Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Menemen 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The result was Keep, nomination has been withdrawn after reliable sources have been produced. Davewild (talk) 12:16, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Menemen massacre

All google hits on "menemen massacre" are from WP or other Wikis mirroring this article
No sources given that meet WP:RS, 1 source given from a Turkish propagandist website by a person of disputed academic credentials (if any)
Google book gives 0 hits and google scholar 1 hit and that to that same website
Does not meet notability or reliability criteria

Xenovatis (talk) 13:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

edit: After this poll begun 2 sources meeting WP:RS have been supplied both from Justin MacCarthy's book Death and Exile:The ethnic cleansing of Ottoman Muslims and 1 source that shows it is also mentioned by independant websites. Xenovatis (talk) 09:10, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This can be closed; nominator has retracted the nomination by recommending Keep below. --Lambiam 15:48, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep but rename Menemen incident. I agree that "massacre" is POV. There are several references to the "Menemen Incident" at Google books. Better sources are available. Aramgar (talk) 13:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The menemen incident already exists as an article and is a completely unrelated rebelion by Islamic fundamentalists that took place several years later in 1930. This is what the google book hits refer to. See here Menemen Incident. Thanks.Xenovatis (talk) 14:20, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Not really notable but the referance looks to be sound enough but it is possibly unreliable- Highfields (talk) (contribs) 16:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Some of the references may be reliable, at least to indicate significant Turkish belief in such a thing [1] [2]. DJ Clayworth (talk) 18:04, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are also confusing it with the unrelated Menemen Incident, please see my response to Aramgar above.
Both links provided seem to be pointing to the same article.

Xenovatis (talk) 18:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Xenovatis. Yes, I was confused and I withdraw from this discussion. DJ Clayworth (talk) 18:42, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'm troubled that this doesn't seem to have the historical notability as a single massacre an article would suggest. There are partisan websites that make a big deal out of it, but Google Books sources only mention it in passing as part of a broader series of depredations during the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922). --Dhartung | Talk 20:12, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. While this pales in comparison with many other massacres, killing a thousand civilians without provocation is not a matter of no importance. Of the first three Google hits on the search term ["menemen massacre" -wikipedia], two are independent of this article. One is from a reputable organization, the Center for Strategic Research of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey, written by a professional academic historian, Dr. Çağrı Erhan. According to the nominator, if I understand this correctly, Dr. Erhan has either no or disputed academic credentials. I would like to hear what this statement is based on. While it may, of course, be discussed to what extent one can expect a neutral point of view from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey, the publication consists largely of direct and literal quotations from the report of the Inter-allied Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate the incidents related to the Greek occupation of Izmir and surroundings; the term "Menemen massacre" is from one of the quotations from the 1919 report.[3] Unless the suggestion is that these quotations are falsifications (which, if true, should be easy to prove conclusively), the point of view of the presenter of this material is not critically relevant. Apparently there is also a reference in [www.hungarianhistory.com/lib/vardy/vardy.doc Vardy, Steven Béla and Tooly, T. Hunt: "Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe"] ("To the north, Greek forces entered Menemen, carrying out a massacre, ..."), but I cannot read articles in the .doc format from this computer and can't be sure of the content. I'd prefer to see this treated in a wider context, in which case I might be convinced that this should be merged into a more general article on atrocities of the war, but I do not see a valid reason for removing the material. --Lambiam 00:44, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

SAM.gov.tr does not meet WP:RS as non-academic and propagandist, similarly the author is biased. The other ref is valid and does make reference to this event.Xenovatis (talk) 09:10, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - By what standards is the Centre for Strategic Studies a propogandist organisation, and by what standards are Dr. Erhan's academic credentials disputed? His research seems to make direct use of western sources and it seems an anon has added a few more sources to the article in the past day. As an aside, I would have preferred if you placed a tag requesting more sources or waited for the creator to reply to you before you launched this afd and removed relevant content wholesale from other articles also. --A.Garnet (talk) 09:41, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

By WP:RS.SAM is a turkish propagandist organization with precisely 0 academic credibility. Only after the AfD begun have academic sources been provided by user:Lambiam and banned useruser:laertes d. This article has been there unsourced for some time and the creator as well as all contributors had been notified. Of course this doesn't solve the notability issue nor the issue of the title being POV. Btw both user:A.Garnet and user:laertes d seem to find me wherever I edit. Interesting. Xenovatis (talk) 09:50, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article might be POV but by saying that an oficial governement institute is a propagandist and having zero academic reliability you are going too far. I'm suspecting POV in your words. Just a sidenote. --Teemeah Gül Bahçesi 17:23, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We are talking about the same government that is denying the Armenian Genocide, had at one time assiduously propagated the belief that the all civilizations are Turkic and still manages to officialy describe three thousand years of Asia Minor history without once mentioning the (other) G-word. You realize that this makes it a bit hard to take them at face value when expounding on a controversial incident. Governmental hinges on the government in question and should not be a source of first recourse on academic matters in any event.Xenovatis (talk) 17:58, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep My issue was that I wasn't sure this was a real event to begin with since the only reference was a turkish propagandist website. After user:Lambiam has provided a WP:RS citation by Lieberman I think it should stay to present an other side of the story even though it is not particularly notable. Xenovatis (talk) 23:51, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I have located a copy of Justin McCarthy's Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, which contains an account of the massacre synthesized from a list of primary sources. Although the number of dead remains controversial and that the Greek houses were marked with crosses seems to lack a source (see p. 270, footnote 54), the Menemen massacre is a notable event of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922). Aramgar (talk) 13:23, 20 March 2008 (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.