armenian

A detailed Summary of armenian

Genocide is the deliberate extermination of a people or a nation. The twentieth century will always be remembered for the genocide that Adolf Hitler perpetrated against the Jews of Europe. But there was a lesser-known genocide during the First World War which may not have matched Hitler's in scale but certainly matched it in atrocity. This was the Armenian genocide masterminded by the Young Turk government of Turkey in 1915.

Historically, the Armenian people have always been subjected to oppressive regimes. Armenia was the first nation to accept Christianity as a state religion. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turk movement sought to restore Turkey's shattered national pride. Their idea was to go about it through the persecution of its minorities. In 1915 the Young Turk government resolved to deport the whole Armenian population of about 1,750,000 to Syria and Mesopotamia. It regarded the Turkish Armenians-despite pledges of loyalty by many-as a dangerous foreign element bent on conspiring with the pro-Christian tsarist enemy to upset the Ottoman campaign in the east.

Following is an excerpt from a speech presented to the Turkish Committee of Union and Progress, February 1915:

d dropped, their Turkish oppressors perhaps stopping long enough to rob them of all their possessions -- even of their clothes. If any stragglers succeeded in reaching their destinations, they were not infrequently massacred. In many instances Armenian soldiers were disposed of in even more summary fashion, for it now became almost the general practice to shoot them in cold blood. In almost all cases the procedure was the same. Here and there squads of 50 or 100 men would be taken, bound together in groups of four, and then marched out to a secluded spot a short distance from the village. Suddenly the sound of rifle shots would fill the air, and the Turkish soldiers who had acted as the escort would sullenly return to camp. Those sent to bury the bodies would find them almost invariably stark naked, for, as usual, the Turks had stolen all their clothes. In cases that came to my attention, the murderers had added a refinement to their victims' sufferings by compelling them to d!

In the morning of April 24, in order that the task be accomplished with the least possible risk, the able-bodied men and the intellectuals were summoned to assemble at convenient places, generally outside the towns. None was overlooked. They were then butchered. This method was generally feasible in small places. In larger cities, it was not always possible to fulfill the orders from Istanbul so simply and promptly. The Armenian notables were assassinated in the streets or in their homes. If it was an interior city, the men were sent off under guard to another town. In a few hours the guards would return without their prisoners. If it was a coast city, the Armenians were taken away in boats outside the harbor to another port. The boats returned astonishingly soon without the passengers.

8 Richard G. Hovannisian, "Remembrance and Denial : The Case of the Armenian Genocide." Wayne State Univ. Press, 1999

Taking advantage of the outbreak of the First World War, the Turkish authorities set out to implement the long- planned program of extermination of the Armenian population of Turkey. Documentary evidence irrefutably attests that the plans for the extermination of the Western Armenian population had been in preparation even before the beginning of the World War.

7 Henry H. Riggs, "Days of Tragedy in Armenia - Personal experiences in Harpoot, 1915-1917." Gomidas Institute, 1997.

1,200 of the most prominent Armenians and other Christians, without distinction of confession, were arrested in the Vilayets of Diyarbekir and Mamouret-ul-Aziz. Later, 674 of them were embarked on thirteen Tigris barges, under the pretext that they were to be taken to Mosul. The Vali of this area, assisted by fifty gendarmes, was in charge of the convoy. Half the gendarmes started off on the barges, while the other half rode along the bank. A short time after the start the prisoners were stripped of all their money and then of their clothes; after that they were thrown into the river. The gendarmes on the bank were ordered to let none of them escape.

8 Richard G. Hovannisian, "Remembrance and Denial : The Case of the Armenian Genocide." Wayne State Univ. Press, 1999

Following is an excerpt from a report presented by American ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau:

It was in the autumn of 1914, when the Turks began to mobilize Christians as well as Moslems for the army. For six months, and in every part of Turkey, they called upon the Armenians for military service. Exemption money was accepted from those who could pay. A few weeks later however, the exemption certificates were disregarded, and their holders enrolled. The younger Armenians, who did not live too far from Istanbul, were placed in the active army. The older ones and the rest of the Armenians enrolled in the more distant regions, where they were utilized for road, railway and fortification building. Wherever they were called, and to whatever task they were put, the Armenians did their duty, and worked f

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