Why was the Armenian genocide of 1915. The Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire
In 1915, there were 2 million Armenians living in the weakened Ottoman Empire. But under the cover of World War I, the Turkish government systematically exterminated 1.5 million people in an attempt to unite the entire Turkish people, creating a new empire with one language and one religion.
The ethnic cleansing of Armenians and other minorities, including Assyrians, Pontic and Anatolian Greeks, is today known as the Armenian Genocide.
Despite pressure from Armenians and activists around the world, Turkey still refuses to recognize the genocide, saying there was no deliberate killing of Armenians.
History of the region
Armenians have lived in the southern Caucasus since the 7th century BC and competed for control over other groups such as the Mongol, Russian, Turkish and Persian empires. In the 4th century, the reigning king of Armenia became a Christian. He claimed that the official religion of the empire was Christianity, although in the 7th century AD all the countries surrounding Armenia were Muslim. Armenians continued to practice as Christians despite being conquered many times and forced to live under harsh rule.
The roots of the genocide lie in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. At the turn of the 20th century, the once widespread Ottoman Empire was crumbling at the edges. The Ottoman Empire lost all of its territory in Europe during the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, creating instability among nationalist ethnic groups.
First massacre
At the turn of the century, tensions grew between the Armenians and the Turkish authorities. Sultan Abdel Hamid II, known as the "Bloody Sultan", told a reporter in 1890: "I will give them a box on their ear that will make them give up their revolutionary ambitions."
In 1894, the "box on the ear" massacre became the first of the Armenian massacres. Ottoman soldiers and civilians attacked Armenian villages in Eastern Anatolia, killing 8,000 Armenians, including children. A year later, 2,500 Armenian women were burned in the Urfa Cathedral. Around the same time, a group of 5,000 people were killed after demonstrations asking for international intervention to prevent massacres in Constantinople. Historians estimate that by 1896, more than 80,000 Armenians had died.
Rise of the Young Turks
In 1909, the Ottoman Sultan was overthrown by a new political group, the Young Turks, a group seeking a modern, Westernized style of government. At first, Armenians hoped that they would have a place in the new state, but they soon realized that the new government was xenophobic and exclusionary of the multi-ethnic Turkish society. To consolidate Turkish rule in the remaining territories of the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks developed a secret program to exterminate the Armenian population.
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, armed attacks began as 300 Armenian intellectuals—political leaders, educators, writers, and religious leaders in Constantinople—were forcibly removed from their homes, tortured, then hanged or shot.
The death march killed approximately 1.5 million Armenians, covering hundreds of miles and lasting several months. Indirect routes through desert areas were specifically chosen to prolong marches and keep caravans in Turkish villages.
After the disappearance of the Armenian population, the Muslim Turks quickly took over whatever was left. The Turks destroyed the remains of the Armenian cultural heritage, including masterpieces of ancient architecture, old libraries and archives. The Turks leveled entire cities, including the once prosperous Kharpert, Van and the ancient capital at Ani, to remove all traces of three thousand years of civilization.
No allied power came to the aid of the Armenian Republic, and it collapsed. The only tiny part of historical Armenia that survived was the easternmost region, because it became part of the Soviet Union. The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota compiled data by province and area, showing that in 1914 there were 2,133,190 Armenians in the empire, but by 1922 there were only about 387,800.
A Failed Call to Arms in the West
At the time, international whistleblowers and national diplomats recognized the atrocities committed as crimes against humanity.
Leslie Davis, the US consul in Harput, noted: "These women and children were driven out of the desert in midsummer, robbed and plundered of what they had... after which all who were not killed were meanwhile killed near the city."
The Swedish ambassador to Peru, Gustaf August Kossva Ankarsvard, wrote in 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 (Great Britain, France and Russia) responded to the news of massacres ah, issuing a warning to Turkey: "The Allied Governments announce publicly that they will hold all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as their agents like them, personally responsible for such matters." The warning had no effect.
Because Ottoman law prohibited photography of Armenian deportees, photographic documentation documenting the severity of ethnic cleansing is rare. In an act of defiance, German military mission officers documented the atrocities occurring in the concentration camps. Although many of the photographs were intercepted by Ottoman intelligence, lost in Germany during World War II or forgotten in dusty boxes, the Armenian Genocide Museum of America has captured some of these photographs in online export.
Recognition of the Armenian Genocide
Today, Armenians commemorate those who died during the genocide on April 24, the day in 1915 when several hundred Armenian intellectuals and professionals were arrested and executed as the beginning of the genocide.
In 1985, the United States named the day "National Day of Remembrance of Human Inhumanity to Man" in honor of all victims of genocide, especially the one and a half million people of Armenian descent who were victims of the genocide committed in Turkey."
Today, recognition of the Armenian Genocide is a hot issue as Turkey criticizes scholars for punishing deaths and blaming Turks for deaths that the government says were due to famine and the brutality of war. In fact, speaking of the Armenian genocide in Turkey, it is punishable by law. As of 2014, 21 countries in total have publicly or legally recognized this ethnic cleansing in Armenia as genocide.
In 2014, on the eve of the 99th anniversary of the genocide, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed condolences to the Armenian people and said: “The incidents of the First World War are our common pain.”
However, many believe the proposals are useless until Turkey recognizes the loss of 1.5 million people as genocide. In response to Erdogan’s proposal, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said: “The refusal to commit a crime is a direct continuation of this very crime. Only recognition and conviction can prevent such crimes from happening again in the future.”
Ultimately, recognition of this genocide is not only important for the elimination of the affected ethnic groups, but also for the development of Turkey as a democratic state. If the past is denied, genocide still occurs. In 2010, a Swedish Parliament Resolution stated that "genocide denial is widely accepted as the final stage of genocide, perpetuating impunity for genocide perpetrators and apparently paving the way for future genocides."
Countries that do not recognize the Armenian genocide
Countries that recognize the Armenian genocide are those that officially accept the systematic mass murder and forced deportation of Armenians carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923.
Although historical and academic institutions of Holocaust and genocide studies accept the Armenian Genocide, many countries refuse to do so in order to maintain their political relations with the Republic of Turkey. Azerbaijan and Turkey are the only countries that refuse to recognize the Armenian Genocide and threaten economic and diplomatic consequences for those who do so.
The Armenian Genocide Memorial Complex was built in 1967 on Tsitsernakaberd Hill in Yerevan. The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, opened in 1995, presents facts about the horror of massacres.
Turkey has been urged to recognize the Armenian Genocide several times, but the sad fact is that the government denies the word "genocide" as an accurate term for massacres.
Facts about countries recognizing the Armenian Genocide, memorial and criminalization of denial
On May 25, 1915, the Entente authorities issued a statement stating that employees of the Ottoman government who participated in the Armenian Genocide would be personally responsible for crimes against humanity. Parliaments of several countries began to recognize this event as genocide from the second half of the 20th century.
The left-leaning and green Turkish political party, the Green Left Party, is the only one that recognizes the Armenian Genocide in the country.
Uruguay became the first country to recognize in 1965, and then in 2004.
Cyprus was the country that recognized the Armenian genocide: first in 1975, 1982 and 1990. Moreover, she became the first to raise this issue at the UN General Assembly. Denial of the Armenian Genocide is also criminalized in Cyprus.
France also criminalized denial of the Armenian Genocide in 2016, having recognized it in 1998 and 2001. Following the passage of the bill, which was criminalized on October 14, 2016, it was adopted by the French National Assembly in July 2017. It carries a penalty of a year in prison or a fine of 45,000 euros.
Greece recognized the event as genocide in 1996 and, according to the 2014 act, failure to punish is punishable by up to three years' imprisonment and a fine not to exceed 30,000 euros.
Countries that recognize the Armenian Genocide: Switzerland and memorial laws
Switzerland recognized the Armenian Genocide in 2003, making denial a crime. Doğu Perinçek, a Turkish politician, lawyer and chairman of the left-wing nationalist Patriotic Party, became the first person to be criminally charged with denouncing the Armenian Genocide. The decision was made by a Swiss court in 2007.
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" referred to is the First World War, 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 more than 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.
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, therefore global community must put pressure on Ankara to recognize the genocide,” Karapetyan responded to Erdogan’s subtle threats.
America had an interest in marking events as genocide
Although the American government and media called the killing of 1.5 million Armenians "atrocities" or "mass murders," the word "genocide" rarely made its way to the American people to describe the events that occurred from 1915 to 1923. That the words “Armenian Genocide” appeared in the New York Times. Peter Balakian, a professor of humanities at Colgate University, and Samantha Power, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, drafted a letter to the editor of the Times that was subsequently published.
In the letter, Balakian and Seal chastise the Times and other media outlets for failing to label the atrocities that occurred in 1915 as genocide.
“The extermination of the Armenians is recognized as genocide by the consensus of genocide and Holocaust scholars around the world. Failure to recognize this trivializes a human rights crime of enormous magnitude,” one portion of the letter reads. "This is ironic because in 1915, the New York Times published 145 articles on the Armenian genocide and regularly used the words 'systematic,' 'government planning,' and 'extermination.'
Currently, US recognition of the events of 1915 as genocide of America is being considered by the US House of Representatives. The proposed resolution is briefly summarized as the “Armenian Genocide Resolution,” but its official title is “H. Res 106 or the U.S. Reaffirmation of the Armenian Genocide Resolution."
The role of religion in the Armenian genocide
The religious origins of the Armenian Genocide date back to the 15th century, when the government of Armenia was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. The leaders of the Ottoman Empire were mostly Muslim. Christian Armenians were considered minorities by the Ottoman Empire, and although they were "allowed to maintain some autonomy", they were largely treated as second-class citizens; i.e. Armenians were denied the right to vote, paid higher taxes than Muslims, and were denied many other legal and economic rights. Insults and biases were prevalent among the leaders of the Ottoman Empire, as Armenians were treated unfairly by violence against Christian minorities.
In the early 1900s, the Ottoman Empire was dismantled and taken over by the Young Turks. The Young Turks were initially formed as leaders who would guide the country and its citizens to a more democratic and constitutionally sound place. The Armenians were initially delighted at this prospect, but later learned that the modernization of the Young Turks would involve extermination as a means of "Turkicizing" the new state.
The rule of the Young Turks would be the catalyst for what is now known as one of the world's first genocides.
The role of religion in this genocide was visible as Christianity was constantly seen as a justification for the holocaust perpetrated by the militant followers of the Young Turks. Likewise, the extermination of Jewish citizens was considered a justification for Nazi Germany during World War II.
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.
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.
Causes and consequences of the Armenian genocide in 1915?
The term "genocide" refers to the systematic mass murder of a specific group of people. The name "genocide" was not coined until 1944, when Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin used the term during trials to describe crimes committed by top Nazi leaders. Lemon created the word by combining the Greek word for "group" or "tribe" (geno-) and the Latin word for "kill" (cide).
In a 1949 CBS interview, Lemkin stated that his inspiration for the term came from the fact that the systematic killing of specific groups of people "has happened so many times in the past" as with the Armenians.
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 - native Christians,' according to the then to the German ambassador at Constantinople...Hitler himself used "purification" or "cleansing" 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.
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".
Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide
To mark the 100th anniversary of the brutal Holocaust that took place in 1915, efforts were made to international efforts in honor of the victims and their families. The first official event to mark the 100th anniversary took place at Florida Atlantic University in south Florida. ARMENPRESS states that the company's mission is to “preserve Armenian culture and promote its dissemination.”
On the West Coast, Los Angeles councilor Paul Kerkorian will accept entries for an art competition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. according to a statement from West Side Today, Kerkorian said the competition "...is a way to honor the history of genocide and highlight the promise of our future." He continued: "I hope that artists and students who care about human rights will participate and help honor the memory of the Armenian people."
Overseas, the Armenian National Committee (ANC) of Australia has officially launched its OnThisDay campaign, which will focus on honoring those affected by the Armenian Genocide. According to Asbares, ANC Australia has compiled an extensive catalog of these newspaper clippings from Australian archives, including the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Argus and other prominent publications of the day, and will be releasing them daily on Facebook .
ANC Australia chief executive Vache Kahramanian noted that the information released will include a variety of articles detailing the "horrors" of the Armenian Genocide, as well as reports on Australia's humanitarian efforts during this time.
Situation today
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan "... extended invitations to the leaders of the 102 states whose soldiers fought in the First World War, inviting them to take part in the anniversary event, which is scheduled to take place on April 23-24," while Armenians will gather to commemorate the 100th anniversary. anniversary of the genocide experienced in the Ottoman Empire. The invitation was met with resentment from Armenian citizens, who considered it “unconscionable,” a “joke,” and a “political maneuver” on Erdogan’s part.
To clarify the essence of the Armenian question and the concept of “Armenian genocide,” we will cite a number of excerpts from the book of the famous French historian Georges de Maleville “The Armenian Tragedy of 1915,” published in Russian by the Baku publishing house “Elm” in 1990, and try to comment on it.
In Chapter I, “Historical Frame of Events,” he writes: “ geographically great Armenia constitutes a territory with undefined borders, the approximate center of which was Mount Ararat (5,165 m) and which was limited by three large lakes of the Caucasus: Sevan (Geycha) - from the northeast, Lake Van - from the southwest and Lake Urmia in the Iranian Azerbaijan - from the southeast. It is impossible to more accurately determine the borders of Armenia in the past due to the lack of reliable data. As you know, today on central Caucasus there is an Armenian core - the Armenian SSR, 90% of the population of which, according to Soviet statistics, are Armenians. But it was not always so. The "Six Armenian Provinces" of Ottoman Turkey (Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, Diyarbakir, Elaziz and Sivas) were inhabited until 1914 a large number Armenians, who, however, did not constitute the majority by any means. Today, Armenians no longer live in Anatolia, and it is their disappearance that is blamed on the Turkish state". However, as Georges de Maleville writes on page 19, “ from 1632 the border was changed as a result of the Russian invasion of the Caucasus. It became clear that political plans The Russians were planning to annex the Black Sea coast. In 1774, the Treaty of Kuchuk-Keynar confirmed the loss of dominance over the Crimea by the Ottomans. On the eastern shore of the Black Sea, according to the 1812 treaty concluded in Bucharest, Abkhazia and Georgia, annexed, however, since 1801, went to Russia. The war with Persia, which began in 1801, ended in 1828 with the transfer to Russia of all Persian territories north of the Araks, namely the Erivan Khanate. According to the Treaty of Turkmenchay, signed in March, Russia had a common border with Turkey, and, having pushed aside Persia, it gained dominance over part of the territory of Armenia(which has never existed there in history - author's note).
A month later, in April 1828, Loris-Melikov's army, which had come to end the Armenian campaign, occupied Turkish Anatolia as part of the operations of the fifth Russo-Turkish War and laid siege for the first time in front of the fortress at Kareya. It was during these events that for the first time the Armenian population of Turkey came out in support of the Russian army, which consisted of volunteers recruited in Erivan, driven to fanaticism by the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin and called upon to terrorize the Muslim population, raising the Armenian population of Turkey to revolt. The same scenario played out calmly for ninety years every time the Russian army made another breakthrough in the same territory, with the only nuance that over time Russian propaganda improved its methods, and, starting from the moment when the “Armenian question” became object of constant excitement, the Russian army was confident that it could count on Turkish territory and on the rear of the Turkish army, that is, on the assistance of bands of armed rebels who, in anticipation of a breakthrough of the Russian army, would wear down the Turkish army and try to destroy it from the rear. After this there were also Russian-Turkish wars in 1833 and 1877. 36 years passed before the next conflict, which began with the declaration of war on November 1, 1914. However, the long period of time was by no means peaceful for Turkish Anatolia. Beginning in 1880, for the first time in its history, Turkish Armenia experienced revolts, banditry and bloody riots, which the Ottoman power tried to stop without much success. The riots followed a chronology that was not random: riots arose systematically, and the suppression of them, necessary to establish order, aroused persistent hatred in response.
Throughout the entire territory between Erzincay and Erzurum in the north and Diyarbakir and Van in the south, sedition has been carried out for more than twenty years with all the consequences that can flow from it, in a region remote from the center and difficult to govern". According to Russian sources, weapons flowed here like a river from Russia.
“On November 1, 1914, Turkey was forced to enter the war,” continues Georges de Maleville. In the spring of 1915, the Turkish government decided to resettle the Armenian population of eastern Anatolia to Syria and the mountainous part of Mesopotamia, which was then Turkish territory. They prove to us that they were allegedly talking about a beating, a measure of disguised destruction. We will try to analyze whether this is true or not. But before these events are described and studied, it is necessary to consider the disposition of forces along the front line during the war. At the beginning of 1915, the Russians, without the knowledge of the Turks, made a maneuver and, bypassing Ararat, descended to the south along the Persian border. It was then that the rebellion of the Armenians inhabiting Van broke out, which entailed the first significant deportation of the Armenian population during the war. This should be discussed in more detail.
A telegram from Governor Wang dated March 20, 1915 reports an armed uprising and clarifies: “ We believe there are more than 2000 rebels. We are trying to suppress this uprising". The efforts were, however, in vain, since on March 23 the same governor reports that the rebellion was spreading to nearby villages. A month later the situation became desperate. This is what the governor telegraphed on April 24: “ 4,000 rebels gathered in the region. The rebels cut off roads, attack nearby villages and subjugate them. Currently, many women and children are left without hearth and home. Shouldn't these women and children (Muslims) be transported to the western provinces?“Unfortunately, they couldn’t do this then, and here are the consequences.
« The Russian Caucasian Army begins an offensive in the direction of Van, - American historian Stanford J. Shaw tells us. (Shaw S.J. vol. 2, p. 316). — This army includes a large number of Armenian volunteers. Setting out from Yerevan on April 28, ... they reached Van on May 14, organized and carried out a massacre of the local Muslim population. Over the next two days, an Armenian state was established in Van under the protection of the Russians, and it seemed that it would be able to hold out after the disappearance of representatives of the Muslim population, killed or put to flight«.
« The Armenian population of the city of Van before these tragic events was only 33,789 people, i.e., only 42% of total number population". (Shaw S.J. p. 316). The number of Muslims was 46,661 people, of which, apparently, the Armenians killed about 36,000 people, which is an act of genocide (author's note). This gives an idea of the scale of the beatings carried out on the unarmed population (Muslim men were at the front) with the simple goal of making room. There was nothing random or unexpected in these actions. This is what another historian, Valiy, writes: “ In April 1915, Armenian revolutionaries captured the city of Van and established an Armenian headquarters there under the command of Aram and Varelu(two leaders of the revolutionary Dashnak party). the 6th of May(possibly according to the old calendar) they opened the city to the Russian army after clearing the area of all Muslims... Among the most famous Armenian leaders (in Van) was the former member of the Turkish parliament Pasdermadjian, known as Garro. He led the Armenian volunteers when clashes began between the Turks and Russians". (Felix Valyi “Revolutions in islam”, Londres, 1925, p. 253).
On May 18, 1915, the tsar, moreover, expressed “ gratitude to the Armenian population of Van for their dedication"(Gyuryun, p. 261), and Aram Manukyan was appointed Russian governor. The show goes on to describe the events that followed.
« Thousands of Armenian residents of Mush, as well as other important centers in the eastern regions of Turkey, began to flock to the new Armenian state, and among them were columns of escaped prisoners... In mid-June, at least 250,000 Armenians were concentrated in the area of the city of Van... However, in early July Ottoman units pushed back the Russian army. The retreating army was accompanied by thousands of Armenians: they were fleeing punishment for the murders that the stillborn state allowed"(Shaw S.J., p. 316).
The Armenian author Khovanesyan, who is furiously hostile towards the Turks, writes: “ The panic was indescribable. After a month of resistance to the governor, after the liberation of the city, after the establishment of the Armenian government, everything was lost. More than 200,000 refugees fled with the retreating Russian army to Transcaucasia, losing the best they had and falling into endless traps set by the Kurds”(Hovannisian, “Road to independence”, p. 53, cite par Shaue).
We dwelled in such detail on the events in Van because, unfortunately, they are a sad example. First, it clearly shows the extent to which armed uprisings in regions with significant Armenian minorities were common and dangerous for the Ottoman troops who fought against the Russians. Here we are quite obviously and clearly talking about betrayal in the face of the enemy. This behavior of the Armenians, by the way, today is systematically obscured by authors who are favorable to their claims - all this is simply denied: the truth interferes with them.
On the other hand, official Turkish telegrams confirm the opinion of all objective authors that the Armenian leaders systematically suppressed the Muslim majority local population in order to be able to seize the territory (that is, they simply slaughtered all the children, women, old people - author's note). We have already spoken about this and repeat it again: nowhere in the Ottoman Empire did the Armenian population, which settled voluntarily, constitute even a slight majority that could allow the creation of an autonomous Armenian region. Under these conditions, the Armenian revolutionaries had no choice but to transform the minority into a majority by exterminating the Muslim population to succeed in their policy. They resorted to this procedure every time their hands were freed, moreover, with the support of the Russians themselves, finally, and this main element in our evidence, when trying to calculate the number of Armenians allegedly destroyed by the Turks, an honest observer should in no case equate the number of missing persons with the number of victims; Throughout the war, the insane hope of achieving the establishment of an Armenian autonomous state under the auspices of the Russians became an obsession for the Armenian population of Turkey. Khovanesyan, an Armenian author, tells us about this: “ The reckless armed rebellion in Van brought to him 200,000 Armenians from all over eastern Anatolia, who then fled from there, overcoming 3000-meter mountains, to then return to Erzurum and again escape from there with other Armenians, and so on.". It is inevitable that a population that has experienced such severe suffering at the height of war will lose significant numbers. However, justice does not allow the Turks to be blamed for these human losses, which occurred solely as a result of the circumstances of the war and the insane propaganda that for decades poisoned the Turkish Armenians and made them believe that they would be able to create an independent state through rebellion or murder, while they were everywhere minority". Let's return to the history of the battles.
The Turkish breakthrough proved short-lived, and in August the Turks were forced to cede Van to the Russians again. Until the end of 1915, the Eastern Front was established along the Van-Agri-Khorasan line. But in February 1916, the Russians launched a powerful offensive in two directions: one around Lake Van on the southern side and further to Bitlis and Mushu, the second from Kars to Erzurum, which was taken on February 16. Here, too, the Russians were accompanied by irregular columns of Armenians, determined to crush everything in their path.
Shaw writes: " What followed was the worst massacre of the entire war: more than a million Muslim peasants were forced to flee. Thousands of them were cut to pieces as they tried to escape with the Ottoman army retreating to Erzincan"(Shaw S. Pzh, p. 323).
One can only marvel at the magnitude of this figure: it gives an idea of the reputation for cruelty that the Armenian auxiliary groups acquired and which they maintained through constant terror (the Russian army, of course, was not involved here).
On April 18, the Russians took Trabzon, in July - Erzincan, even Sivas was under threat. However, the Russian offensive in the south around Lake Van was repulsed. In the autumn of 1916, the front was in the shape of a semicircle, which included Trabzon and Erzincan in Russian territory and reached Bitlis in the south. The front remained this way until the spring of 1918.
Of course, the Armenian revolutionary organizations believed that the Russian victory was assured, and imagined, “ that their dream would be realized, especially since the newly occupied territories included the port of Trabzon. A huge number of Armenians - refugees from Van, as well as emigrants from Russian Armenia - flocked to the Erzurum area. Throughout 1917, the Russian army was paralyzed by the St. Petersburg revolution. On December 18, 1917, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice with the Ottoman government in Erzincan, and this was followed by the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918, which declared the return to Turkey of the eastern territories taken from it in 1878. The Russians returned Kara and Ardahan, and “Armenia” was thus reduced to its natural densely populated territory - Russian Armenia, which Armenian gangs created in 1905-1907. as a result of the massacre of Azerbaijanis(however, it should be noted that here the Armenians did not constitute the majority at that time, until the end of the forties of the twentieth century - author's note).
But the Armenians did not agree that way. Starting on January 13, 1918, they began to acquire weapons from the Bolsheviks, who were recalling their units from the front.(TsGAAR, D-T, No. 13). Then, on February 10, 1918, together with the Georgians and Azerbaijanis, they formed a single socialist republic of Transcaucasia with Menshevik tendencies, which rejected in advance the terms of the treaty that were to be accepted in Brest-Litovsk. Finally, taking advantage of the decision of the Russian army, non-combatant Armenian units organized a systematic massacre of the Muslim population in Erzincan and Erzurum, accompanied by indescribable horrors, which were then told by indignant Russian officers" (Khleboc, journal de guerre du 2-e regiment d`artillerie, cite par Durun, p. 272).
The goal was still the same: to make room in order to ensure that Armenian immigrants had an exclusive right to territory in the eyes of international public opinion. Shaw states that the Turkish population of the five provinces of Trabzon, Erzincan, Erzurum, Van and Bitlis, which numbered 3,300,000 in 1914, became 600,000 refugees after the war (ibid., p. 325).
On June 4, 1918, the Caucasian republics signed a treaty with Turkey that confirmed the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Agreement and recognized the 1877 borders, thus allowing Turkish troops to bypass Armenia from the south and recapture Baku from the British, which they did on September 14, 1918. The Mudros Agreement of October 30, 1918 found Turkish troops in Baku. In the subsequent period of disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the Armenians tried to take advantage of the retreat of the Turkish troops: on April 19, 1919, they again occupied Kars (Georgians - Ardahan). This means that the front line was again pushed west almost along the 1878 border. From there, for eighteen months, the Armenians carried out countless raids on the outskirts of the territories they occupied, namely in the northwest direction towards the Black Sea and Trabzon (Gürün, 295 - 318), which refers to the memoirs of General Kazim Karzbekir and two witnesses - Rawlinson (English ) and Robert Dana (American).
And, naturally, they again tried to increase the Armenian population of Kars, and did this using well-known methods, that is, through total terror and murder. Fate decreed otherwise. Thanks to Mustafa Kemal, Turkey regained its strength, and on September 28, 1920, General Kazim Karabekir launched an offensive against the Armenians. On October 30 he took Kars, and on November 7 - Alexandropol (Gyumri). For the third time in 5 years of war, a huge mass of Armenians fled before the offensive of the Turkish army, thus expressing in their own way their refusal to submit to the Turkish government.
This is how the story of the migration of the Armenian population on the Eastern Front ends. However, this population could never actually be taken into account in the statistics of the notorious “beatings” committed by the Turks against the Armenians. All that is known about him is that the survivors, their number is very unclear, after terrible ordeals reached Soviet Armenia. But how many of these unfortunates were there whom human and criminally absurd propaganda sent at the height of the war to the line of fire in order to build there a chimerical state by exterminating the indigenous local population?
However, in order to more clearly imagine what happened in 1915, let us return to the events that unfolded around the Armenians in the pre-war period, that is, before the outbreak of the First World War of 1914-1918.
The one who worked to promote and use the Armenians for their own purposes is quite eloquently stated in the letter of the Tsar’s governor in the Caucasus, Vorontsov-Dashkov, which we present below.
On October 10, 1912, the governor of Nicholas II in the Caucasus, I.K. Vorontsov-Dashkov, writes to the emperor Russian Empire: « Your Majesty knows that in the entire history of our relations with Turkey in the Caucasus, right up to the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, which ended with the annexation of the present-day Batumi and Kars regions to our territory, Russian policy has incessantly since Peter the Great been based on a friendly attitude towards the Armenians, who paid us for this during the hostilities by actively helping the troops. With the annexation of the so-called Armenian region, in which Etchmiadzin, the cradle of Armenian-Gregorianism, was located, to our possessions. Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich spent a lot of effort to create from the Patriarch of Etchmiadzin a trustee of the Turkish and Persian Armenians, rightly believing thereby to achieve useful influence for Russia among the Christian population of Asia Minor, through which the path of our primordial offensive movement to the southern seas ran. By patronizing the Armenians, we acquired loyal allies who always provided us with great services... It was carried out consistently and steadily for almost a century and a half"("Red Archive", No. 1 (26). M., pp. 118-120).
So, the policy of using Armenians in the fight against Turks and Azerbaijanis by Russia began from the time of Peter 1 and has been going on for about 250 years. By the hands of Armenians, who, in the apt expression of the prosecutor of the Etchmiadzin Synod. A.Frenkel, "civilization has only scratched the surface"Russia is implementing the behests of Peter I. " And quietly reduce these infidels so that they don’t know it". Yes, history, which no matter how much you hush up or distort, has preserved the true state of affairs in the Caucasus of the so-called Armenian region, in which Etchmiadzin (Uch muAdzin - Three Churches) and Iravan, i.e. Yerevan, are located. By the way, the flag of the Iravan Khanate is in Baku, in the museum.
In 1828, on February 10, according to the Treaty of Turkmenchay, the Nakhchivan and Iravan khanates became part of the Russian Empire. The Khanate of Iran offered heroic resistance to the Russian hordes for 23 years. Armenians also fought as part of the Russian troops. In 1825, the population of the Iravan Khanate consisted of Muslim Azerbaijanis (more than 95%) and Kurds. In 1828, Russia, having spent enormous material resources, resettled 120 thousand Armenians within the defeated Iravan Khanate.
And from 1829 to 1918, about 300 thousand more Armenians were settled there, and even after that, Armenians in the Erivan, Etchmiadzin provinces and other areas of the so-called Russian Armenia did not constitute the majority of the population anywhere. Their National composition nowhere exceeded 30-40% of the total local population in 1917. Thus, the population table of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, compiled according to the “Caucasian calendar for 1917”, shows that in the part of the Erivan province, which is part of Azerbaijan, there were 129,586 Muslims and 80,530 Armenians, which was 61% and 38%, respectively. And in the document presented to the Chairman of the Paris Peace Conference - a note of protest. The Azerbaijani peace delegation dated August 16/19, 1919 regarding the recognition of the independence of the Azerbaijan Republic (abbreviated - author’s note) states: “ Being deprived of the opportunity to obtain regular and private relations with its capital - the city of Baku, the Azerbaijani peace delegation only learned from recent official reports about the sad fate to which the Karsk region, Nakhchivan, Sharuro-Daralagez, Surmalinsky districts and part of the Erivan district of the Erivan province were subjected - annexation , with the exception of the Ardagan district, to the Kars region forcibly to the territory of the Armenian Republic. All these lands were occupied by Turkish troops, who remained in them until the armistice was concluded. After the departure of the latter: the regions of Kars and Batumi, together with the Akhalikh and Akhalkalaki districts of the Tiflis province, formed an independent republic of the South-Western Caucasus, headed by a provisional government in the city of Kars.
This provisional government was formed by the parliament convened at the same time. Despite such a clearly expressed will of the population of these regions, the neighboring republics, in violation of the principle of free self-determination of peoples, made a number of attempts and forcibly seized part of the Republic of the South-West Caucasus and eventually ensured that the Kars parliament and government were dissolved by decree of General Thomson, and the members government arrested and sent to Batumi. At the same time, the dissolution and arrests were motivated by the fact that the Kars parliament and government seemed to have a hostile orientation, which, by the way, the Allied Command was incorrectly informed by the parties interested in this region. After this, the Kars region, under the guise of settling refugees, was occupied by Armenian and Georgian troops, and the occupation of the region was accompanied by armed clashes. Deeply sympathizing with the cause of the resettlement of refugees in their places, the Azerbaijani Minister of Foreign Affairs, in his protest on April 30 of this year, wrote to Mr. Commander of the Allied Forces that this resettlement should take place with the assistance of British troops, and not the Armenian military forces, who are striving not so much for the resettlement refugees to the place, how many to forcibly seize and secure this area.
The Republic of Azerbaijan cannot and should not be indifferent to such a fate of the Kars region as a simple spectator. It should not be forgotten that it was in the Kars region, which relatively recently belonged to Turkey (until 1877), that the relations of Armenians towards Muslims always left much to be desired. During the last war, these relations greatly worsened due to the events of December 1914, when Turkish troops temporarily occupied the Ardagan district, the city of Ardagan and part of the Karsky district; After the retreat of the Turks, Russian troops began to destroy the Muslim population, putting everything to fire and sword. And in these bloody events that befell the innocent Muslim population, local Armenians expressed a clearly hostile attitude and in some places, as was the case, for example, even in the cities of Kars and Ardahan, they not only incited the Cossacks against the Muslims, but also slaughtered the latter mercilessly. All these circumstances cannot, of course, speak of a calm life together Muslims of the Kars region under the control of the Armenian authorities.
Realizing this, the Muslim population of the region itself, through deputations and with the help of written requests for Lately repeatedly appealed to the Azerbaijani government with a statement that it could not and would not be able to submit to the power of the Armenians, and therefore asked for the annexation of the region to the territory of the Azerbaijan Republic. Even less can the Republic of Azerbaijan reconcile itself with the transfer of control of the Nakhichevan, Sharuro-Daralagez, Surmalin districts and part of the Erivan district to the government of Armenia...
She finds that by transferring control of an integral part of the territory of Azerbaijan, there was a clear violation of the undoubted right of the Azerbaijan Republic to the districts: Nakhichevan, Sharuro-Daralagez, Surmalinsky and part of the Erivan district. This act creates a source of constant misunderstandings and even clashes between the local Muslim population and the Armenian Republic.
The named areas are inhabited by Muslim Azerbaijanis, who are one people, one nationality with the indigenous population of Azerbaijan, completely homogeneous not only in faith, but also in ethnic composition, language, customs and way of life.
It is enough to take the ratio of Muslims and Armenians to resolve the issue of ownership of these lands in favor of Azerbaijan. Thus, not only more than half are Muslim Azerbaijanis, but they are a significant majority in all districts, especially in the Sharur-Daralagez district - 72.3%.” In relation to the Erivan district, figures relating to the population of the entire district are taken. But that part of this district that is transferred to the administration of the Armenian government and which consists of the Vedi-Basar and Millistan districts contains about 90% of the Muslim population.
This is precisely the part of the Erivan district that suffered the most from the Armenian military units under different names - “Vants”, “Sasunts”, who, like Andronik’s gangs, slaughtered the Muslim population, not sparing the elderly and children, burned entire villages, subjected villages to shelling from guns and an armored train, dishonored Muslim women, the bellies of the dead were ripped open, the eyes were gouged out, and sometimes the corpses were burned; they also robbed the population and generally committed unheard-of atrocities. By the way, in the Vedi-Basar region, an outrageous fact took place when the same Armenian detachments in the villages of Karakhach, Kadyshu, Karabaglar, Agasibekdy, Dekhnaz slaughtered all the men, and then took captive several hundred beautiful married women and girls, who were handed over to Armenian "warriors". The latter kept these unfortunate victims of Armenian atrocities with them for a long time, despite the fact that after the protest of the Azerbaijani government, even the Armenian parliament intervened in the matter” (TsGAOR Az. SSR, f, 894. from 10, d. 104, l. 1-3) .
The information available in the note of protest of the Azerbaijan Republic, which they quoted, submitted to the Chairman of the Paris Peace Conference, eloquently testify that in Armenia (Russian) the Armenians never had a homeland, since they did not constitute the majority anywhere. This document testifies that in Batumi, Akhalsalaki, Akhaltsikhe, Kars, Nakhichevan, Etchmiadzin, Yerevan, etc., Muslim Azerbaijanis have always lived, and in the majority.
Contrary to common sense In the territories that have belonged to the Azerbaijanis from time immemorial, by the will of England, the Armenian Republic was created in 1918.
England thereby solved a double problem: “it created a buffer Christian state between Turkey and Russia and cut off Turkey from the entire Turkic world (and in 1922, by the will of the leadership of the USSR, Zangezur was taken from Azerbaijan and transferred to Armenia. Thus, Turkey finally lost direct land access to Turkic world, which stretches in a wide strip from the Balkans to the Korean Peninsula. What motivated England and the Entente in making the decision to create an Armenian state from scratch? Apparently, anti-Turkism and anti-Islamism! And besides this, the successful development of the brilliant Porte, which stretched from Asia Minor to the middle of Europe and organically combined the interests of both Muslim and Christian peoples subject to it. It was not without reason that for the first time in world practice, the Ottoman Empire created the institution of “Ombudsman” - a defender of the rights of humanity, regardless of the religious, national and property affiliation of the subjects of the empire, which effectively protected the entire population from the arbitrariness of the bureaucratic apparatus of power.
Excerpt from a book THE GREAT LIE ABOUT “GREAT ARMENIA” Tahir Mobile oglu. Baku "Araz" -2009 pp.58-69
100 years have passed since the beginning of one of the most terrible events in world history, crimes against humanity - the genocide of the Armenian people, second (after the Holocaust) in terms of the degree of study and the number of victims.
Before the First World War, Greeks and Armenians (mostly Christians) made up two-thirds of the population of Turkey, Armenians themselves made up a fifth of the population, 2-4 million Armenians out of 13 million people living in Turkey, including all other peoples.
According to official reports, about 1.5 million people became victims of the genocide: 700 thousand were killed, 600 thousand died during deportation. Another 1.5 million Armenians became refugees, many fled to the territory of modern Armenia, some to Syria, Lebanon, and America. According to various sources, 4-7 million Armenians now live in Turkey (with a total population of 76 million people), the Christian population is 0.6% (for example, in 1914 - two thirds, although the population of Turkey then was 13 million people ).
Some countries, including Russia, recognize genocide, Turkey denies the fact of the crime, which is why it has hostile relations with Armenia to this day.
The genocide carried out by the Turkish army was aimed not only at the extermination of the Armenian (in particular Christian) population, but also against the Greeks and Assyrians. Even before the start of the war (in 1911-14), an order was sent to the Turkish authorities from the Union and Progress party that measures should be taken against the Armenians, that is, the murder of the people was a planned action.
“The situation worsened further in 1914, when Turkey became an ally of Germany and declared war on Russia, which was naturally sympathized with by local Armenians. The government of the Young Turks declared them a “fifth column”, and therefore a decision was made on their wholesale deportation to inaccessible mountainous areas” (ria.ru)
“The mass extermination and deportation of the Armenian population of Western Armenia, Cilicia and other provinces of the Ottoman Empire was carried out by the ruling circles of Turkey in 1915-1923. The policy of genocide against the Armenians was determined by a number of factors. The leading importance among them was the ideology of Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism, which was professed by the ruling circles of the Ottoman Empire. The militant ideology of pan-Islamism was characterized by intolerance towards non-Muslims, preached outright chauvinism, and called for the Turkification of all non-Turkish peoples.
Entering the war, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire made far-reaching plans for the creation of “Great Turan”. It was meant to annex Transcaucasia and the North to the empire. Caucasus, Crimea, Volga region, Central Asia. On the way to this goal, the aggressors had to put an end to, first of all, the Armenian people, who opposed the aggressive plans of the Pan-Turkists. In September 1914, at a meeting chaired by the Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat, a special body was formed - the Executive Committee of Three, which was tasked with organizing the beating of the Armenian population; it included the leaders of the Young Turks Nazim, Behaetdin Shakir and Shukri. The executive committee of the three received broad powers, weapons, and money. » (genocide.ru)
The war became a convenient opportunity for the implementation of cruel plans; the purpose of the bloodshed was the complete extermination of the Armenian people, preventing the leaders of the Young Turks from realizing their selfish political goals. The Turks and other peoples living in Turkey were incited against the Armenians by all means, belittling and showing the latter in a dirty light. The date April 24, 1915 is called the beginning of the Armenian genocide, but persecution and murder began long before it. Then, at the end of April, the first most powerful, crushing blow was suffered by the intelligentsia and elite of Istanbul, which were deported: the arrest of 235 noble Armenians, their exile, then the arrest of another 600 Armenians and several thousand more people, many of whom were killed near the city.
From then on, “purges” of Armenians were continuously carried out: the deportations were not aimed at the resettlement (exile) of the people to the deserts of Mesopatamia and Syria, but their complete extermination. people were often attacked by robbers along the route of a caravan of prisoners, and were killed in the thousands after arriving at their destinations. In addition, the “perpetrators” used torture, during which either all or most of the deported Armenians died. Caravans took the longest route, people were exhausted by thirst, hunger, and unsanitary conditions.
About the deportation of Armenians:
« The deportation was carried out according to three principles: 1) the “ten percent principle”, according to which Armenians should not exceed 10% of the Muslims in the region, 2) the number of houses of the deportees should not exceed fifty, 3) the deportees were forbidden to change their destinations. Armenians were prohibited from opening their own schools, and Armenian villages had to be at least a five-hour drive from each other. Despite the demand to deport all Armenians without exception, a significant part of the Armenian population of Istanbul and Edirne was not deported for fear that foreign citizens would witness this process" (Wikipedia)
That is, they wanted to neutralize those who still survived. Why did the Armenian people of Turkey and Germany (which supported the former) so “annoy”? In addition to political motives and the thirst for conquest of new lands, the enemies of the Armenians also had ideological considerations, according to which the Christian Armenians (a strong, united people) prevented the spread of pan-Islamism for the successful solution of their plans. Christians were incited against Muslims, Muslims were manipulated based on political goals, and behind the slogans of the need for unification, the use of the Turks in the destruction of the Armenians was hidden.
NTV documentary film “Genocide. Start"
In addition to information about the tragedy, the film shows one amazing point: there are quite a lot of living grandmothers who are witnesses to the events of 100 years ago.
Testimonies from victims:
“Our group was driven along the stage on June 14 under an escort of 15 gendarmes. There were about 400-500 of us. Already a two-hour walk from the city, numerous gangs of villagers and bandits armed with hunting rifles, rifles and axes began to attack us. They took everything we had. Over the course of seven or eight days, they killed all the men and boys over 15 years old, one by one. Two blows with a rifle butt and the man is dead. The bandits grabbed all the attractive women and girls. Many were taken to the mountains on horseback. This is how my sister was kidnapped and torn away from her one-year-old child. We were not allowed to spend the night in the villages, but were forced to sleep on the bare ground. I saw people eating grass to relieve hunger. And what the gendarmes, bandits and local residents did under the cover of darkness is completely beyond description” (from the memoirs of an Armenian widow from the town of Bayburt in north-eastern Anatolia)
“They ordered the men and boys to come forward. Some little boys were dressed as girls and hid in the crowd of women. But my father had to come out. He was a grown man with ycami. As soon as they separated all the men, a group of armed men appeared from behind the hill and killed them before our eyes. They bayoneted them in the stomach. Many women could not stand it and threw themselves off the cliff into the river" (from the story of a survivor from the city of Konya, Central Anatolia)
“Those who lagged behind were immediately shot. They drove us through deserted areas, through deserts, along mountain paths, bypassing cities, so that we had nowhere to get water and food. At night we were wet with dew, and during the day we were exhausted under the scorching sun. I only remember that we walked and walked all the time” (from the memories of a survivor)
The Armenians stoically, heroically and desperately fought off the brutal Turks, inspired by the slogans of the instigators of the riots and bloodshed to kill as many as possible of those who were presented as enemies. The largest battles and confrontations were the defense of the city of Van (April-June 1915), the Musa Dag mountains (53-day defense in the summer-early autumn of 1915).
In the bloody massacre of the Armenians, the Turks did not spare either children or pregnant women; they mocked people in incredibly cruel ways, girls were raped, taken as concubines and tortured, crowds of Armenians were collected on barges, ferries under the pretext of resettlement and drowned in the sea, gathered by villages and burned alive, children were stabbed to death and also thrown into the sea, medical experiments were carried out on young and old in specially created camps. People were drying out alive from hunger and thirst. All the horrors that befell the Armenian people then cannot be described in dry letters and numbers; this is a tragedy that they remember in emotional colors already in the younger generation to this day.
From witness reports: “About 30 villages were cut out in the Alexandropol district and Akhalkalaki region; some of those who managed to escape are in the most dire situation.” Other messages described the situation in the villages of Alexandropol district: “All the villages have been robbed, there is no shelter, no grain, no clothing, no fuel. The streets of the villages are filled with corpses. All this is complemented by hunger and cold, which claim one victim after another... In addition, askers and hooligans mock their prisoners and try to punish the people with even more brutal means, rejoicing and taking pleasure in it. They subject parents to various tortures, force them to hand over their 8-9 year old girls into the hands of executioners...” (genocide.ru)
« Biological justification was used as one of the justifications for the extermination of the Ottoman Armenians. Armenians were called “dangerous germs” and were given a lower biological status than Muslims . The main propagandist of this policy was Dr. Mehmet Reshid, the governor of Diyarbakir, who was the first to order the nailing of horseshoes to the feet of the deportees. Reshid also practiced the crucifixion of Armenians, imitating the crucifixion of Christ. The official Turkish encyclopedia of 1978 characterizes Reşid as a “wonderful patriot.” (Wikipedia)
Children and pregnant women were forcibly given poison, those who disagreed were drowned, lethal doses of morphine were administered, children were killed in steam baths, and many perverted and cruel experiments were performed on people. Those who survived in conditions of hunger, cold, thirst, and unsanitary conditions often died from typhoid fever.
One of the Turkish doctors, Hamdi Suat, who conducted experiments on Armenian soldiers in order to obtain a vaccine against typhoid fever (they were injected with blood contaminated with typhus), is revered in modern Turkey as a national hero, the founder of bacteriology, and a house-museum is dedicated to him in Istanbul.
In general, in Turkey it is forbidden to refer to the events of that time as the genocide of the Armenian people; history textbooks talk about the forced defense of the Turks and the killings of Armenians as a measure of self-defense; those who are victims for many other countries are presented as aggressors.
The Turkish authorities are in every possible way agitating their compatriots to strengthen the position that the Armenian genocide never happened; campaigns and PR campaigns are being carried out to maintain the status of an “innocent” country; monuments of Armenian culture and architecture existing in Turkey are being destroyed.
War changes people beyond recognition... What a person can do under the influence of authorities, how easily he kills, and not just kills, but brutally - it’s hard to imagine when in cheerful pictures we see the sun, the sea, the beaches of Turkey or remember our own travel experiences. What about Turkey... in general - war changes people, a crowd inspired by the ideas of victory, the seizure of power - sweeps away everything in its path, and if in ordinary, peaceful life committing murder is savagery for many, then in war - many become monsters and not notice this.
Under the noise and increasing cruelty, rivers of blood are a familiar sight; there are so many examples of how people, during every revolution, skirmish, and military conflict, could not control themselves and destroyed and killed everything and everyone around them.
The common features of all genocides carried out in world history are similar in that people (victims) were devalued to the level of insects or soulless objects, while the provocateurs by all means caused the perpetrators and those who were beneficial for carrying out the extermination of the people not just a lack of pity for the potential the object of murder, and also hatred, animal rage. They were convinced that the victims were to blame for many troubles, that the triumph of retribution was necessary, combined with unbridled animal aggression - this meant an uncontrollable wave of outrages, savagery, and ferocity.
In addition to the extermination of Armenians, the Turks also carried out the destruction of the cultural heritage of the people:
“In 1915-23 and subsequent years, thousands of Armenian manuscripts kept in Armenian monasteries were destroyed, hundreds of historical and architectural monuments were destroyed, and the shrines of the people were desecrated. The destruction of historical and architectural monuments in Turkey and the appropriation of many cultural values of the Armenian people continue to this day. The tragedy experienced by the Armenian people affected all aspects of life and social behavior of the Armenian people, firmly settled in their historical memory. The impact of the genocide was experienced both by the generation that became its direct victim and by subsequent generations" (genocide.ru)
Among the Turks there were caring people, officials who could shelter Armenian children, or rebelled against the extermination of Armenians - but basically any help to victims of the genocide was condemned and punished, and therefore was carefully hidden.
After the defeat of Turkey in the First World War, a military tribunal in 1919 (despite this - genocide, according to versions of some historians and eyewitness accounts - lasted until 1923) sentenced the representatives of the committee of three to death in absentia, the sentence was later carried out for all three, including including through lynching. But if the perpetrators were executed, then those who gave the orders remained free.
April 24 is the European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Armenian Genocide. One of the most monstrous genocides in world history in terms of the number of victims and the degree of study, like the Holocaust, it experienced attempts at denial on the part of the country that was primarily responsible for the massacres. The number of killed Armenians, according to official data alone, is about 1.5 million.
On April 24, the world will celebrate one of the most tragic dates in the history of the Armenian people - the 100th anniversary of the genocide. In other words, a century of bloody massacre unleashed against the Armenian people.
Mass extermination and deportation of the Armenian population of Western Armenia, Cilicia and other provinces of the Ottoman Empire was carried out by the ruling circles of Turkey in 1915–1923. The policy of genocide against the Armenians was determined by a number of factors. The leading importance among them was the ideology of pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism, which was professed by the ruling circles of the Ottoman Empire. The militant ideology of pan-Islamism was characterized by intolerance towards non-Muslims, preached outright chauvinism, and called for the Turkification of all non-Turkish peoples. Entering the war (World War I), the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire made far-reaching plans for the creation of “Great Turan”. The intention was to annex Transcaucasia, the North Caucasus, Crimea, the Volga region, and Central Asia to the empire. On the way to this goal, the aggressors had to put an end to, first of all, the Armenian people, who opposed the aggressive plans of the Pan-Turkists.
The Young Turks began to develop plans for the destruction of the Armenian population even before the start of the World War. The decisions of the Congress of the Party “Unity and Progress” (Ittihad ve Terakki), held in October 1911 in Thessaloniki, contained a requirement for the Turkification of the non-Turkish peoples of the empire. Following this, the political and military circles of Turkey came to the decision to carry out the genocide of Armenians throughout the Ottoman Empire. At the beginning of 1914, a special order was sent to local authorities regarding the measures that were to be taken against the Armenians. The fact that the order was sent out before the start of the war irrefutably indicates that the extermination of the Armenians was a planned action, not at all determined by a specific military situation.
The leadership of the Unity and Progress party has repeatedly discussed the issue of mass deportation and massacre of the Armenian population. In September 1914, at a meeting chaired by the Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat, a special body was formed - the Executive Committee of Three, which was tasked with organizing the massacre of the Armenian population; it included the leaders of the Young Turks Nazim, Behaetdin Shakir and Shukri. When plotting a monstrous crime, the leaders of the Young Turks took into account that the war provided an opportunity to carry it out. Nazim directly stated that such an opportunity may no longer exist, “the intervention of the great powers and the protest of the newspapers will not have any consequences, since they will face a fait accompli, and thus the issue will be resolved... Our actions should be aimed at destroying Armenians so that not a single one of them survives.”
From the very first days of the war, rabid anti-Armenian propaganda unfolded in Turkey. The Turkish people were told that Armenians did not want to serve in the Turkish army, that they were ready to cooperate with the enemy. Fabrications were spread about the mass desertion of Armenians from the Turkish army, about uprisings of Armenians that threatened the rear of the Turkish troops, etc. Unbridled chauvinistic propaganda against the Armenians especially intensified after the first serious defeats of the Turkish troops on the Caucasian front. In February 1915, War Minister Enver gave the order to exterminate Armenians serving in the Turkish army. At the beginning of the war, about 60 thousand Armenians aged 18–45 were drafted into the Turkish army, i.e. the most combat-ready part of the male population. This order was carried out with unprecedented cruelty. And on April 24, 1915, a blow was struck against the Armenian intelligentsia.
From May to June 1915, mass deportation and massacre of the Armenian population of Western Armenia (vilayets of Van, Erzurum, Bitlis, Kharberd, Sebastia, Diyarbakir), Cilicia, Western Anatolia and other areas began. The ongoing deportation of the Armenian population in fact pursued the goal of its destruction. The real goals of the deportation were also known to Germany, Turkey's ally. The German consul in Trebizond in July 1915 reported on the deportation of Armenians in this vilayet and noted that the Young Turks intended to put an end to the Armenian question in this way.
The Armenians who were removed from their places of permanent residence were brought into caravans that headed deep into the empire, to Mesopotamia and Syria, where special camps were created for them. Armenians were destroyed both in their places of residence and on the way to exile; their caravans were attacked by Turkish rabble, Kurdish bandits eager for prey. As a result, a small part of the deported Armenians reached their destinations. But even those who reached the deserts of Mesopotamia were not safe; There are known cases when deported Armenians were taken out of the camps and slaughtered by the thousands in the desert.
The lack of basic sanitary conditions, hunger, and epidemics caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people. The actions of the Turkish pogromists were characterized by unprecedented cruelty. The leaders of the Young Turks demanded this. Thus, the Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat, in a secret telegram sent to the governor of Aleppo, demanded an end to the existence of Armenians, not to pay any attention to age, gender, or remorse. This requirement was strictly fulfilled. Eyewitnesses of the events, Armenians who survived the horrors of deportation and genocide, left numerous descriptions of the incredible suffering that befell the Armenian population.
Most of the Armenian population of Cilicia was also subjected to barbaric extermination. The massacre of Armenians continued in subsequent years. Thousands of Armenians were exterminated, driven to the southern regions of the Ottoman Empire and kept in the camps of Ras-ul-Ain, Deir ez-Zor and others. The Young Turks sought to carry out the genocide of Armenians in Eastern Armenia, where, in addition to the local population, large numbers of refugees from Western Armenia. Having committed aggression against Transcaucasia in 1918, Turkish troops carried out pogroms and massacres of Armenians in many areas of Eastern Armenia and Azerbaijan. Having occupied Baku in September 1918, the Turkish interventionists, together with the Caucasian Tatars, organized a terrible massacre of the local Armenian population, killing 30 thousand people.
As a result of the Armenian genocide carried out by the Young Turks, 1.5 million people died in 1915–1916 alone. About 600 thousand Armenians became refugees; they scattered throughout many countries of the world, replenishing existing ones and forming new Armenian communities. An Armenian diaspora (Spyurk) was formed. As a result of the genocide, Western Armenia lost its original population. The leaders of the Young Turks did not hide their satisfaction at the successful implementation of the planned atrocity: German diplomats in Turkey reported to their government that already in August 1915, the Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat cynically declared that “actions regarding the Armenians have basically been carried out and the Armenian question no longer exists.” .
The relative ease with which the Turkish pogromists managed to carry out the genocide of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire is partly explained by the unpreparedness of the Armenian population, as well as the Armenian political parties, for the looming threat of extermination. The actions of the pogromists were greatly facilitated by the mobilization of the most combat-ready part of the Armenian population - men - into the Turkish army, as well as the liquidation of the Armenian intelligentsia of Constantinople. A certain role was also played by the fact that in some public and clerical circles of Western Armenians they believed that disobedience to the Turkish authorities, who gave orders for deportation, could only lead to an increase in the number of victims.
However, in some areas the Armenian population offered stubborn resistance to the Turkish vandals. The Armenians of Van, resorting to self-defense, successfully repelled the enemy’s attacks and held the city in their hands until the arrival of Russian troops and Armenian volunteers. The Armenians of Shapin Garakhisar, Musha, Sasun, and Shatakh offered armed resistance to the many times superior enemy forces. The epic of the defenders of Mount Musa in Suetia lasted for forty days. The self-defense of the Armenians in 1915 is a heroic page in the national liberation struggle of the people.
During the aggression against Armenia in 1918, the Turks, having occupied Karaklis, carried out a massacre of the Armenian population, killing several thousand people.
During the Turkish-Armenian War of 1920, Turkish troops occupied Alexandropol. Continuing the policies of their predecessors, the Young Turks, the Kemalists sought to organize genocide in Eastern Armenia, where, in addition to the local population, masses of refugees from Western Armenia had accumulated. In Alexandropol and the villages of the district, the Turkish occupiers committed atrocities, destroyed the peaceful Armenian population, and plundered property. The Revolutionary Committee of Soviet Armenia received information about the excesses of the Kemalists. One of the reports said: “About 30 villages were cut out in the Alexandropol district and Akhalkalaki region, some of those who managed to escape are in the most dire situation.” Other messages described the situation in the villages of Alexandropol district: “All the villages have been robbed, there is no shelter, no grain, no clothing, no fuel. The streets of the villages are filled with corpses. All this is complemented by hunger and cold, which claim one victim after another... In addition, askers and hooligans mock their prisoners and try to punish the people with even more brutal means, rejoicing and taking pleasure in it. They subject parents to various tortures, force them to hand over their 8-9 year old girls into the hands of executioners...”
In January 1921, the government of Soviet Armenia expressed a protest to the Commissioner for Foreign Affairs of Turkey due to the fact that Turkish troops in the Alexandropol district were committing “continuous violence, robberies and murders against the peaceful working population...”. Tens of thousands of Armenians became victims of the atrocities of the Turkish occupiers. The invaders also caused enormous material damage to the Alexandropol district.
In 1918–1920, the city of Shushi, the center of Karabakh, became the scene of pogroms and massacres of the Armenian population. In September 1918, Turkish troops, supported by Azerbaijani Musavatists, moved to Shushi. Ruining Armenian villages along the way and destroying their population, on September 25, 1918, Turkish troops occupied Shushi. But soon, after the defeat of Turkey in the First World War, they were forced to leave it. In December of the same year, the British entered Shushi. Soon the Musavatist Khosrov-bek Sultanov was appointed governor-general of Karabakh. With the help of Turkish military instructors, he formed Kurdish shock troops, which, together with units of the Musavat army, were stationed in the Armenian part of Shushi. The forces of the pogromists were constantly replenished; there were many Turkish officers in the city. In June 1919, the first pogroms of the Armenians of Shushi took place; On the night of June 5, at least 500 Armenians were killed in the city and surrounding villages. On March 23, 1920, Turkish-Musavat gangs committed a terrible pogrom against the Armenian population of Shushi, killing over 30 thousand people and setting the Armenian part of the city on fire.
The Armenians of Cilicia, who survived the genocide of 1915–1916 and found refuge in other countries, began to return to their homeland after the defeat of Turkey. According to the division of zones of influence determined by the allies, Cilicia was included in the sphere of influence of France. In 1919, 120–130 thousand Armenians lived in Cilicia; The return of Armenians continued, and by 1920 their number reached 160 thousand. The command of the French troops located in Cilicia did not take measures to ensure the safety of the Armenian population; Turkish authorities remained in place, Muslims were not disarmed. The Kemalists took advantage of this and began massacres of the Armenian population. In January 1920, during 20-day pogroms, 11 thousand Armenians, residents of Mavash, died; the rest of the Armenians went to Syria. Soon the Turks besieged Ajn, where the Armenian population by this time barely numbered 6 thousand people. The Armenians of Ajn put up stubborn resistance to the Turkish troops, which lasted 7 months, but in October the Turks managed to take the city. About 400 Ajna defenders managed to break through the siege and escape.
At the beginning of 1920, the remnants of the Armenian population of Urfa - about 6 thousand people - moved to Aleppo.
On April 1, 1920, Kemalist troops besieged Aintap. Thanks to a 15-day heroic defense, the Ayntap Armenians escaped massacre. But after French troops left Cilicia, the Armenians of Ayntap moved to Syria at the end of 1921. In 1920, the Kemalists destroyed the remnants of the Armenian population of Zeytun. That is, the Kemalists completed the destruction of the Armenian population of Cilicia, begun by the Young Turks.
The last episode of the tragedy of the Armenian people was the massacre of Armenians in the western regions of Turkey during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922. In August - September 1921, Turkish troops achieved a turning point in the military operations and launched a general offensive against the Greek troops. On September 9, the Turks invaded Izmir and massacred the Greek and Armenian population. The Turks sank ships stationed in the harbor of Izmir, on which there were Armenian and Greek refugees, mostly women, old people, children...
The Armenian genocide carried out in Turkey caused enormous damage to the material and spiritual culture of the Armenian people. In 1915–1923 and subsequent years, thousands of Armenian manuscripts stored in Armenian monasteries were destroyed, hundreds of historical and architectural monuments were destroyed, and the shrines of the people were desecrated. The tragedy experienced affected all aspects of the life and social behavior of the Armenian people and firmly settled in their historical memory.
Progressive public opinion The world condemned the atrocious crime of the Turkish pogromists who tried to destroy one of the most ancient civilized peoples in the world. Social and political figures, scientists, cultural figures from many countries branded genocide, qualifying it as a grave crime against humanity, and took part in the implementation humanitarian aid to the Armenian people, in particular to refugees who have found refuge in many countries of the world. After Turkey's defeat in World War I, the leaders of the Young Turk party were accused of dragging Turkey into a disastrous war and put on trial. Among the charges brought against war criminals were organizing and carrying out the massacre of Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. However, the death sentence against a number of Young Turk leaders was pronounced in absentia, because after the defeat of Turkey they managed to flee the country. The death sentence against some of them (Taliat, Behaetdin Shakir, Jemal Pasha, Said Halim, etc.) was subsequently carried out by the Armenian people's avengers.
After World War II, genocide was classified as the gravest crime against humanity. The legal documents on genocide were based on the principles developed by the international military tribunal in Nuremberg, which tried the main war criminals Hitler's Germany. Subsequently, the UN adopted a number of decisions regarding genocide, the main of which are the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) and the Convention on the Inapplicability of the Statute of Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity (1968).
In 1989, the Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR adopted a law that condemned the Armenian genocide in Western Armenia and Turkey as a crime against humanity. The Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR appealed to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a request to make a decision condemning the Armenian genocide in Turkey. In the Declaration of Independence of Armenia, adopted Supreme Council Armenian SSR on August 23, 1990, proclaims that “The Republic of Armenia supports the cause international recognition the Armenian genocide of 1915 in Ottoman Turkey and Western Armenia."
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§ 1. Beginning of the First World War. Progress of military operations on the Caucasian front
On August 1, 1914, the First World War began. The war was fought between coalitions: the Entente (England, France, Russia) and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey) for the redistribution of spheres of influence in the world. Most states of the world took part in the war, voluntarily or forcedly, which is why the war got its name.
During the war, Ottoman Turkey sought to implement the “Pan-Turkism” program - to annex territories inhabited by Turkic peoples, including Transcaucasia, the southern regions of Russia and Central Asia to Altai. In turn, Russia sought to annex the territory of Western Armenia, seize the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits and access the Mediterranean Sea. Fighting between the two coalitions took place on many fronts in Europe, Asia and Africa.
On the Caucasian front, the Turks concentrated an army of 300 thousand, led by Minister of War Enver. In October 1914, Turkish troops launched an offensive and managed to capture some border territories, and also invaded the western regions of Iran. IN winter months During the battles near Sarykamysh, Russian troops defeated superior Turkish forces and drove them out of Iran. During 1915, military operations continued with varying success. At the beginning of 1916, Russian troops launched a large-scale offensive and, having defeated the enemy, captured Bayazet, Mush, Alashkert, the large city of Erzurum and an important port on the Black Sea coast of Trapizon. During 1917, there were no active military operations on the Caucasian Front. The demoralized Turkish troops did not attempt to launch a new offensive, and the February and October revolutions of 1917 in Russia and changes in government did not give the Russian command the opportunity to develop an offensive. On December 5, 1917, a truce was concluded between the Russian and Turkish commands.
§ 2. Armenian volunteer movement. Armenian battalions
The Armenian people took an active part in the First World War on the side of the Entente countries. In Russia, about 200 thousand Armenians were drafted into the army. More than 50,000 Armenians fought in the armies of other countries. Since the aggressive plans of tsarism coincided with the desire of the Armenian people to liberate the territories of Western Armenia from the Turkish yoke, Armenian political parties conducted active propaganda for the organization of volunteer detachments with a total number of about 10 thousand people.
The first detachment was commanded by an outstanding leader liberation movement, national hero Andranik Ozanyan, who later received the rank of general in the Russian army. The commanders of other detachments were Dro, Hamazasp, Keri, Vardan, Arshak Dzhanpoladyan, Hovsep Argutyan and others. The commander of the VI detachment subsequently became Gayk Bzhshkyan - Guy, a later famous commander of the Red Army. Armenians - volunteers from different regions Russia and even from other countries. The Armenian troops showed courage and participated in all major battles for the liberation of Western Armenia.
The tsarist government initially encouraged the volunteer movement of the Armenians in every possible way, until the defeat of the Turkish armies became obvious. Fearing that Armenian troops could serve as a basis for national army, the command of the Caucasian Front in the summer of 1916 reorganized the volunteer detachments into the 5th rifle battalion of the Russian army.
§ 3. Armenian genocide of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire
In 1915-1918 The Young Turk government of Turkey planned and carried out the genocide of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire. As a result of the forced eviction of Armenians from their historical homeland and massacres, 1.5 million people died.
Back in 1911 in Thessaloniki, at a secret meeting of the Young Turk party, it was decided to Turkify all subjects of the Muslim faith, and destroy all Christians. With the outbreak of World War I, the Young Turk government decided to take advantage of the favorable international situation and carry out its long-planned plans.
The genocide was carried out according to a specific plan. Firstly, men liable for military service were drafted into the army in order to deprive the Armenian population of the possibility of resistance. They were used as work units and were gradually destroyed. Secondly, the Armenian intelligentsia, which could organize and lead the resistance of the Armenian population, was destroyed. In March-April 1915, more than 600 people were arrested: parliament members Onik Vramyan and Grigor Zokhrap, writers Varuzhan, Siamanto, Ruben Sevak, composer and musicologist Komitas. On the way to their place of exile, they were subjected to insults and humiliation. Many of them died along the way, and the survivors were subsequently brutally murdered. On April 24, 1915, the Young Turk authorities executed 20 Armenian political prisoners. An eyewitness to these atrocities, the famous composer Komitas lost his mind.
After this, the Young Turk authorities began to evict and exterminate already defenseless children, old people and women. All property of the Armenians was plundered. On the way to the place of exile, the Armenians were subjected to new atrocities: the weak were killed, women were raped or kidnapped for harems, children died from hunger and thirst. Of the total number of exiled Armenians, barely a tenth reached the place of exile - the Der-el-Zor desert in Mesopotamia. Of the 2.5 million Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire, 1.5 million were destroyed, and the rest scattered throughout the world.
Part of the Armenian population was able to escape thanks to the help of Russian troops and, abandoning everything, fled from their homes to the borders of the Russian Empire. Some of the Armenian refugees found salvation in Arab countries, in Iran and other countries. Many of them, after the defeat of the Turkish troops, returned to their homeland, but were subjected to new atrocities and destruction. About 200 thousand Armenians were forcibly Turkified. Many thousands of Armenian orphans were rescued by American charitable and missionary organizations operating in the Middle East.
After the defeat in the war and the flight of the Young Turk leaders, the new government of Ottoman Turkey in 1920 conducted an investigation into the crimes of the previous government. For planning and carrying out the Armenian genocide, the military tribunal in Constantinople found him guilty and sentenced him in absentia to death penalty Taleat (Prime Minister), Enver (Minister of War), Cemal (Minister of Internal Affairs) and Behaeddin Shakir (Secretary of the Central Committee of the Young Turks Party). Their sentence was carried out by Armenian avengers.
After defeat in the war, the Young Turk leaders fled Turkey and found refuge in Germany and other countries. But they failed to escape vengeance.
Soghomon Tehlirian shot Taleat on March 15, 1921 in Berlin. The German court, having examined the case, acquitted Tehlirian.
Petros Ter-Petrosyan and Artashes Gevorkyan killed Dzhemal in Tiflis on July 25, 1922.
Arshavir Shikaryan and Aram Yerkanyan shot Behaeddin Shakir on April 17, 1922 in Berlin.
Enver was killed in August 1922 in Central Asia.
§ 4. Heroic self-defense of the Armenian population
During the genocide of 1915, the Armenian population of some regions, through heroic self-defense, was able to escape or die with honor - with arms in hand.
For more than a month, the residents of the city of Van and nearby villages heroically defended themselves against regular Turkish troops. Self-defense was led by Armenak Yekaryan, Aram Manukyan, Panos Terlemazyan and others. All Armenian political parties acted in concert. They were saved from final death by the Russian army's offensive on Van in May 1915. Due to the forced retreat of Russian troops, 200 thousand residents of the Van vilayet were also forced to leave their homeland along with Russian troops to escape new massacres.
The highlanders of Sasun defended themselves against regular Turkish troops for almost a year. The siege ring gradually tightened, and most of the population was slaughtered. The entry of the Russian army into Mush in February 1916 saved the people of Sasun from final destruction. Of the 50 thousand population of Sasun, about a tenth was saved, and they were forced to leave their homeland and move within the Russian Empire.
The Armenian population of the town of Shapin-Garaisar, having received an order to relocate, took up arms and fortified themselves in a nearby dilapidated fortress. For 27 days, the Armenians repelled attacks by regular Turkish forces. When food and ammunition were already running out, it was decided to try to break out of the encirclement. About a thousand people were saved. Those who remained were brutally killed.
The defenders of Musa-Ler showed an example of heroic self-defense. Having received an order to evict, the 5 thousand Armenian population of seven villages in the Suetia region (on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, near Antioch) decided to defend themselves and fortified themselves on Mount Musa. Self-defense was led by Tigran Andreasyan and others. For a month and a half there were unequal battles with Turkish troops armed with artillery. The French cruiser Guichen noticed an Armenian call for help, and on September 10, 1915, the remaining 4,058 Armenians were transported to Egypt on French and English ships. The story of this heroic self-defense is described in the novel “40 Days of Musa Dagh” by the Austrian writer Franz Werfel.
The last source of heroism was the self-defense of the population of the Armenian quarter of the city of Edesia, which lasted from September 29 to November 15, 1915. All the men died with weapons in their hands, and the surviving 15 thousand women and children were exiled by the Young Turk authorities to the deserts of Mesopotamia.
Foreigners who witnessed the genocide of 1915-1916 condemned this crime and left descriptions of the atrocities carried out by the Young Turk authorities against the Armenian population. They also refuted the false accusations of the Turkish authorities about the alleged uprising of the Armenians. Johann Lepsius, Anatole France, Henry Morgenthau, Maxim Gorky, Valery Bryusov and many others raised their voices against the first genocide in the history of the 20th century and the atrocities taking place. Nowadays, the parliaments of many countries have already recognized and condemned the genocide of the Armenian people committed by the Young Turks.
§ 5. Consequences of genocide
During the 1915 Genocide, the Armenian population was barbarously exterminated in its historical homeland. Responsibility for the Genocide of the Armenian population lies with the leaders of the Young Turks party. Turkish Prime Minister Taleat subsequently cynically declared that the “Armenian Question” no longer existed, since there were no more Armenians, and that he had done more in three months to resolve the “Armenian Question” than Sultan Abdul Hamid had done in 30 years of his reign. .
Kurdish tribes also actively participated in the extermination of the Armenian population, trying to seize Armenian territories and plunder the property of the Armenians. The German government and command are also responsible for the Armenian genocide. Many German officers commanded Turkish units that took part in the genocide. The Entente powers are also to blame for what happened. They did nothing to stop the mass extermination of the Armenian population by the Young Turk authorities.
During the genocide, more than 2 thousand Armenian villages, the same number of churches and monasteries, and Armenian neighborhoods in more than 60 cities were destroyed. The Young Turk government appropriated the valuables and deposits plundered from the Armenian population.
After the Genocide of 1915, there was practically no Armenian population left in Western Armenia.
§ 6. Culture of Armenia in late XIX and the beginning of the 20th century
Before the Genocide of 1915, Armenian culture experienced significant growth. This was associated with the rise of the liberation movement, the awakening of national self-awareness, and the development of capitalist relations both in Armenia itself and in those countries where a significant number of the Armenian population lived compactly. The division of Armenia into two parts - Western and Eastern - was reflected in the development of two independent directions in Armenian culture: Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian. The major centers of Armenian culture were Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tiflis, Baku, Constantinople, Izmir, Venice, Paris and other cities, where a significant part of the Armenian intelligentsia was concentrated.
Armenian educational institutions made a huge contribution to the development of Armenian culture. In Eastern Armenia, in the urban centers of Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus and in some cities of Russia (Rostov-on-Don, Astrakhan) at the beginning of the 20th century, there were about 300 Armenian schools, male and female gymnasiums. In some rural areas there were primary schools where they taught reading, writing and arithmetic, as well as the Russian language.
About 400 Armenian schools of various levels operated in the cities of Western Armenia and major cities Ottoman Empire. Armenian schools did not receive any state subsidies either in the Russian Empire, much less in Ottoman Turkey. These schools existed thanks to the material support of the Armenian Apostolic Church, various public organizations and individual philanthropists. The most famous among Armenian educational institutions were the Nersisyan school in Tiflis, the Gevorkian theological seminary in Etchmiadzin, the Murad-Raphaelian school in Venice and the Lazarevsky Institute in Moscow.
The development of education greatly contributed to the further development of Armenian periodicals. At the beginning of the 20th century, about 300 Armenian newspapers and magazines of various political trends were published. Some of them were published by Armenian national parties, such as: “Droshak”, “Hnchak”, “Proletariat”, etc. In addition, newspapers and magazines of socio-political and cultural orientation were published.
The main centers of Armenian periodicals at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries were Constantinople and Tiflis. The most popular newspapers published in Tiflis were the newspaper “Mshak” (ed. G. Artsruni), the magazine “Murch” (ed. Av. Arashanyants), in Constantinople - the newspaper “Megu” (ed. Harutyun Svachyan), the newspaper “Masis” (ed. Karapet Utujyan). Stepanos Nazaryants published the magazine “Hysisapail” (Northern Lights) in Moscow.
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Armenian literature experienced rapid flowering. A galaxy of talented poets and novelists appeared in both Eastern and Western Armenia. The main motives of their creativity were patriotism and the dream of seeing their homeland united and free. It is no coincidence that many of the Armenian writers in their work turned to the heroic pages of the rich Armenian history, as an example for inspiration in the struggle for the unification and independence of the country. Thanks to their creativity, two independent literary languages took shape: Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian. Poets Rafael Patkanyan, Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, Vahan Teryan, prose poets Avetik Isahakyan, Ghazaros Aghayan, Perch Proshyan, playwright Gabriel Sundukyan, novelists Nardos, Muratsan and others wrote in Eastern Armenian. Poets Petros Duryan, Misak Metsarents, Siamanto, Daniel Varudan, poet, prose writer and playwright Levon Shant, short story writer Grigor Zokhrap, great satirist Hakob Paronyan and others wrote their works in Western Armenian.
An indelible mark on Armenian literature of this period was left by the prose poet Hovhannes Tumanyan and the novelist Raffi.
In his work, O. Tumanyan reworked many folk legends and traditions, sang national traditions, life and customs of the people. His most famous works are the poems “Anush”, “Maro”, the legends “Akhtmar”, “The Fall of Tmkaberd” and others.
Raffi is known as the author of the historical novels “Samvel”, “Jalaladdin”, “Hent” and others. His novel “Kaytser” (Sparks) enjoyed great success among his contemporaries, where the call was clearly heard for the Armenian people to stand up in the fight for the liberation of their homeland, not really hoping for help from powers.
Achieved significant success social Sciences. Professor of the Lazarev Institute Mkrtich Emin published ancient Armenian sources in Russian translation. These same sources in French translation were published in Paris at the expense of the famous Armenian philanthropist, Prime Minister of Egypt Nubar Pasha. A member of the Mkhitarist congregation, Father Ghevond Alishan, wrote major works on the history of Armenia, gave a detailed list and description of the surviving historical monuments, many of which were subsequently destroyed. Grigor Khalatyan published for the first time full story Armenia in Russian. Garegin Srvandztyan, traveling through the regions of Western and Eastern Armenia, collected enormous treasures of Armenian folklore. He has the honor of discovering the recording and the first edition of the text of the Armenian medieval epic “Sasuntsi David”. The famous scientist Manuk Abeghyan conducted research in the field of folklore and ancient Armenian literature. The famous philologist and linguist Hrachya Acharyan studied the vocabulary of the Armenian language and made comparisons and comparisons of the Armenian language with other Indo-European languages.
The famous historian Nikolai Adonts in 1909, wrote and published in Russian a study on the history of medieval Armenia and Armenian-Byzantine relations. His major work, “Armenia in the Age of Justinian,” published in 1909, has not lost its significance to this day. The famous historian and philologist Leo (Arakel Babakhanyan) wrote works on various issues Armenian history and literature, and also collected and published documents related to the “Armenian Question”.
Armenian musical art developed. The creativity of folk gusans was raised to new heights by gusan Jivani, gusan Sheram and others. Armenian composers who received a classical education appeared on the stage. Tigran Chukhajyan wrote the first Armenian opera “Arshak the Second”. Composer Armen Tigranyan wrote the opera “Anush” on the theme of the poem of the same name by Hovhannes Tumanyan. The famous composer, musicologist Komitas initiated the scientific study of folk musical folklore, recorded the music and words of 3 thousand folk songs. Komitas gave concerts and lectures in many European countries, introducing Europeans to the original Armenian folk musical art.
The end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries were also marked by the further development of Armenian painting. The famous painter was the famous marine painter Hovhannes Aivazovsky (1817-1900). He lived and worked in Feodosia (Crimea), and most of his works are dedicated to marine theme. His most famous paintings are “The Ninth Wave”, “Noah Descends from Mount Ararat”, “Lake Sevan”, “Massacre of Armenians in Trapizon in 1895” and etc.
Outstanding painters were Gevorg Bashinjagyan, Panos Terlemezyan, Vardges Surenyants.
Vardges Surenyants, in addition to easel painting, was also engaged in mural painting; he painted many Armenian churches in different cities of Russia. His most famous paintings are “Shamiram and Ara the Beautiful” and “Salome”. A copy of his painting “The Armenian Madonna” today adorns the new Cathedral in Yerevan. Forward