Krystian

So you wouldn't mind if Russia was completely occupied by for example the US, as long as the Russians were given equal rights and were not treated any differently? To you national pride and self determination doesn't matter?

Ancientgeezer

Irish Banker counting his six-figure bonus?

Elena

If one nation allows the other nation to take over, then it is in agreement with what is happening to it.

If a nation doesn't like the situation, it fights back.

Vezir

I think all of those nations should pray the god that they weren't forced to get assimilated . All european empires assimilated people who they conquered. I also don't believe Armenian genocide, Ottoman Empire did not have power to do a 'genocide' at 1915. Armenians joined the war on the Russian side and they got defeated. I believe more Turkish civilians died in WW1 and independence war then Armenian civilians.

xander.XVII

Riddicolous.
Those nation were invade and Turkish were invaders, that's the point.
Turkish civilians died, because the inept Young Turks embarked themselves upon a war they had no chance to win.

bunyip

Not in my opinion.

. I wonder how many citizens of conquered,colonised and annexed countries thought "Ah well, no better than we deserved"


Sounds like a rather self serving and smug justification for the strong stomping on the weak,as tends to be the case with countries.

Krystian

The European colonizers managed to assimilate only primitive, stone-age societies. When a European power took over another European nation's land it didn't manage to do that. The Spanish controlled the Netherlands but didn't turn the Dutch into Spanish did they? That's because those people were already Christian and European - it's much harder, almost impossible, to assimilate people of the same civilization group. Even when muslim states were colonized, like Algiers by the French for example, they couldn't assimilate or convert them. It only works with primitive, extremely different societies that had no previous contact with that civilization - like the native americans, africans or some isolated east asians (Philippines). If the Balkan people were conquered by a European empire they would not get assimilated.

However, had any European power taken over the Balkans instead of the Ottomans then all of Europe's progress would flow to the Balkans immediately. The Balkan nations would not have their Rennaissance in the 19th century, but in the 16th, along with the rest of Europe. They would not be influenced culturally by Orientalism either. They would not be divided by Islamizations, as in the case of the Bosniaks, Pomaks, Albanians etc. Of course, the best option for them would be to remain independent and flourish as they did before and after the ottoman occupation, but if a takeover had to be chose, a European/Christian one is in any case better than Ottoman/Oriental/Muslim one.

About the Armenians i don't want to enter a pointless debate, suffice it to say the Turks did massacre Armenians at least as much as Vlad Tepes massacred Turks (he actually massacred more non-turks). So if your logic says Ottoman rule over Wallachia is deserved because of Tepes' massacres, than an Armenian rule over Turkey is just as much if not more deserved for their suffering (which even without a genocide of 1.5 million is surely large).

Elena

Without even going into the subject of who, when and where...

How could Armenia "join" Russian side, if Armenia was PART OF the Russian Empire?! Can you say Bedfordshire joined Britain in WW1?

Fox

One example immediately springs to mind: North Korea deserves to be conquered and ruled by South Korea.

bunyip

No country deserves to be conquered;it is the innocent who always suffer the most


Dictatorships ALWAYS fall eventually, as does every powerful system or country.