Armenian Genocide 100th Year Rememberance

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The Armenian Genocide began on the 24th of April, 1915.

The systematic massacres and deportations of Armenians from their historic homelands began on the 24th of April, 1915, by order of the Ottoman Empire.  Hundreds of Armenian public figures – politicians, clergymen, educators, artists – were arrested and summarily executed in the capital Constantinople (Istanbul) or sent into exile. The Armenian Genocide followed decades of discrimination and pogroms against Armenians and other minorities under Ottoman rule, most notably the Hamidian Massacres of 1894-1896, and the Adana Massacre of 1909.

Using the cover of World War I, the Ottoman authorities subjected the native Christian population (Armenians, Greeks, and Syriac peoples) to outright annihilation and exile in an attempt to demographically cleanse Anatolia and Asia Minor of non-Muslim elements. The Armenian Genocide thus intended to establish an ethnically pure, national Turkish state by removing the two million Armenians whose ancestral homes stretched from Van and Bitlis, Mush and Erzurum in the east to Trabzon, Samsun, and Sivas in the north, to Ankara, Kütahya, and Izmir in the west, to Adana and Marash, and Antep and Urfa in the south, not to mention numerous other cities, towns, villages, and regions that had held an Armenian population – some for centuries, others for millennia. http://100years100facts.com/facts/the-armenian-genocide-began-on-the-24th-of-april/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Startling image from the above showing the crucifixion of Christian girls by the Turks in 1915.

See clip at

and still at

.

 

  

 

The crucifixion of Christian girls in Malatya in 1915 was described on pp.132-133 of the book Ravished Armenia (1918).

 

Quote

The

Armenian Genocide

[7]

(

Armenian

: Հայոց Ցեղասպանություն

Hayots Tseghaspanutyun

),

[note 3]

also known as the

Armenian Holocaust

,

[8]

the

Armenian Massacres

and, traditionally by Armenians, as

Medz Yeghern

(Armenian: Մեծ Եղեռն, "Great Crime"),

[9]

was the

Ottoman government

's systematic extermination of its minority

Armenian

subjects inside their historic homeland which lies within the territory constituting the present-day

Republic of Turkey

. The total number of people killed as a result has been estimated at between 1 and 1.5 million. The starting date is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day Ottoman authorities rounded up and arrested some

250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders

in

Constantinople

. The genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labour, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on

death marches

leading to the

Syrian desert

. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre.

[10]

[11]

[12]

Other

indigenous

and Christian ethnic groups such as the

Assyrians

and the

Ottoman Greeks were similarly targeted

for extermination by the

Ottoman government

, and their treatment is considered by many historians to be part of the same genocidal policy. The majority of

Armenian diaspora

communities around the world came into being as a direct result of the genocide.

http://en.wikipedia....menian_Genocide

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Islam was the official religion of the Ottoman Empire and became more important after two seminal events: the conquest of Constantinople and the conquest of Arab regions of the Middle East. The highest position in Islam, caliphate, was claimed by the sultan, after the defeat of the Mamluks which was established as Ottoman Caliphate. The Sultan was to be a devout Muslim and was given the literal authority of the Caliph. Additionally, Sunni clerics had tremendous influence over government and their authority was central to the regulation of the economy. Despite all this, the Sultan also had a right to decree, enforcing a code called Kanun (law) in Turkish. Additionally, there was a supreme clerical position called the Sheykhulislam ("Sheykh of Islam" in Arabic). Minorities, particularly Christians and Jews but also some others, were mandated to pay the jizya, the poll tax as mandated by traditional Islam.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_Ottoman_Empire

[Perceiver]

It's an inhuman crime. For some reason most of the Turks in my country are denying it happened.

[Marblehead]

It's an inhuman crime. For some reason most of the Turks in my country are denying it happened.

Well, of course they are going to deny it.  They don't want to be any part of it.  Can't blame them.

[dust]

Well, of course they are going to deny it.  They don't want to be any part of it.  Can't blame them.

 

Today's Turks are not a part of what happened in 1915 any more than today's British are a part of the Opium War.

 

To me, denying that it happened is the one way of directly associating oneself with it. As with the Holocaust, why deny it unless you harbour the same feelings your previous countrymen (the actual offenders) did?

 

A modern Turk would do much better to admit that it happened, that it was wrong, but point out that they weren't actually alive when it happened!

Edited April 22, 2015 by dustybeijing