When was the Armenian genocide. Turkish genocide of Armenians. How it was

On August 26, 1896, a group of heavily armed Armenians seized the Ottoman Bank building, took European staff hostage and, threatening to blow up the bank, demanded that the Turkish government carry out promised political reforms. However, in response, the Turkish authorities ordered attacks on the Armenians. Over the course of two days, with the apparent connivance of the authorities, the Turks massacred or beat to death more than 6,000 Armenians.

The exact number of victims of the massacre of 1894-1896 is impossible to calculate. Even before the end of the violent actions, the Lutheran missionary Johannes Lepsius, who was in Turkey at that time, using German and other sources, collected the following statistics: killed - 88,243 people, devastated - 546,000 people, plundered cities and villages - 2,493, villages converted to Islam - 456, churches and monasteries desecrated - 649, churches turned into mosques - 328. Estimating the total number of killed, Kinross gives the figure 50-100 thousand, Bloxham - 80-100 thousand, Hovhannisyan - about 100 thousand, Adalyan and Totten - from 100 to 300 thousand, Dadryan - 250-300 thousand, Syuni - 300 thousand people.

But the date April 24, 1915 occupies a special place in the history of the Armenian genocide. During World War I, Armenians fought on the side of the Turks. But when Turkish troops suffered a brutal defeat at Sarykamysh, they blamed the Armenians for everything.

The Armenians in the army were disarmed. At first, the authorities gathered healthy men in Turkish cities, declaring that the government, benevolent to them, based on military necessity, was preparing the resettlement of Armenians to new homes. Many law-abiding Armenians loyal to Turkey, having received calls from the police, came themselves.

The collected men were imprisoned and then taken out of the city into deserted areas and destroyed using firearms and bladed weapons. Then the elderly, women and children gathered and were also informed that they had to be resettled. They were driven in columns under the escort of gendarmes. Those who could not walk were killed; no exceptions were made even for pregnant women. The gendarmes chose the longest routes possible or forced people to go back along the same route, but drove people around until the majority died of thirst or hunger.

Muslims were warned of the death penalty for defending Armenians. Women and children from Ordu were loaded onto barges under the pretext of transporting them to Samsun, and then taken out to sea and thrown overboard.

During the 1919 tribunal, the chief of police of Trebizond testified that he had sent young Armenian women to Istanbul as a gift from the regional governor to Ittihat leaders. Armenian girls from the Red Crescent Hospital were abused, where the governor of Trebizond raped them and kept them as personal concubines.

The destruction of the Armenian population was accompanied by a campaign to destroy the Armenian cultural heritage. Armenian monuments and churches were blown up, cemeteries were plowed open into fields where corn and wheat were sown, Armenian quarters of cities were destroyed or occupied by the Turkish and Kurdish population and renamed

A telegram from US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau to the State Department (dated July 16, 1915) describes the extermination of the Armenians as a “campaign of racial extermination.”

Armenians near a fallen horse.

According to Johannes Lepsius, about 1 million Armenians were killed; in 1919, Lepsius revised his estimate to 1,100,000. According to him, only during the Ottoman invasion of Transcaucasia in 1918, from 50 to 100 thousand Armenians were killed. Ernst Sommer of the German Relief Union estimated the number of deportees at 1,400,000 and the number of survivors at 250,000.

If this is not genocide, then what is genocide?

The Armenian people did not bow their heads until the very end and fought for their views, their freedom and their independence. The resistance of the Armenians is evidenced by the battles that took place in Musa Dag, where the Armenians held the defense for more than fifty days; defense of the cities of Van and Mush. The Armenians held out in these cities until the Russian army appeared on the territory of the cities.

The Armenians took revenge even after the end of all hostilities. They created an operation to destroy the Ottoman rulers, who decided to exterminate the innocent people. So in 1921 and 1922, three pashas who decided on genocide were shot dead by Armenian soldiers and patriots.

It is not surprising that Germany recognized the Armenian genocide (despite Turkey’s hysteria). Russia also recognized him.

Putin at the memorial complex for those killed in the genocide.

For Armenians in Turkey, it was a difficult time. They were subjected to genocide, this is recognized throughout the world, except for Turkey itself, of course. Reasons: The Ottomans were never particularly friendly. In 1915, the rights of Armenians and the indigenous inhabitants of the empire were not equal. There was a division not just by nationality but also by faith and confession. Armenians are Christians, so they went to church. And the Turks, at that time they were all Sunnis. Armenians were not Muslims, therefore they were subject to high taxes, could not have means of defense, and could not act as witnesses in courts. These people, at that moment, lived rather poorly, worked on the land, I emphasize that on their own. But the Turks did not like Armenians, they considered them calculating and cunning. If you look at the Caucasian places in the Ottoman Empire, the situation there was more sad. The Muslims who lived in those territories often came into conflict with the Armenians. In general, hatred grew.

First World War.

In 1908 there was a revolution. The Young Turks came to power, the basis of the new government was nationalism and pan-Turkism, in short, nothing positive was offered for other nationalities living on these lands. And then in 1914, raids on Armenians began when the Turks entered the First World War by signing a treaty with Germany. The Germans promised that they would help Turkey get out to the Caucasus. The problem was that at that time there were many Armenians living in the lands of the Caucasus. On Turkish territory itself, non-Muslims began to be harassed, property could be taken away, and jihad was declared. As you know, this is a war against infidels, and every infidel is not a Muslim. The beginning. Of course, during the outbreak of hostilities in the First World War, Armenian people were also called up to fight. The bulk of the Armenians fought against Persia and Russia. But Türkiye suffered defeats on all fronts, and the Armenians became to blame. They began to deprive all people of this nationality of weapons, confiscations took place, and then the killings began. Those military men of Armenian nationality who did not comply with the new orders were shot. Distorted news spread information that these people are traitors, they are spies, the public learned such news from the media.

April 24, 1915. Today, this day is a day of remembrance, a day that is associated with the genocide of an entire people. The entire Armenian elite was arrested in Istanbuli, and then they were deported. Even before the events in the capital, residents of other settlements were subjected to this procedure. But then, such shipments were covered up by the desire to resettle people to other areas that were not affected by the war. But, in fact, people were sent to deserts, where there was not even water, no food, no living conditions. This was done on purpose, and old people, women and children were sent there. The men were taken under arrest so as not to interfere. In May, Anatolia was persecuted. And on April 12, in a city called Van, the Armenian uprising began. People realized that starvation and painful death awaited them, and they took up arms to defend themselves. They fought for a month, Russian troops came to the rescue and stopped the bloodshed. Then, about 55 thousand people died, and these were only Armenians. During the expulsion campaign, there were several similar clashes, and the Turkish authorities did their best to incite hatred between peoples. In June 15, an order was given to deport almost the entire Armenian population. How everything was done. One region was taken, the number of inhabitants of Muslims and Armenians. It was necessary to deport so that the Armenian population was ten percent of the Muslim population. Of course, the schools of these people were also closed, and they tried to place new settlements as far from each other as possible. Similar actions took place throughout the empire. But, in major cities everything happened not so tragically and massively, the authorities were afraid of noise. After all, foreign media could find out about what was going on. They killed in an organized, special and en masse manner. People died during the journey, and also in concentration camps. Later, it will become known that on the initiative of the authorities, experiments were carried out on people, a vaccine against typhus was tried. The gendarmes mocked and tortured people every day. Today. This issue is still being actively studied. The number of deaths is still unknown. In the fifteenth year, they talked about three hundred thousand dead. But the German researcher Lepsius gave a different figure of a million dead. Johannes Lepsius studied everything in detail. This scientist also stated that about three hundred thousand people were forcibly converted to Islam. Now, the Turks talk about two hundred thousand dead, but the free press writes about two million. There is a well-known encyclopedia called Britannica, where the numbers range from six hundred thousand to one and a half million.

Of course they wanted to hide all their actions, but abroad found out. And in 1915, the allied countries Great Britain, France, and Russia signed a declaration calling on Istanbul to stop this. Naturally, there was no point, they weren’t going to stop anything. Everything stopped only in 1918, Türkiye lost in the First World War. The country was occupied by the Entente, these are the three countries described above; at that time they had an alliance called the Entente. Of course, the government itself fled. A new government came, and the union of three countries demanded a debriefing. Already in 1818, all documents were studied by a military tribunal. They proved that the killings of the population were planned, organized, and were recognized as an international war crime. Guilty number one was identified, he became Mehmed Talaat Pasha, at the time of the atrocities this man held the post of Minister of Internal Affairs and Grand Vizier. Also, Enver Pasha, he was one of the leaders of the party, Ahmed Jemal Pasha, also a party member. All these people were sentenced to execution, but fled the country. In 19, an Armenian party gathered in Yerevan, which presented a list of those who initiated the events of the fifteenth, there were hundreds of people there. They did not accept legal methods of struggle in Yerevan, they began to look for the culprits and kill. The "Nemesis" campaign has begun. Over the course of four years, various people were killed who were related to the authorities, who were related to the killings of civilians. The main culprit, Talaat Pasha, was killed by a man named Soghomon Tehlirian, this happened in 1921, in March in the city of Berlin. Of course, the man was arrested, but he was better defended by German lawyers, the killer was acquitted, and later moved to the states. The next torturer was killed in Tiflis, this happened in 1922. And Enver died during the fighting; by the way, he fought against the Red Army. This is such a terrible bloody river, a terrible trace in history that will always be in the hands of descendants, residents, and in the hearts of the relatives of the victims.

Original taken from mamlas in Why Armenians are not Jews

On this topic: Genocide: no statute of limitations... || History of the Armenians of Georgia || That's where Hitler's fascists took their example from || Ordinary Armenian genocide || I am Armenian, but I am against Nazism on genocide

Holocaust rehearsal
The Armenian question: how “potential rebels” were turned into “dangerous microbes”

Genocide, concentration camps, experiments on humans, the “national question” - all these horrors in public consciousness Most often associated with the Second World War, although, in fact, their inventors were not the Nazis. Entire peoples - Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks - were brought to the brink of complete destruction at the beginning of the 20th century, during the Great War. And back in 1915, the leaders of England, France and Russia, in connection with these events, for the first time in history, voiced the formulation of “crimes against humanity.” ©

~~~~~~~~~~~

Deported Armenian women, children and old people. Ottoman Empire. 1915

Today's Armenia is only a small part of the territory where millions of Armenians have lived for centuries. In 1915, they - mostly unarmed civilians - were expelled from their homes, deported to concentration camps in the desert, and killed in every possible way. In most civilized countries of the world, this is officially recognized as genocide, and to this day those tragic events continue to poison the relations of Turkey and Azerbaijan with Armenia.

"Armenian Question"

The Armenian people formed in the territory of the South Caucasus and modern Eastern Turkey many centuries earlier than the Turkish: already in the second century BC, a kingdom existed on the shores of Lake Van, around the sacred Mount Ararat Great Armenia. In its best years, the possessions of this “empire” covered almost the entire mountainous “triangle” between the Black, Caspian and Mediterranean seas.

In 301, Armenia became the first country to officially adopt Christianity as a state religion. Subsequently, for centuries, the Armenians defended themselves from attacks by Muslims (Arabs, Persians and Turks). This led to the loss of a number of territories, a decrease in the number of people, and their dispersion throughout the world. By the beginning of modern times, only a small part of Armenia with the city of Erivan (Yerevan) became part of the Russian Empire, where the Armenians found protection and patronage. Most of the Armenians fell under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, and Muslims - Turks, Kurds, refugees from North Caucasus.

Not being Muslims, the Armenians, like the Balkan peoples, were considered representatives of a “second-class” community - “dhimmi”. Until 1908, they were prohibited from carrying weapons, they had to pay higher taxes, often could not even live in houses higher than one floor, build new churches without permission from the authorities, and so on.

But, as often happens, the persecution of Eastern Christians only intensified the revelation of the talents of an entrepreneur, merchant, and artisan capable of working in the most difficult conditions. By the twentieth century, an impressive layer of the Armenian intelligentsia had formed, the first national parties began to emerge and public organizations. Literacy rates among Armenians and other Christians in the Ottoman Empire were higher than among Muslims.

70% of Armenians, however, remained simple peasants, but among the Muslim population there was a stereotype of a cunning and rich Armenian, a “market merchant”, whose success the common Turk was jealous of. The situation was somewhat reminiscent of the situation of Jews in Europe, their discrimination and, as a consequence, the emergence, due to a tough “natural exchange,” of a powerful layer of wealthy Jews who did not give up in the harshest conditions. However, in the case of the Armenians, the situation was further aggravated by the presence in Turkey of a huge number of poor Muslim refugees from the North Caucasus, Crimea and the Balkans (the so-called Muhajirs).

The scale of this phenomenon is evidenced by the fact that refugees and their descendants at the time of the creation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 accounted for up to 20% of the population, and the entire era from the 1870s to 1913 in the Turkish historical memory known as "sekyumu" - "disaster". The last wave of Turks, expelled by the Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks, swept just before the First World War - these were refugees from the Balkan Wars. They often transferred the hatred from the European Christians who expelled them to the Christians of the Ottoman Empire. They were ready, roughly speaking, to “take revenge” by robbing and killing defenseless Armenians, although up to 8 thousand Armenian soldiers fought in the ranks of the Turkish army against the Bulgarians and Serbs in the Balkan Wars.

The first pogroms

The first waves of Armenian pogroms swept across the Ottoman Empire back in the 19th century. This was the so-called Erzurum massacre of 1895, massacres in Istanbul, Van, Sasun and other cities. According to the American researcher Robert Andersen, even then at least 60 thousand Christians were killed, who were “crushed like grapes,” which even caused protests from the ambassadors of European powers. The German Lutheran missionary Johannes Lepsius collected evidence of the extermination of at least 88,243 Armenians and the robbery of more than half a million in 1894-96 alone. In response, desperate Armenian socialist Dashnaks staged a terrorist attack - on August 26, 1896, they took hostages in a bank building in Istanbul and, threatening to explode, demanded that the Turkish government carry out reforms.

But the coming to power of the Young Turks, who announced a course of reform, did not improve the situation. In 1907, a new wave of Armenian pogroms swept through the cities of the Mediterranean. Thousands of people died again. In addition, it was the Young Turks who encouraged the resettlement of refugees from the Balkans to Armenian lands (about 400 thousand people were settled there) and banned public organizations with “non-Turkish” goals.

Armenian political parties responded by turning to European powers for support, and with their active support (primarily from Russia), a plan was imposed on the weakened Ottoman Empire, which finally provided for the creation of two autonomies from six Armenian regions and the city of Trebizond. They, in agreement with the Ottomans, were to be governed by representatives of the European powers. In Constantinople, naturally, they perceived this solution to the “Armenian question” as a national humiliation, which later played a role in the decision to enter the war on the side of Germany.

Potential rebels

In the First World War, all the warring countries actively used (or at least sought to use) “potentially rebellious” ethnic communities on enemy territory - national minorities that, in one way or another, suffered from discrimination and oppression. The Germans supported the struggle for their rights of the British Irish, the British - the Arabs, the Austro-Hungarians - the Ukrainians, and so on. Well, the Russian Empire actively supported the Armenians, for whom, in comparison with the Turks, it, as a predominantly Christian country, was at least “the lesser of evils.” With the participation and assistance of Russia, already at the end of 1914, an allied Armenian militia was formed, commanded by the legendary General Andranik Ozanyan.

The Armenian battalions provided enormous assistance to the Russians in the defense of northwestern Persia, which was also invaded by the Turks and later during the battles on the Caucasian front. Through them, weapons and groups of saboteurs were supplied to the Ottoman rear, where it was possible to carry out, for example, sabotage on telegraph lines near Van and attacks on Turkish units in Bitlis.

Also in December 1914 - January 1915, the Battle of Sarykamysh took place on the border of the Russian and Ottoman empires, in which the Turks suffered a crushing defeat, losing 78 thousand soldiers out of 80 thousand who participated in the battles killed, wounded and frostbitten. Russian troops captured the border fortress of Bayazet, expelled the Turks from Persia and advanced deep into Turkish territory with the help of Armenians from the border regions, which caused another flurry of discussions from the leaders of the Young Turk Ittihat party “about the betrayal of the Armenians as a whole.”

Enver Pasha

Subsequently, critics of the concept of genocide in relation to the entire Armenian people will cite these arguments as the main ones: the Armenians were not even “potential”, but accomplished rebels, they “first started”, they killed Muslims. However, in the winter of 1914-1915, most Armenians still lived a peaceful life, many men were even drafted into the Turkish army and honestly served what they thought was their country. The leader of the Young Turks, Enver Pasha, even publicly thanked the Armenians for their loyalty during the Sarykamysh operation, sending a letter to the Archbishop of Konya Province.

However, the moment of enlightenment was brief. The “first sign” of a new round of repression was the disarmament in February 1915 of about 100 thousand soldiers of Armenian (and at the same time - Assyrian and Greek origin) and their transfer to rear work. Many Armenian historians claim that some of the conscripts were killed immediately. The confiscation of weapons from the civilian Armenian population began, which alarmed (and, as it soon turns out, rightly so) people: many Armenians began to hide pistols and rifles.

The US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, later called this disarmament “a prelude to the destruction of the Armenians.” In some cities, Turkish authorities took hundreds of hostages until the Armenians surrendered their “arsenals.” The collected weapons were often photographed and sent to Istanbul as evidence of "betrayal." This became a pretext for further whipping up hysteria.

In Armenia, April 24 is celebrated as Genocide Remembrance Day. This is a non-working day: hundreds of thousands of people every year climb the hill to the memorial complex in memory of the victims of the First World War and lay flowers at the eternal flame. The memorial itself was built back in Soviet times, in the 1960s, which was an exception to all the rules: in the USSR they did not like to remember the First World War.

The date April 24 was not chosen by chance: it was on this day in 1915 that mass arrests of representatives of the Armenian elite took place in Istanbul. In total, more than 5.5 thousand people were captured, including 235 of the most famous and respected people - businessmen, journalists, scientists, those whose voice could be heard in the world, who could lead the resistance.

A month later, on May 26, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Ottoman Empire, Talaat Pasha, presented an entire “Deportation Law” dedicated to “the fight against those opposing the government.” Four days later it was approved by the Majlis (parliament). Although the Armenians were not mentioned there, it was clear that the law was written primarily “for their souls,” as well as for the Assyrians, Pontic Greeks and other “infidels.” As researcher Fuat Dündar writes, Talaat stated that “the deportation was carried out for the final solution of the Armenian question.” So even the term itself, later used by the Nazis, is nothing new.

Biological justification was used as one of the justifications for the deportation and murder of Armenians. Some Ottoman chauvinists called them “dangerous germs.” The main promoter of this policy was the governor of the region and the city of Diyarbakir, Dr. Mehmet Reshid, who “amused himself,” among other things, by nailing horseshoes to the feet of deportees. US Ambassador Morgenthau, in a telegram to the State Department dated July 16, 1915, described the extermination of Armenians as a “campaign of racial extermination.”

Medical experiments were also carried out on the Armenians. By order of another “doctor” - 3rd Army doctor Teftik Salim - to develop a vaccine against typhus, experiments were carried out on disarmed soldiers in the Erzincan hospital, most of whom eventually died. The experiments were directly carried out by Hamdi Suat, a professor at the Istanbul Medical School, who injected the test subjects with blood infected with typhus. By the way, he was later recognized as the founder of Turkish bacteriology. After the end of the war, during the consideration of the case by the Special Military Tribunal, he said that he “worked only with convicted criminals.”

In the phase of “ethnic cleansing”

But even simple deportation was not limited to just sending people in railway cattle cars to concentration camps in the desert surrounded by barbed wire (the most famous is Deir ez-Zor in the east of modern Syria), where the majority died of hunger, unsanitary conditions or thirst. It was often accompanied by massacres, which took on the most disgusting character in the Black Sea city of Trebizond.

Armenian refugee camp

Official Said Ahmed described what was happening in an interview with British diplomat Mark Sykes: “At first, Ottoman officials took away the children, and the American consul tried to save some of them. The Muslims of Trebizond were warned of the death penalty for defending the Armenians. Then they separated the adult men, declaring that they must take part in the work. Women and children were expelled towards Mosul, after which the men were shot near pre-dug ditches. Women and children were attacked by “chettes” (released from prisons in exchange for the cooperation of criminals - RP), who robbed and raped the women and then killed them. The military had strict orders not to interfere with the actions of the Chettes.

As a result of the investigation conducted by the tribunal in 1919, facts of poisoning of Armenian children (right in schools) and pregnant women by the head of the Trebizond health department, Ali Seib, also became known. Mobile phones were also used steam baths, in which children were killed with superheated steam.

The murders were accompanied by robberies. According to the testimony of the merchant Mehmet Ali, the governor of Trebizond, Cemal Azmi and Ali Seib, embezzled jewelry worth from 300 thousand to 400 thousand Turkish gold pounds. The American consul in Trebizond reported that he daily observed how “a crowd of Turkish women and children followed the police like vultures and seized everything they could carry,” and the house of Commissioner Ittihat in Trebizond was full of gold.

Beautiful girls were publicly raped and then killed, including by local officials. In 1919, at the tribunal, the chief of police of Trebizond said that he sent young Armenian women to Istanbul as a gift from the governor to the leaders of the Young Turk party. Armenian women and children from another Black Sea city, Ordu, were loaded onto barges and then taken out to sea and thrown overboard.

Historian Ruben Adalyan in his book “The Armenian Genocide” cites the memories of Takuya Levonyan, who miraculously survived: “During the march, we had no water or food. We walked for 15 days. There were no shoes left on my feet anymore. Finally we reached Tigranakert. There we washed ourselves by the water, soaked some dry bread and ate. There was a rumor that the governor was asking for a very beautiful 12-year-old girl... At night they came with lanterns and looked for her. They found her, took her away from her sobbing mother and said that they would return her later. They later returned the child, almost dead, in terrible condition. The mother sobbed loudly, and of course the child, unable to bear what happened, died. The women could not calm her down. Finally, the women dug a hole and buried the girl. There was a big wall there and my mother wrote on it “Shushan is buried here.”

Public executions of Armenians on the streets of Constantinople

A major role in the persecution of the Armenians was played by the Teshkilat-i-Makhusa organization (translated from Turkish - Special Organization) with headquarters in Erzurum, subordinate to Turkish counterintelligence and staffed by tens of thousands of “chettes”. The leader of the organization was the prominent Young Turk Behaeddin Shakir. At the end of April 1915, he organized a meeting in Erzurum at which the Armenians were accused of treason. After this, attacks began on the Armenians of the Erzurum region, and in mid-May there was a massacre in the city of Khinis, where 19 thousand people were killed. Villagers from the vicinity of Erzurum were deported to the city, where some of them died of starvation, and some were thrown into the river in the Kemakh gorge. Only 100 “useful Armenians” were left in Erzurum, who worked at important military installations.

According to the American historian Richard Hovhannisyan, who grew up in a family of Armenian refugees, 15 thousand Armenians were also killed in the city of Bitlis near Van. Most were thrown into a mountain river, and their houses were handed over to Turkish refugees from the Balkans. In the vicinity of Mush, Armenian women and children were burned alive in boarded-up barns.

The destruction of the population was accompanied by a campaign to destroy cultural heritage. Architectural monuments and churches were blown up, cemeteries were plowed into fields, the Armenian quarters of cities were occupied by the Muslim population and were renamed.

Resistance

On April 27, 1915, the Armenian Catholicos called on the United States and Italy, which still remained neutral in the war, to intervene and prevent the killings. The Allied powers of the Entente countries publicly condemned the massacre, but in war conditions they could do little to alleviate their fate. In the joint Declaration of May 24, 1915, Great Britain, France and the Russian Empire spoke for the first time about “crimes against humanity”: “In view of new crimes, the governments of the Allied States publicly declare to the Sublime Porte the personal responsibility for these crimes of all members of the Ottoman government.” Fundraising has begun in Europe and the USA to help Armenian refugees.

Even among the Turks themselves there were those who opposed the repression of the Armenian population. The courage of these people is especially noteworthy, because in war conditions such a position could easily be paid with one’s life. Dr. Cemal Haidar, who witnessed medical experiments on humans, described them as “barbaric” and “scientific crimes” in an open letter to the Minister of the Interior. Haidar was supported by the chief physician of the Erzincan Red Crescent Hospital, Dr. Salaheddin.

There are known cases of the rescue of Armenian children by Turkish families, as well as statements by officials who refused to take part in the killings. Thus, the head of the city of Aleppo, Jalal Bey, spoke out against the deportation of Armenians, declaring that “Armenians are defending themselves” and that “the right to live is the natural right of any person.” In June 1915, he was removed from office and replaced with a more “nationally oriented” official.

The governor of Adrianople, Haji Adil Bey, and even the first head of the Deir ez-Zor concentration camp, Ali Sued Bey, tried as best they could to alleviate the plight of the Armenians (he was also soon removed from his post). But the firmest position was the governor of the city of Smyrna (now Izmir) Rahmi Bey, who managed to defend the right of Armenians and Greeks to live in their hometown. He provided calculations that were convincing to official Istanbul that the expulsion of Christians would deal a mortal blow to trade, and therefore most local Armenians lived relatively calmly until the end of the war. True, about 200 thousand townspeople died already in 1922, during another, Greco-Turkish war. Only a few managed to escape, among whom, by the way, was the future Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis.

The German ambassador in Constantinople, Count von Wolf-Metternich, also protested against the inhumane actions of the Allies. German doctor Armin Wegner collected a large photo archive - his photograph of an Armenian woman walking under Turkish escort became one of the symbols of 1915. Martin Nipage, a German teacher at a technical school in Aleppo, wrote an entire book about the barbaric killings of Armenians. Missionary Johannes Lepsius managed to visit Constantinople again, but his requests to the Young Turk leader Enver Pasha for the protection of the Armenians remained unanswered. Upon returning to Germany, Lepsius tried without much success to attract public attention to the situation in the country allied to the Germans. Rafael de Nogales Mendez, a Venezuelan officer who served in the Ottoman army, also described numerous facts of murders of Armenians in his book.

But first of all, of course, the Armenians themselves resisted. After the deportations began, uprisings broke out throughout the country. From April 19 to May 16, the inhabitants of the city of Van, who had only 1,300 “fighters” - partly from among the elderly, women and children, heroically held the defense. Having lost hundreds of soldiers and failed to take the city, the Turks ravaged the surrounding Armenian villages, killing thousands of civilians. But up to 70 thousand Armenians hiding in Van were eventually saved - they waited for the advancing Russian army.

The second case of a successful rescue was the defense of Mount Musa Dag by Mediterranean Armenians from July 21 to September 12, 1915. 600 militia held back the onslaught of several thousand soldiers for almost two months. On September 12, posters hanging on trees calling for help were noticed by an Allied cruiser. Soon, an Anglo-French squadron approached the foot of the mountain facing the sea and evacuated more than 4,000 Armenians. Almost all other Armenian uprisings - in Sasun, Mush, Urfa and other cities of Turkey - ended with their suppression and the death of the defenders.

Soghomon Tehliryan

After the war, at the congress of the Armenian Dashnaktsutyun party, a decision was made to launch an “operation of retribution” - the liquidation of war criminals. The operation was named after the ancient Greek goddess “Nemesis”. Most of the perpetrators were Armenians who had escaped the genocide and were determined to avenge the deaths of their loved ones.

The most famous victim of the operation was former minister Internal Affairs and Grand Vizier (Chief Minister) Talaat Pasha. Together with other Young Turk leaders, he fled to Germany in 1918, hid, but was tracked down and shot in March 1921. A German court acquitted his killer, Soghomon Tehlirian, with the formulation of “temporary loss of reason resulting from the suffering he experienced,” especially since Talaat Pasha had already been sentenced to death at home by a military tribunal. The Armenians also found and destroyed several more ideologists of the massacres, including the already mentioned governor of Trebizond Jemal Azmi, the leader of the Young Turks Behaeddin Shakir and another former grand vizier Said Halim Pasha.

Genocide controversy

Whether what happened in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 can be called genocide, there is still no consensus in the world, mainly due to the position of Turkey itself. American-Israeli sociologist, one of the leading experts on the history of genocides, founder and executive director of the Holocaust and Genocide Institute, Israel Cherny, noted that “the Armenian genocide is noteworthy because in the bloody 20th century it was an early example of mass genocide, which many recognize as Holocaust rehearsal."

One of the most controversial issues is the number of victims - an accurate calculation of the number of deaths is impossible, because the statistics themselves on the number of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of the First World War were very crafty, deliberately distorted. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, citing calculations famous historian Arnold Toynbee, about 600 thousand Armenians died in 1915, and the American political scientist and historian Rudolf Rummel speaks of 2,102,000 Armenians (of which, however, 258 thousand lived in the territories of today's Iran, Georgia and Armenia).

Modern Türkiye, as well as Azerbaijan, do not recognize what happened as genocide at the state level. They believe that the death of Armenians occurred due to negligence from hunger and disease during deportation from the combat zone, was essentially a consequence civil war, as a result of which many Turks themselves also died.

The founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, said in 1919: “Whatever happened to non-Muslims in our country is a consequence of their barbaric adherence to the policy of separatism, when they became an instrument of external intrigue and abused their rights. These events are far from the scale of those forms of oppression that were committed without any justification in European countries.”

Already in 1994, the doctrine of denial was formulated by the then Prime Minister of Turkey Tansu Ciller: “It is not true that the Turkish authorities do not want to state their position on the so-called “Armenian issue.” Our position is very clear. Today it is obvious that in the light of historical facts, the Armenian claims are unfounded and illusory. The Armenians were not subject to genocide in any case.”

The current President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, noted: “We did not commit this crime, we have nothing to apologize for. Whoever is at fault can apologize. However, the Turkish Republic, the Turkish nation, does not have such problems.” True, on April 23, 2014, speaking in parliament, Erdogan for the first time expressed condolences to the descendants of the Armenians “who died during the events of the early twentieth century.”

The events of 1915 are considered genocide of the Armenian people by the Ottoman Empire by many international organizations, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and more than 20 countries of the world (including the 1995 statement of the Russian State Duma “On condemnation of the genocide of the Armenian people”), about 10 countries at the regional level (for example, 43 from the 50 US states).

In some countries (France, Switzerland), denying the Armenian genocide is considered a criminal offense; several people have already been convicted. The killing of the Assyrians as a form of genocide has so far been recognized only by Sweden, the Australian state of New South Wales and the American state of New York.

Turkey spends heavily on PR campaigns and donates to universities whose professors hold positions similar to Turkey's. Critical discussion of the “Kemalist” version of history is considered a crime in Turkey, making public debate difficult, although in recent years intellectuals, the press and civil society have begun to discuss the “Armenian Question”. This causes sharp rejection by nationalists and authorities - “disagreeing” intellectuals who try to apologize to the Armenians are persecuted by all means.

The most famous victims are Turkish writer, laureate Nobel Prize in literature, Orhan Pamuk, forced to live abroad, and journalist Hrant Dink, editor of a newspaper for the now very small Armenian community in Turkey, killed in 2007 by a Turkish nationalist. His funeral in Istanbul resulted in a demonstration, where tens of thousands of Turks marched with signs saying “We are all Armenians, we are all Grants.”

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 official religion The empire is 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 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.

World War I

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, gunfire 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 eastern 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 a letter 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.

Left Bank 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.

The Perinze affair was a result of his portrayal of 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 Borisov 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 many scientific articles and proclamations from respected historians 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 funds mass media called the murder of 1.5 million Armenians "atrocities" or "mass murders", the word "genocide" rarely made its way to the American people when describing 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 and subjected to 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 legal proceedings 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. First official event, dedicated to 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 World War I, 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.

About crimes and information war after 102 years

Isabella Muradyan

On these beautiful spring days, when nature awakens and blossoms, in the heart of every Armenian, young or adult, there is a place that will not bloom again... All Armenians, not excluding those whose ancestors did not suffer during a series of Genocides perpetrated by the Turks and their patrons in 1895-1896, 1909, 1915-1923 carry this pain within themselves...

And everyone is tormented by the question - why, why, why...?! Despite the fact that so little and so much time has passed at the same time, most Armenians, and not only others, have little idea of ​​the answers to these questions.

This is happening because since the end of the 19th century a large-scale information war has been waged against Armenians - and the majority of the Armenian elite of the Republic of Armenia and the Diaspora does not understand this.

The sacred duty of every Armenian parent, especially the mother, in the name of love and in the name of the life given by her, is not only to provide the child with normal conditions for growth and development, to provide knowledge of the terrible danger that can find him everywhere, its name is the Unpunished Armenian Genocide...

Within the framework of this article, I will only have the opportunity to lift the veil on this issue and awaken your desire to learn more...

Feral Wolf Effect

In order to better understand the problems of the peoples living under the Turkish yoke, one should take a closer look at the Turks themselves and their legislation and customs. These nomadic tribes came to our region around the 11th century, following their herds during the terrible drought that reigned in Altai and the Volga steppes, but this was not their homeland. The Turks themselves and the majority world scientists The steppes and semi-deserts that are part of China are considered the ancestral home of the Turks. Today this is the Xinjiang Uyghur region of China.

Worth mentioning is the well-known legend about the origin of the Turks, which is told by the TURKIC scientists THEMSELVES. A certain young boy survived after an enemy raid on his village in the steppe. But they cut off his arms and legs and left him to die. The boy was found and nursed by a wild wolf.

Then, having matured, he copulated with the she-wolf who fed him, and from their connection eleven children were born, who formed the BASIS OF THE ELITE OF THE TURKIC TRIBES (the Ashina clan).

If you visit the ancestral homeland of the Turks at least once - in the Xinjiang Uyghur region of China and come across Uyghurs en masse - comparatively pure form Turks, you will see their way of life and everyday life, you will immediately understand a lot - and the main thing is that the Turkic legends were right... For a couple of centuries now, the Chinese have been trying to ennoble the Uyghurs with a firm hand / train them, build modern houses, create infrastructure, give Newest technologies etc./. However, even today the relations between the Chinese and the Uyghurs are quite ambiguous, based on the support of the “brotherly Turkish government.” Türkiye officially funds terrorist Uyghur organizations that advocate secession from the PRC and organize numerous terrorist attacks in China. One of the brutal ones was in 2011, when in Kashgar, Uyghur terrorists first threw an explosive device into a restaurant, and then began to finish off the fleeing customers with knives... As a rule, in all terrorist attacks, the majority of the victims are Han (ethnic Chinese).

The centuries-old processes of abduction and mixing of Turks determined their external distance from their Uyghur relatives, but as you can see, their essence is one. Despite today's deceptive external resemblance of the Turks / inc. Azeri-Turks / with the peoples of our region it does not change, which is dispassionately evidenced by the terrible statistics of their inhuman crimes against the Armenians (Greeks, Assyrians, Slavs, etc.), in 1895-96, in 1905 or 1909, in 1915- 1923, 1988 or 2016 / slaughtered family of Armenian elders and abuse of the corpses of Armenian soldiers, 4-day war /…

One of the reasons is our lack of understanding of the Turkish essence. It’s interesting, but being very practical people in everyday life and business, Armenians become “incorrigible romantics” (the words of the father of Zionism T. Herzel) in politics and operate in advance with categories that are failed from the very beginning. Instead of moving away from the feral “wolf” or trying to isolate/destroy it, the majority tries to “establish cooperation”, “induce feelings of guilt”, “get offended” or seek mediators for negotiations.” Needless to say, at any opportunity this “wolf” will try to deal with you - a favorite Turkish proverb even today is “if you can’t cut off an outstretched hand, kiss it while you can...”. Let’s also imagine that a feral wolf has partial human thinking and he knows that he lives on land stolen from you, in a house stolen from you, eats fruits stolen from you, sells valuables stolen from you... It’s not that he’s bad, he’s just different - a completely different subspecies, and these are yours It's a problem if you don't understand this...

Another very important aspect - The causes of the Armenian Genocide should be sought primarily in the geopolitical and economic planes.

There is a huge amount of archival documents, historical, scientific and other literature on the topic of the causes of the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey, but even the broad masses of the Armenian people and their elite (including the Diaspora) are still captive of a number of misconceptions specifically carried out by Turkish propaganda and its patrons - and this a significant part of the information war against Armenians.

I'll bring you 5 of the most common misconceptions:

The genocide was a consequence of the First World War;

Mass deportations of the Armenian population were carried out from the Eastern front zone into the depths of the Ottoman Empire and were caused by military expediency so that the Armenians would not help the enemy (mainly the Russians);

Numerous casualties among the Armenian civilian population of the Ottoman Empire were random and not organized;

The basis of the Armenian Genocide was the religious difference between Armenians and Turks - i.e. there was a conflict between Christians and Muslims;

The Armenians lived well with the Turks as subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and only Western countries and Russia, through their intervention, destroyed the friendly relations of the two peoples - Armenian and Turkish.

Giving a brief analysis, we immediately note that none of these statements has any serious basis. This a well-thought-out information war that has been going on for decades.

It is designed to hide the true causes of the Armenian Genocide, which lie on the economic and geopolitical planes and are not limited to the 1915 Genocide. There was precisely a desire to physically destroy the Armenians, take away their material wealth and territory, and so that nothing would interfere with the creation of a new pan-Turkic empire led by Turkey - from Europe (Albania) to China (Xinjiang province).

Exactly pan-Turkic component and the economic defeat of the Armenians(and then the Pontic Greeks) were one of the main ideas of the Genocide of 1909, 1915-1923, carried out by the Young Turks.

(The planned pan-Turkic empire is marked in red on the map, its further advancement is marked in pink). And today a small part of our homeland, the Republic of Armenia (about 7% of the original, see map of the Armenian Highlands) cuts the supposed empire like a narrow wedge.

MYTH 1st. The 1915 genocide was a consequence of the First World War.

It's a lie. The decision to exterminate the Armenians has been discussed in certain political circles in Turkey (and especially the Young Turks) since the end of the 19th century, especially intensely since 1905, when there was no talk of the First World War. With the participation and support of Turkish emissaries to Transcaucasia in 1905. The first Turkic/Tatar-Armenian clashes and pogroms of Armenians were prepared and carried out in Baku, Shushi, Nakhichevan, Erivan, Goris, Elisavetpol. After the suppression of the Turkic/Tatar rebellion by the tsarist troops, the instigators fled to Turkey and joined the central committee of the Young Turks (Akhmed Agayev, Alimardan-bek Topchibashev, etc.) In total, there were from 3,000 to 10,000 people killed.

As a result of the pogroms, thousands of workers lost their jobs and livelihoods. The Caspian, Caucasian, “Petrov”, Balakhani and others belonging to the Armenians were burned, oil companies, warehouses, Beckendorf Theater. The damage of the pogroms reached about 25 million rubles - about 774,235,000 US dollars today ( gold content 1 ruble was 0.774235 grams. pure gold) the Armenian campaigns especially suffered, since the fires were directed specifically against the Armenians (for comparison, the average monthly earnings of a worker in 1905 in the Russian Empire was 17 rubles 125 kopecks, beef shoulder blade 1 kg - 45 kopecks, fresh milk 1 liter - 14 kopecks, premium wheat flour 1 kilogram - 24 kopecks, etc.

We should not forget the Armenian Genocide, provoked by the Young Turks in 1909. in Adana, Marash, Kessab (massacre on the territory of the former Armenian kingdom-Cilicia, Ottoman Türkiye). 30,000 Armenians were killed. The total damage inflicted on the Armenians was about 20 million Turkish lira. 24 churches, 16 schools, 232 houses, 30 hotels, 2 factories, 1,429 summer houses, 253 farms, 523 shops, 23 mills and many other objects were burned.

For comparison: the Ottoman debt to creditors after the First World War under the Treaty of Sèvres was fixed at 143 million golden Turkish lira.

So The First World War was for the Young Turks only a screen and decoration for the well-thought-out and prepared extermination of Armenians in their area of ​​​​residence - on the historical land of Armenia...

MYTH 2nd. Mass deportations of the Armenian population were carried out from the Eastern front zone into the depths of the Ottoman Empire and were caused by military expediency so that the Armenians would not help the enemy (mainly the Russians). It's a lie. The Ottoman Armenians did not help their enemies - and the same Russians. Yes, in Russian army in 1914 there were Armenians from among the subjects of the Russian Empire - 250 thousand people, many were mobilized into the war and fought on the fronts, incl. against Turkey. However, also on the Turkish side, according to official data, there were Ottoman subjects Armenians - about 170 thousand (according to some sources about 300 thousand) who fought as part of the Turkish troops (whom the Turks drafted into their army and then killed). The very fact of the participation of Armenian subjects of the Russian Empire did not make the Ottoman Armenians traitors, as some Turkish historians are trying to prove. On the contrary, when Turkish troops under the command of Enver Pasha (Minister of War), after an attack on the Russian Empire, were repulsed and suffered a brutal defeat near Sarikamish in January 1915, it was precisely Ottoman Armenians helped Enver Pasha escape.

The thesis about the deportation of Armenians from the front-line zone is also false since the first deportations of Armenians were carried out not on the eastern front, but from the center of the empire - from Cilicia and AnatoliaVSyria. And in all cases, the deportees were doomed to death in advance.

MYTH 3rd. Numerous casualties among the Armenian civilian population of the Ottoman Empire were random and not organized. Another LIE - a single mechanism for the arrest and murder of Armenian men, and then the deportation of women and children under gendarme escort and the organized extermination of Armenians throughout the empire directly indicate government structure in the organization of the Genocide. The murder of Armenian subjects drafted into the Ottoman army, regulations, numerous testimonies, including from the Turks themselves, indicate the personal participation of Turkish government officials of various ranks in the Armenian Genocide.

This is evidenced by inhumane experiments V government institutions Ottoman Empire over Armenians (including women and children). These and many other facts of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 ORGANIZED BY THE TURKISH AUTHORITIES. revealedTurkish military tribunal 1919-1920And many still do not know that one of the first countries to recognize the Armenian Genocide, after the endThe First World War was TURKEY. Among the general cruelty and savagery, the methods of extermination of Armenians by TURKISH OFFICIALS in 1915, which subsequently were only partially used by the fascist executioners in the Second World War and recognized as crimes against humanity. For the first time in the history of the 20th century and on a similar scale, it was To was applied to the Armeniansso-called lower“biological status” .

According to the indictment announced on Turkish military tribunal, the deportations were not dictated by military necessity or disciplinary reasons, but were conceived by the central Young Turk Ittihad committee, and their consequences were felt in every corner of the Ottoman Empire. By the way, the Young Turk regime was one of the successful “color revolutions” of that time; there were other projects that were not successful - the Young Italians, the Young Czechs, the Young Bosnians, the Young Serbs, etc.

In evidence Turkish military tribunal 1919-1920. mostly relied on documents, and not for testimony. The Tribunal considered the fact of the organized murder of Armenians by the leaders of Ittihat (Turkish) to be proven. taktil cinayeti) and found Enver, Cemal, Talaat and Dr. Nazim, who were absent from the trial, guilty. They were sentenced to death by the tribunal. By the beginning of the tribunal, the main leaders of Ittihat - denme Talaat, Enver, Jemal, Shakir, Nazim, Bedri and Azmi - fled with the help of the British outside Turkey.

The killings of Armenians were accompanied by robberies and thefts. For example, Asent Mustafa and the governor of Trebizond, Cemal Azmi, embezzled Armenian jewelry worth from 300,000 to 400,000 Turkish gold pounds (at that time about $1,500,000, with the average salary of a worker in the United States during this period being about $45.5 per month). The American consul in Aleppo reported to Washington that a “giant plunder scheme” was operating in Turkey. The Consul in Trebizond reported that he daily observed how "a crowd of Turkish women and children followed the police like vultures and seized everything they could carry away," and that the house of Commissioner Ittihat in Trebizond was full of gold and jewelry, which constituted his share of the plunder, and etc.

MYTH 4th. The basis of the Armenian Genocide was the religious difference between Armenians and Turks - i.e. there was a conflict between Christians and Muslims. And this is also a LIE. During the Genocide of 1915 were exterminated and robbed not only Christian Armenians, but also Muslim Armenians who converted to Islam from the 16th to 18th centuries - Hamshenians (Hemshils). During the Genocide of 1915-1923. Armenians were not allowed to change their religion, many agreed to this just to save their loved ones - Talaat's directive “On a change of faith” dated December 17, 1915 directly insisted on the deportation and actual murder of Armenians, REGARDLESS OF THEIR FAITH. And we should not forget that the difference in religion did not become an obstacle and the bulk of Christian Armenian refugees found shelter and conditions for organizing a new life EXACTLY IN NEIGHBORING MUSLIM COUNTRIES . So, the factor of Islamo-Christian confrontation was only a background/cover.

MYTH 5th. The Armenians lived well with the Turks as subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and only Western countries and Russia, through their intervention, destroyed the friendly relations of the two peoples - the Armenian and Turkish. This statement can be considered the apotheosis of LIES and visual aid information propaganda, since the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, not being Muslims, were considered second-class subjects - dhimmis (submissive to Islam), and were subject to many restrictions:

- Armenians were forbidden to carry weapons and ride horses(On horse);

- murder of a Muslim - incl. in self-defense and protection of loved ones - punishable by death;

- Armenians paid higher taxes, and in addition to the official ones, they were also subject to taxes from various local Muslim tribes;

- Armenians could not inherit real estate(for them there was only lifetime use, heirs had to get permission again for the right to use property),

- Armenians' testimony was not accepted in court;

In a number of areas Armenians were forbidden to speak their native language under pain of having their tongues cut out(for example, the city of Kutia is the birthplace of Komitas and the reason for his ignorance of his native language in childhood);

- Armenians had to give part of their children to the harem and to the Janissaries;

- Armenian women and children were constantly the targets of violence, kidnapping and the slave trade and much more…

For comparison: Armenians in the Russian Empire. They were equal in rights to Russian subjects, including the possibility of entering the service, representation in noble assemblies, etc. In serf Russia, serfdom did not apply to them, and Armenian settlers, regardless of class, were allowed to freely leave the Russian Empire. Among the benefits provided to Armenians was the establishment of an Armenian court in 1746. and the right to use the Armenian code of law in Russia, permission to have their own Magistrates, i.e. granting full self-government. The Armenians were freed for ten years (or forever, like, for example, the Grigoriopol Armenians) from all duties, billets, and recruitment. They were given sums without repayment for the construction of urban settlements - houses, churches, magistrates' buildings, gymnasiums, installation of water pipes, baths and coffee houses (!). Saving fiscal legislation was implemented: “after 10 preferential years have passed, pay them to the treasury from merchant capital 1% of the ruble, from workshops and burghers 2 rubles per year from each yard, from villagers 10 kopecks. for a tithe." See Decree of Empress Catherine II of October 12, 1794.

During the organization of the Armenian Genocide in 1915, at the beginning of 1914-1915. the government of the Young Turks declared war on the infidels - jihad, organizing in mosques and in public places numerous gatherings at which Muslims were called to kill ALL Armenians as spies and saboteurs. According to Muslim law, the enemy's property is a trophy for the first person to kill him. Thus, murders and robberies were carried out everywhere, because after the mass declaration of Armenians as enemies, this was considered a LEGAL and financially ENCOURAGED act. A fifth of the loot from the Armenians OFFICIALLY went to the Young Turks’ party treasury.

The speed and scale of the 1915 Genocide carried out by the Young Turks is terrifying. Within a year, about 80% of the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were exterminated - in 1915. About 1,500,000 Armenians were killed as of today, in 2017. The Armenian community in Turkey is about 70,000 Christian Armenians, there are also Islamized Armenians - the number is unknown.

Geopolitical and legal aspects Armenian Genocide

IN 1879 Ottoman Türkiye officially declared itself BANKRUPT- the size of Turkey's external debt was considered astronomical and reached a nominal value of 5.3 billion francs in gold. Central State Bank of Turkey "Imperial Ottoman Bank" was a concession enterprise established in 1856. and was sentenced to 80 years English and French financiers (including those from the Rothschild clan) . Under the terms of the concession, the Bank serviced all operations related to the accounting of financial revenues to the state treasury. The bank had the exclusive right to issue banknotes (i.e., issue Turkish money) valid throughout the Ottoman Empire.

Let us note that it was in this bank that the valuables and funds of the majority of Armenians were kept, which were then confiscated from ALL of them AND WERE NOT RETURNED TO ANYONE, and so did branches of foreign banks.

Map of murders and pogroms of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire for 1915.

Türkiye quickly sold off its existing assets, includinggave concessions to foreign companies(mainly Western) land, rights to build and operate large infrastructures (railway), mining, etc. This important detail, in the future, the new owners were not interested in changing the status of the territories and their loss to Turkey.

Map of mineral resources of Western Armenia /Türkiye today/.

For reference: The territory of Western Armenia is rich in various useful things, incl. ore minerals: iron, lead, zinc, manganese, mercury, antimony, molybdenum, etc. There are rich deposits of copper, tungsten, etc.

Living in their historical homeland, the Armenians and Pontic Greeks also participated in economic legal relations within the empire - especially after a series of internal Turkish reforms (1856, 1869), which took place under pressure from the Western powers (France, Great Britain) and Russia and represented a significant part of the financial and industrial elite of Turkey.

Having centuries-old corresponding civilizational potential and powerful connections with compatriots from outside, including the possibility of attracting (turnover) national capital, the Armenians and Greeks represented serious competition and therefore were exterminated by the Young Turks of the Denme.

Legal levers that the Young Turks operated during the deportation and the Armenian Genocide of 1915. (the most important acts).

1. The totality of a number of aspects of Ottoman Muslim law that legitimized the seizure of the property of Armenians by virtue of declaring them en masse as “Western and Russian spies.” An important step in this direction was the declaration of a holy war - jihad with infidels from the Entente countries and their allies on November 11, 1914. The seized property of the Armenians/"harbi", according to the legal custom established and applied in Turkey, passed to the murderers. By order of the Young Turks, a fifth of it was officially transferred to their party treasury.

2. Decisions of the congresses of the party “Unity and Progress” 1910-1915. ( The extermination of Armenians has been considered since 1905. ), incl. Secret decision of the “Unity and Progress” committee at the congress in Thessaloniki on the Turkification of non-Turkish peoples of the empire. The final decision to implement the Armenian Genocide was made at a secret meeting of the Ittihadists on February 26, 1915. with the participation of 75 people.

3. Decision on special education. organ - executive committee of three, consisting of the Young Turks-denme Nazim, Shakir and Shukri, October 1914, who was supposed to be responsible for organizational matters extermination of the Armenians. The organization of special detachments of criminals, “Teshkilat-i Makhsuse” (Special Organization), to assist the Executive Committee of the Three, numbered up to 34,000 members and largely consisted of “chettes” - criminals released from prison.

4. Order of War Minister Enver in February 1915 on the extermination of Armenians serving in the Turkish army.

7. Temporary Law “On the Disposal of Property” of September 26, 1915 Eleven articles of this law regulated issues related to the disposal of the property of deportees, their loans and assets.

8. Order of the Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat dated September 16, 1915 on the extermination of Armenian children in orphanages. In the initial period of the 1915 Genocide, some Turks began to officially adopt Armenian orphans, but the Young Turks saw this as a “loophole to save the Armenians” and a secret order was issued. In it, Talaat wrote: “gather all the Armenian children, ... remove them under the pretext that the deportation committee will take care of them, so that suspicion does not arise. Destroy them and report execution.”

9. Temporary Law “On Expropriation and Confiscation of Property”, dated October 13/16, 1915 Among the many glaring facts:

The unprecedented nature of the confiscation carried out by the Turkish Ministry of Finance, on the basis of this law, of bank deposits and jewelry of Armenians, which they deposited in the Ottoman Bank before deportation;

- official expropriation of money that was received by Armenians when selling their property to local Turks;

Attempts by the government, represented by the Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat, to receive compensation for the insurance policies of Armenians who insured their lives with foreign insurance companies, based on the fact that they had no heirs left and the Turkish government became their beneficiary.

10. Talaat’s directive “On a change of faith” dated December 17, 1915 etc. Many Armenians, trying to escape, agreed to change their religion; this directive insisted on their deportation and actual murder, regardless of their faith.

Losses from the Genocide for the period 1915-1919. / Paris Peace Conference, 1919 /

Losses of the Armenian people at the end of the 19th century. and the beginning of the 20th century, the culmination of which was the implementation of the 1915 Genocide. - cannot be calculated either by the number of killed or by fixed property damage - they are immeasurable. In addition to those brutally killed by enemies, tens of thousands of Armenians died daily from hunger, cold, epidemics, and stress etc., mostly helpless women, old people and children. Hundreds of thousands of women and children were Turkified and held captive by force, were sold into slavery, the number of refugees amounted to hundreds of thousands, plus tens of thousands of orphans and street children. The population mortality figures also speak of the catastrophic situation. In Yerevan, 20-25% of the population died in 1919 alone. According to expert estimates, for 1914-1919. the population of the current territory of Armenia decreased by 600,000 people, a small part of them emigrated, the rest died from disease and deprivation. There was massive looting and destruction of numerous valuables, incl. destruction of priceless treasures of the nation: manuscripts, books, architectural and other monuments of national and world significance. The unrealized potential of the destroyed generations, the loss of qualified personnel and the failure in their continuity, which has sharply affected the overall level of development of the nation and the global niche it occupies to this day, cannot be replenished, and the list goes on...

Total from 1915-1919 1,800,000 Armenians were killed throughout Western Armenia and Cilicia, part of Eastern Armenia. 66 cities, 2,500 villages, 2,000 churches and monasteries, 1,500 schools, as well as ancient monuments, manuscripts, factories, etc. were plundered and devastated.

Incomplete (recognized) damage at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. amounted to 19,130,932,000 French gold francs, of which:

Let us recall that the size of the external debt of Ottoman Turkey was the largest among the countries of Eurasia and reached a nominal value of 5,300,000,000 French gold francs.

Türkiye paid for it and has a lot today precisely due to the robbery and murder of Armenians on Armenian soil...

Since the Armenian Genocide remained an unpunished crime, which brought huge dividends to its organizers, ranging from material to moral and ideological - perpetuating their positive role in the formation of the Turkish state and the embodiment of the ideas of pan-Turkism, Armenians will always be a target.

It is the reluctance of the Turkish side to part with the loot and pay the bills of history that makes any negotiations on the issue of the Armenian genocide impossible.

Recognition of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 is the most important element of state security of the Republic of Armenia, since impunity for the crime and too large dividends clearly lead to an attempt to REPEAT THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE.

The increase in the number of countries that have recognized the Armenian genocide also increases the level of security of Armenia, since international recognition of this crime is a deterrent for Turkey and Azerbaijan.

We do not call for hatred, we call for UNDERSTANDING and ADEQUACY not only of Armenians, but also of all those who consider themselves cultured and civilized people. And even after more than 100 years, crimes against Armenians must be condemned, criminals punished, and what was obtained by criminal means returned to the owners (their loved ones) or the national to the successor state.This is the only way to stop new crimes, new genocide anywherepeace. In the dissemination of meaningful information and the consistent struggle to punish criminals, the salvation of our future generations - in the palms of mothers, look for the fate of nations...

Isabella Muradyan - migration lawyer (Yerevan), member of the International Law Association, especially for