Talk:Turkish War of Independence

Edit request

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{{POV|date=October 2025|talk=pov tag}}

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• It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given in talk page.

ping: User:LeonChrisfield

Throat0390 (talk) 01:39, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

Already done Day Creature (talk) 02:07, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

POV tag discussion

Heavily biased page that cited Rudolf Rummel’s source, which most historians believe is unreliable and inflated the numbers of non-Western regimes, but does not allow estimates of Turkish civilian deaths to be cited because they are “pro-Turkish”.

The page mentioned 30,000+ buildings and 250+ villages were burnt to the ground by the Hellenic Army and Greek/Armenian rebels, but only 15k Turkish civilians were killed per the source of Rummel. This is a very low estimate of Turkish civilian casualties from a pro-Western, right-wing neoconservative historian. The numbers of casualties and buildings/villages destroyed also simply didn’t match up due to them being from different sources. At least add an estimate of the Turks died from those atrocities done by the separatist and Greek nationalist forces instead of citing Rummel as an objective truth.

In addition, it portrays the Turkish forces' invasion of Armenian territory (which is not a neutral pov) during the War of Independence, but fails to mention the “Greater Armenia” goal of the Armenian forces and their anti-Muslim violence.

The page overwhelmingly portrays Turkish forces as genocidal forces and the aggressors while downplaying Greek and Armenian war crimes against Muslims and their Megali and Greater Armenia ultranationalist goals to annex areas overwhelmingly populated by Turkish Muslims by selectively citing historians biased towards Western, pro-Armenian, pro-Greek, and anti-Turkish perspectives. Hence, the pov dispute tag is justified. LeonChrisfield (talk) 02:49, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

The page of invasion of Armeniana is changed recently but i don't see balanced neutral discussion. Shadow4dark (talk) 06:14, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

Rummel is only cited twice in the whole article, and you haven't explained what makes it unreliable. You also haven't provided any examples of what sources you think should be cited in the article. Your current approach is not going to get anything changed. Your comment here may also be seen as WP:NATIONALIST for the way it frames opposing nations. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 05:39, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

“Only cited twice,” yet presented as the truth in the “casualties and losses” section, with no other estimates allowed.

I did explain how he inflated the numbers of anti-western regimes and even on his page, there were criticisms of inaccuracies: “His figures for Communist governments have been criticized for the methodology which he used to arrive at them, and they have also been criticized for being higher than the figures which have been given by most scholars.”

“Rummel's works have been criticized for establishing estimates on hearsay and unverifiable overtly high death estimates from highly biased authors. An example of this is in the Tito's Slaughterhousechapter of Statistics of Democide, where Rummel quotes estimates for the democide record of Tito's Yugoslavia from authors who were sympathetic towards the Independent State of Croatia(NDH) and who attempted to downplay or deny the crimes of Ustaše in the Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, an example of those authors being Ivo Omrčanin, a former NDH official in foreign ministry and an espouser of fascist ideals.” Those facts on his page already proves his citations about this emotionally charged and controversial historical event cannot be treated as objective facts.

My views about disputing this article’s neutrality also can’t be considered “nationalist” since I am not a Turkish person or someone with Turkish heritage. I was not denying Turkish crimes and genocides, but only pointing out the blatant biases against Turkey and its national movement. In contrast, there are very few mentions of Armenian and Greek ultranationalist goals and war crimes compared to Turkish ones.

I wasn’t aiming to promote a “Turkish nationalist” narrative or deny Turkish crimes and wrongdoings, which would be absurd considering I am non-Turkish and non-Muslim. I was only questioning the heavily pro-Armenian/Greek nationalist narrative of the war in this article and the almost overwhelming negative portrayal of the Turkish forces. LeonChrisfield (talk) 02:19, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

A POV tag is for clear, article-wide neutrality problems; the concerns raised here are about specific claims and sourcing, which can be handled by improving particular sentences or sections with stronger citations rather than tagging the whole page. If Rummel’s figures are disputed, the solution is to add high-quality scholarly estimates and attribute them, rather than assert motives like 'pro-Western/pro-Turkish' or decide reliability by political framing. WP:NPOV requires summarizing all significant viewpoints in proportion to their prominence in reliable sources, so arguments about Greek/Armenian aims or violence should be proposed with concrete, published historians to support inclusion at due weight.

Let's not forget that an RFC decided that the most accurate term for Turkey's actions against Armenia was "invasion" in line with reliable sources. This title choice does not exonerate any possible atrocities made by the new republic of Armenia, but reflects that the overall balance of forces were against the Armenians which is why 'turkish-armenian war' was an incorrect title.

Finally, to keep discussion productive (and avoid WP:NATIONALIST rhetoric), it’s better to present a short list of proposed text changes with citations than to characterize the article as 'heavily biased' as a basis for a dispute tag. Greensminded24 (talk) 04:30, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

A quick look at the article makes it clear that it fails the basic objectivity test. The actual topic, the subject, Turkish War of Independence is lost in the side topics that have been given outsized prominence or sometimes plain wrong. Unfortunately this is often encountered in almost all articles remotely tangential to recent Turkish or Ottoman history. Attempts to bring balance have been usually thwarted as evidenced by the edit history here. I will try with specific suggestions here. Murat (talk) 22:37, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

If this is about casualties in the infobox, then MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE tells us that information in the article infobox should be a summary of key facts from the article and that the article should be complete without the infobox. Casualties, in general, and the casualties being specifically discussed are not supported by the body of the article. This is a deficiency in the article. If there is dispute or significant variance between reported figures, this is something that the article should also be discussing. Cinderella157 (talk) 07:02, 27 December 2025 (UTC)Typo Cinderella157 (talk) 01:49, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

Should the Samsun clashes article be deleted or not?

Your valuable opinions are requested at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Samsun clashes (1920) (2nd nomination) as almost no one has given a point of view there and the previous discussion also suffered from a lack of contributors. Thanks Chidgk1 (talk) 12:15, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

The ethnic cleansing section seems fairly biased

As well as it just seeming to be based on fairly unreliable accounts (I mean there were certainly cleansings and perhaps a genocide but it uses a lot of presumptions about the goals of the turkish nationalists and also seems almost racist towards muslims?) there is no definitive proof the turkish nationalists caused the fire of smyrna ~2026-31718-21 (talk) 18:57, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

It is difficult to respond to "this is biased". Please provide a specific example of a passage in this article that does not accurately summarize the provided sources. If your issue is that the sources are wrong, that's something that you will need to take up with the sources themselves, or offer more current sources with what you deem to be more accurate information. 331dot (talk) 19:11, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

I already stated that the fire of smyrna is not really confirmed to be done by the turks (the fire of smyrna wiki page is also extremely biased and you can see that other people have voiced their frustrations about that page,) I'm not really sure what would be considered a "reliable" source so I would just research it yourself or have a look at the sources given on the fire of smyrna/burning of smyrna wiki page. I'll have a look at the page again and pick out some other stuff that appears to be biased ~2026-31718-21 (talk) 19:22, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not clear on what is biased about "Greek and Armenian civilians were massacred in the fire of Smyrna". Again, if the source provided is not being accurately summarized, and/or the sources on Burning of Smyrna are not accurately summarized, you will need to detail the errors. If the sources are accurately summarized, but you disagree with what they say, that's not something we can help you with. 331dot (talk) 19:40, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

the problem is it's clearly trying to say the turks definitively caused it which isn't provably true by fact and isn't exactly general consensus (although wikipedia claims so and says only turkish sources say otherwise)? I don't know how to say this in a way that doesn't sound mean, but you seem to be completely ignoring what I said, from first saying I haven't provided a specific example, to now this, again as I said I'm too tired to read much, so I would go research it yourself, there are about as many sources that say that it was turks as it was greeks, I remember watching a video with a similar sentiment, that I believe may have provided sources, so I will go find that video now ~2026-31718-21 (talk) 20:21, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

You seem to be disputing what the sources themselves say, not claiming they are inaccurately summarized here. 331dot (talk) 21:17, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Ok so first of the section mainly relies on quotes which is a massive red flag, it should really focus on the actual real accusations of genocide (to my knowledge there isn't any proven genocide unlike the armenian genocide by enver pasha)"It seems, in the end, unlikely that the Turkish Nationalist leaders, though secular in name, ever had any intention of allowing any sizeable non-Muslim minority to remain." I cannot read the source for this as I don't have the money or a reason to buy the book and won't (and probably couldn't anyway) go to find an archive of it, but just reading from the text, it says "though secular in name" as if they were not actually secularist which based on their policies isn't true and any counterargument to that is an assumption and not particularly provable, it also seems to try to state that they believed the nationalists wanted to kill all christians which again isn't provable, "disposing of people of different races, languages and religions in our country is the most ... vital issue" same book, and this also doesn't have a date attached which makes this questionable since riza nur became a critic of ataturk, "Raymond Kévorkian states that "removing non-Turks from the sanctuary of Anatolia continued to be one of" the Turkish Nationalists' main activities after World War I." again a book with a price tag on it, I found this summary of the chapter it's from however "Scholarship over recent decades examining the acts of mass violence perpetrated in the Ottoman world during the First World War tends to ignore the consequences these had in the post-war years, when Kemalism was on the rise, going on to give birth to a state that stands out for having been built on a collective crime. The political and social changes characterizing this period were of the utmost significance for the course Turkey subsequently took. Turkish society, far from assuming responsibility for the crimes committed during the First World War, displayed its determination to carry through the policy to eliminate..." this as well as the paragraph seems to show that the writer of this book is stating theories as fact, "Preventing Armenians and other Christians from returning home, and therefore allowing their properties to be retained by those who had stolen them during the war, was a key factor in securing popular support for the Turkish Nationalist Movement." again the source is just the book and the same chapter nothing to add here, there's no further proof of this statement in the article "Christian civilians were subjected to forced deportation to expel them from the country, a policy that continued after the war." this could definitely be true but it's the same source which is in my opinion I find unreliable but perhaps keep this in, although I wouldn't be surprised if it was christian civilians who openly supported the opposition against the turks or straight up people who were in the miltary or their families "These deportations were similar to those employed during the Armenian Genocide and caused many deaths" no significant proof and sounds unlikely in my opinion. There are a few more that bothered me but they're all from the same one source that I have criticised multiple times, I'd also like to state "Greek and Armenian civilians were massacred in the fire of Smyrna and later during the Turkish invasion of Armenia." is half true, the turkish invasion of armenia seems to be accurate although I have yet to skim through it but like I said earlier there's no proof the burning of smyrna is. "Vahagn Avedian argues that the Turkish War of Independence was not directed against the Allied Powers, but that its main objective was to get rid of non-Turkish minority groups. The Nationalist movement maintained the aggressive policy of the CUP against Christians. It was stated in a secret telegram from Foreign Minister Ahmet Muhtar (Mollaoğlu) to Kazım Karabekir in mid-1921 "the most important thing is to eliminate Armenia, both politically and materially". Avedian holds that the existence of the Armenian Republic was considered as the "greatest threat" for the continuation of Turkish state, and that for this reason, they "fulfilled the genocidal policy of its CUP predecessor". After the Christian population was destroyed, the focus shifted to the Kurdish population. Ethnic cleansing was also carried against Pontic Greeks with the collaboration with Ankara and Istanbul governments" the nationalists openly disliked or perhaps even hated the cup (easily fact checkable), although ataturk did show some liking to enver pasha to my knowledge, also checking the source quickly it seems to say that the cup and the nationalists were the same thing... which no, and the source also seems to have little relation to the statement it's mainly about the armenian genocide, turkey not recognising it and the supposed strong relation between the nationalists and cup (or even going as far to say they are basically the same entity), however I'm too tired to look through the source properly so take this last statemet so I may be completely wrong ~2026-31718-21 (talk) 20:09, 27 May 2026 (UTC)