What's new

The Armenian Genocide: 99 years of Denial

April 24, 2014

turkey4999.jpg

This month Armenians around the world remember their dead.

Adolf Hitler is quoted as saying, eight days before invading Poland in 1939, “Who today, after all, speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?” He was speaking of being inspired by the 1915 genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as he began his own systematic campaign of destruction. Today, the Armenian genocide remains fresh and relevant in the minds of Armenians around the world.

On the night of April 24, 1915, the Turkish government placed under arrest over 200 Armenian community leaders in Constantinople. Hundreds more were apprehended soon after. They were all sent to prison in the interior of Anatolia, where most were summarily executed. The Young Turk regime had long been planning the Armenian Genocide and reports of atrocities being committed against the Armenians in the eastern war zones had been filtering in during the first months of 1915.

The Ministry of War had already acted on the government's plan by disarming the Armenian recruits in the Ottoman Army, reducing them to labor battalions and working them under conditions equaling slavery. The incapacitation and methodic reduction of the Armenian male population, as well as the summary arrest and execution of the Armenian leadership marked the earliest stages of the Armenian Genocide. These acts were committed under the cover of a news blackout on account of the war and the government proceeded to implement its plans to liquidate the Armenian population with secrecy.

Therefore, the Young Turks regime's true intentions went undetected until the arrests of April 24. As the persons seized that night included the most prominent public figures of the Armenian community in the capital city of the Ottoman Empire, everyone was alerted about the dimensions of the policies being entertained and implemented by the Turkish government. Their death presaged the murder of an ancient civilization. April 24 is, therefore, commemorated as the date of the unfolding of the Armenian Genocide.

The Armenian Genocide was centrally planned and administered by the Turkish government against the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. It was carried out during W.W.I between the years 1915 and 1918. The Armenian people were subjected to deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre, and starvation. The great bulk of the Armenian population was forcibly removed from Armenia and Anatolia to Syria, where the vast majority was sent into the desert to die of thirst and hunger. Large numbers of Armenians were methodically massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire. Women and children were abducted and horribly abused. The entire wealth of the Armenian people was expropriated. After only a little more than a year of calm at the end of W.W.I, the atrocities were renewed between 1920 and 1923, and the remaining Armenians were subjected to further massacres and expulsions. In 1915, thirty-three years before UN Genocide Convention was adopted, the Armenian Genocide was condemned by the international community as a crime against humanity.

It is estimated that one and a half million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923. There were an estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of W.W.I. Well over a million were deported in 1915. Hundreds of thousands were butchered outright. Many others died of starvation, exhaustion, and epidemics which ravaged the concentration camps. Among the Armenians living along the periphery of the Ottoman Empire many at first escaped the fate of their countrymen in the central provinces of Turkey. Tens of thousands in the east fled to the Russian border to lead a precarious existence as refugees. The majority of the Armenians in Constantinople, the capital city, were spared deportation. In 1918, however, the Young Turk regime took the war into the Caucasus, where approximately 1,800,000 lived under Russian dominion. Ottoman forces advancing through East Armenia and Azerbaijan here too engaged in systematic massacres. The expulsions and massacres carried by the Nationalist Turks between 1920 and 1922 added tens of thousands of more victims. By 1923 the entire landmass of Asia Minor and historic West Armenia had been expunged of its Armenian population. The destruction of the Armenian communities in this part of the world was total.

lol yeah...

and @TaiShang , you missed the date..That so called anniversary was 1 month earlier...But good trolling, i will give you the credit

The original OP says "these days," good friend. By the way, it is not my opinion. Information is collected from credible sources. If anyone has concerns or objections, they should refer to the original source. I do not necessarily endorse views expressed in the cited documents.
 
Whats the point of dredging up this ancient history, everyone involved in it, has long been dead and buried and cold underground.
 
Whats the point of dredging up this ancient history, everyone involved in it, has long been dead and buried and cold underground.

That's why there is a science called history.

And, if history is still polemical, it never really ends.
 
That's why there is a science called history.

And, if history is still polemical, it never really ends.

IMO if you back far enough - everyone's screwed everyone else - at one time or another.
 
@Tai Shang

When I have time to respond effectively to this thread you will regret that you opened it.

I will not have time to respond effectively. Let truth rein supreme.

IMO if you back far enough - everyone's screwed everyone else - at one time or another.

I agree. I cannot be the judge to decide what is more important and for whom.

But there is a ton of scholarship on the above issue. Denying that there is a debate would be closing eyes in wide day and denying there is no light.
 
Dont worry it will but in the mean time watch this.


Sadly, I would not trust that man. I know Turkey had great leaders, really, visionary ones before, but, that one above is probably the worst and the least educated. No offense intended.

For the beginning, he is a threat to his own country since he is divisive and brutal, first sleeping with a religious organization to clear away the pro-independent and anti-NATO (or, anti-getting to much involved in US's dirty business in West Asia) elements in the military and then declaring them an enemy of the state (they indeed could be) and winning an election on the back of pitting one side against the other.
 
Sadly, I would not trust that man. I know Turkey had great leaders, really, visionary ones before, but, that one above is probably the worst and the least educated. No offense intended.
For the beginning, he is a threat to his own country since he is divisive and brutal, first sleeping with a religious organization to clear away the pro-independent and anti-NATO (or, anti-getting to much involved in US's dirty business in West Asia) elements in the military and then declaring them an enemy of the state (they indeed could be) and winning an election on the back of pitting one side against the other.

He says bring your archives and we will bring ours. Historians, Archelogists, Lawyers, etc... will inspect the incident than we will come to an conclusion.

But for now this issue is purely politic, done by the Armenian lobbies all over the world. No body can force us to accept this by political means.

We were saying this long before Erdoğan but Armenians evade this.... why don't you ask yourself that "Why do the Armenians evade such a commision to investigate the incident ? "
 
Last edited by a moderator:
100 years of Armenian tale, its very interesting that a Chinese guy sensitive about genocide; but u dont forget the biggest genocide of Uyghur Turks in Thurkisthan. 100 years later you may say 'Uyghur Turks killed millions of chineese in East Turkhistan / genocide like Armenians said!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom