequences for people who publish other than an "official view" in or from turkey afaik. there is a discussion going on even on eu-level about these things. writers and journalists in turkey are often in a difficult position when writing about these historical events.
of course our mission is to collect, develop and desseminate npov content, but this may in such cases collide with present-day political situations and power, present-day political points of view and interests of a nation or a regime, perhaps in some cases even encompass certain dangers for some of our editors as well.
in all projects, a fine balance needs to be found on all its controversial subjects, which may at times be slightly different in different projects and languages, a phenomenon that i consider acceptable if and when within certain limits of *linguistical compromise*, since they are meant to address different "audiences" (the speakers of that language: each language also has its own context of at least history, literature, science and politics), but not when it becomes a *political compromise*.
descriptions of and terminology for historical events in an encyclopedia should generally be based on the science of history, concurring with and referring to relevant international scientifical sources (if available also in the language of a project), not on current political views or nomenclature. but what if there are different views among different scientists, different views in different scientifical literature, possibly in different languages, whether linked to politics or not, how and who are we to judge?
content may perhaps differ slightly in various languages, incorporating linguistical compromises, but i agree this does not seem to be the case here. the title [[Claims_of_an_Armenian_Genocide]] does suggest a pov, and the article itself possibly needs serious revision as well, maybe an article [[Armenian_Genocide]] is still missing on tr.wikipedia as well as an article [[International_recognition_of_an_Armenian_Genocide]] (or [[International_recognition_of_the_Armenian_Genocide]], change "international" for "scientific" or "political" and you have 2 more) and probably a whole bunch more like [[Denials_of_an_Armenian_Genocide]] and [[Historical_demography_of_the_Armenians_during_the_Ottoman_period]].
it may be that the situation in tr.wikipedia at this point also simply reflects the present status quo in the published turkish language and its publically available sources. yet i do not know 100% for sure, i am no historian myself, and also my turkish (though "tr-1") is simply not good enough to evaluate all this on my own.
that said, i would like to suggest {{sofixit}} to Bogdan Giusca as well, since i think it is finally up to (editors of the) projects themselves to gradually develop an acceptable npov over a period of time, even when this means lengthy and difficult discussions. these had best take place first of all on the project itself imho.
best regards, oscar
-- *edito ergo sum*
On 7/13/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
The Turkish Wikipedia has no article on Armenian Genocide.
However, unlike all the other 38 Wikipedias which have articles on the "Armenian Genocide", it has an article on "Claims of an Armenian Genocide".
I'm sure that if German Wikipedia had "Holocaust" redirect to "Claims of a Holocaust", there'd be an outcry, but why doesn't the same thing happen about this article on Turkish Wikipedia?
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