Armenian genocide 1915 how many people died. Armenian genocide in Turkey: a brief historical overview

100 years have passed since the beginning of one of the most terrible events in world history, crimes against humanity - the genocide of the Armenian people, second (after the Holocaust) in terms of the degree of study and the number of victims.

Before the First World War, Greeks and Armenians (mostly Christians) made up two-thirds of the population of Turkey, Armenians themselves made up a fifth of the population, 2-4 million Armenians out of 13 million people living in Turkey, including all other peoples.

According to official reports, about 1.5 million people became victims of the genocide: 700 thousand were killed, 600 thousand died during deportation. Another 1.5 million Armenians became refugees, many fled to the territory of modern Armenia, some to Syria, Lebanon, and America. According to various sources, 4-7 million Armenians now live in Turkey (with a total population of 76 million people), the Christian population is 0.6% (for example, in 1914 - two thirds, although the population of Turkey then was 13 million people ).

Some countries, including Russia, recognize genocide, Türkiye denies the fact of the crime, which is why it has hostile relations with Armenia to this day.

The genocide carried out by the Turkish army was aimed not only at the extermination of the Armenian (in particular Christian) population, but also against the Greeks and Assyrians. Even before the start of the war (in 1911-14), an order was sent to the Turkish authorities from the Union and Progress party that measures should be taken against the Armenians, that is, the murder of the people was a planned action.

“The situation worsened further in 1914, when Turkey became an ally of Germany and declared war on Russia, which was naturally sympathized with by local Armenians. The government of the Young Turks declared them a “fifth column”, and therefore a decision was made on their wholesale deportation to inaccessible mountainous areas” (ria.ru)

“The mass extermination and deportation of the Armenian population of Western Armenia, Cilicia and other provinces of the Ottoman Empire was carried out by the ruling circles of Turkey in 1915-1923. The policy of genocide against the Armenians was determined by a number of factors. The leading importance among them was the ideology of Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism, which was professed by the ruling circles of the Ottoman Empire. The militant ideology of pan-Islamism was characterized by intolerance towards non-Muslims, preached outright chauvinism, and called for the Turkification of all non-Turkish peoples.

Entering the war, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire made far-reaching plans for the creation of “Great Turan”. It was meant to annex Transcaucasia and the North to the empire. Caucasus, Crimea, Volga region, Central Asia. On the way to this goal, the aggressors had to put an end to, first of all, the Armenian people, who opposed the aggressive plans of the Pan-Turkists. In September 1914, at a meeting chaired by the Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat, a special body was formed - the Executive Committee of Three, which was tasked with organizing the beating of the Armenian population; it included the leaders of the Young Turks Nazim, Behaetdin Shakir and Shukri. The executive committee of the three received broad powers, weapons, and money. » (genocide.ru)

The war became a convenient opportunity for the implementation of cruel plans; the purpose of the bloodshed was the complete extermination of the Armenian people, preventing the leaders of the Young Turks from realizing their selfish political goals. The Turks and other peoples living in Turkey were incited against the Armenians by all means, belittling and showing the latter in a dirty light. The date April 24, 1915 is called the beginning of the Armenian genocide, but persecution and murder began long before it. Then, at the end of April, the first most powerful, crushing blow was suffered by the intelligentsia and elite of Istanbul, which were deported: the arrest of 235 noble Armenians, their exile, then the arrest of another 600 Armenians and several thousand more people, many of whom were killed near the city.

From then on, “purges” of Armenians were continuously carried out: the deportations were not aimed at the resettlement (exile) of the people to the deserts of Mesopatamia and Syria, but their complete extermination. people were often attacked by robbers along the route of a caravan of prisoners, and were killed in the thousands after arriving at their destinations. In addition, the “perpetrators” used torture, during which either all or most of the deported Armenians died. Caravans took the longest route, people were exhausted by thirst, hunger, and unsanitary conditions.

About the deportation of Armenians:

« The deportation was carried out according to three principles: 1) the “ten percent principle”, according to which Armenians should not exceed 10% of the Muslims in the region, 2) the number of houses of the deportees should not exceed fifty, 3) the deportees were forbidden to change their destinations. Armenians were prohibited from opening their own schools, and Armenian villages had to be at least a five-hour drive from each other. Despite the demand to deport all Armenians without exception, a significant part of the Armenian population of Istanbul and Edirne was not deported for fear that foreign citizens would witness this process" (Wikipedia)

That is, they wanted to neutralize those who still survived. Why did the Armenian people of Turkey and Germany (which supported the former) so “annoy”? In addition to political motives and the thirst for conquest of new lands, the enemies of the Armenians also had ideological considerations, according to which the Christian Armenians (a strong, united people) prevented the spread of pan-Islamism for the successful solution of their plans. Christians were incited against Muslims, Muslims were manipulated based on political goals, and behind the slogans of the need for unification, the use of the Turks in the destruction of the Armenians was hidden.

NTV documentary film “Genocide. Start"

In addition to information about the tragedy, the film shows one amazing point: there are quite a lot of living grandmothers who are witnesses to the events of 100 years ago.

Testimonies from victims:

“Our group was driven along the stage on June 14 under an escort of 15 gendarmes. There were about 400-500 of us. Already a two-hour walk from the city, numerous gangs of villagers and bandits armed with hunting rifles, rifles and axes began to attack us. They took everything we had. Over the course of seven or eight days, they killed all the men and boys over 15 years old, one by one. Two blows with a rifle butt and the man is dead. The bandits grabbed all the attractive women and girls. Many were taken to the mountains on horseback. This is how my sister was kidnapped and torn away from her one-year-old child. We were not allowed to spend the night in the villages, but were forced to sleep on the bare ground. I saw people eating grass to relieve hunger. And what the gendarmes, bandits and local residents did under the cover of darkness is completely beyond description” (from the memoirs of an Armenian widow from the town of Bayburt in north-eastern Anatolia)

“They ordered the men and boys to come forward. Some little boys were dressed as girls and hid in the crowd of women. But my father had to come out. He was a grown man with ycami. As soon as they separated all the men, a group of armed men appeared from behind the hill and killed them before our eyes. They bayoneted them in the stomach. Many women could not stand it and threw themselves off the cliff into the river" (from the story of a survivor from the city of Konya, Central Anatolia)

“Those who lagged behind were immediately shot. They drove us through deserted areas, through deserts, along mountain paths, bypassing cities, so that we had nowhere to get water and food. At night we were wet with dew, and during the day we were exhausted under the scorching sun. I only remember that we walked and walked all the time” (from the memories of a survivor)

The Armenians stoically, heroically and desperately fought off the brutal Turks, inspired by the slogans of the instigators of the riots and bloodshed to kill as many as possible of those who were presented as enemies. The largest battles and confrontations were the defense of the city of Van (April-June 1915), the Musa Dag mountains (53-day defense in the summer-early autumn of 1915).

In the bloody massacre of the Armenians, the Turks did not spare either children or pregnant women; they mocked people in incredibly cruel ways, girls were raped, taken as concubines and tortured, crowds of Armenians were collected on barges, ferries under the pretext of resettlement and drowned in the sea, gathered by villages and burned alive, children were stabbed to death and also thrown into the sea, medical experiments were carried out on young and old in specially created camps. People were drying out alive from hunger and thirst. All the horrors that befell the Armenian people then cannot be described in dry letters and numbers; this is a tragedy that they remember in emotional colors already in the younger generation to this day.

From witness reports: “About 30 villages were cut out in the Alexandropol district and the Akhalkalaki region; some of those who managed to escape are in the most dire situation.” Other messages described the situation in the villages of Alexandropol district: “All the villages have been robbed, there is no shelter, no grain, no clothing, no fuel. The streets of the villages are filled with corpses. All this is complemented by hunger and cold, which claim one victim after another... In addition, askers and hooligans mock their prisoners and try to punish the people with even more brutal means, rejoicing and taking pleasure in it. They subject parents to various tortures, force them to hand over their 8-9 year old girls into the hands of executioners...” (genocide.ru)

« Biological justification was used as one of the justifications for the extermination of the Ottoman Armenians. Armenians were called “dangerous germs” and were given a lower biological status than Muslims . The main propagandist of this policy was Dr. Mehmet Reshid, the governor of Diyarbakir, who was the first to order the nailing of horseshoes to the feet of the deportees. Reshid also practiced the crucifixion of Armenians, imitating the crucifixion of Christ. The official Turkish encyclopedia of 1978 characterizes Reşid as a “wonderful patriot.” (Wikipedia)

Children and pregnant women were forcibly given poison, those who disagreed were drowned, lethal doses of morphine were administered, children were killed in steam baths, and many perverted and cruel experiments were performed on people. Those who survived in conditions of hunger, cold, thirst, and unsanitary conditions often died from typhoid fever.

One of the Turkish doctors, Hamdi Suat, who conducted experiments on Armenian soldiers in order to obtain a vaccine against typhoid fever (they were injected with blood contaminated with typhus), is revered in modern Turkey as a national hero, the founder of bacteriology, and a house-museum is dedicated to him in Istanbul.

In general, in Turkey it is forbidden to refer to the events of that time as the genocide of the Armenian people; history textbooks talk about the forced defense of the Turks and the killings of Armenians as a measure of self-defense; those who are victims for many other countries are presented as aggressors.

The Turkish authorities are in every possible way agitating their compatriots to strengthen the position that the Armenian genocide never happened; campaigns and PR campaigns are being carried out to maintain the status of an “innocent” country; monuments of Armenian culture and architecture existing in Turkey are being destroyed.

War changes people beyond recognition... What a person can do under the influence of authorities, how easily he kills, and not just kills, but brutally - it’s hard to imagine when in cheerful pictures we see the sun, the sea, the beaches of Turkey or remember our own travel experiences. What about Turkey... in general - war changes people, a crowd inspired by the ideas of victory, the seizure of power - sweeps away everything in its path, and if in ordinary, peaceful life committing murder is savagery for many, then in war - many become monsters and not notice this.

Under the noise and increasing cruelty, rivers of blood are a familiar sight; there are so many examples of how people, during every revolution, skirmish, and military conflict, could not control themselves and destroyed and killed everything and everyone around them.

The common features of all genocides carried out in world history are similar in that people (victims) were devalued to the level of insects or soulless objects, while the provocateurs by all means caused the perpetrators and those who were beneficial for carrying out the extermination of the people not just a lack of pity for the potential the object of murder, and also hatred, animal rage. They were convinced that the victims were to blame for many troubles, that the triumph of retribution was necessary, combined with unbridled animal aggression - this meant an uncontrollable wave of outrages, savagery, and ferocity.

In addition to the extermination of Armenians, the Turks also carried out the destruction of the cultural heritage of the people:

“In 1915-23 and subsequent years, thousands of Armenian manuscripts stored in Armenian monasteries were destroyed, hundreds of historical and architectural monuments were destroyed, and the shrines of the people were desecrated. The destruction of historical and architectural monuments in Turkey and the appropriation of many cultural values ​​of the Armenian people continue to this day. The tragedy experienced by the Armenian people affected all aspects of the life and social behavior of the Armenian people and firmly settled in their historical memory. The impact of the genocide was experienced both by the generation that became its direct victim and by subsequent generations" (genocid.ru)

Among the Turks there were caring people, officials who could shelter Armenian children, or rebelled against the extermination of Armenians - but basically any help to victims of the genocide was condemned and punished, and therefore was carefully hidden.

After the defeat of Turkey in the First World War, a military tribunal in 1919 (despite this - genocide, according to versions of some historians and eyewitness accounts - lasted until 1923) sentenced the representatives of the committee of three to death in absentia, the sentence was later carried out for all three, including including through lynching. But if the perpetrators were executed, then those who gave the orders remained free.

April 24 is the European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Armenian Genocide. One of the most monstrous genocides in world history in terms of the number of victims and the degree of study, like the Holocaust, it experienced attempts at denial on the part of the country that was primarily responsible for the massacres. The number of killed Armenians, according to official data alone, is about 1.5 million.

In 1915, there were 2 million Armenians living in the weakened Ottoman Empire. But under the cover of World War I, the Turkish government systematically exterminated 1.5 million people in an attempt to unite the entire Turkish people, creating a new empire with one language and one religion.

The ethnic cleansing of Armenians and other minorities, including Assyrians, Pontic and Anatolian Greeks, is today known as the Armenian Genocide.

Despite pressure from Armenians and activists around the world, Turkey still refuses to recognize the genocide, saying there was no deliberate killing of Armenians.

History of the region

Armenians have lived in the southern Caucasus since the 7th century BC and competed for control over other groups such as the Mongol, Russian, Turkish and Persian empires. In the 4th century, the reigning king of Armenia became a Christian. He claimed that the official religion of the empire was Christianity, although in the 7th century AD all the countries surrounding Armenia were Muslim. Armenians continued to practice as Christians despite being conquered many times and forced to live under harsh rule.

The roots of the genocide lie in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. At the turn of the 20th century, the once widespread Ottoman Empire was crumbling at the edges. The Ottoman Empire lost all of its territory in Europe during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, creating instability among nationalist ethnic groups.

First massacre

At the turn of the century, tensions grew between the Armenians and the Turkish authorities. Sultan Abdel Hamid II, known as the "Bloody Sultan", told a reporter in 1890: "I will give them a box on their ear that will make them give up their revolutionary ambitions."

In 1894, the "box on the ear" massacre became the first of the Armenian massacres. Ottoman soldiers and civilians attacked Armenian villages in Eastern Anatolia, killing 8,000 Armenians, including children. A year later, 2,500 Armenian women were burned in the Urfa Cathedral. Around the same time, a group of 5,000 people were killed after demonstrations asking for international intervention to prevent massacres in Constantinople. Historians estimate that by 1896, more than 80,000 Armenians had died.

Rise of the Young Turks

In 1909, the Ottoman Sultan was overthrown by a new political group, the Young Turks, a group seeking a modern, Westernized style of government. At first, Armenians hoped that they would have a place in the new state, but they soon realized that the new government was xenophobic and exclusionary of the multi-ethnic Turkish society. To consolidate Turkish rule in the remaining territories of the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks developed a secret program to exterminate the Armenian population.

First World War

In 1914, the Turks entered World War I on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The outbreak of war will provide an excellent opportunity to resolve the “Armenian question” once and for all.

How the Armenian genocide began in 1915

Military leaders accused the Armenians of supporting the Allies on the assumption that the people were naturally sympathetic to Christian Russia. Consequently, the Turks disarmed the entire Armenian population. Turkish suspicion of the Armenian people led the government to insist on the "removal" of Armenians from war zones along the Eastern Front.

Transmitted in coded telegrams, the mandate to exterminate the Armenians came directly from the Young Turks. On the evening of April 24, 1915, armed attacks began as 300 Armenian intellectuals—political leaders, educators, writers, and religious leaders in Constantinople—were forcibly removed from their homes, tortured, then hanged or shot.

The death march killed approximately 1.5 million Armenians, covering hundreds of miles and lasting several months. Indirect routes through desert areas were specifically chosen to prolong marches and keep caravans in Turkish villages.

After the disappearance of the Armenian population, the Muslim Turks quickly took over whatever was left. The Turks destroyed the remains of the Armenian cultural heritage, including masterpieces of ancient architecture, old libraries and archives. The Turks leveled entire cities, including the once prosperous Kharpert, Van and the ancient capital at Ani, to remove all traces of three thousand years of civilization.

No allied power came to the aid of the Armenian Republic, and it collapsed. The only tiny part of historical Armenia that survived was the easternmost region, because it became part of the Soviet Union. The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota compiled data by province and area, showing that in 1914 there were 2,133,190 Armenians in the empire, but by 1922 there were only about 387,800.

A Failed Call to Arms in the West

At the time, international whistleblowers and national diplomats recognized the atrocities committed as crimes against humanity.

Leslie Davis, the US consul in Harput, noted: "These women and children were driven out of the desert in midsummer, robbed and plundered of what they had... after which all who were not killed were meanwhile killed near the city."

The Swedish ambassador to Peru, Gustaf August Kossva Ankarsvard, wrote in 1915: “The persecution of the Armenians has reached dragging proportions, and everything indicates that the young Turks want to take advantage of this opportunity ... [to put an end to the Armenian question. The means for this are quite simple and consist in the destruction of the Armenian people."

Even Henry Morgenthau, the US Ambassador to Armenia, noted: “When the Turkish authorities ordered these deportations, they were simply giving a death sentence to an entire race.”

The New York Times also covered the issue extensively—145 articles in 1915—with the headlines “Appeal to Turkey to Stop the Massacre.” The newspaper described the actions against the Armenians as "systematic, 'sanctioned' and 'organized by the government.'

The Allied Powers (Britain, France and Russia) responded to news of the massacres by issuing a warning to Turkey: "The Allied Governments announce publicly that they will hold all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as their agents like them, personally responsible for such matters." The warning had no effect.

Because Ottoman law prohibited photography of Armenian deportees, photographic documentation documenting the severity of ethnic cleansing is rare. In an act of defiance, German military mission officers documented the atrocities occurring in the concentration camps. Although many of the photographs were intercepted by Ottoman intelligence, lost in Germany during World War II or forgotten in dusty boxes, the Armenian Genocide Museum of America has captured some of these photographs in online export.

Recognition of the Armenian Genocide

Today, Armenians commemorate those who died during the genocide on April 24, the day in 1915 when several hundred Armenian intellectuals and professionals were arrested and executed as the beginning of the genocide.

In 1985, the United States named the day "National Day of Remembrance of Human Inhumanity to Man" in honor of all victims of genocide, especially the one and a half million people of Armenian descent who were victims of the genocide committed in Turkey."

Today, recognition of the Armenian Genocide is a hot issue as Turkey criticizes scholars for punishing deaths and blaming Turks for deaths that the government says were due to famine and the brutality of war. In fact, speaking of the Armenian genocide in Turkey, it is punishable by law. As of 2014, 21 countries in total have publicly or legally recognized this ethnic cleansing in Armenia as genocide.

In 2014, on the eve of the 99th anniversary of the genocide, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed condolences to the Armenian people and said: “The incidents of the First World War are our common pain.”

However, many believe the proposals are useless until Turkey recognizes the loss of 1.5 million people as genocide. In response to Erdogan’s proposal, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said: “The refusal to commit a crime is a direct continuation of this very crime. Only recognition and conviction can prevent such crimes from happening again in the future.”

Ultimately, recognition of this genocide is not only important for the elimination of the affected ethnic groups, but also for the development of Turkey as a democratic state. If the past is denied, genocide still occurs. In 2010, a Swedish Parliament Resolution stated that "genocide denial is widely accepted as the final stage of genocide, perpetuating impunity for genocide perpetrators and apparently paving the way for future genocides."

Countries that do not recognize the Armenian genocide

Countries that recognize the Armenian genocide are those that officially accept the systematic mass murder and forced deportation of Armenians carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923.

Although historical and academic institutions of Holocaust and genocide studies accept the Armenian Genocide, many countries refuse to do so in order to maintain their political relations with the Republic of Turkey. Azerbaijan and Turkey are the only countries that refuse to recognize the Armenian Genocide and threaten economic and diplomatic consequences for those who do so.

The Armenian Genocide Memorial Complex was built in 1967 on Tsitsernakaberd Hill in Yerevan. The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, opened in 1995, presents facts about the horror of massacres.

Turkey has been urged to recognize the Armenian Genocide several times, but the sad fact is that the government denies the word “genocide” as an accurate term for massacres.

Facts about countries recognizing the Armenian Genocide, memorial and criminalization of denial

On May 25, 1915, the Entente authorities issued a statement stating that employees of the Ottoman government who participated in the Armenian Genocide would be personally responsible for crimes against humanity. Parliaments of several countries began to recognize this event as genocide from the second half of the 20th century.

The left-leaning and green Turkish political party, the Green Left Party, is the only one that recognizes the Armenian Genocide in the country.

Uruguay became the first country to recognize in 1965, and then in 2004.

Cyprus was the country that recognized the Armenian genocide: first in 1975, 1982 and 1990. Moreover, she became the first to raise this issue at the UN General Assembly. Denial of the Armenian Genocide is also criminalized in Cyprus.

France also criminalized denial of the Armenian Genocide in 2016, having recognized it in 1998 and 2001. Following the passage of the bill, which was criminalized on October 14, 2016, it was adopted by the French National Assembly in July 2017. It carries a penalty of a year in prison or a fine of 45,000 euros.

Greece recognized the event as genocide in 1996 and, according to the 2014 act, failure to punish is punishable by up to three years' imprisonment and a fine not to exceed 30,000 euros.

Countries that recognize the Armenian Genocide: Switzerland and memorial laws

Switzerland recognized the Armenian Genocide in 2003, making denial a crime. Doğu Perinçek, a Turkish politician, lawyer and chairman of the left-wing nationalist Patriotic Party, became the first person to be criminally charged with denouncing the Armenian Genocide. The decision was made by a Swiss court in 2007.

Perinze's case was a result of him describing the Armenian Genocide as an international lie in Lausanne in 2005. His case was appealed to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. His decision was in his favor on freedom of speech grounds. According to the court: "Mr Perinček made a speech of a historical, legal and political nature in a controversial debate."

Although he was sentenced to life in prison in August 2013, he was eventually released in 2014. After his release, he joined the Justice and Development Party and Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Facts about countries recognizing the Armenian Genocide and memorial

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg announced recognition of the Armenian Genocide in 2015 after the Chamber of Deputies unanimously adopted a resolution.

Brazil's decision to recognize the massacres was approved by the Federal Senate.

As for Bolivia, the resolution recognizing genocide was unanimously approved by the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Bulgaria became another country to recognize the Armenian Genocide in 2015, but criticism followed. On April 24, 2015, the phrase “mass extermination of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire” was used in Bulgaria. They were criticized for not using the term "genocide". Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov stated that the phrase or idiom is the Bulgarian word for "genocide".

Germany has announced its recognition twice: in 2005 and 2016. The resolution was first adopted in 2016. That same year in July, the German Bundestag gave her only one vote against the event called "genocide".

10 facts about the Armenian genocide in 1915

Today, the Turkish government still denies that the massacre of approximately 1.5 million Armenians constituted a “genocide.” This is despite the fact that numerous scholarly articles and proclamations from respected historians have testified that the events leading up to the massacres, as well as the manner in which the Armenians were killed, irrevocably make this moment in history one of the first Holocausts.

1. According to history, the Turkish people deny the genocide, saying: "The Armenians were an enemy force... and their massacre was a necessary military measure."

The "war" being referred to is World War I, and the events leading up to the Armenian genocide - which were at the forefront of the history of the Holocaust - which preceded World War I by over 20 years.

One prominent Turkish politician, Doğu Perinçek, came under fire for his denial of the Armenian Genocide while visiting Switzerland in 2008. According to The Telegraph, a Swiss court fined Perzcek after he called the genocide an “international lie.” He appealed the charge in 2013 and the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Swiss court's charges "violated the right to freedom of expression."

Amal Clooney (yes, the new Ms. George Clooney) has now joined the legal team that will represent Armenia in challenging this appeal. According to The Telegraph, Clooney will be joined by her head of chambers, Geoffrey Robertson QC, who is also the author of the October 2014 book An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Remembers the Armenians Now?

Publishers Random House said the book "... leaves no doubt that the terrible events of 1915 amounted to the crime against humanity now known as genocide."

The irony in Perinek's outrage at the charges brought against him is obvious; Perynek is a supporter of Turkey's current laws, which condemn citizens for talking about the Armenian Genocide.

1. Discussion of the Armenian genocide is illegal in Turkey

In Turkey, discussing the Armenian genocide is a crime punishable by imprisonment. In 2010, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan effectively threatened to deport 100,000 Armenians in response to the Armenian Genocide Commemoration Bill introduced in the House of Commons.

Foreign affairs correspondent, Damien McElroy, details the events in the article. Erdogan made this statement, later called "blackmail" by Armenian MP Hrayr Karapetyan, after the bill was released:

“Currently, 170,000 Armenians live in our country. Only 70,000 of them are Turkish citizens, but we tolerate the remaining 100,000... If necessary, I may have to tell these 100,000 to return to their country because they are not my citizens. I don't need to keep them in my country.

“This statement once again proves that in today’s Turkey there is a threat of the Armenian genocide, so the world community should put pressure on Ankara to recognize the genocide,” Karapetyan responded to Erdogan’s subtle threats.

1. America had an interest in marking events as genocide

Although the American government and media called the killing of 1.5 million Armenians "atrocities" or "mass murders," the word "genocide" rarely made its way to the American people to describe the events that occurred from 1915 to 1923. That the words “Armenian Genocide” appeared in the New York Times. Peter Balakian, a professor of humanities at Colgate University, and Samantha Power, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, drafted a letter to the editor of the Times that was subsequently published.

In the letter, Balakian and Seal chastise the Times and other media outlets for failing to label the atrocities that occurred in 1915 as genocide.

“The extermination of the Armenians is recognized as genocide by the consensus of genocide and Holocaust scholars around the world. Failure to recognize this trivializes a human rights crime of enormous magnitude,” one portion of the letter reads. "This is ironic because in 1915, the New York Times published 145 articles on the Armenian genocide and regularly used the words 'systematic,' 'government planning,' and 'extermination.'

Currently, US recognition of the events of 1915 as genocide of America is being considered by the US House of Representatives. The proposed resolution is briefly summarized as the “Armenian Genocide Resolution,” but its official title is “H. Res 106 or the U.S. Reaffirmation of the Armenian Genocide Resolution."

1. The role of religion in the Armenian genocide

The religious origins of the Armenian Genocide date back to the 15th century, when the government of Armenia was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. The leaders of the Ottoman Empire were mostly Muslim. Christian Armenians were considered minorities by the Ottoman Empire, and although they were "allowed to maintain some autonomy", they were largely treated as second-class citizens; i.e., Armenians were denied the right to vote, paid higher taxes than Muslims, and were denied many other legal and economic rights. Insults and biases were prevalent among the leaders of the Ottoman Empire, as Armenians were treated unfairly by violence against Christian minorities.

In the early 1900s, the Ottoman Empire was dismantled and taken over by the Young Turks. The Young Turks were initially formed as leaders who would guide the country and its citizens to a more democratic and constitutionally sound place. The Armenians were initially delighted at this prospect, but later learned that the modernization of the Young Turks would involve extermination as a means of "Turkicizing" the new state.

The rule of the Young Turks would be the catalyst for what is now known as one of the world's first genocides.

The role of religion in this genocide was visible as Christianity was constantly seen as a justification for the holocaust perpetrated by the militant followers of the Young Turks. Likewise, the extermination of Jewish citizens was considered a justification for Nazi Germany during World War II.

1. Slap from the Sultan

According to history, Turkish dictator Sultan Abdul Hamid II made this ominous threat to a reporter in 1890:

“I will soon settle these Armenians,” he said. "I will give them a slap in the face that will force them... to give up their revolutionary ambitions."

Before the Armenian Genocide in 1915, these threats were realized during the massacres of thousands of Armenians between 1894 and 1896. According to the United Council for Human Rights, Christian Armenian calls for reform led to "...more than 100,000 Armenian villagers killed during widespread pogroms carried out by the Sultan's special regiments."

The ruler of the Ottoman Empire was overthrown by a group called the Young Turks. The Armenians hoped that this new regime would lead to a fair and just society for their people. Unfortunately, the group became the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide during the First World War.

1. Young Turks

In 1908, a group of "reformers" calling themselves the "Young Turks" overthrew Sultan Hamid and gained leadership of Turkey. Initially, the goal of the Young Turks seemed to be one that would lead the country towards equality and justice, and the Armenians hoped for peace among their people in light of the changes.

However, it quickly became obvious that the goal of the Young Turks was to “lure” the country and eliminate the Armenians. The Young Turks were the catalysts for the Armenian Genocide that occurred during World War I and were responsible for the murder of nearly two million Armenians.

Many people wonder why the crimes of the Young Turks are not seen as the crimes of the Nazi Party during the Holocaust.

Scholars and historians note that the reason for this may be the lack of accountability for the crimes of the Turks. After the Ottoman Empire surrendered in 1918, Young Turk leaders fled to Germany, where they were promised freedom from any persecution for their atrocities.

Since then, the Turkish government, along with several of Turkey's allies, have denied that the genocide ever took place. In 1922, the Armenian Genocide came to an end, leaving only 388,000 Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

1. Causes and consequences of the Armenian genocide in 1915?

The term "genocide" refers to the systematic mass murder of a specific group of people. The name "genocide" was not coined until 1944, when Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin used the term during trials to describe crimes committed by top Nazi leaders. Lemon created the word by combining the Greek word for "group" or "tribe" (geno-) and the Latin word for "kill" (cide).

In a 1949 CBS interview, Lemkin stated that his inspiration for the term came from the fact that the systematic killing of specific groups of people "has happened so many times in the past" as with the Armenians.

1. Similarities between Genocide and Holocaust

There are several pieces of evidence suggesting that the Armenian Genocide was the inspiration for Adolf Hitler before he led the Nazi Party in an attempt to exterminate the entire nation. This point has been the subject of much heated debate, especially regarding Hitler's alleged quote regarding the Armenians.

Many genocide scholars have stated that a week before the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Hitler asked, “Who today talks about exterminating the Armenians?”

According to an article published in the Midwestern Quarterly in mid-April 2013 by Hannibal Travis, it is indeed possible that, as many claim, the Hitler quote was not actually or in some way embellished by historians. Unsparingly, Travis notes that several parallels between the Genocide and the Holocaust are clear.

Both used the concept of ethnic "cleansing" or "cleansing". According to Travis, "while the Young Turks implemented a 'clean sweep of internal enemies—the native Christians,' according to the then German ambassador in Constantinople...Hitler himself used 'purification' or 'purification' as a euphemism for extermination."

Travis also notes that even if Hitler's infamous quote about the Armenians had never occurred, the inspiration he and the Nazi Party received from various aspects of the Armenian Genocide is undeniable.

1. What happened during the Armenian Genocide?

The Armenian genocide officially began on April 24, 1915. During this time, the Young Turks recruited a deadly organization of individuals who were sent to persecute the Armenians. This group included murderers and former prisoners. According to the story, one of the officers gave instructions to call the atrocities that were about to happen “... the liquidation of Christian elements.”

The genocide played out like this:

Armenians were forcibly removed from their homes and sent on “death marches,” which involved trekking through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. Marchers were often stripped naked and forced to walk until they died. Those who stopped for a reprieve or respite were shot

The only Armenians who were rescued were subject to conversion and/or mistreatment. Some children of genocide victims were kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam; these children were to be raised in the home of a Turkish family. Some Armenian women were raped and forced to serve as slaves in Turkish "harems".

1. Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide

On the 100th anniversary of the brutal Holocaust that took place in 1915, there were international efforts to commemorate the victims and their families. The first official event to mark the 100th anniversary took place at Florida Atlantic University in south Florida. ARMENPRESS states that the company's mission is to “preserve Armenian culture and promote its dissemination.”

On the West Coast, Los Angeles councilor Paul Kerkorian will accept entries for an art competition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. according to a statement from West Side Today, Kerkorian said the competition "...is a way to honor the history of genocide and highlight the promise of our future." He continued: "I hope that artists and students who care about human rights will participate and help honor the memory of the Armenian people."

Overseas, the Armenian National Committee (ANC) of Australia has officially launched its OnThisDay campaign, which will focus on honoring those affected by the Armenian Genocide. According to Asbares, ANC Australia has compiled an extensive catalog of these newspaper clippings from Australian archives, including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Argus and other prominent publications of the day, and will be releasing them daily on Facebook .

ANC Australia chief executive Vache Kahramanian noted that the information released will include a variety of articles detailing the "horrors" of the Armenian Genocide, as well as reports on Australia's humanitarian efforts during this time.

Situation today

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan "... extended invitations to the leaders of the 102 states whose soldiers fought in the First World War, inviting them to take part in the anniversary event, which is scheduled to take place on April 23-24," while Armenians will gather to commemorate the 100th anniversary. anniversary of the genocide experienced in the Ottoman Empire. The invitation was met with resentment from Armenian citizens, who considered it “unconscionable,” a “joke,” and a “political maneuver” on Erdogan’s part.

Dönme - crypto-Jewish sect brought Atatürk to power

One of the most destructive factors that largely determines the political situation in the Middle East and Transcaucasia for 100 years is the genocide of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire, during which, according to various sources, from 664 thousand to 1.5 million people were killed. And given that the genocide of the Pontic Greeks, which began in Izmir, during which from 350 thousand to 1.2 million people were killed, and the Assyrians, in which the Kurds took part, which killed from 275 to 750 thousand people, took place almost simultaneously, this factor is already For more than 100 years, it has kept the entire region in suspense, constantly fueling hostility between the peoples inhabiting it. Moreover, as soon as there is even a slight rapprochement between neighbors, giving hope for their reconciliation and further peaceful coexistence, an external factor, a third party, immediately intervenes in the situation, and a bloody event occurs, further fueling mutual hatred.

“There was no “genocide” against Armenians in the history of Turkey” , Erdogan said.

No one will dare to suspect the Turkish President of inadequacy. Erdogan, the leader of a great Islamic country, heir to one of the greatest empires, by definition cannot be like, say, the president of Ukraine. And the president of any country will not risk committing an outright and open lie. This means that Erdogan really knows something that is unknown to most people in other countries, or is carefully hidden from the world community. And such a factor really exists. It is not about the event of genocide itself, it is about who carried out this inhuman cruelty and is truly responsible for it.

***

In February 2018, on the Turkish e-government portal (www.turkiye.gov.tr ) an online service was launched where any Turkish citizen could trace his genealogy and learn about his ancestors in a few clicks. Available records were limited to the early 19th century, during the Ottoman Empire. The service almost instantly became so popular that it soon collapsed due to millions of requests. The results obtained shocked a huge number of Turks. It turns out that many people who considered themselves Turks actually have ancestors of Armenian, Jewish, Greek, Bulgarian and even Macedonian and Romanian origin. This fact, by default, only confirmed what everyone in Turkey knows, but no one likes to mention, especially in front of foreigners. It is considered bad form to talk about this out loud in Turkey, but it is this factor that now determines all domestic and foreign policy, Erdogan’s entire struggle for power within the country.

By the standards of its time, the Ottoman Empire pursued a relatively tolerant policy towards national and religious minorities, preferring, again by the standards of that time, non-violent methods of assimilation. To some extent, it repeated the methods of the Byzantine Empire it defeated. Armenians traditionally led the financial sphere of the empire. Most of the bankers in Constantinople were Armenians. Many finance ministers were Armenians; it is enough to recall the brilliant Hakob Kazazyan Pasha, who was considered the best finance minister in the entire history of the Ottoman Empire. Of course, throughout history there have been interethnic and interreligious conflicts, which even led to the shedding of blood. But nothing like the genocide of the Christian population in the 20th century happened in the Empire. And suddenly such a tragedy happens. Any sane person will understand that this does not happen out of the blue. So why and who carried out these bloody genocides? The answer to this question lies in the history of the Ottoman Empire itself.

***

As I wrote in the article"Island of the Antichrist: a springboard for Armageddon" , Dönmeh, or Sabbatians are the followers and disciples of the Jewish rabbi Shabbtai Zevi, who in 1665 was proclaimed the Jewish messiah and caused the greatest schism in Judaism in almost 2 millennia of its official existence. Avoiding execution by the Sultan, Shabbtai Zvi converted to Islam in 1666 along with his many followers. Despite this, many Sabbatians are still members of three religions - Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The Turkish Dönmeh were originally founded in Greek Thessaloniki by Jacob Kerido and his son Berachio (Baruch) Russo (Osman Baba). Subsequently, the Dönme spread throughout Turkey, where they were called, depending on the direction in Sabbateanism, Izmirlars, Karakaslars (black-browed) and Kapanjilars (owners of scales). The main place of concentration of the Dönme in the Asian part of the Empire was the city of Izmir. The Young Turk movement was largely composed of Dönmeh. Kemal Atatürk, the first president of Turkey, was a Dönmeh and a member of the Veritas Masonic Lodge, a branch of the Grand Orient of France.

Throughout their history, the Dönmeh repeatedly appealed to rabbis, representatives of traditional Judaism, with requests to recognize them as Jews, like the Karaites who deny the Talmud (oral Torah). However, they always received a refusal, which in most cases was of a political nature, and not religious. Kemalist Turkey has always been an ally of Israel, which did not find it politically advantageous to admit that this state was actually led by Jews. For the same reasons, Israel categorically refused and still refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide. Foreign Ministry spokesman Emanuel Nachshon recently said that Israel's official position has not changed.

“We are very sensitive and responsive to the terrible tragedy of the Armenian people during the First World War. Historical debate about how to evaluate this tragedy is one thing, but the recognition that something terrible happened to the Armenian people is completely different, and this is much more important.”

Initially, in Thessaloniki, Greece, then part of the Ottoman Empire, the Dönmeh community consisted of 200 families. In secret, they practiced their own form of Judaism, based on the "18 Commandments" supposedly left by Shabbtai Zevi, along with a ban on intermarriage with true Muslims. The Dönme never integrated into Muslim society and continued to believe that Shabbtai Zvi would one day return and lead them to redemption.

According to very underestimated estimates of the Dönme themselves, their number in Turkey now amounts to 15-20 thousand people. Alternative sources speak of millions of Dönme in Turkey. All officers and generals of the Turkish army, bankers, financiers, judges, journalists, police officers, lawyers, attorneys, preachers throughout the 20th century were Dönme. But this phenomenon began in 1891 with the creation of the Dönme political organization - the Committee of Unity and Progress, later called the “Young Turks”, responsible for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the genocide of the Christian peoples of Turkey.

***

The well-known “evil genius of the Russian revolution” Alexander Parvus was a financial adviser to the Young Turks, and the first Bolshevik government of Russia allocated Ataturk 10 million rubles in gold, 45 thousand rifles and 300 machine guns with ammunition. One of the main, sacred, reasons for the Armenian genocide was the fact that the Jews considered the Armenians to be Amalekites, descendants of Amalek, the grandson of Esau. Esau himself was the elder twin brother of the founder of Israel, Jacob, who, taking advantage of the blindness of their father, Isaac, stole the birthright from his elder brother. Throughout history, the Amalekites were the main enemies of Israel, with whom David fought during the reign of Saul, who was killed by an Amalekite.

The head of the Young Turks was Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), who was a Dönme and a direct descendant of the Jewish messiah Shabbtai Zevi. The Jewish writer and rabbi Joachim Prinz confirms this fact in his book “The secret Jews” on page 122:

“The Young Turk uprising in 1908 against the authoritarian regime of Sultan Abdul Hamid began among the intelligentsia of Thessaloniki. It was there that the need for a Constitutional regime arose. Leaders of the revolution that led to the creation of a more modern government in Turkey included Javaid Bey and Mustafa Kemal. Both were ardent denme. Javaid Bey became Minister of Finance, Mustafa Kemal became the leader of the new regime and took the name Ataturk. His opponents tried to use his Dönma affiliation to discredit him, but without success. Too many of the Young Turks in the newly formed revolutionary cabinet prayed to Allah, but their real prophet was Shabbtai Zvi, the Messiah of Smyrna (Izmir - author's note)."

October 14, 1922TheLiterary Digest published an article entitled "The Sort of Mustafa Kemal is" which stated:

“A Spanish Jew by birth, an Orthodox Muslim by birth, trained at a German war college, a patriot who had studied the campaigns of the world's great generals, including Napoleon, Grant and Lee—these are said to be but a few of the outstanding personality characteristics of the new "Man on Horseback" appeared in the Middle East. He is a real dictator, correspondents testify, a man of the type who immediately becomes the hope and fear of peoples torn to pieces by unsuccessful wars. Unity and power returned to Turkey largely thanks to the will of Mustafa Kemal Pasha. Apparently no one has yet called him the "Napoleon of the Middle East", but probably some enterprising journalist will sooner or later; For Kemal's rise to power, his methods are autocratic and carefully thought out, even his military tactics are said to be reminiscent of Napoleon."

In an article entitled “When Kemal Ataturk Recited Shema Yisrael,” Jewish author Hillel Halkin quoted Mustafa Kemal Ataturk:

“I am a descendant of Shabbtai Zevi - no longer a Jew, but an ardent admirer of this prophet. I think every Jew in this country would do well to join his camp.”

Gershom Scholem wrote in his book Kabbalah on pp. 330-331:

“Their liturgies were written in a very small format so that they could be easily hidden. All the sects hid their internal affairs so successfully from the Jews and Turks that for a long time knowledge about them was based only on rumors and reports from outsiders. The Dönmeh manuscripts revealing the details of their Sabbatian ideas were only presented and examined after several Dönmeh families decided to fully assimilate into Turkish society and gave their documents to Jewish friends of Salonika and Izmir. As long as the Dönme were concentrated in Thessaloniki, the institutional framework of the sects remained intact, although several Dönme members were active in the Young Turk movement that arose in that city. The first administration that came to power after the Young Turk revolution in 1909 included three Dönmeh ministers, including the Minister of Finance Javid Bek, who was a descendant of Baruch Rousseau's family and one of the leaders of his sect. One of the claims that was commonly made by many of Thessaloniki's Jews (denied, however, by the Turkish government) was that Kemal Atatürk was of Dönme origin. This view was eagerly supported by many of Atatürk’s religious opponents in Anatolia.”

The Inspector General of the Turkish Army in Armenia and the Military Governor of the Egyptian Sinai during World War I, Rafael de Nogales, wrote in his book “Four Years Beneath the Crescent” on pp. 26-27 that the main architect of the Armenian Genocide, Osman Talaat, was dönme:

“He was a Hebrew renegade (dönmeh) from Thessaloniki, Talaat, the chief organizer of massacres and deportations, who, fishing in troubled waters, succeeded in his career from postal clerk modest rank to Grand Vizier of the Empire."

In one of Marcel Tinaire's articles in L'Illustration in December 1923, which was translated into English and published as Saloniki, it is written:

“Today's Dönme, associated with Free Masonry, trained in Western universities, often professing total atheism, became the leaders of the Young Turk revolution. Talaat Bek, Javid Bek and many other members of the Unity and Progress Committee were Dönme from Thessaloniki.”

The London Times on July 11, 1911, in the article “Jews and the situation in Albania” wrote:

“It is well known that under Masonic auspices the Thessaloniki Committee was formed with the help of the Jews and Dönmeh, or crypto-Jews of Turkey, whose headquarters are in Thessaloniki, and whose organization even under Sultan Abdul Hamid took a Masonic form. Jews such as Emmanuel Carasso, Salem, Sassoun, Farji, Meslah and Dönmeh, or crypto-Jews such as Javaid Bek and the Balji family, took an influential part in both the organization of the Committee and the work of its central body in Thessaloniki. These facts, which are known to every government in Europe, are also known throughout Turkey and the Balkans, where the trend is increasingly noticeable hold the Jews and the Dönme responsible for the bloody failures committed by the Committee».

On August 9, 1911, the same newspaper published a letter to its Constantinople editorial office, which included comments on the situation from the chief rabbis. In particular it was written:

“I will simply note that, according to the information I have received from genuine Freemasons, most of the lodges founded under the auspices of the Grand Orient of Turkey since the Revolution were from the very beginning the face of the Committee of Union and Progress, and they were not then recognized by the British Freemasons . The first "Supreme Council" of Turkey, appointed in 1909, contained three Jews - Caronry, Cohen and Fari, and three Dönme - Djavidaso, Kibarasso and Osman Talaat (the main leader and organizer of the Armenian genocide - author's note)."

To be continued…

Alexander Nikishin For

Genocide(from Greek genos - clan, tribe and Latin caedo - I kill), an international crime expressed in actions committed with the aim of destroying, in whole or in part, any national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

Actions qualified by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 as acts of Genocide have been committed repeatedly in human history since ancient times, especially during wars of extermination and devastating invasions and campaigns of conquerors, internal ethnic and religious clashes, during the period of partition peace and the formation of the colonial empires of the European powers, in the process of a fierce struggle for the redistribution of the divided world, which led to two world wars and in the colonial wars after the Second World War of 1939 - 1945.

However, the term "genocide" was first introduced into use in the early 30s. XX century by a Polish lawyer, a Jew by origin, Rafael Lemkin, and after the Second World War received international legal status as a concept defining a grave crime against humanity. By Genocide, R Lemkin meant the massacre of Armenians in Turkey during the First World War (1914 - 1918), and then the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany in the period preceding the Second World War, and in the Nazi-occupied countries of Europe during the war.

The first genocide of the 20th century is considered to be the extermination of more than 1.5 million Armenians during 1915 - 1923. in Western Armenia and other parts of the Ottoman Empire, organized and systematically carried out by the Young Turk rulers.

The Armenian Genocide should also include the massacres of the Armenian population in Eastern Armenia and the Transcaucasus as a whole, committed by the Turks who invaded Transcaucasia in 1918, and by the Kemalists during the aggression against the Armenian Republic in September - December 1920, as well as the pogroms of Armenians organized by the Musavatists in Baku and Shushi in 1918 and 1920 respectively. Taking into account those who died as a result of the periodic pogroms of Armenians carried out by the Turkish authorities, starting from the end of the 19th century, the number of victims of the Armenian Genocide exceeds 2 million.

The Armenian Genocide 1915 - 1916 - mass extermination and deportation of the Armenian population of Western Armenia, Cilicia and other provinces of the Ottoman Empire, carried out by the ruling circles of Turkey during the First World War (1914 - 1918). The policy of genocide against the Armenians was determined by a number of factors.

The leading importance among them was the ideology of Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism, which from the middle of the 19th century. professed by the ruling circles of the Ottoman Empire. The militant ideology of pan-Islamism was characterized by intolerance towards non-Muslims, preached outright chauvinism, and called for the Turkification of all non-Turkish peoples. Entering the war, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire made far-reaching plans for the creation of “Great Turan”. These plans meant the annexation of Transcaucasia, the North Caucasus, Crimea, the Volga region, and Central Asia to the empire.

On the way to this goal, the aggressors had to put an end to, first of all, the Armenian people, who opposed the aggressive plans of the Pan-Turkists. The Young Turks began to develop plans for the destruction of the Armenian population even before the start of the World War. The decisions of the Union and Progress party congress, held in October 1911 in Thessaloniki, contained a demand for the Turkification of the non-Turkish peoples of the empire.

At the beginning of 1914, a special order was sent to local authorities regarding the measures that were to be taken against the Armenians. The fact that the order was sent out before the start of the war irrefutably indicates that the extermination of the Armenians was a planned action, not at all determined by a specific military situation. The leadership of the Unity and Progress party has repeatedly discussed the issue of mass deportation and massacre of the Armenian population.

In October 1914, at a meeting chaired by the Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat, a special body was formed - the Executive Committee of Three, which was tasked with organizing the extermination of the Armenian population; it included the leaders of the Young Turks Nazim, Behaetdin Shakir and Shukri. When plotting a monstrous crime, the leaders of the Young Turks took into account that the war provided an opportunity to carry it out. Nazim directly stated that such an opportunity may no longer exist, “the intervention of the great powers and the protest of the newspapers will not have any consequences, since they will be faced with a fait accompli, and thereby the issue will be resolved... Our actions must be directed to exterminate the Armenians so that not a single one of them remains alive."

By undertaking the destruction of the Armenian population, the ruling circles of Turkey intended to achieve several goals:

• the elimination of the Armenian Question, which would put an end to the intervention of European powers;
• the Turks would get rid of economic competition, all the property of the Armenian people would pass into their hands;
• the elimination of the Armenian people will help pave the way for the conquest of the Caucasus, for the achievement of the great ideal of Turanism.

The executive committee of the three received broad powers, weapons, and money. The authorities organized special detachments “Teshkilati and Makhsuse”, consisting mainly of criminals released from prisons and other criminal elements, who were supposed to take part in the mass extermination of Armenians.

From the very first days of the war, rabid anti-Armenian propaganda unfolded in Turkey. The Turkish people were told that Armenians did not want to serve in the Turkish army, that they were ready to cooperate with the enemy. Fabrications were spread about the mass desertion of Armenians from the Turkish army, about uprisings of Armenians that threatened the rear of the Turkish troops, etc. Anti-Armenian propaganda especially intensified after the first serious defeats of the Turkish troops on the Caucasian front. In February 1915, Minister of War Enver gave the order to exterminate the Armenians serving in the Turkish army (at the beginning of the war, about 60 thousand Armenians aged 18-45 years were drafted into the Turkish army, i.e. the most combat-ready part of the male population). This order was carried out with unprecedented cruelty.

On the night of April 24, 1915, representatives of the Constantinople police department burst into the homes of the most prominent Armenians in the capital and arrested them. Over the next few days, eight hundred people - writers, poets, journalists, politicians, doctors, lawyers, lawyers, scientists, teachers, priests, educators, artists - were sent to the central prison.

Two months later, on June 15, 1915, 20 Armenian intellectuals, members of the Hunchak party, were executed in one of the squares of the capital, who were charged with trumped-up charges of organizing terror against the authorities and seeking to create an autonomous Armenia.

The same thing happened in all vilayets (regions): within a few days, thousands of people were arrested, including all famous cultural figures, politicians, and intellectuals. The deportation to the desert regions of the Empire was planned in advance. And this was a deliberate deception: as soon as people moved away from their homes, they were mercilessly killed by those who were supposed to accompany them and ensure their safety. The Armenians who worked in government bodies were fired one after another; all military doctors were thrown into prison.
The great powers were completely drawn into the global confrontation, and they put their geopolitical interests above the fate of two million Armenians...

From May - June 1915, mass deportation and massacre of the Armenian population of Western Armenia (vilayets of Van, Erzurum, Bitlis, Kharberd, Sebastia, Diyarbekir), Cilicia, Western Anatolia and other areas began. The ongoing deportation of the Armenian population in fact pursued the goal of its destruction. The US Ambassador to Turkey, G. Morgenthau, noted: “The true purpose of the deportations was robbery and destruction; this is truly a new method of massacre. When the Turkish authorities ordered these expulsions, they were actually passing a death sentence on an entire nation.”

The real goals of the deportation were also known to Germany, Turkey's ally. In June 1915, the German Ambassador to Turkey Wangenheim reported to his government that if at first the expulsion of the Armenian population was limited to provinces close to the Caucasian front, now the Turkish authorities extended these actions to those parts of the country that were not under the threat of enemy invasion. These actions, the ambassador concluded, the ways in which the expulsion is carried out indicate that the Turkish government has as its goal the destruction of the Armenian nation in the Turkish state. The same assessment of the deportation was contained in messages from German consuls from the vilayets of Turkey. In July 1915, the German vice-consul in Samsun reported that the deportation carried out in the vilayets of Anatolia was aimed at either destroying or converting the entire Armenian people to Islam. The German consul in Trebizond at the same time reported on the deportation of Armenians in this vilayet and noted that the Young Turks intended to put an end to the Armenian Question in this way.

The Armenians who were removed from their places of permanent residence were brought into caravans that headed deep into the empire, to Mesopotamia and Syria, where special camps were created for them. Armenians were destroyed both in their places of residence and on the way to exile; their caravans were attacked by Turkish rabble, Kurdish bandits eager for prey. As a result, a small part of the deported Armenians reached their destinations. But even those who reached the deserts of Mesopotamia were not safe; There are known cases when deported Armenians were taken out of the camps and slaughtered by the thousands in the desert. The lack of basic sanitary conditions, hunger, and epidemics caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

The actions of the Turkish pogromists were characterized by unprecedented cruelty. The leaders of the Young Turks demanded this. Thus, the Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat, in a secret telegram sent to the governor of Aleppo, demanded an end to the existence of Armenians, not to pay any attention to age, gender, or remorse. This requirement was strictly fulfilled. Eyewitnesses of the events, Armenians who survived the horrors of deportation and genocide, left numerous descriptions of the incredible suffering that befell the Armenian population. A correspondent for the English newspaper The Times reported in September 1915: “From Sasun and Trebizond, from Ordu and Eintab, from Marash and Erzurum, the same reports of atrocities are coming in: of men mercilessly shot, crucified, mutilated or taken to labor battalions, about children kidnapped and forcibly converted to the Mohammedan faith, about women raped and sold into slavery deep behind the lines, shot on the spot or sent along with their children to the desert west of Mosul, where there is neither food nor water... Many of these unfortunate victims did not reach their destination..., and their corpses precisely indicated the path they followed."

In October 1916, the newspaper "Caucasian Word" published correspondence about the massacre of Armenians in the village of Baskan (Vardo Valley); the author cited an eyewitness account: “We saw how the unfortunates were first stripped of everything valuable; then they were stripped, and some were killed on the spot, while others were taken away from the road, into remote corners, and then finished off. We saw a group of three women , who embraced each other in mortal fear. And it was impossible to separate them, to separate them. All three were killed... The screams and screams were unimaginable, our hair stood on end, our blood froze in our veins..." Most of the Armenian population was also subjected to barbaric extermination. Cilicia.

The massacre of Armenians continued in subsequent years. Thousands of Armenians were exterminated, driven to the southern regions of the Ottoman Empire and kept in the camps of Rasul Aina, Deir Zora, and others. The Young Turks sought to carry out the genocide of Armenians in Eastern Armenia, where, in addition to the local population, large numbers of refugees from Western Armenia accumulated. Having committed aggression against Transcaucasia in 1918, Turkish troops carried out pogroms and massacres of Armenians in many areas of Eastern Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Having occupied Baku in September 1918, Turkish invaders, together with Azerbaijani nationalists, organized a terrible massacre of the local Armenian population, killing 30 thousand people.

As a result of the Armenian genocide, carried out by the Young Turks in 1915 - 1916, more than 1.5 million people died, about 600 thousand Armenians became refugees; they scattered throughout many countries of the world, replenishing existing ones and forming new Armenian communities. An Armenian diaspora (“Spyurk” - Armenian) was formed.

As a result of the genocide, Western Armenia lost its original population. The leaders of the Young Turks did not hide their satisfaction at the successful implementation of the planned atrocity: German diplomats in Turkey reported to their government that already in August 1915, the Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat cynically declared that “actions against the Armenians have been largely carried out and the Armenian Question no longer exists.”

The relative ease with which the Turkish pogromists managed to carry out the genocide of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire is partly explained by the unpreparedness of the Armenian population, as well as the Armenian political parties, for the impending threat of extermination. The actions of the pogromists were greatly facilitated by the mobilization of the most combat-ready part of the Armenian population - men - into the Turkish army, as well as the liquidation of the Armenian intelligentsia of Constantinople. A certain role was also played by the fact that in some public and clerical circles of Western Armenians they believed that disobedience to the Turkish authorities, who gave orders for deportation, could only lead to an increase in the number of victims.

The Armenian genocide carried out in Turkey caused enormous damage to the spiritual and material culture of the Armenian people. In 1915 - 1916 and subsequent years, thousands of Armenian manuscripts stored in Armenian monasteries were destroyed, hundreds of historical and architectural monuments were destroyed, and the shrines of the people were desecrated. The destruction of historical and architectural monuments in Turkey and the appropriation of many cultural values ​​of the Armenian people continue to this day. The tragedy experienced by the Armenian people affected all aspects of the life and social behavior of the Armenian people and firmly settled in their historical memory.

Progressive public opinion around the world condemned the heinous crime of the Turkish pogromists who tried to destroy the Armenian people. Social and political figures, scientists, cultural figures from many countries branded the genocide, qualifying it as a grave crime against humanity, and took part in providing humanitarian assistance to the Armenian people, in particular to refugees who have found refuge in many countries of the world.

After Turkey's defeat in the First World War, the leaders of the Young Turks were accused of dragging Turkey into a disastrous war and put on trial. Among the charges brought against war criminals was the charge of organizing and carrying out the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. However, the verdict against a number of Young Turk leaders was passed in absentia, because after Turkey's defeat they managed to flee the country. The death sentence against some of them (Talaat, Behaetdin Shakir, Jemal Pasha, Said Halim, etc.) was subsequently carried out by the Armenian people's avengers.

After the Second World War, genocide was qualified as the gravest crime against humanity. The legal documents on genocide were based on the basic principles developed by the international military tribunal in Nuremberg, which tried the main war criminals of Nazi Germany. Subsequently, the UN adopted a number of decisions regarding genocide, the main of which are the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) and the Convention on the Inapplicability of the Statute of Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, adopted in 1968.