Many Turkish politicians do not recognize the extermination of Armenians as genocide. But how else can you call a mass murder on a national basis? Scholars from Turkey, Armenia and other countries have collected documentary evidence of the massacre, which killed more than a million people.
It began about 1000 kilometers from the historical homeland of the Armenians - in Istanbul.
On the night of April 24, 1915, Turkish gendarmes arrested more than 200 representatives of the capital's Armenian intelligentsia - employees, journalists, teachers, doctors, pharmacists, entrepreneurs and bankers.
For half a year, the Ottoman Empire has been drawn into the First World War. The detainees are accused of betrayal and aiding the enemy. Arrests of prominent representatives of the Armenian community continue in the provinces. Armenians are tortured and publicly executed. But the real nightmare is yet to come. The organizers of the genocide plan to wipe out an entire nation from the face of the earth.
Until the second half of the 19th century, Armenians played an important role in the life of the Ottoman Empire. Being Christians, they, like representatives of other non-Muslim peoples, were excluded from public service for centuries.
However, many of them managed to amass a large fortune. Not only in the Armenian Highlands in Eastern Anatolia, but also in Istanbul, they controlled a number of key sectors of the economy: the silk and textile industries, agriculture, shipbuilding and the tobacco industry.
People from the Armenian minority were the first to transfer modern dramatic and operatic art to Turkish soil. They were the authors of the first Ottoman novels of the European type.
Of the 22 newspapers published in Istanbul, nine were printed in Armenian. In 1856, a reform decree was proclaimed in the Ottoman Empire. All subjects, regardless of religious affiliation, were given the right to hold the highest public office. After that, there were even more Armenians in the capital.
It was not until the last third of the 19th century that relations between the Ottoman authorities and the Armenian minority deteriorated sharply.
It all started in 1877. During the Russian-Turkish war, the leaders of the Armenian community turned to the Russian emperor with a request to occupy the Armenian regions of Asian Turkey or to obtain autonomy from the Ottoman Sultan Abdul-Hamid II. Their hopes were not justified.
But under the terms of the San Stefano peace treaty concluded the following year, the Sultan's government undertook to protect Christians from religious persecution and equalize their rights with Muslims. Moreover, the reform was to be carried out under the supervision of European observers.
For the Ottoman rulers, these concessions were a real humiliation. Moreover, their multinational empire was already bursting at the seams.
As early as 1875, the Grand Vizier, the chief minister of the Sultan, declared state bankruptcy. Control over the payment of external debt passed to the Europeans.
The following year, Serbs, Montenegrins and Bulgarians rebelled against Turkish rule. And by decision of the Berlin Congress of 1878, the Ottoman Empire lost vast territories in the Balkans.
Abdul-Hamid II, who had ruled Turkey since 1876, saw the uprisings of his Christian subjects and the intervention of European powers as a conspiracy against his empire and Islam. When Armenian revolutionaries and independence fighters began to stage terrorist attacks against Ottoman officials and organize partisan detachments, he took harsh measures.
In 1894, Kurdish cavalry militias drowned the Armenian uprising in blood, destroyed the houses of the rebels and killed many civilians. Both in Anatolia and Istanbul in subsequent years, Muslims massacred Armenians more than once, killing at least 80 thousand people. Pogroms could take place on the personal orders of the Sultan, many historians believe.
After several years of relative calm, the confrontation between the Armenian minority and the authorities is escalating again. In 1913, as a result of a coup d'état, a group of leaders of the Unity and Progress Committee came to power. A military dictatorship is established in the country.
This organization is the ultranationalist wing of the Young Turks movement, who overthrew Sultan Abdul-Hamid II in 1909 and placed his weak-willed brother Mehmed V on the throne.
The country has proclaimed a constitutional monarchy. Now the Sultan is only a formal ruler. All real power is concentrated in the hands of members of the so-called "triumvirate", consisting of two high-ranking officers and one former employee of the telegraph office: Enver Pasha, Jemal Pasha and Talaat Pasha.
Their goal is to save the decaying power at any cost. Any desire for national autonomy they regard as treason. They are convinced of the superiority of the Turks as representatives of the "titular nation" over the rest of the peoples of the empire. And we are determined to create a purely Turkish Muslim state.
Nationalist propaganda intensifies after another humiliating defeat for the Ottoman Empire. A year before the coup, as a result of the first Balkan war, she loses almost all of her European territories.
More than 500 years of Turkish rule in the Balkans is coming to an end. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims are fleeing to Asia Minor, mainly to the areas inhabited by Armenians. For the Turks, these refugees are destitute co-religionists who need to be sheltered and settled in a new place. And for the sake of this, it is not a sin to expel Christians and take away their property.
The anti-Armenian hysteria reached its peak in November 1914 after the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the First World War on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The governor of the province of Diyarbakır, a physician by education, openly calls the Armenians "harmful microbes that have infected the body of the fatherland." And he asks himself: is it not the doctor's duty to destroy the dangerous bacillus?
There is a war going on. The Turkish government no longer needs to act with an eye to the West. In addition, the events on the Caucasian front give the authorities a pretext for launching an anti-Armenian campaign. There, since the middle of winter, the Ottoman army under the command of Enver Pasha has been attacking the Russians. The offensive turns into a complete rout. More than three-quarters of Turkish soldiers die from the cold.
In April 1915, the Armenian population of the border town of Van rebelled, counting on a speedy Russian counteroffensive. The Turkish garrison was expelled, the local fortress and state institutions were destroyed. Panic in Istanbul.
Official propaganda inflates this incident to the scale of a global anti-state conspiracy aimed at the collapse of the empire.
In this situation, the abstract idea of creating a mono-ethnic state is embodied in a concrete plan for the extermination of Armenians. Separate Armenian pogroms, which have been perpetrated by paramilitary groups since the beginning of the war, develop into an organized genocide.
Later in the memorandum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, this would be called a "complete and comprehensive resolution" of the Armenian issue. Perhaps it was adopted by the "Unity and Progress" committee in the days between the breakthrough of the Caucasian front and the landing of the Entente troops in Gallipoli near Istanbul on April 25, 1915.
Repressions begin with the illegal arrest of representatives of the Armenian elite. This is followed by a deportation order. Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha instructs the provincial governors to deport the entire Armenian population to the desert regions of Syria and Mesopotamia controlled by the Turks.
But the government's true plan is even more terrifying. Special representatives of the Central Committee are sent to all the provinces, who verbally transmit the secret order to the local authorities.
They are instructed to gather and kill all Armenian men and youths, and send women and children by stage, in the expectation that many of them will die on the way from disease, hunger and cold.
There are no official documents with orders from Talaat Pasha and other members of the government to organize massacres. And who would sign such orders and take responsibility for such a monstrous atrocity?
However, separate service records have been preserved in the state archives, indicating the participation of many state institutions in the repressions.
And there are numerous eyewitness accounts: German diplomats and nurses, American consuls and the Armenians themselves, who survived the genocide. According to them, one can clearly restore the course of events that took place in April 1915 in Anatolia, and then on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.
Most of the Armenians lived in the province of Erzurum in the northeast of Anatolia on the border with Russia. There, the deportation scheme was first worked out, which was then used in other regions.
In the localities, a commission is being created from the chief of police, senior officials of the administration, a representative of the central committee of the ruling party, and several other people. They prepare lists of Armenians and notify them of the upcoming "resettlement". At the same time, punitive detachments carry out massacres and pogroms in Armenian settlements.
By the end of June, the gendarmes round up all the inhabitants of the Armenian villages of Eastern and Central Anatolia. And under an armed escort, up to ten thousand people are sent on foot to the 600-kilometer crossing to the north of Syria to the city of Aleppo.
From Western Anatolia, Armenians are transported to the south-east of the country by trains along the Baghdad railway. Following the villagers, the Armenian population of the cities is deported.
German diplomats send dispatch after dispatch to Berlin describing the course and extent of the repressions. But the government of Kaiser Germany does not want to interfere in the internal affairs of the allied power.
The German ambassador in Istanbul, Count Paul von Wolf-Metternich, asks the then Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg to publicly condemn the extermination of the Armenians. To which he replies: “Our only task is to keep Turkey on our side until the end of the war, regardless of whether the Armenians die because of this or not.” Many German officers are even involved in the preparation of deportation plans as military advisers.
One of the key elements of the project to create a mono-ethnic state is the transformation of Christian Armenians into Muslim Turks. Now it is impossible to calculate how many Armenian women were forcibly married to Turks and how many Armenian children were given to Turkish families and shelters for re-education. According to some estimates, there could be 200 thousand. Thousands of Armenian girls were sold to the Bedouins. The testimonies of Armenian women are one of the main sources of information about the atrocities of the escort teams.
The first stop along the way is a transit point, in fact concentration camp near Aleppo. Tens of thousands of its prisoners die of hunger, thirst and epidemics. From there, the Armenians are driven along the deserted banks of the Euphrates from one temporary camp to another. The last and largest was broken in the desert near the city of Der-Zor on the territory of modern Syria (now Deir ez-Zor).
In the spring of 1916, the transit camp near Aleppo was disbanded. Every day more and more thousands of deportees arrive in Der-Zor. Up to 200 thousand people accumulate in the overcrowded camp. His commandant Ali Sued-bey, who tried to alleviate the plight of the Armenians, is removed from his post. In his place, the Minister of the Interior appoints Zeki Bey, who immediately organizes the massacre.
In December 1916, after a series of massacres, the second phase of the genocide ends. But the camp itself continues to operate until the end of the war. When the British army enters Der Zor in October 1918, the soldiers find only a thousand people in it, exhausted by hunger and disease.
In December 1916, the authorities stop the operation to exterminate the Armenians and begin to cover their tracks. Most of the camps had already been liquidated by that time. In Anatolia, according to official statistics, there is no Armenian population left at all.
Several tens of thousands of people could have fled to Russia. Of the more than 1.2 million deported, about 700,000 died on the stage. Another 300,000 are in concentration camps. Only a few managed to escape and take refuge in the major Syrian cities. According to some researchers, there are even more victims.
After the capitulation of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the victorious Western countries demand that those responsible for the crimes against Armenians be convicted. In order to negotiate better peace terms, the new Sultan Mehmed VI organizes a military tribunal in Istanbul, which sentences to death 17 organizers of the genocide: officials, military and politicians. Many Turks are outraged by this verdict.
In August 1920, the Entente countries imposed the Treaty of Sevres on Turkey on harsh terms. The Ottoman Empire collapses, recognizes the independence of Armenia and cedes part of Anatolia to the Armenians and Greeks. This is the end of flirting with the Entente.
Turkish nationalists, led by Mustafa Kemal, refuse to ratify the treaty in parliament and, in the course of several military campaigns, drive the Greeks out of Asia Minor. The authorities manage to carry out only three death sentences. On March 31, 1923, even before the official proclamation of the Turkish Republic, Kemal announces an amnesty for all convicts.
The three main perpetrators of the genocide - the Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha, the Minister of the Navy and the military governor of Syria Cemal, and the Minister of Defense Enver - fled to Germany as early as 1918.
Enver will die a few years later in battles with the Red Army while trying to raise an anti-Bolshevik uprising in Central Asia. Dzhemal and Talaat will be shot by Armenian militants during the Nemesis vengeance operation.
The killer of Talaat, who committed his attack in 1921 in Berlin, was declared insane by a German court and released.
Despite all the historical evidence, the Turkish government still denies the very fact of the Armenian genocide and its scale. According to the official version, it was only a forced migration from the areas of hostilities, during which there were massacres, but not planned extermination.
“We are against the Armenians for three reasons. First, they enriched themselves at the expense of the Turks. Secondly, they seek to create their own state. Thirdly, they openly support our enemies. They helped the Russians in the Caucasus, and our defeat there is largely due to their actions. Therefore, we have come to a firm decision to neutralize this force before the end of the war. From now on, we will not tolerate a single Armenian in all of Anatolia. Let them live in the desert and nowhere else.”
Talaat Pasha, Minister of the Interior of the Ottoman Empire, in a conversation with the American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr., August 1915:
“Every Muslim hiding an Armenian will be executed on the spot, and his house will be burned to the ground. If this is an official, then he will be removed from service and brought before the tribunal; military personnel who encourage harborers will be court-martialed for disobeying orders.”
From the order of General Mehmed Kamil Pasha, commander of the third Turkish army
“When they came and ordered us to get ready for the road, we were all surprised. Just three days before, we were checking to see if the grapes were ripe and if it was time to harvest. Then peace and tranquility reigned all around. And suddenly the city crier announces that we are obliged to leave the city and carts are already being equipped to take us out.
From the memories of one of the survivors
“People were preparing to leave their homeland, abandoning their homes and land. They tried to sell furniture, food, and clothes because they were only allowed to take a few things with them. And they agreed to any price. The streets were full of Turks and Turkish women prowling in search of sewing machines, furniture, carpets and other valuable things that could be obtained almost for nothing. $25 sewing machines sold for 50 cents. Expensive carpets were snapped up for less than a dollar. The whole thing was like a feast for vultures.”
Leslie Davis, American Consul in Harput, Eastern Anatolia
“Some wealthy Armenians were warned that in three days they, together with the entire Armenian population, must leave the city, leaving all their property, which is declared state property. But the Turks did not wait for the appointed time and after two hours they began to rob the Armenian houses. On Monday, cannon fire and rifle fire continued all day. In the evening, soldiers broke into an orphanage for girls in search of hiding Armenians. One woman and a girl were shot while trying to close the front gate. Having combed the city, the pogromists set fire to and leveled the Armenian quarter, as well as the surrounding Armenian villages.”
From the memoirs of Alma Johansson, a Swedish nun in the German charitable mission in the city of Mush, Eastern Anatolia
“The most beautiful older Armenian girls are kept in captivity to appease the rioters from the local gang that runs the city. The local representative of the Unity and Progress Committee gathered ten of the most attractive prisoners in one of the houses in the city center to rape them along with their comrades.
Oscar S. Heizer, American Consul in Trabzon, northeastern Anatolia, July 28, 1915
Our group was driven along the stage on June 14 under the escort of 15 gendarmes. We were 400-500 people. Already two hours walk from the city, we were attacked by numerous gangs of villagers and bandits armed with hunting rifles, rifles and axes. They took everything from us. In seven or eight days, they killed all the men and boys over 15 years old - one by one. Two blows with the butt and the man is dead. The bandits grabbed all the attractive women and girls. Many were taken to the mountains on horseback. So my sister was also kidnapped, who was 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 bare ground. I have seen people eat grass to relieve their hunger. And what the gendarmes, bandits and local residents did under the cover of darkness is beyond description at all.”
From the memoirs of an Armenian widow from the town of Bayburt in the northeast of Anatolia
“They ordered the men and boys to come forward. Some of the little boys were dressed as girls and hid in the crowd of women. But my father had to leave. He was a grown man with a mustache. As soon as they separated all the men, a group of armed men appeared from behind the hill and killed them in front of our eyes. They stabbed them in the stomach with bayonets. Many women could not bear it and threw themselves off the cliff into the river.”
From the story of a survivor from the city of Konya, Central Anatolia
“The corpses left on the road should be buried, and not thrown into ravines, wells and rivers. The things of the dead are to be burned."
“The lagging 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
“On the 52nd day of their journey, they came to another village. There, the local Kurds took everything they had - even their shirts. And for five days the whole column walked naked under the scorching sun. All these days they were not given a piece of bread or a sip of water. Hundreds fell dead, their tongues black as coal. And when, by the end of the fifth day, they reached the well, everyone naturally rushed to the water, but the gendarmes blocked their way and forbade them to drink. They demanded to pay them for water - from one to three liras per cup. And sometimes they didn’t give water, even after receiving money.”
From the memoirs of a survivor from the city of Harput, Eastern Anatolia
At every station, wherever our train stopped, we saw opposite these echelons of cattle cars. Children's faces peeked out from tiny barred windows. The side doors of the carriages were open, and inside one could clearly distinguish old men and women, young mothers with babies, men, women, and children who had been squeezed in like sheep or pigs.”
Anna Harlow Birge, Member of the Delegation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, on a trip to Istanbul, November 1915
“One of the first victims we saw was an elderly Armenian with a gray beard. A stone stuck out of his head, with which they crushed his skull. A little further away lay the burnt bodies of six or eight people. All that remained of them were bones and fragments of clothing. We traveled on horseback throughout Lake Goljuk and counted at least ten thousand bodies of killed Armenians in a day.”
Leslie Davis, American Consul in Harput
“On August 22, at the stage between Bogazliyan and Erkilet (Central Anatolia), six escort gendarmes began, under pain of death, to extort money from the convoy of exiles. 120 Armenian families were able to collect only ten lira. Due to the fact that there was so little money, the gendarmes became furious, chose all the men, about 200 people, and locked them in a local inn.
Then they took them out of there shackled by several people, searched them, took away all the money they found and sent them straight in shackles to a nearby ravine. Then, with shots from rifles, the gendarmes gave a signal to the local gangs of Turkish cutthroats, who were already at the ready with clubs, stones, sabers, daggers and knives. They attacked and killed all the men and boys over 12 years old. All this massacre took place in front of wives, mothers and children.
From the testimony of six Armenian women from the village of Hadjiköy, recorded by the German consul in Adana, October 1, 1915
“The column of arrived deported Armenians was stopped in front of the buildings of the local administration. All the boys and girls were taken from their mothers and taken inside; after that the column was driven on. Then the inhabitants of the surrounding villages were informed that anyone who wanted to could come to the city and choose a child for themselves.”
Patriarch of Constantinople of the Armenian Apostolic Church Zaven Ter-Yegiyan, August 15, 1915
“The Turks took away all the sexually mature girls and girls and raped them. Two girls resisted, and then the gendarmes beat them to death. One girl named Roza Kirasyan decided to voluntarily give herself to one of the gendarmes, taking his word that he would not offend her, and then marry her to his brother. The Turks took 50 girls and 12 boys away from Erkilet.”
From the testimony of six Armenian women from Khachik, September 1915
“At the end of June 1915, when the temperature rose to 46 degrees, a group of 100 Armenian women and children was deported from Harput. To the east of Diyarbakir they were handed over to a gang of Kurds who chose the most attractive women, girls and children for themselves.
Realizing what fate awaits them in the captivity of these monsters, the frightened women resisted with all their might and some of them were killed by the enraged Kurds. Before taking the selected women with them, they tore off almost all the rest of the clothes and drove them down the road naked.
“After the massacre of the Armenians, the Turks and Kurds ransacked their corpses in search of booty. One of them began to search me and noticed that I was still alive. Secretly from others, he carried me to his home. Gave me a new Turkish name - Ahmed. Taught me how to pray in Turkish. I became a real Turk and lived with him for five years.”
From the memories of a survivor
“People have to kill and eat stray dogs. They recently killed and ate a dying man. I know this from an eyewitness. One woman cut her hair and exchanged it for bread. I myself saw how another woman licked pools of the blood of some animal from the ground on the road. Until now, they all ate grass, but now it has withered. Last week we visited the house of people who had not eaten for three days. There was a woman with a small child in her arms, who was trying to feed him with a crumb of bread. But he could no longer eat, wheezed and died in her arms.
“There were so many corpses in the city that the local sanitary services could not cope with their cleaning and the military provided large ox-drawn wagons for their removal. They piled ten corpses into them and sent them to the cemetery in columns. It was a terrible sight: piles of uncovered, naked bodies with heads, arms and legs hanging on the sides of the wagons.
Jesse B. Jackson, American Consul in Aleppo
“I will send caravan after caravan of Armenians to you. We will take and share all their gold, money, jewelry and valuables. You will ferry them on rafts across the Tigris. When you arrive at a secluded place, kill them all and dump the bodies in the river. Rip open their bellies and fill them with stones so that they do not float up. Take all their belongings for yourself. And you will give me half of the gold, money and precious stones.”
From the appeal of the governor of Diyarbakir (South Anatolia), the former doctor of Reshid Bey, to the leaders of the local Kurdish Raman clan - recorded from the words of one of his representatives
“The next day we stopped for lunch and came across a whole camp of Armenian exiles. The poor fellows built primitive goatskin tents for themselves to hide in the shade. But the majority lay directly under the scorching sun on hot sand. There were many sick among them, so the Turks gave them a day of respite. It is hard to imagine a more depressing sight than a crowd of people in the middle of the desert at this time of year. These unfortunates must be terribly thirsty.”
“There were still many small children alive who wandered lost among the corpses of their murdered parents. To capture and destroy them, “fours” (“death squadrons” formed from Kurds and criminals specially released from prisons) were sent everywhere. They caught children by the thousands and drove them to the banks of the Euphrates, where they grabbed their legs and crushed their heads on the stones.
From the memoirs of a Greek eyewitness
“In the morning, a caravan of exiles was surrounded by a detachment of mounted Circassians - they took everything that was left from them and tore off their clothes. After that, they drove a crowd of naked men, women and children to Karadag itself (mountains on the banks of the Khabur, a tributary of the Euphrates). There, the Circassians again attacked the unfortunate with axes, sabers and daggers. And they began to chop and prick right and left, until the blood flowed like a river and the whole valley was covered with mutilated bodies.
I saw the Governor of Der-Zor watching from his sidecar and cheering the killers with "Bravo!" I myself buried myself in a pile of corpses. When all the dying people calmed down, the Circassians galloped away. Three days later, I and thirty other survivors emerged from under the decaying bodies. We had to travel three more days to the Euphrates without food or water. One by one, everyone lost strength and fell dead. I alone managed to finally reach Aleppo, disguised as a dervish.
From the story of a survivor Hosep Sargsyan from the city of Gaziontep in South Anatolia
“On the approach to the village, along the sides of the road, many dead lay. How they were killed, I don't know. But I have seen thousands of corpses with my own eyes. It was summer, so melted fat flowed out of them. The stench was such that the Turks collected all the corpses, doused them with kerosene and burned them.”
From the memories of a survivor
“Having reached the Euphrates, the gendarmes threw all the surviving children under the age of 15 into the river. Those who tried to swim out were shot from the shore.”
From the story of an Armenian widow from Bayburt
“We want you to instruct the American insurance agencies to provide us with a complete list of Armenians who have concluded a life insurance contract with them. Almost all of them are already dead and did not leave behind heirs who could receive the due payments. Now all this money, of course, must go to the treasury.
For the Armenians in Turkey, it was a difficult time. They were subjected to genocide, this is recognized all over the world, except for Turkey itself, of course. Causes.
The Ottomans were never particularly friendly. In 1915, the Armenians and the indigenous inhabitants of the empire were not equalized in rights. There was a division not only according to nationalities, but also according to the faith of confession. Armenians are Christians, so they went to church. And the Turks, at that time they were all Sunnis. Armenians were not Muslims, therefore they were heavily taxed, could not have remedies, and could not act as witnesses in courts. These people, at that moment, lived in poverty, worked on the land, I emphasize that on their own. But the Turks did not like the Armenians, they considered them prudent and cunning. If you look at the Caucasian places in the Ottoman Empire, the situation there was more sad. The Muslims who lived in those territories often came into conflict with the Armenians. In general, hatred grew.
First World.
In 1908 there was a coup. The Young Turks came to power, nationalism and pan-Turkism became the basis of the new government, in short, nothing positive was offered for other nationalities living on these lands. And so, in 1914, the raids on the Armenians began when the Turks entered the First World War, signing an agreement with Germany. The Germans promised that they would help Turkey get out to the Caucasus. The problem was that many Armenians lived on the lands of the Caucasus at that time. On the very same Turkish territory, non-Muslims began to be harassed, property could be taken away, and jihad was declared. As you know, this is a war against the infidels, and the infidel is every non-Muslim. Start. Of course, during the outbreak of hostilities in the First World War, Armenian people were also called to the war. The bulk of the Armenians fought against Persia and Russia. But Turkey suffered defeats on all fronts, and the Armenians became guilty. They began to deprive all people of this nationality of weapons, confiscations took place, and then the killings began. Those soldiers of Armenian nationality who did not follow the new orders were shot. Distorted news, they spread information that this people is a traitor, they are spies, the society learned such news from the media. 
April 24, 1915. Today, this day is a day of remembrance, a day associated with the genocide of an entire nation. In Istanbul, the entire Armenian elite was arrested, then they were deported. Even before the events in the capital, residents of other settlements were subjected to this procedure. But then, such shipments were covered by the desire to resettle people in other areas that were not affected by the war. But, in fact, people were sent to the desert, where there was not even water, there were no food, conditions for life. This was done on purpose, and old people, women and children were sent there. Men, on the other hand, were taken under arrest so as not to interfere. In May, Anatolia was persecuted. And on April 12, in a city called Van, an uprising of Armenians began. People realized that a starvation, painful death awaited them, and they took up arms to defend themselves. They fought for a month, Russian troops came to the rescue and stopped the bloodshed. Then, where 55 thousand people died, and these are only Armenians. During the action of expulsion, there were several such skirmishes, and the Turkish authorities, as best they could, ignited hatred between the peoples. In June 15, an order was given to deport almost the entire Armenian population. How everything was done. One region was taken, the number of inhabitants of Muslims, and Armenians. It was necessary to deport so that the Armenian population was ten percent of the Muslim. Of course, the schools of this people were also closed, they tried to place new settlements as far as possible from each other. Similar actions took place throughout the empire. But, in large cities, everything happened not so tragically and massively, the authorities were afraid of noise. After all, foreign media could learn about what was happening. Killed in an organized manner, on purpose and en masse. People died during the journey, also in concentration camps. Later, it will become known that, at the initiative of the authorities, experiments were performed on people, they tried the vaccine against typhus. The gendarmes mocked and tortured people every day. For today. This issue is still being actively studied. The number of dead is still not known. In the fifteenth year, they talked about three hundred thousand dead. But the German researcher Lepsius, called a different figure of a million dead. Johannes Lepsius, studied everything in detail. This scientist also stated that about three hundred thousand people were forcibly converted to Islam. Now, the Turks are talking about 200,000 deaths, but the free press is talking about 2 million. There is a well-known encyclopedia called Britannica, where the numbers are from six hundred thousand to one and a half mil. 
Of course, they wanted to hide all their actions, but abroad found out. And in 1915, the ally countries of Great Britain, France, Russia, signed a declaration, she called on Istanbul to stop this. Naturally, there was no point, they were not going to stop anything. Everything stopped only in 1918, Türkiye lost in the First World War. The country was occupied by the Entente, these are the three countries about which it is written above, they had at that time a union called the Entente. Of course, the government itself fled. A new government came, and the union of the three countries demanded a debriefing. Already in the year 18, all documents were studied by a military tribunal. They proved that the killings of the population were planned, organized, were recognized as an international war crime. Guilty number one was identified, he became Mehmed Talaat Pasha, at the time of the atrocities, this man served as Minister of the Interior and Grand Vizier. Also, Enver Pasha, he was one of the leaders of the party, Ahmed Cemal Pasha, also a party member. All these people were sentenced to death but fled the country. In the year 19, an Armenian party gathered in Yerevan, which presented a list of those who initiated the events of the fifteenth, there were hundreds of people. Legal methods of struggle in Yerevan were not accepted, they began to look for the guilty and kill. The action "Nemesis" has begun. For four years, they killed various people who were related to the authorities, who were related to the killings of civilians. The main culprit Talaat Pasha was killed by a man named Soghomon Tehlirian, this happened in 1921, in March in the city of Berlin. Of course, the man was arrested, but he was better defended by German lawyers, the killer was acquitted, and later moved to the states. The next torturer was killed in Tiflis, it happened in the twenty-second year. And Enver died already during the hostilities, by the way, he fought against the Red Army. Here is such a terrible bloody river, a terrible trace in history that will always be in the hands of descendants, residents, in the hearts of the relatives of the dead.
Of course, it is difficult to describe the emotions when you return to those historical events. Sorry for the people, sorry for the kids. It is absolutely not a pity for those who were deprived of their lives for actions that led to the deaths of millions. But Turkey itself and its friend Azerbaijan did not recognize the Armenian genocide, apparently they remember that the stigmas are in the cannon. Now we can only recall with horror those events, according to books, films that are still being made. One day a year, we remember and then we move on. Only one day that allows you to think about the value of life, including children's. Nothing can ever justify the mass murder of children. It's too much.
Genocide(from the Greek genos - clan, tribe and lat. caedo - I kill), an international crime expressed in actions committed with the aim of destroying, in whole or in part, any national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
Actions qualified by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as acts of Genocide have been committed repeatedly in the history of mankind since ancient times, especially during wars of extermination and devastating invasions and campaigns of conquerors, internal ethnic and religious clashes, during the period of partition peace and the formation of colonial empires of European powers, in the process of a fierce struggle for the redivision of the divided world, which led to two world wars and in colonial wars after the Second World War of 1939-1945.
However, the term "genocide" was first introduced into use in the early 30s. XX century by a Polish lawyer, a Jew by origin Rafael Lemkin, and after the Second World War received international legal status as a concept that defines the gravest crime against humanity. R. Lemkin under the Genocide meant the massacre of Armenians in Turkey during the First World War (1914 - 1918), and then the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany in the period preceding the Second World War, and in the countries of Europe occupied by the Nazis during the war years.
The destruction of more than 1.5 million Armenians during 1915-1923 is considered the first genocide of the 20th century. in Western Armenia and other parts of the Ottoman Empire, organized and systematically carried out by the Young Turk rulers.
The Armenian Genocide should also include the massacres of the Armenian population in Eastern Armenia and in Transcaucasia as a whole, committed by the Turks, who invaded Transcaucasia in 1918, and by the Kemalists during the aggression against the Armenian Republic in September-December 1920, as well as the pogroms of Armenians organized by the Musavatists. in Baku and Shushi in 1918 and 1920 respectively. Taking into account those who perished as a result of the periodic pogroms of Armenians perpetrated by the Turkish authorities, since the end of the 19th century, the number of victims of the Armenian Genocide exceeds 2 million.
Armenian Genocide 1915 - 1916 - mass extermination and deportation of the Armenian population of Western Armenia, Cilicia and other provinces of the Ottoman Empire, carried out by the ruling circles of Turkey during the First World War (1914 - 1918). The policy of genocide against Armenians was conditioned by a number of factors.
Leading among them was the ideology of Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism, which since the middle of the XIX century. professed by the ruling circles of the Ottoman Empire. The militant ideology of pan-Islamism was distinguished 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 the "Big Turan". These plans implied the accession to the empire of the Transcaucasus, the North Caucasus, the Crimea, the Volga region, and Central Asia.
On the way to this goal, the aggressors had to put an end, first of all, to the Armenian people, who opposed the aggressive plans of the Pan-Turkists. The Young Turks began to develop plans for the extermination of the Armenian population even before the start of the World War. The decisions of the congress of the "Unity and Progress" party, held in October 1911 in Thessaloniki, contained a demand for the Turkification of the non-Turkish peoples of the empire.
At the beginning of 1914, a special order was sent to the local authorities regarding the measures to be taken against the Armenians. The fact that the order was sent before the start of the war irrefutably testifies that the extermination of the Armenians was a planned action, not at all due to a specific military situation. The leadership of the "Unity and Progress" party has repeatedly discussed the issue of mass deportation and massacre of the Armenian population.
In October 1914, at a meeting chaired by Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat, a special body was formed - the Executive Committee of the Three, which was entrusted with organizing the extermination of the Armenian population; it included the leaders of the Young Turks Nazim, Behaetdin Shakir and Shukri. Plotting a monstrous crime, the leaders of the Young Turks took into account that the war provided an opportunity for its implementation. Nazim bluntly stated that such an opportunity may no longer be, "the intervention of the great powers and the protest of the newspapers will have no consequences, because they will face a fait accompli, and thus the issue will be resolved ... Our actions must be directed to annihilate the Armenians so that not a single one of them remains alive."
Undertaking the destruction of the Armenian population, the Turkish ruling circles intended to achieve several goals:
- liquidation of the Armenian Question, which would put an end to the intervention of the European powers;
- the Turks were getting rid of economic competition, all the property of the Armenian people would have passed into their hands;
- the elimination of the Armenian people will help pave the way to the capture of the Caucasus, to the achievement of the great ideal of Turanism.
The executive committee of the three received wide powers, weapons, money. The authorities organized “Teshkilati and Makhsuse” special detachments, which consisted mainly of criminals released from prisons and other criminal elements, who were supposed to take part in the mass destruction of Armenians.
From the very first days of the war, a frenzied anti-Armenian propaganda unfolded in Turkey. The Turkish people were inspired that the Armenians did not want to serve in the Turkish army, that they were ready to cooperate with the enemy. There were rumors about the mass desertion of Armenians from the Turkish army, about Armenian uprisings that threatened the rear of the Turkish troops, etc. Anti-Armenian propaganda especially intensified after the first serious defeats of the Turkish troops on the Caucasian front. In February 1915, Minister of War Enver ordered the extermination of the 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 unparalleled cruelty.
On the night of April 24, 1915, representatives of the police department of Constantinople broke into the homes of the most prominent Armenians in the capital and arrested them. Over the next few days, eight hundred people - writers, poets, journalists, politicians, doctors, lawyers, lawyers, scientists, teachers, priests, teachers, artists - were sent to the central prison.
Two months later, on June 15, 1915, on one of the squares of the capital, 20 intellectuals - Armenians - members of the Hnchak party, were executed, who were trumped-up charges of organizing terror against the authorities and striving to create an autonomous Armenia.
The same thing happened in all vilayets (regions): within a few days, thousands of people were arrested, including all famous cultural figures, politicians, people of mental labor. The deportation to the desert regions of the Empire was planned in advance. And this was a deliberate deception: as soon as people moved away from their native places, they were ruthlessly killed by those who were supposed to accompany them and ensure their safety. The Armenians who worked in government bodies were fired one by one; all military doctors were thrown into prisons.
The great powers were completely involved in the global confrontation, and they put their geopolitical interests above the fate of two million Armenians...
From May - June 1915, mass deportation and massacre of the Armenian population of Western Armenia (vilayets of Van, Erzrum, Bitlis, Kharberd, Sebastia, Diyarbekir), Cilicia, Western Anatolia and other areas began. The ongoing deportation of the Armenian population in fact pursued the goal of its destruction. US Ambassador to Turkey G. Morgenthau noted: "The true purpose of the deportation was robbery and destruction; this is indeed a new method of massacre. When the Turkish authorities ordered these deportations, they actually pronounced the death sentence of an entire nation."
The real purpose of the deportation was also known to Germany, an ally of Turkey. In June 1915, the German ambassador to Turkey, Wangenheim, informed his government that if at first the expulsion of the Armenian population was limited to the provinces close to the Caucasian front, now the Turkish authorities extended these actions to those parts of the country that were not under the threat of enemy invasion. These actions, the ambassador concluded, the way in which the deportation is carried out, indicate that the Turkish government has as its goal the destruction of the Armenian nation in the Turkish state. The same assessment of the deportation was contained in the reports of the German consuls from the vilayets of Turkey. In July 1915, the German vice-consul in Samsun reported that the deportation carried out in the vilayets of Anatolia was aimed at either destroying or converting the entire Armenian people to Islam. The German consul in Trebizond at the same time reported on the deportation of Armenians in this vilayet and noted that the Young Turks intended to put an end to the Armenian question in this way.
The Armenians who left their places of permanent residence were reduced to caravans that went deep into the empire, to Mesopotamia and Syria, where special camps were created for them. Armenians were exterminated both in their places of residence and on their way to exile; their caravans were attacked by Turkish rabble, Kurdish robber bands, hungry 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 cases when deported Armenians were taken out of the camps and massacred by the thousands in the desert. Lack of basic sanitary conditions, famine, epidemics caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people.
The actions of the Turkish rioters were distinguished by unprecedented cruelty. This was demanded by the leaders of the Young Turks. Thus, Minister of the Interior Talaat, in a secret telegram sent to the Governor of Aleppo, demanded to put an end to the existence of the Armenians, not to pay any attention to age, gender, or remorse. This requirement was strictly observed. 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. The correspondent of the English newspaper The Times reported in September 1915: “From Sasun and Trebizond, from Ordu and Eintab, from Marash and Erzurum, the same reports of atrocities are received: about men mercilessly shot, crucified, mutilated or taken away to labor battalions, about children abducted and forcibly converted to the Mohammedan faith, about women raped and sold into slavery in the rear, shot on the spot or sent with their children to the desert west of Mosul, where there is neither food nor water ... Many of these unfortunate victims did not reach their destination... and their corpses clearly indicated the path they followed."
In October 1916, the newspaper "Caucasian Word" published a report about the massacre of Armenians in the village of Baskan (Vardo Valley); the author cited an eyewitness account: “We saw how everything valuable was first torn off the unfortunate; then they undressed, and others were killed right there on the spot, and others were taken away from the road, into dead corners, and then finished off. We saw a group of three women who embraced in mortal fear. And it was impossible to separate them, separate them. All three were killed ... The scream and scream were unimaginable, our hair stood on end, the blood ran cold in the veins ... "The majority of the Armenian population was also subjected to barbaric extermination Cilicia.
The massacre of Armenians continued in subsequent years. Thousands of Armenians were exterminated, driven to the southern regions of the Ottoman Empire and kept in the camps of Rasul-Aina, Deir-Zora and others. The Young Turks also sought to carry out the Armenian genocide in Eastern Armenia, where, in addition to the local population, large masses of refugees from Western Armenia accumulated. Having committed aggression against Transcaucasia in 1918, Turkish troops carried out pogroms and massacres of Armenians in many areas of Eastern Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Having occupied Baku in September 1918, the Turkish invaders, together with the Azerbaijani nationalists, organized a terrible massacre of the local Armenian population, killing 30,000 people.
As a result of the Armenian genocide carried out by the Young Turks in 1915-1916, more than 1.5 million people died, about 600 thousand Armenians became refugees; they scattered over many countries of the world, replenishing the existing ones and forming new Armenian communities. An Armenian diaspora was formed (“diaspora” - Armenian).
As a result of the genocide, Western Armenia lost its original population. The leaders of the Young Turks did not hide their satisfaction with the successful implementation of the planned atrocity: German diplomats in Turkey informed their government that already in August 1915, Minister of the Interior Talaat cynically stated that "the actions against the Armenians were basically 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 due to the unpreparedness of the Armenian population, as well as the Armenian political parties, for the impending threat of extermination. In many respects, the actions of the pogromists were 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 ordered the deportation, could only lead to an increase in the number of victims.
The Armenian genocide carried out in Turkey caused enormous damage to the spiritual and material culture of the Armenian people. In 1915-1916 and subsequent years, thousands of Armenian manuscripts 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 on the territory of Turkey, the appropriation of many cultural values of the Armenian people continues to the present. The tragedy experienced by the Armenian people was reflected in all aspects of the life and social behavior of the Armenian people, firmly settled in their historical memory.
The progressive public opinion of the world condemned the villainous crime of the Turkish rioters who tried to destroy the Armenian people. Public - politicians, scientists, cultural figures of many countries branded the genocide, qualifying it as the gravest crime against humanity, took part in the implementation of humanitarian assistance to the Armenian people, in particular to refugees who found refuge in many countries of the world.
After Turkey's defeat in the First World War, the leaders of the Young Turks were accused of dragging Turkey into a disastrous war for her and put on trial. Among the charges brought against the war criminals was the charge of organizing and carrying out the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. However, the verdict against a number of leaders of the Young Turks was passed in absentia, because. after the defeat of Turkey, they managed to flee the country. The death sentence against some of them (Talaat, Behaetdin Shakir, Jemal Pasha, Said Halim, etc.) was subsequently carried out by the Armenian people's avengers.
After the Second World War, genocide was qualified as the gravest crime against humanity. The legal documents on the genocide were based on the basic principles developed by the international military tribunal in Nuremberg, which tried the main war criminals of Nazi Germany. Subsequently, the UN adopted a number of decisions regarding genocide, the main of which are the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) and the Convention on the non-applicability of the statute of limitations to war crimes and crimes against humanity, adopted in 1968.
About crimes and information war after 102 years
Isabella Muradyan
In these beautiful spring days, when nature awakens and blooms, is there a place in the heart of every Armenian, young or adult, that will no longer bloom ... All Armenians, not excluding those whose ancestors did not suffer during a series of Genocides organized by the Turks and their patrons in 1895-1896, 1909, 1915-1923 bear this pain in themselves...
And everyone is tormented by the question - why, why, why ...?! Despite the fact that so little and so much time has passed at the same time, most of the Armenians, and not only them, have a poor idea of the answers to these questions.
This happens because since the end of the 19th century, a large-scale information war has been waged against the Armenians - and the majority of the Armenian elite of the Republic of Armenia and the Diaspora do not understand this.
The sacred duty of every Armenian parent, especially a mother, in the name of love and in the name of the life she has given, is not only to provide the child with normal conditions for growth and development, to provide knowledge about the terrible danger that can find him everywhere, her name is the Unpunished Armenian Genocide...
Within the framework of this article, I will only have the opportunity to lift the veil on this issue and awaken your desire to learn more ...
Feral wolf effect
In order to better understand the problems of the peoples who lived under the Turkish yoke, one should better consider the Turks themselves and their laws and customs. These nomadic tribes came to our region around the 11th century, following their herds during a terrible drought that reigned in Altai and the Volga steppes, but this is not their homeland. The Turks themselves and most scientists of the world consider the steppe and semi-desert, which are part of China, to be the ancestral home of the Turks. Today it is the Xinjiang Uygur region of China.
Worthy of mention is the well-known legend about the birth of the Turks, which is told by the TURKIC scientists themselves. A certain young boy survived after an enemy raid on his village in the steppe. But they chopped off his arms and legs and left him to die. The boy was found and raised by a wild she-wolf.
Then, having matured, he copulated with the she-wolf who fed him and from their connection eleven children were born, who formed the BASIS of the ELITE of the TURKIC TRIBES (genus Ashina).
If you visit the ancestral home of the Turks at least once - in the Xinjiang Uygur region of China and in the mass you will encounter the Uyghurs - a relatively pure form of the Turks, you will see their way of life and everyday life, you will immediately understand a lot - and most importantly, that the Turkic legends were right ... Already For a couple of centuries, the Chinese have been trying with a firm hand to ennoble the Uyghurs / train them, build modern houses, create infrastructure, provide the latest technologies, etc. /. However, even today the relationship between the Chinese and the Uyghurs is rather ambiguous, based on the support of the “fraternal Turkish government”. Turkey officially finances terrorist Uyghur organizations that advocate secession from China and organize numerous terrorist attacks in China. One of the brutal ones was in 2011, when Uyghur terrorists in Kashgar first threw an explosive device into a restaurant, and then began to finish off the fleeing visitors with knives ... As a rule, in all terrorist attacks, the majority of the victims are Han (ethnic Chinese).
The centuries-old processes of abduction and mixing of the Turks determined their external distance from their Uyghur relatives, but as you can see, their essence is one. Despite today's external deceptive similarity of the Turks / incl. Azeri-Turks / with the peoples of our region, it does not change, which is dispassionately evidenced by the terrible statistics of their inhuman crimes against Armenians (Greeks, Assyrians, Slavs, etc.), that in 1895-96, that in 1905 or 1909, that 1915- 1923, 1988 or 2016 / slaughtered family of Armenian old people and abuse of the corpses of Armenian soldiers, 4-day war / ...
One of the reasons is our misunderstanding of the Turkish essence. It is interesting, but being very practical people in everyday life and business, Armenians become “incorrigible romantics” (the words of the father of Zionism T. Herzel) in politics and operate in advance with categories that fail from the very beginning. Instead of moving away from the feral "wolf" or trying to isolate / destroy it, the majority is trying to "establish cooperation", "cause guilt", "offended" or looking for negotiators". Needless to say, at any opportunity this “wolf” will try to deal with you - a favorite Turkish proverb even today “you cannot cut off an outstretched hand, kiss it while you can ...”. And let’s also imagine that a feral wolf has partial human thinking and is aware that he lives on land stolen from you, in a house stolen from you, eats fruits stolen from you, sells valuables stolen from you ... It’s not that he is bad, it’s just different - a completely different subspecies, and these are your problems since you don’t understand this ...
Another very important aspect is the causes of the Armenian Genocide should be sought primarily in the geopolitical and economic planes.
On the topic of the causes of the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey, there is a huge amount of archival documents, historical, scientific and other literature, but even the broad masses of the Armenian people and its elite (including the Diaspora) are still captive to a number of delusions specially carried out by Turkish propaganda and its patrons - and this a significant part of the information war against the Armenians.
I will bring Top 5 of these misconceptions:
The genocide was a consequence of the First World War;
Mass deportations of the Armenian population were carried out from the Eastern front zone deep into the Ottoman Empire and were caused by military expediency, so that the Armenians would not help the enemy (mainly the Russians);
Numerous casualties among the Armenians - the civilian population of the Ottoman Empire were random, not organized;
The basis of the Armenian Genocide was the religious difference between Armenians and Turks - i.e. there was conflict between Christians and Muslims;
The Armenians lived well with the Turks as subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and only Western countries and Russia destroyed the friendly relations of the two peoples - Armenian and Turkish.
Giving brief analysis We immediately note that none of these statements has any serious grounds. This a well-thought-out information war that has been going on for decades.
It is designed to hide the true causes of the Armenian Genocide, which lie in the economic and geopolitical planes and are not limited to the 1915 Genocide. It was precisely the desire to physically destroy the Armenians, take away their material wealth and territory, and so that nothing would prevent the creation of a new pan-Turkic empire led by Turkey - from Europe (Albania) to China (Xinjiang province).
Exactly the pan-Turkic component and the economic defeat of the Armenians(and then the Pontic Greeks) were one of the main ideas of the Genocide of 1909, 1915-1923 carried out by the Young Turks.
(On the map, the planned pan-Turkic empire is marked in red, its further advancement is marked in pink). And today, a small part of our homeland, the Republic of Armenia (about 7% of the original, see the map of the Armenian Highlands) cuts the proposed empire with a narrow wedge.
MYTH 1st. The genocide of 1915 was a consequence of the First World War.
It's a lie. The decision to exterminate the Armenians has been discussed in certain political circles in Turkey (and especially in the Young Turks) since the end of the 19th century, especially intensively since 1905, when there was no talk of the First World War. With the participation and support of Turkish emissaries in Transcaucasia in 1905. the first Turkic/Tatar-Armenian clashes and pogroms of Armenians in Baku, Shushi, Nakhichevan, Erivan, Goris, Yelisavetpol were prepared and carried out. After the suppression of the Turkic / Tatar rebellion by the tsarist troops, the instigators fled to Turkey and entered the central committee of the Young Turks (Akhmed Agaev, Alimardan-bek Topchibashev, etc.). In total, there were from 3,000 to 10,000 people who died.
As a result of the pogroms, thousands of workers lost their jobs and livelihoods. The Caspian, Caucasian, "Petrov", Balakhani and other oil companies, warehouses, Beckendorf's theater owned by Armenians were burned. The damage of the pogroms reached about 25 million rubles - about 774,235,000 US dollars today (the gold value of 1 ruble was 0.774235 grams of pure gold) Armenian campaigns were especially affected, since the fires were directed specifically against the Armenians (for comparison, the monthly average earnings of a worker in 1905 in the Russian Empire was 17 rubles 125 kopecks, 1 kg of beef shoulder blade - 45 kopecks, 1 liter of fresh milk - 14 kopecks, 1 kilogram of premium wheat flour - 24 kopecks, etc.
We should not forget the Armenian Genocide already provoked by the Young Turks in 1909. in Adana, Marash, Kessab (massacre on the territory of the former Armenian kingdom of Cilicia, Ottoman Turkey). 30,000 Armenians were killed. The total damage inflicted on the Armenians was about 20 million Turkish liras. 24 churches, 16 schools, 232 houses, 30 hotels, 2 factories, 1,429 summer houses, 253 farms, 523 shops, 23 mills and many other objects were burned down.
For comparison: the Ottoman debt to creditors after the First World War under the Treaty of Sèvres was fixed at 143 million gold Turkish liras.
So The First World War was for the Young Turks only a screen and decoration for the well-thought-out and prepared destruction of the Armenians in their area of residence - on the historical land of Armenia...
MYTH 2nd. Mass deportations of the Armenian population were carried out from the Eastern front zone deep into the Ottoman Empire and were caused by military expediency so that the Armenians would not help the enemy (mainly the Russians). It's a lie. The Ottoman Armenians did not help the enemies - and the same Russians. Yes, in the Russian army in 1914. there were Armenians from among the subjects of the Russian Empire - 250 thousand people, many were mobilized for the war and fought on the fronts, incl. against Turkey. However, according to official data, there were also Ottoman subjects of Armenians from the Turkish side - about 170 thousand (according to some sources, about 300 thousand) who fought as part of the Turkish troops (whom the Turks drafted into their army and then killed). The very fact of the participation of Armenian subjects of the Russian Empire did not make the Ottoman Armenians traitors, as some Turkish historians are trying to prove. On the contrary, when the Turkish troops under the command of Enver Pasha (Minister of War), after an attack on the Russian Empire, were rebuffed and suffered a brutal defeat near Sarikamysh in January 1915, it was Ottoman Armenians helped save Enver Pasha.
The thesis about the deportation of Armenians from the frontline zone is also false, since the first deportations of Armenians were carried out not at all on the eastern front, but from the center of the empire - from Cilicia and AnatoliaVSyria. And in all cases, the deportees were doomed to death in advance.
MYTH 3rd. Numerous casualties among the Armenians - the civilian population of the Ottoman Empire were random, not organized. Another FALSE - a single mechanism for the arrest and murder of Armenian men, and then the deportation of women and children under escort with gendarmes and the organized extermination of Armenians throughout the empire directly indicate the state structure in the organization of the Genocide. The murder of Armenian subjects drafted into the Ottoman army, normative acts, numerous testimonies, including the Turks themselves, speak of the personal participation of Turkish state officials of various ranks in the Armenian Genocide.
This is also evidenced by inhuman experiments in state institutions of the Ottoman Empire on Armenians (including women and children). These and many other facts of the 1915 Armenian Genocide ORGANIZED BY THE TURKISH AUTHORITIES. revealedTurkish military tribunal 1919-1920And many still do not know that one of the first countries to recognize the Armenian Genocide, afterThe first world war was precisely Türkiye. Among the general cruelty and savagery, the methods of extermination of Armenians by OFFICIAL TURKISH PERSONS in 1915 stand out, which subsequently were only partially used by fascist executioners in World War II and recognized as crimes against humanity. For the first time in the history of the 20th century and on a similar scale, it was To the Armenians were appliedthe so-called lower“biological status” .
According to the accusation announced on Turkish military tribunal, the deportations were not dictated by military necessity or disciplinary reasons, but were conceived by the central committee of the Ittihad Young Turks, and their consequences were felt in every corner of the Ottoman Empire. By the way, the Young Turk regime was one of the successful "color revolutions" of that time, there were other projects that were unsuccessful - young Italians, young Czechs, young Bosnians, young Serbs, etc.
In evidence Turkish military tribunal 1919-1920. mostly relied on documents and not on witness statements. The Tribunal considered as proven the fact of the organized murder of Armenians by the leaders of Ittihat (tour. taktil cinayeti) and found Enver, Dzhemal, Talaat and Dr. Nezim, who were absent from the trial, guilty. They were sentenced to death by the tribunal. By the beginning of the work of the tribunal, the main leaders of Ittihat - denme Talaat, Enver, Jemal, Shakir, Nazim, Bedri and Azmi - fled with the help of the British outside of Turkey.
The killings of Armenians were accompanied by robberies and theft. For example, Asent Mustafa and the governor of Trebizond, Cemal Azmi, embezzled Armenian jewelry worth between 300,000 and 400,000 Turkish gold pounds (at that time about 1,500,000 US dollars, while the average salary of a worker in the US during the specified period was about $45.5 per month). The American consul in Aleppo reported to Washington that a "gigantic plundering scheme" was operating in Turkey. The Consul at Trebizond reported seeing daily "a mob of Turkish women and children following the police like vultures and seizing everything they could carry", and that the house of Commissioner Ittihat at Trebizond was full of gold and jewels, which are his share of the looting, and etc.
MYTH 4th. The basis of the Armenian Genocide was the religious difference between Armenians and Turks - i.e. There was conflict between Christians and Muslims. And this is also a FALSE. during the Genocide of 1915. were destroyed and robbed not only Christian Armenians, but also Muslim Armenians who converted to Islam from the 16th to the 18th centuries - the Hamshens (Khemshils). During the Genocide of 1915-1923. Armenians were not allowed to change their religion, many agreed to this just to save their loved ones - Directive of Talaat "On the change of faith" dated December 17, 1915. directly insisted on the deportation and actual murder of Armenians REGARDLESS OF THEIR BELIEF. And do not forget that the difference in religion did not become an obstacle and the bulk of the Armenian Christian refugees found shelter and conditions for organizing a new life. EXACTLY IN THE NEIGHBOR MUSLIM COUNTRIES . So, the factor of Islamic-Christian confrontation was only a background / cover.
MYTH 5th. The Armenians lived well with the Turks as subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and only the Western countries and Russia destroyed the friendly relations of the two peoples - the Armenian and Turkish. This statement can be considered the apotheosis of LIE and a visual aid of information propaganda, since the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, not being Muslims, were considered second-class subjects - dhimmis (submissive to Islam), and they were subject to many restrictions:
- Armenians were forbidden to carry weapons and ride horseback(On horse);
- the murder of a Muslim - incl. in self-defense and protection of loved ones - punishable by death;
- Armenians paid higher taxes, and in addition to the official ones, they were also taxed by various small-town Muslim tribes;
- Armenians could not inherit real estate(for them there was only lifetime use, heirs had to get permission again. for the right to use the property)
- the testimony of the Armenians was not accepted in court;
In a number of localities Armenians were forbidden to speak their native language under pain of cutting off the tongue(for example, the city of Kutia - the birthplace of Komitas and the reason for his ignorance of his native language in childhood);
- Armenians had to give part of their children - to the harem and to the Janissaries;
- Armenian women and children were constantly the targets of violence, abductions and the slave trade and much more…
For comparison: Armenians in the Russian Empire. They were equal in rights to Russian subjects, including the possibility of entering the service, representation in noble assemblies, etc. In serf Russia, serfdom did not apply to them, and Armenian settlers, regardless of class, were allowed to leave the Russian Empire without hindrance. Among the benefits provided to Armenians was the establishment of an Armenian court in 1746. and the right to use the Armenian judicial code in Russia, permission to have their own Magistrates, i.e. granting full self-government. The Armenians were exempted for ten years (or forever, as, for example, the Armenians of Grigoriopol) from all duties, camps, and recruitment. They were given sums without a refund for the construction of urban settlements - houses, churches, buildings of magistrates, gymnasiums, the installation of water pipes, baths and coffee houses (!). Sparing fiscal legislation was carried out: “after 10 grace years, to pay them to the treasury from the merchant's capital 1% per ruble, from workshops and philistines 2 rubles a year from each household, from the villagers 10 kopecks. for a tithe." See Decree of Empress Catherine II of October 12, 1794.
During the organization of the Armenian Genocide in 1915, at the beginning of 1914-1915. the government of the Young Turks declared war on the infidels - jihad, organizing numerous gatherings in mosques and public places, at which Muslims were called upon to kill ALL Armenians as spies and saboteurs. According to Muslim law, the property of the enemy is the trophy of the first one who kills him. Thus, murders and robberies were carried out everywhere, because. after the mass declaration of Armenians as enemies - this was considered a LEGAL and FINANCIALLY ENCOURAGED act. One fifth of what was stolen from the Armenians OFFICIALLY went to the Young Turks' party fund.
The speed and scale of the implementation of the 1915 Genocide by the Young Turks is appalling. During the year, about 80% of the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were destroyed - in 1915. about 1,500,000 Armenians were killed, as of today, in 2017. the Armenian community in Turkey is about 70,000 Christian Armenians, there are also Islamized Armenians - the number is unknown.
Geopolitical and Legal Aspects of the Armenian Genocide
IN 1879 Ottoman Türkiye officially declares itself bankrupt- the size of Turkey's external debt was considered astronomical and reached a nominal value of 5.3 billion francs in gold. Central State Bank of Turkey "Imperial Ottoman Bank" was a concession company established in 1856. and was given for 80 years English and French financiers (including those from the Rothschild clan) . Under the terms of the concession, the Bank serviced all operations related to the accounting of financial receipts to the state treasury. The bank had the exclusive right to issue banknotes (i.e. issue Turkish money) valid throughout the territory of the Ottoman Empire.
It should be noted that it was in this bank that the values and funds of the majority of Armenians were stored, which were then seized from them ALL AND WAS NOT RETURNED TO ANYONE, so did branches of foreign banks.
Map of the killings and pogroms of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915
Türkiye quickly sold off existing assets, includingleased to foreign companies(mainly western) land, rights to build and operate large infrastructures ( Railway), field development, etc. This is an important detail, in the future the new owners were not interested in changing the status of the territories and losing them to Turkey.
Map of mineral resources of Western Armenia /Türkiye today/.
For reference: the territory of Western Armenia is rich in various useful, incl. ore minerals: iron, lead, zinc, manganese, mercury, antimony, molybdenum, etc. There are rich deposits of copper, tungsten, etc.
Living in their historical homeland, Armenians and Pontic Greeks also participated in economic legal relations within the empire - especially after a series of internal Turkish reforms (1856, 1869), which took place under pressure from the Western powers (France, Great Britain) and Russia and represented a significant part of the financial and industrial elite of Turkey.
Having a centuries-old relevant civilizational potential and strong ties with compatriots from outside, including the possibility of attracting (turning in) national capital, the Armenians and Greeks represented serious competition and therefore were exterminated by the Denme Young Turks.
Legal levers operated by the Young Turks during the deportation and the Armenian Genocide of 1915. (the most important acts).
1. The totality of a number of aspects of the Ottoman Muslim law, which legalized the seizure of the property of Armenians by virtue of declaring them en masse as “Western and Russian spies”. An important step in this direction is the declaration of a holy war - jihad against the infidels from the Entente countries and their allies on November 11, 1914. The confiscated property of the Armenians/”harbi”, according to the legal custom established and applied in Turkey, passed to the killers. By order of the Young Turks, one fifth of it was officially transferred to their party fund.
2. Decisions of the congresses of the party "Unity and Progress" 1910-1915. ( the extermination of the Armenians has been considered since 1905. ), including Secret decision of the "Unity and Progress" committee at the congress in Thessaloniki on the Turkishization of the non-Turkish peoples of the empire. The final decision on the implementation of the Armenian Genocide was made at a secret meeting of the Ittihadists on February 26, 1915. with the participation of 75 people.
3. Decision on education special. organ - Executive Committee of the three, as part of the Young Turks-Denme Nazim, Shakir and Shukri, October 1914, who was to be responsible for the organizational issues of the destruction of the Armenians. The organization of special detachments of criminals “Teshkilat-i mahsuse” (Special Organization), to assist the Executive Committee of the Three, numbered up to 34,000 members and largely consisted of “chettes” - criminals released from prisons.
4. Order of Minister of War Enver in February 1915 on the destruction of Armenians serving in the Turkish army.
7. Provisional Law "On the disposal of property" of September 26, 1915 Eleven articles of this law regulated issues related to the disposal of the property of the deportees, their loans and assets.
8. Order of the Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat of September 16, 1915 on the extermination of Armenian children in orphanages. In the initial period of the 1915 Genocide, some Turks began to officially adopt Armenian orphans, but the Young Turks saw this as a “loophole for saving the Armenians” and a secret order was issued. In it, Talaat wrote: “gather all the Armenian children, ... remove them under the pretext that they will be taken care of by the deportation committee, so that suspicion does not arise. Destroy them and report on their execution."
9. Provisional Law “On the Expropriation and Confiscation of Property”, dated October 13/16, 1915 Among the many shocking facts:
The unprecedented nature of the confiscation carried out by the Ministry of Finance of Turkey, on the basis of this law, of bank deposits and jewelry of Armenians deposited by them before deportation to the Ottoman Bank;
- official expropriation of money that was received by the Armenians when selling their property to local Turks;
The attempts of the government, represented by Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat, to receive compensation under the insurance policies of Armenians who insured their lives in foreign insurance companies, based on the fact that they had no heirs left and the Turkish government becomes their beneficiary.
10. Talaat's directive "On the change of faith" of December 17, 1915 etc. Many Armenians, trying to escape, agreed to change their religion, this directive insisted on their deportation and actual murder, regardless of their faith.
Losses from the Genocide for the period 1915-1919. / Paris Peace Conference, 1919 /
Losses of the Armenian people at the end of the 19th century. and the beginning of the 20th century, the highest point of which was the implementation of the 1915 Genocide. - cannot be calculated either by the number of those killed or by fixed property damage - they are immeasurable. In addition to those brutally killed by enemies, tens of thousands of Armenians died every day from hunger, cold, epidemics, and stress etc., mostly helpless women, old people and children. Hundreds of thousands of women and children were converted into Turks and held captive by force, were sold into slavery, the number of refugees numbered in the hundreds of thousands, plus tens of thousands of orphans and homeless children. The mortality figures also speak of the catastrophic situation. In Yerevan alone in 1919, 20-25% of the population died. According to experts, for 1914-1919. the population of the current territory of Armenia decreased by 600,000 people, a small part of them emigrated, the rest died from illness and deprivation. There was a massive looting and destruction of numerous valuables, incl. destruction of the priceless treasures of the nation: manuscripts, books, architectural and other monuments of national and world significance. The unfulfilled potential of the destroyed generations, the loss of qualified personnel and the failure in their succession, which has drastically affected the general level of development of the nation and the world niche it occupies so far, and this list can be continued...
Total from 1915-1919. 1,800,000 Armenians were killed throughout Western Armenia and Cilicia, part of Eastern Armenia. 66 cities, 2,500 villages, 2,000 churches and monasteries, 1,500 schools, as well as ancient monuments, manuscripts, factories, factories, etc. were plundered and devastated.
Incomplete (admitted) damage at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. amounted to 19,130,932,000 French gold francs, of which:
Recall the size of the external debt of Ottoman Turkey was the largest among the countries of Eurasia and reached the face value of 5,300,000,000 French gold francs.
Turkey paid for it and today it has a lot due to the robbery and murder of Armenians on Armenian soil…
Since the Armenian Genocide remained an unpunished crime that brought huge dividends to its organizers, ranging from material to moral and ideological - perpetuating their positive role in the formation of the Turkish state and the embodiment of the ideas of pan-Turkism, Armenians will constantly be a target.
It is the unwillingness of the Turkish side to part with the loot and pay the bills of history that makes any negotiations on the problem of the Armenian genocide impossible.
The recognition of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 is the most important element of the state security of the Republic of Armenia, since the impunity of the crime and too large dividends unambiguously lead to an attempt to REPEAT the ARMENIAN GENOCIDE.
The increase in the number of countries that have recognized the Armenian Genocide also increases the level of Armenia's security, since the international recognition of this crime is a deterrent for Turkey and Azerbaijan.
We do not call for hatred, we call for UNDERSTANDING and ADEQUACY not only for Armenians, but also for all those who consider themselves cultured and civilized people. And even after more than 100 years, but the crimes against the Armenians must be condemned, the criminals punished, and the proceeds of crime must be returned to the owners (their relatives) or to the national successor state.This is the only way to stop new crimes, a new genocide at any pointpeace. In the dissemination of significant information and the consistent struggle for the punishment of criminals, the salvation of our future generations - in the hands of mothers, look for the fate of nations ...
Isabella Muradyan - migration lawyer (Yerevan), member of the International Law Association, especially for
On the prospects for resolving the conflict in, the aggravation of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, on the history of Armenia and Armenian-Turkish relations political observer websiteSaid Gafurov talks with political scientist Andrei Epifantsev.
Genocide issue: "Armenians and Turks behaved in the same way"
Armenian Genocide
— Let's start with the controversial topic right away ... T Tell me right away, was there a genocide of Armenians by the Turks in general or not? I know that you wrote a lot on this topic and understood this topic.
— What is certain is that there was a massacre in Turkey in 1915 and that such things should never be repeated. My personal approach is that the official Armenian position, according to which it was a genocide caused by the terrible hatred of the Turks for Armenians, is not correct in a number of ways.
Firstly, it is quite obvious that the cause of what happened was largely the Armenians themselves, who staged an uprising before this. Which began long before 1915.
All this dragged on from the end of the 19th century and covered, among other things, Russia. The Dashnaks didn't care who they blew up, Turkish officials or Prince Golitsyn.
Secondly, it is important to know what is usually not shown here: the Armenians, in fact, behaved like the same Turks - they staged ethnic cleansing, massacres, and so on. And if all the available information is put together, you get a comprehensive picture of what happened.
— The Turks have their own genocide museum, dedicated to the territory, which, with the help of English gold and Russian weapons, was "liberated" by Armenian pre-Shnak units. Their commanders indeed reported that not a single Turk remained there. Another thing is that the Dashnaks were then provoked into action by the British. And, by the way, the Turkish court in Istanbul, even under the Sultan, condemned the organizers of mass crimes against Armenians. True, in absentia. That is, the fact of a mass crime took place.
- Certainly. And the Turks themselves do not deny this, they offer condolences. But they do not call what happened a genocide. From the point of view of international law, there is a Convention on the Prevention of Genocide, signed, among other things, by Armenia and Russia. It indicates who has the right to recognize a crime as genocide - this is the court in The Hague, and only he.
Neither Armenia nor the foreign Armenian diaspora has ever appealed to this court. Why? Because they understand that they will not be able to prove this genocide in legal, historical terms. Moreover, all international courts - the European Court of Human Rights, the French Court of Justice and so on, when the Armenian diaspora tried to raise this issue, they were denied. Only since last October there were three such courts - and the Armenian side lost everything.
Let's go back to the first half of the 20th century: even then it was obvious that both the Turkish and the Armenian sides resorted to ethnic cleansing. Two American missionaries sent by the Congress after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire saw a picture of ethnic cleansing carried out precisely by the Armenians.
We ourselves saw in 1918 and in 1920, before the Soviet power was firmly established, either Armenian or Azerbaijani purges. Therefore, as soon as the "factor of the USSR" disappeared, they immediately received Nagorno-Karabakh and the same purges. Today, this area has been cleared to the maximum. There are practically no Armenians left in Azerbaijan, and no Azerbaijanis in Karabakh and Armenia.
The positions of Turks and Azerbaijanis are fundamentally different
— And in Istanbul, meanwhile, there is a large Armenian colony, there are churches. By the way, this is an argument against genocide.
- The positions of the Turks and Azerbaijanis are fundamentally different. At the ethnic level, at the household level. There is no real territorial conflict between Armenia and Turkey now, but there is one with the Azerbaijanis. Secondly, some events were 100 years ago, while others are today. Thirdly, the Turks set themselves the goal not to destroy the Armenians physically, but to call them to loyalty, albeit by wild means.
Therefore, many Armenians remained in the country, whom they tried to Turkify, so to speak, to Islamize, but they remained Armenians inside themselves. Some of the Armenians survived, who were resettled away from the battle zone. After World War II, Türkiye began to restore Armenian churches.
Now Armenians are actively going to work in Turkey. There were Armenian ministers in the Turkish government, which is impossible in Azerbaijan. The conflict is now going on for very specific reasons - and the main thing is land. The compromise option offered by Azerbaijan is a high degree of autonomy, but within Azerbaijan. So to say, the Armenians should become Azerbaijan. The Armenians categorically disagree with this - it will again be a massacre, deprivation of rights, and so on.
There are, of course, other options for a settlement, for example, as was done in Bosnia. The parties have created a very complex state, consisting of two autonomous entities with their own rights, an army, and so on. But this option is not even considered by the parties.
Monostates, states created on the basis of an ethnic project, are a dead end. The question is this: history is not finite, it continues. For some states, it is very important to get the dominance of their people on this earth. And after it is provided, it is already possible to develop the project further, involving other peoples, but already on the basis of some kind of subordination. In fact, the Armenians now, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Azerbaijanis, in fact, are at this stage.
Is there any solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh problem?
— The Azerbaijani official line: the Armenians are our brothers, they must return, that is, all the necessary guarantees, let them leave us only external defense and international affairs. Everything else will remain with them, including security issues. And what is the position of Armenia?
Here everything runs into the fact that Armenia and the Armenian society have this position of the historical land - "this is our historical land, and that's it." There will be two states, one will be a state, it doesn't matter. We will not give up our historical land. We are more likely to die or leave from there, but we will not live in Azerbaijan. No one says that nations cannot make mistakes. Including the Armenians. And in the future, when they are convinced of their mistake, they will probably come to a different opinion.
Armenian society today is, in fact, very much divided. There are diasporas, there are Armenians of Armenia. Very strong polarization, more than in our society, oligarchies, a very large spread between Westerners and Russophiles. But with regard to Karabakh, there is a complete consensus in it. The Diaspora spends money on Karabakh, there is a powerful lobbying of the interests of Karabakh Armenians in the West. The national-patriotic upsurge is preserved, it is warmed up and will be preserved for a long time.
But all national projects have their moment of truth. In the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, this moment of truth has not yet come for any of the parties. The Armenian and Azerbaijani sides are still on maximalist positions, each of the elites has convinced its people that victory is possible only on maximalist positions, only by fulfilling all our demands. "We are everything, our enemy is nothing."
People, in fact, have become hostages of this situation, it is already difficult to win back. And the same mediators who work in the Minsk Group face a difficult task: to persuade the elite to turn to the people and say - no, guys, we must lower the bar. Therefore, there is no progress.
- Bertolt Brecht wrote: "Nationalism does not feed hungry stomachs." Azerbaijanis rightly say that the most affected by the conflict is the ordinary Armenian people. The elite is cashing in on military supplies, while the life of ordinary people is getting worse: Karabakh is a poor land.
“And Armenia is not a rich land. But so far, people are choosing guns from the "guns or butter" option. In my opinion, the resolution of the Karabakh crisis is possible. And this decision lies in the division of Karabakh. If you just divide Karabakh, although I understand that it is difficult, but nevertheless: one part is one, the other part is another.
Legitimize, say: "The international community accepts this option." It is possible to calculate the percentage of the population at the time of 1988 or 1994. Divide, fix boundaries and say that anyone who unleashes a conflict that violates the established status quo will be punished. The issue will resolve itself.
Prepared for publication by Sergey Valentinov