Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rawandiz massacre

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Aoidh (talk) 06:16, 27 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Rawandiz massacre[edit]

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Articles for deletion/Rawandiz massacre

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Article uses unreliable sources, does not accurately describe the actual event, and uses references written by a genocidal denier Samuel Weems in which I removed, it should be deleted. I spent time researching the references and none could actually directly confirm the events in which are to said to happen on the article.Nocturnal781 (talk) 22:33, 19 March 2023 (UTC) Nocturnal781 (talk) 22:34, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Armenia-related deletion discussions. Nocturnal781 (talk) 22:38, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

~~Weak keep~~Weak Delete See conversation below for justification for change to weak delete. The sourcing in this article is an absolute mess, but I am not yet confident this event did not occur and is not notable. It needs more sourcing and unfortunately it’s not easy sourcing.

Apparently Kenneth Mason covered it in a 1919 piece:

https://ia800708.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/28/items/crossref-pre-1923-scholarly-works/10.2307%252F1779073.zip&file=10.2307%252F1779409.pdf

A footnote in this book addresses Mason’s says it didn’t happen, page 337, but appears to base that on the Russian ambassador’s “trust me bro” to a degree I’m not comfortable with. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Kurdish_National_Movement.html?id=FCbspX-dGPYC

Apparently, the Cambridge History of the Kurds mentions it, but I could only see a clip of the texthttps://books.google.com/books/about/The_Cambridge_History_of_the_Kurds.html?id=IXgnEAAAQBAJ

I was also able to find various bits confirming the Noel mentioning in the one article cite was in that area during those years.

Absent a better source review, I’m just not confident enough to support deletion yet. I’m going to keep looking into it tad, but I hope those sources help others do so as well.

Jo7hs2 (talk) 23:35, 19 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Discrimination, Events, History, Iraq, and Russia. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 00:37, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If we cannot prove this was an actual a massacre it does not warrant an article. It needs reliable sources by reliable people like a historian. I've searched far and wide and found 0 information indicating a massacre occurred by a reliable source. But if you find any please let me know.Nocturnal781 (talk) 00:39, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The first link I provided is by Kenneth Mason (geographer). While he is not a true historian, at that time there was a lot of overlap. In the work I linked, he wrote:

“On 23 August 1916 the Russian general, Chernozubov, defeated the 4th Turkish division at Lalgan on the Persian side of the frontier, and drove the Turks back on Rowanduz. Two Turkish regiments were captured, and about two-thirds of the town population fled. The Armenian troops with the Russians massacred about five thousand Kurds, men, women, and children, by driving them over the cliffs of the Rowanduz gorge at the point of the bayonet. Even the Armenian can be a bit of a tiger when he has a defenceless prey.

Russia now overran the country. Some of the tribes were glad to be freed from Turkish misrule; others were not. Unfortunately the Russian is no administrator in countries such as these. He had no political officers with his troops and no method of liaison with the inhabitants. Friction followed licence and the Kurds turned on the Russians. Individual tribes harried and harassed the Russian communications and cut up small parties. They could not operate together, and suffered in various degrees in con- sequence. When Russia later on evacuated the district, for their own safety they took the precaution of wiping out almost every village on their line of retreat. Not one village remains intact between Rowanduz and the Garaushinke pass, and many are so completely obliterated as to remind one of the raids of Hulakhu Khan, who used to make his prisoners plough up the land over the villages and towns he destroyed.”

I am still looking into it to see if a more recent historian may have written on it.

Jo7hs2 (talk) 02:53, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Found this article speaking on this also, “Kutley seems to have used an essay by the well-known historian Dr. Kemal Mazhar Ahmed published in 1975 by the Kurdish Academy in Baghdad. “The city was taken on May 13. The Armenians fedayeens wanted to take vengeance and as a result they shed a lot of blood. According to some sources, at the end of the massacre 5000 Kurdish women, children, and men were killed. Many of them had not been shot but had been thrust into the Rawanduz gorge.” Ahmed’s work states. In a footnote, he refers to a book by K. Mason, an English officer at the time. It dealt with the question of the Turkish-Iraqi border and the role of the League of Nations. It is curious that in his footnote remarks K.M. Ahmad himself doubts that in Rawanduz 5000 Kurds had been killed: “This figure seems to be exaggerated. Neither M.H. Zeki, who reports on the destructions of the war, nor Hüseyn H. Mukriyani, who lived in Rawanduz after World War I and wrote about it, cite such a figure. Among the people it was said that many Kurdish women had thrown themselves into the gorge to save their honor.” Thus, not only is the number 5000 murdered Kurds questionable, but also whether or not such a mass murder took place at all in Rawanduz. Naci Kutlay seems either not to have read this important remark by K.M. Ahmed or to have deliberately concealed it. ” Basically a well known Historian doubting what Mason said is true.[1] Nocturnal781 (talk) 03:15, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As a further follow up, a footnote in The Kurdish National Movement: Its Origins and Development by Wadie Jwaideh, footnote 14 on page 337 mentions Mason’s assertion but says it is refuted by the account of Russian consul Nikitine and cites as proof Nikitine’s “La systeme routier du Kurdistan”, in La Geographre 03, nos. 56 May-lune 1935:363-85.

There’s an account remarkably similar to Mason’s in this semi-contemporaneous source arguing in support of a treaty: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Treaty_with_Turkey.html?id=3AVQAQAAMAAJ

And this book, Beyond Isis, page 114 mentions a Russian massacre of Kurds in 1916 af Rawandiz https://books.google.com/books/about/Beyond_ISIS_History_and_Future_of_Religi.html?id=XIeXDwAAQBAJ

The Cambridge History of the Kurds link gave a useful cite, noting:

“At the same time, in some cases the Kurds were the objects of violence: in 1916 Russian forces allied with Armenian volunteers seized the town of Rawanduz, engaging in massacre and pillage (Hay, 2008: 137–8).”

That appears to be Hay, R. (2008). Iraq and Rupert Hay's Two Years in Kurdistan. Plymouth: Lexington. Which turns out is actually Rupert Hay’s account of his time in Kurdistan, not a secondary source, just edited and compiled by Paul Rich.

So, it looks like there’s two sets of narratives, one is that it occurred and one is that it didn’t occur or was a smaller event than some sources suggest. While the available evidence for the event happening is more credible in a vacuum, as it doesn’t ultimately come from a source with a potential motive for disguising the events (Nikitine), I’m concerned that I do see some mention of the Armenian genocide in at least one of the contemporary sources, and so I’m concerned there’s some taint of anti-Armenia bias to at least two of those sources (the one about the treaty and Mason’s comment about defenseless prey), which starts pushing things above where I’m comfortable trying to suss out motives in sources just for an AfD.

While I still conclude there are substantial sources, I do not think this article can be written without original research at this point, due to the considerable unresolved historical question in those sources. Even the secondary historical/geographical sources are conflicted into two primary viewpoints that are diametrically opposed. I am therefore now at weak delete, unless somebody can find a more recent work that persuasively documents the event and explains away the contrary reporting. Jo7hs2 (talk) 12:16, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Minor follow up comment, I did a little more digging in Wikipedia Library under both spellings of Rawandiz I’ve seen used and found nothing remarkable beyond what we already found. I think we pretty much dug everything up. Jo7hs2 (talk) 22:29, 20 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Good work. I appreciate when people take the time to do this. Nocturnal781 (talk) 04:42, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Jo7hs2 has done a good investigation of sources and I agree with their conclusions. // Timothy :: talk 21:45, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.