Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Persecution of Muslims during Ottoman contraction

Sources presented & challenged
Since has been challenged publicly, I should reply. To correct some misreadings of the sources I presented, then: These examples substantiate the claim that persecution of Muslim populations is a recognized and studied area of scholarship. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:23, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * On the general point of using search engines, of course I used academic search engines. Specifically, I used two of the academic databases to which I have access: ProQuest and EBSCOHost.  Why this would be a surprise to any experienced editor I'm unable to say, but I can assure that I did, in fact, read the articles.  The objections to these three sources seems to have been that the words persecution or massacre do not appear.  This is a short-sighted and incomplete reading.
 * Poulton, The Muslim Experience in the Balkan states, 1919‐1991, Nationalities Papers, 28(1)45:19 Aug 2010 As the article states, the beginning of this time period is clearly during the period of the contraction or ending of the Ottoman empire. As our Partition of the Ottoman Empire states, this period stretched from 1918 with the end of WWI to 1922 with the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate.  Poulton's article starts there and continues to the beginning of the Yugoslav Wars.  As to whether it discusses persecution, it discusses:Tension was particularly evident in the relations between the new Orthodox Christian rulers and their Muslim minority populations, which were seen as undesirable relics from the Ottoman past....In these exchanges...religion not ethnicity or language was the key factor, with all the Muslims expelled from Greece seen as “Turks,” and all the Orthodox people expelled form Turkey seen as “Greeks” regardless of mother tongue or ethnicity....The fact that all of these states, with the exception of Albania, had majority Christian populations made the position of Muslim communities within them especially problematic. The differentiation of these communities from the majority along ethno-linguistic as well as religious lines in certain cases merely intensified perceptions of “otherness.” It also discusses forced assimilation and emigration campaigns starting during the creation of the new Balkan states.  To argue that the lack of the words "persecution" or "massacre" means that ethnic cleansing, minority oppression and discrimination, and forced assimilation is not persecution is very odd.
 * Bieber, Muslim Identity in the Balkans Before the Establishment of Nation States, Nationalities Papers, 28(1)1:13:19 Aug 2010 Again, the objection seems based on a negative word search for "persecution" or "massacre". The article is concerned mostly with the creation of Muslim identity but also addresses the end of Ottoman Empire: Well into the nineteenth century most Muslims continued to view the Ottoman Empire as the state structure within which they wanted to live. The decline of the Empire, however, presented Muslims from Bihac to Crete with three options: one, they could withdraw further southeast to the shrinking borders of the Ottoman Empire (eventually to Anatolia); two, they could assimilate into the new Christian nation states by adopting Christianity; or, three, they could form their own nations, by establishing their own nation states. The last of these options is a continuing process that has still not been completed at the end of the twentieth century. Most Muslims of Southeastern Europe continue to live as minorities in Christian states or as citizens of fragile states with Muslim majorities.
 * Mourelos, The 1914 Persecutions and the first Attempt at an Exchange of Minorities between Greece and Turkey, Balkan Studies, 26(2)389:1 Jan 1985 Another case where the article was apparently searched for the terms and the actual text was ignored. The article is obviously concerned mostly with Greek persecution by Turks (as the author's name would imply) but, as the term "exchange" should make clear, both Muslim and Christian populations were forced/induced/encouraged to leave their homes for the "correct" religiously-defined area. That Mourelos writes most of the article to argue that Greeks were treated worse by the Ottoman government than vice-versa does not obscure or excuse that Muslims were also forced to leave their homes: Under Article 4 of the Athens Convention, the Muslims of the newly acquired provinces of Greece (Macedonia, Epirus, Crete) could chose a nationality within a period of three years. Those who opted for the Ottoman nationality would have to settle outside Greece.