The mass destruction and deportation of the Armenian population of Western Armenia, Cilicia and other provinces of the Ottoman Empire were carried out by the ruling circles of Turkey in 1915-1923. 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 was 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". It was meant to attach Transcaucasia, North to the empire. Caucasus, Crimea, Volga region, 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 party "Unity and Progress" (Ittihad ve Terakki), held in October 1911 in Thessaloniki, contained a demand 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 Armenian genocide throughout the Ottoman 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 start of the war, irrefutably testifies that the destruction 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 September 1914, at a meeting chaired by Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat, a special body was formed - the Executive Committee of the Three, which was instructed to organize the massacre 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 provides an opportunity for its implementation. Nazim openly 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 extermination of the Armenian population, the ruling circles of Turkey intended to achieve several goals: the elimination of the Armenian question, which would put an end to the intervention of European powers; the Turks were getting rid of economic competition, all the property of the Armenians 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 special detachments, such as "Teshkilat and Mahsuse", 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 the uprisings of Armenians who threatened the rear of the Turkish troops, etc.

The unbridled chauvinistic propaganda against the Armenians intensified especially after the first serious defeats of the Turkish troops on the Caucasian front. In February 1915 Minister of War Enver ordered the destruction 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, that is, the most combat-ready part of the male population. This order was carried out with unparalleled cruelty.

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. The real purpose of the deportation was also known to Germany, an ally of Turkey. 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 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 that the existence of the Armenians be put to an end, that no attention be paid 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. 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, etc. The Young Turks sought to carry out the Armenian genocide in Eastern Armenia, where, in addition to the local population, large masses 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 invaders, together with the Caucasian Tatars, 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 only in 1915-16, 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. The Armenian Diaspora (Diaspora) 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 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.

However, in some places the Armenian population offered stubborn resistance to the Turkish vandals. The Armenians of Van, having resorted to self-defense, successfully repulsed the attacks of the enemy, held the city in their hands until the arrival of Russian troops and Armenian volunteers. Armed resistance to the many times superior enemy forces was provided by the Armenians Shapin Garakhisar, Mush, Sasun, Shatakh. The epic of the defenders of Mount Musa in Suetia continued 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, massacred the Armenian population, killing several thousand people. In September 1918, Turkish troops occupied Baku and, together with Azerbaijani nationalists, organized the massacre of the local Armenian population.

During the Turkish-Armenian War of 1920, Turkish troops occupied Alexandropol. Continuing the policy 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 invaders committed atrocities, destroyed the peaceful Armenian population, and robbed property. The Revolutionary Committee of Soviet Armenia received information about the atrocities of the Kemalists. One of the reports said: "About 30 villages were slaughtered in the Alexandropol district and the Akhalkalaki region, some of those who managed to escape are in the most distressed situation." Other reports described the situation in the villages of the Alexandropol district: “All the villages have been robbed, there is no shelter, no grain, no clothes, no fuel. The streets of the villages are overflowing with corpses. All this is supplemented by hunger and cold, taking away one victim after another ... In addition, askers and the hooligans taunt their captives and try to punish the people with even more brutal means, rejoicing and enjoying it. They subject their parents to various torments, force them to hand over their 8-9-year-old girls to the executioners ... "

In January 1921, the government of Soviet Armenia protested to the Turkish Commissar for Foreign Affairs over the fact that Turkish troops in the Alexandropol district were carrying out "continuous violence, robbery and murder against the peaceful working population ...". Tens of thousands of Armenians became victims of the atrocities of the Turkish invaders. The invaders also inflicted enormous material damage on the Alexandropol district.

In 1918-20, 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, devastating 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. Dec. 1918 The British entered Shushi. Soon, Musavatist Khosrov-bey Sultanov was appointed governor-general of Karabakh. With the help of Turkish military instructors, he formed shock Kurdish detachments, which, together with parts of the Musavatist army, were deployed in the Armenian part of Shusha. The forces of the rioters were constantly replenished, there were many Turkish officers in the city. In June 1919, the first pogroms of the Armenians of Shusha 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 perpetrated a terrible massacre of the Armenian population of Shusha, killing over 30 thousand people and setting fire to the Armenian part of the city.

The Armenians of Cilicia, who survived the genocide of 1915-16 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 stipulated 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 had reached 160,000. The command of the French troops located in Cilicia did not take measures to ensure the security of the Armenian population; Turkish authorities remained on the ground, the Muslims were not disarmed. This was used by the Kemalists, who began the massacre of the Armenian population. In January 1920, during the 20-day pogroms, 11 thousand Armenian residents of Mavash died, the rest of the Armenians went to Syria. Soon the Turks laid siege to Ajn, where the Armenian population by that time numbered barely 6,000 people. The Armenians of Ajna offered stubborn resistance to the Turkish troops, which lasted 7 months, but in October the Turks managed to take the city. About 400 defenders of Ajna managed to break through the siege ring and escape.

At the beginning of 1920, the remnants of the Armenian population of Urfa moved to Aleppo - about 6 thousand people.

On April 1, 1920, Kemalist troops besieged Ayntap. Thanks to the 15-day heroic defense, the Aintap Armenians escaped the massacre. But after the 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 extermination 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 1919-22. In August-September 1921, Turkish troops achieved a turning point in the course of hostilities and launched a general offensive against the Greek troops. On September 9, the Turks broke into Izmir and massacred the Greek and Armenian population, the Turks sank the ships that were in the harbor of Izmir, on which there were Armenian and Greek refugees, mostly women, old people, children ...

The Armenian Genocide was carried out by the governments of Turkey. They are the main culprits of the monstrous crime of the first genocide of the twentieth century. The Armenian genocide carried out in Turkey caused enormous damage to the material and spiritual culture of the Armenian 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 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 impact of the genocide was experienced both by the generation that became its direct victim and by subsequent generations.

The progressive public opinion of the world condemned the villainous crime of the Turkish pogromists, who were trying to destroy one of the most ancient civilized peoples of the world. Public and political figures, 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 shelter in many countries of the world. After the defeat of Turkey 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 war criminals was the charge of organizing and carrying out the massacre of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. However, a number of Young Turk leaders were sentenced to death in absentia, because after the defeat of Turkey they managed to escape from 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 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.

In 1989, the Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR adopted a law on genocide, which condemned the Armenian genocide in Western Armenia and Turkey as a crime directed against humanity. The Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR asked the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to adopt a decision condemning the Armenian genocide in Turkey. The Declaration of Independence of Armenia, adopted by the Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR on August 23, 1990, proclaims that "the Republic of Armenia supports the cause of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in Ottoman Turkey and Western Armenia."

In 1915, 2 million Armenians lived in the weakened Ottoman Empire. But under the cover of World War I, the Turkish government systematically massacred 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 intentional killing of Armenians.

History of the region

Armenians have lived in the southern Caucasus since the 7th century BC and fought for control of other groups such as the Mongol, Russian, Turkish and Persian empires. In the 4th century, the reigning king of Armenia became a Christian. He argued 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 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 around the edges. The Ottoman Empire lost all of its territory in Europe during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, creating instability among the 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 was the first of the Armenian massacres. Military and civilians of the Ottoman troops attacked Armenian villages in Eastern Anatolia, resulting in the death of 8 thousand 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 more than 80,000 Armenians died by 1896.

Rise of 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, the Armenians hoped that they would have a place in the new state, but they soon realized that the new government was xenophobic and excluded 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 issue” 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 naturally sympathized with Christian Russia. Consequently, the Turks disarmed the entire Armenian population. Turkish suspicion of the Armenian people prompted the government to push for the "removal" of Armenians from the war zones along the Eastern Front.

The mandate to exterminate the Armenians, transmitted in coded telegrams, came directly from the Young Turks. On the evening of April 24, 1915, armed shelling 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 about 1.5 million Armenians, covering hundreds of miles and lasting several months. Indirect routes through the desert areas were specially chosen to extend the marches and keep the caravans in the 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 a three-thousand-year-old 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 provincial and district data showing that in 1914 there were 2,133,190 Armenians in the empire, but by 1922 only about 387,800.

Failed Call to Arms in the West

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

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

The Swedish ambassador to Peru, Gustaf August Kosswa Ankarsvärd, 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 ... [put an end to the Armenian question. The means for this are quite simple and consist in the annihilation of the Armenian people.”

Even Henry Morgenthau, the US ambassador to Armenia, noted: “When the Turkish authorities ordered these deportations, they were simply giving the 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 news of the massacres by issuing a warning to Turkey: "The Allied Governments declare publicly that they will hold all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as their agents like themselves, personally responsible for such matters." The warning had no effect.

Because Ottoman law forbade photographing the Armenian deportees, photographic documentation that captures the severity of the ethnic cleansing is rare. In an act of defiance, the officers of the German military mission recorded the atrocities taking place in the concentration camps. Although many photographs were intercepted by Ottoman intelligence, lost in Germany during World War II or forgotten in dusty boxes, the Museum of the Armenian Genocide of America captured some of these photographs in an 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 this day "National Day of Remembrance for Human Inhumanity to Man" in honor of all victims of the genocide, especially the one and a half million people of Armenian descent who were victims of the genocide committed in Turkey."

Today, the recognition of the Armenian Genocide is a hot topic as Turkey criticizes scholars for punishing mortality and blaming the Turks for the deaths, which the government says was due to starvation and the brutality of the 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 cases of the First World War are our common pain.”

However, many believe that 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 condemnation can prevent the repetition of such crimes in the future.”

Ultimately, the 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 is still happening. In 2010, a Resolution of the Swedish Parliament stated that "genocide denial is widely recognized as the final stage of genocide, cementing the impunity of the perpetrators of genocide and clearly 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 massacres and forced deportations of Armenians carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923.

Although historical and academic institutions for the study of the Holocaust and the genocide accept the Armenian Genocide, many countries refuse to do so in order to preserve 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 repercussions for those who do.

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 the 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 the massacres.

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

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

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

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

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

France also criminalized the denial of the Armenian Genocide in 2016, recognizing it in 1998 and 2001. After passing the bill, which was criminalized on 14 October 2016, it was passed by the French National Assembly in July 2017. It provides for a sentence of a year in prison or a fine of 45,000 euros.

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

Countries that recognize the Armenian Genocide: Switzerland and memorial laws

Switzerland recognized the Armenian Genocide in 2003, when denial is a crime. Dogu Perincek, a Turkish politician, lawyer and chairman of the left-wing nationalist patriotic party, became the first person to be criminally charged with denial of the Armenian Genocide. The decision was taken by a Swiss court in 2007.

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

Although he was sentenced to life imprisonment 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 the memorial

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

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

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

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

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

10 facts about the Armenian genocide in 1915

Today, the Turkish government still denies that the massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians represented it as a "genocide." This is despite the fact that a host of scholarly articles and proclamations from respected historians testified that the events leading up to the massacres, as well as how 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: "Armenians were an enemy force... and their slaughter was a necessary military measure."

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

One prominent Turkish politician, Dogu Perincek, came under fire for his denial of the Armenian Genocide while visiting Switzerland in 2008. According to The Telegraph, Perjček was fined by a Swiss court after he called the genocide an "international lie". He appealed the allegation in 2013 and the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Swiss court's allegations "violated the right to freedom of expression".

Currently, Amal Clooney (yes, the new Ms. George Clooney) has 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, CC, who also authored an October 2014 book, An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Remembers Armenians Now?.

Publishers from Random House stated that the book "...is beyond doubt that the horrific events of 1915 became a crime against humanity now known as genocide."

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

1. Discussion of the Armenian Genocide is illegal in Turkey

In Turkey, discussing the Armenian genocide is considered a crime punishable by imprisonment. In 2010, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan effectively threatened to deport 100,000 Armenians in response to an Armenian Genocide Commemoration Bill presented to 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 release of the bill:

“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 there is a threat of the Armenian genocide in Turkey today, so the world community should put pressure on Ankara to recognize the genocide,” Karapetyan replied to Erdogan’s subtle threats.

1. America was interested in marking the events as genocide

Although the American government and the media called the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians "atrocities" or "massacres," the word "genocide" rarely made its way into the American people when describing the events that took place from 1915 to 1923. That the words "Armenian Genocide" appeared in the New York Times. Petr Balakian, a professor of humanities at Colgate University, and Samantha Power, a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, wrote a letter to the editor of the Times that was subsequently published.

In the letter, Balakian and Sila punish The Times and other media outlets for not labeling the atrocities that took place in 1915 as genocide.

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

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

1. The role of religion in the Armenian genocide

The religious origins of the Armenian Genocide date back to the 15th century when the government of Armenia was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. The leaders of the Ottoman Empire were mostly Muslims. Christian Armenians were considered minorities by the Ottoman Empire, and although they were "allowed to maintain some autonomy", they were mostly treated as second-class citizens; i.e. Armenians were denied the right to vote, paid higher taxes than Muslims, and were denied a host of other legal and economic rights. Insults and prejudice prevailed in the leaders of the Ottoman Empire, since the unfair treatment of Armenians caught up in violence against Christian minorities.

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

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

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

1. A 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 make them ... give up their revolutionary ambitions."

Prior to 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 Armenians' calls for reform resulted in "...over 100,000 Armenian villagers killed in 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 forwarders of the Armenian genocide during the First World War.

1. Young Turks

In 1908, a group of "reformers" who called 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 to equality and justice, and the Armenians hoped for peace among their people in light of the changes.

However, it quickly became apparent that the aim of the Young Turks was to "lure" the country and liquidate the Armenians. Young Turks were the catalysts for the Armenian Genocide that took place during World War I and were responsible for the murder of almost two million Armenians.

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

Scholars and historians point out that the reason for this may be the lack of accountability for the crimes of the Turks. After the Ottoman Empire surrendered in 1918, the leaders of the Young Turks 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, has denied that the genocide ever took place. In 1922, the Armenian Genocide came to an end, leaving only 388,000 Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

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

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

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

1. Similarities Between Genocide and Holocaust

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

Many genocidal scholars have stated that a week before the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Hitler asked, "Who is talking about the extermination of Armenians today?"

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

Both used the concept of ethnic "cleansing" or "cleansing". According to Travis, "While the Young Turks were realizing a 'pure sweep of internal enemies - native Christians', according to the then German ambassador in Constantinople... Hitler himself used 'cleansing' or 'cleansing' as a euphemism for extermination."

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

1. What happened during the Armenian Genocide?

The Armenian Genocide officially began on April 24, 1915. During this time, the Young Turks recruited a deadly organization of individuals who were sent to persecute the Armenians. The composition of this group included killers and former prisoners. According to the story, one of the officers instructed to name the atrocities that were to take place "... the liquidation of the Christian elements."

The genocide played out like this:

Armenians were forcibly removed from their homes and sent on "death marches" that involved trekking through the desert of Mesopotamia without food or water. The marchers were often torn naked and forced to walk until they died. Those who stopped for reprieve or respite were shot

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

1. Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide

On the 100th anniversary of the brutal holocaust that took place in 1915, international efforts were made to commemorate the victims and their families. The first official 100th anniversary event was held 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 be accepting entries for an art competition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. according to a West Side Today statement, Kerkorian stated that the contest "...is a way to honor the history of the genocide and highlight the promise of our future." He continued, “I hope that artists and students who care about human rights will get involved and help honor the memory of the Armenian people.”

Abroad, 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 produced an extensive catalog of these newspaper clippings from Australian archives, including those from the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Argus and other notable publications of the day, and will be releasing them daily on Facebook. .

ANC Australia Executive Director Vache Gahramanyan noted that the information released will include many 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 "... has 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 to be held on April 23-24", at the same time Armenians will gather to commemorate the 100- anniversary of the genocide experienced in the Ottoman Empire. The invitation was met with resentment from the citizens of Armenia, who considered it "unscrupulous", a "joke" and a "political maneuver" on the part of Erdogan.

Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire

The concept of "genocide" is enshrined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as a crime against a "national, ethnic, racial group". However, the Convention also includes in the concept of genocide such a category as a "religious group", which is by no means formed on biological grounds. In this case, the concept of genocide should come from the destruction or persecution of people on the basis of a certain commonality of their origin, in other words, persecution due to belonging to a social, biological or other group. Nationality or race, therefore, is only a special case in the concept of genocide.

The following periodization of the Armenian Genocide is accepted in the research literature:

1. Russo-Turkish War 1877–1878 San Stefano Peace Treaty. The Berlin Congress and the Emergence of the Armenian Question.
2. Armenian pogroms of 1894–1896
3. Establishment of the Young Turk regime.
4. World War I and the Armenian Genocide.
5. Kemalist movement. Armenian-Turkish war. Massacre in Cilicia. Treaty of Lausanne.

Russo-Turkish War, Berlin Treaty and Armenian pogroms of 1894–1896

Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, not being Muslims, were considered second-class citizens - dhimmis. After the Russo-Turkish War, at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the Porte (the government of the Ottoman Empire) undertook to carry out reforms related to the situation of the Armenians and guarantee their security. However, the implementation of the terms of the Berlin Treaty was sabotaged by the government of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who feared that the reforms would lead to the domination of Armenians in eastern Turkey and the establishment of their independence. Abdul Hamid told the German ambassador von Radolin that he would rather die than succumb to the pressure of the Armenians and allow reforms related to autonomy to be carried out. On the basis of the Cyprus Convention, the British sent their consuls to the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire, who confirmed the mistreatment of the Armenians. In 1880, the six countries that signed the Treaty of Berlin sent a note to the Porte and demanded specific reforms "to ensure the safety of the life and property of the Armenians." However, Turkey did not comply with the terms of the note, and the measures taken by it were described in the British consular report as "an excellent farce."

After the end of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. Muslims expelled from the Caucasus and the Balkan countries, in particular, Circassians and Kurds, began to move en masse to areas populated mainly by Armenians and other Christian peoples. The refugees expelled from their lands by Christians transferred their hatred to local Christians. Religious intolerance was supplemented by acute socio-economic conflicts: the unsettledness of refugees, conflicts over agricultural resources. All this together gave rise to conflicts, and the representatives of the Turkish authorities on the ground not only did not protect the Armenians from the attacks of the Kurds and Circassians, but often they themselves were behind the raids on the Armenian villages.

There is also another point of view about the numerous victims from the opposite side: "Turks are the victims of a deep injustice, we never talk about their victims, while we talk about the Armenian victims much more often than the victims of the Holocaust, but the Turkish victims are more numerous than the Armenian victims" .

Massacres in 1894-1896 consisted of three main episodes: the massacre in Sasun, the massacres of Armenians throughout the empire in the autumn and winter of 1895, and the massacre in Istanbul and in the Van region, which was caused by the protests of local Armenians.

In the region of Sasun, the Kurdish leaders imposed tribute on the Armenian population. At the same time, the Ottoman government demanded the repayment of state tax arrears, which had previously been forgiven, given the facts of Kurdish robberies. At the beginning of 1894 there was an uprising of the Armenians of Sasun. During the suppression of the uprising by Turkish troops and detachments of Kurds, according to various estimates, from 3 to 10 thousand or more Armenians were slaughtered.

The peak of the Armenian pogroms occurred after September 18, 1895, when a protest demonstration took place in Bab Ali, the district of the Turkish capital of Istanbul, where the residence of the Sultan was located. More than 2,000 Armenians died in the pogroms that followed the dispersal of the demonstration. The massacre against the Armenians of Constantinople initiated by the Turks resulted in a total massacre of Armenians throughout Asia Minor.

The following summer, a group of Armenian militants, representatives of the radical Dashnaktsutyun party, attempted to draw European attention to the intolerable plight of the Armenian population by seizing the Imperial Ottoman Bank, Turkey's central bank. The first dragoman of the Russian embassy, ​​V. Maksimov, took part in settling the incident. He assured that the great powers would exert the pressure necessary for reforms on the High Port, and gave his word that the participants in the action would be given the opportunity to freely leave the country on one of the European ships. However, the authorities ordered attacks on the Armenians to begin even before the Dashnaks left the bank. As a result of the three-day massacre, according to various estimates, from 5,000 to 8,700 people died.

In the period 1894–1896. in the Ottoman Empire, according to various sources, from 50 to 300 thousand Armenians were destroyed.

Establishment of the Young Turk regime and Armenian pogroms in Cilicia

In order to establish a constitutional regime in the country, a group of young Turkish officers and government officials created a secret organization, which later became the basis of the Ittihad ve terakki (Unity and Progress) party, also called the Young Turks. At the end of June 1908, the Young Turk officers raised a rebellion, which soon grew into a general uprising: the Young Turks were joined by Greek, Macedonian, Albanian and Bulgarian rebels. A month later, the Sultan was forced to make significant concessions, restore the Constitution, grant amnesty to the leaders of the uprising, and follow their instructions in many matters.

The restoration of the Constitution and new laws meant the end of the traditional superiority of Muslims over Christians, in particular Armenians. At the first stage, the Armenians supported the Young Turks, their slogans about universal equality and brotherhood of the peoples of the empire found the most positive response among the Armenian population. In the Armenian-populated regions, celebrations were held on the occasion of the establishment of a new order, sometimes quite stormy, which caused additional aggression among the Muslim population, which had lost its privileged position.

New laws allowed Christians to carry weapons, which led to the active arming of the Armenian part of the population. Both Armenians and Muslims accused each other of mass arming. In the spring of 1909, a new wave of anti-Armenian pogroms began in Cilicia. The first pogroms took place in Adana, then the pogroms spread to other cities of the Adana and Aleppo vilayets. The troops of the Young Turks from Rumelia sent to maintain order not only failed to protect the Armenians, but, together with the pogromists, took part in robberies and murders. The result of the massacre in Cilicia - 20 thousand dead Armenians. Many researchers are of the opinion that the organizers of the massacre were the Young Turks, or at least the Young Turk authorities of the Adanay Vilayet.

From 1909, the Young Turks launched a campaign of forcible Turkification of the population and banned organizations associated with non-Turkish ethnic goals. The Turkishization policy was approved at the Ittihad congresses of 1910 and 1911.

World War I and the Armenian Genocide

According to some reports, the Armenian genocide was being prepared before the war. In February 1914 (four months before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo), the Ittihadists called for a boycott of Armenian businesses, and one of the Young Turk leaders, Dr. Nazim, went on a tour of Turkey to personally oversee the implementation of the boycott.

On August 4, 1914, mobilization was announced, and already on August 18, reports began to arrive from Central Anatolia about looting of Armenian property under the slogan of "raising funds for the army". At the same time, the authorities disarmed the Armenians in different regions of the country, taking away even kitchen knives. In October, robbery and requisitions were in full swing, arrests of Armenian politicians, began to receive the first reports of murders. Most of the Armenians drafted into the army were sent to special labor battalions.

In early December 1914, the Turks launched an offensive on the Caucasian front, but in January 1915, having suffered a crushing defeat in the battle of Sarykamysh, they were forced to retreat. The victory of the Russian army was largely helped by the actions of Armenian volunteers from among the Armenians living in the Russian Empire, which led to the spread of the opinion about the betrayal of the Armenians in general. The retreating Turkish troops brought down all the anger from the defeat on the Christian population of the front-line regions, slaughtering Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in their path. At the same time, arrests of prominent Armenians and attacks on Armenian villages continued throughout the country.

At the beginning of 1915, a secret meeting of the Young Turk leaders took place. One of the leaders of the Young Turk Party, Dr. Nazim Bey, delivered the following speech during it: "The Armenian people must be destroyed at the root so that not a single Armenian remains on our land, and this very name is forgotten. Now there is a war, there will be no such opportunity again. The intervention of the great powers and the noisy protests of the world press will go unnoticed, and if they find out, they will be confronted with a fait accompli, and thus the question will be settled". Nazim Bey was supported by other participants of the meeting. A plan was drawn up for the total extermination of the Armenians.

Henry Morgenthau (1856-1946), US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (1913-1916), later wrote a book on the Armenian Genocide: "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 were in fact pronouncing the death sentence of an entire nation".

The position of the Turkish side is that there was an Armenian rebellion: during the First World War, the Armenians sided with Russia, signed up as volunteers in the Russian army, formed Armenian volunteer squads that fought on the Caucasian front along with Russian troops.

In the spring of 1915, the disarmament of the Armenians was in full swing. Detachments of Turkish, Kurdish and Circassian irregular troops slaughtered Armenian villages in the Alashkert Valley, the Greeks drafted into the army were killed near Smyrna (Izmir), and the deportation of the Armenian population of Zeytun began.

In the first days of April, massacres began in the Armenian and Assyrian villages of the Van vilayet. In mid-April, refugees from the surrounding villages began to arrive in the city of Van, reporting on what was happening there. The Armenian delegation invited to negotiate with the administration of the vilayet was destroyed by the Turks. Upon learning of this, the Armenians of Van decided to defend themselves and refused to surrender their weapons. Turkish troops and detachments of Kurds besieged the city, but all attempts to break the resistance of the Armenians were unsuccessful. In May, forward detachments of Russian troops and Armenian volunteers pushed back the Turks and lifted the siege of Van.

On April 24, 1915, several hundred of the most prominent representatives of the Armenian intelligentsia were arrested and then destroyed in Istanbul: writers, artists, lawyers, and representatives of the clergy. At the same time, the liquidation of Armenian communities throughout Anatolia began. April 24 entered the history of the Armenian people as a black day.

In June 1915, Enver Pasha, the Minister of War and the de facto head of the government of the Ottoman Empire, and Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha instructed the civil authorities to begin the deportation of Armenians to Mesopotamia. This order meant almost certain death - in Mesopotamia the lands are poor, there was a serious shortage of fresh water, and it is impossible to immediately settle 1.5 million people there.

The deported Armenians of the Trebizond and Erzurum vilayets were driven along the Euphrates valley to the Kemakh gorge. On June 8, 9, 10, 1915, defenseless people in the gorge were attacked by Turkish soldiers and Kurds. After the robbery, almost all Armenians were slaughtered, only a few managed to escape. On the fourth day, a "noble" detachment was sent, officially - to "punish" the Kurds. This detachment finished off those who survived.

In the autumn of 1915, columns of emaciated and ragged women and children moved along the roads of the country. Columns of deportees flocked to Aleppo, from where the few survivors were sent to the deserts of Syria, where most of them perished.

The official authorities of the Ottoman Empire attempted to hide the scale and ultimate goal of the action, but foreign consuls and missionaries sent messages about the atrocities taking place in Turkey. This forced the Young Turks to act more cautiously. In August 1915, on the advice of the Germans, the Turkish authorities forbade the killing of Armenians in places where American consuls could see it. In November of the same year, Jemal Pasha tried to court the director and professors of the German school in Aleppo, thanks to which the world became aware of the deportations and massacres of Armenians in Cilicia. In January 1916, a circular was sent out forbidding the photographing of the bodies of the dead.

In the spring of 1916, due to the difficult situation on all fronts, the Young Turks decided to speed up the process of destruction. It included previously deported Armenians, who were usually settled in desert areas. At the same time, the Turkish authorities are suppressing any attempts by neutral countries to provide humanitarian assistance to Armenians dying in the deserts.

In June 1916, the authorities dismissed the governor of Der-Zor, Ali Suad, an Arab by nationality, for refusing to exterminate the deported Armenians. Salih Zeki, known for his ruthlessness, was appointed in his place. With the arrival of Zeki, the process of extermination of the deportees accelerated even more.

By the autumn of 1916, the world already knew about the massacre of Armenians. The scale of what had happened was unknown, reports of the atrocities of the Turks were perceived with some distrust, but it was clear that something had happened in the Ottoman Empire that had not been seen before. At the request of the Turkish Minister of War Enver Pasha, the German ambassador Count Wolf-Metternich was recalled from Constantinople: the Young Turks felt that he was too actively protesting against the massacre of Armenians.

US President Woodrow Wilson declared October 8 and 9 the Days of Assistance to Armenia: on these days the whole country collected donations to help Armenian refugees.

In 1917, the situation on the Caucasian front changed dramatically. The February Revolution, failures on the Eastern Front, the active work of the Bolshevik emissaries to decompose the army led to a sharp decrease in the combat effectiveness of the Russian army. After the October coup, the Russian military command was forced to sign a truce with the Turks. Taking advantage of the ensuing collapse of the front and the disorderly withdrawal of Russian troops, in February 1918, Turkish troops occupied Erzrum, Kars and reached Batum. The advancing Turks mercilessly exterminated the Armenians and Assyrians. The only obstacle that somehow hindered the advance of the Turks were the Armenian volunteer detachments covering the withdrawal of thousands of refugees.

On October 30, 1918, the Turkish government signed the Mudros truce with the Entente countries, according to which, among other things, the Turkish side was obliged to return the deported Armenians, withdraw troops from Transcaucasia and Cilicia. The articles that directly affected the interests of Armenia stated that all prisoners of war and interned Armenians should be gathered in Constantinople so that they would be handed over to the allies without any conditions. Article 24 had the following content: "In the event of unrest in one of the Armenian vilayets, the allies reserve the right to occupy part of it".

After signing the agreement, the new Turkish government, under pressure from the international community, began legal proceedings against the organizers of the genocide. In 1919–1920 emergency military tribunals were formed in the country, which investigated the crimes of the Young Turks. By that time, the entire Young Turk elite was on the run: Talaat, Enver, Dzhemal and others, having taken the party fund, left Turkey. They were sentenced to death in absentia, but only a few lower-ranking criminals were punished.

Operation Nemesis

In October 1919, at the IX Congress of the Dashnaktsutyun party in Yerevan, on the initiative of Shahan Natali, a decision was made to conduct a punitive operation "Nemesis". A list was compiled of 650 persons involved in the massacre of Armenians, of which 41 people were selected as the main culprits. To carry out the operation, a Responsible Body (headed by the Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia to the United States Armen Garo) and a Special Fund (headed by Shahan Satchaklyan) were formed.

As part of the Nemesis operation in 1920-1922, Talaat Pasha, Jemal Pasha, Said Halim and some other leaders of the Young Turks who fled from justice were tracked down and killed.

Enver was killed in Central Asia in a skirmish with a detachment of Red Army soldiers under the command of the Armenian Melkumov (a former member of the Hunchak Party). Dr. Nazim and Javid Bey (Minister of Finance of the Young Turk government) were executed in Turkey on charges of participating in a conspiracy against Mustafa Kemal, the founder of the Republic of Turkey.

The situation of the Armenians after the First World War

After the Armistice of Mudros, Armenians who survived the pogroms and deportations began to return to Cilicia, attracted by the promises of the allies, primarily France, to assist in the creation of Armenian autonomy. However, the emergence of an Armenian state formation ran counter to the plans of the Kemalists. The policy of France, which was afraid of too sharp strengthening of England in the region, changed towards greater support for Turkey, as opposed to Greece, which was supported by England.

In January 1920, the Kemalist troops launched an operation to exterminate the Armenians of Cilicia. After heavy and bloody defensive battles that lasted more than a year in some areas, the few surviving Armenians were forced to emigrate, mainly to French-mandated Syria.

In 1922–23 A conference on the Middle East issue was held in Lausanne (Switzerland), which was attended by Great Britain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey and a number of other countries. The conference ended with the signing of a series of treaties, among which was a peace treaty between the Republic of Turkey and the allied powers, defining the borders of modern Turkey. In the final version of the treaty, the Armenian question was not mentioned at all.

Data on the number of victims

In August 1915, Enver Pasha reported 300,000 dead Armenians. At the same time, according to the German missionary Johannes Lepsius, about 1 million Armenians were killed. In 1919, Lepsius revised his estimate to 1,100,000. According to him, only during the Ottoman invasion of Transcaucasia in 1918, from 50 to 100 thousand Armenians were killed. On December 20, 1915, the German consul in Aleppo, Rössler, informed the Reich Chancellor that, based on a general estimate of the Armenian population of 2.5 million, the death toll could very likely reach 800,000, possibly higher. At the same time, he noted that if the Armenian population of 1.5 million people is taken as the basis for the assessment, then the death toll should be proportionally reduced (that is, the estimate of the death toll will be 480,000). According to the estimates of the British historian and culturologist Arnold Toynbee, published in 1916, about 600,000 Armenians died. The German Methodist missionary Ernst Sommer estimated the number of deportees at 1,400,000.

Contemporary estimates of the number of victims vary from 200,000 (some Turkish sources) to over 2,000,000 Armenians (some Armenian sources). The American historian of Armenian origin Ronald Suny gives estimates ranging from several hundred thousand to 1.5 million as a range. 5 million. The "Encyclopedia of Genocide" published by the Israeli sociologist and specialist in the history of genocides, Israel Charny, reports the destruction of up to 1.5 million Armenians. According to the American historian Richard Hovhannisyan, until recently the most common estimate was 1,500,000, but recently, as a result of political pressure from Turkey, this estimate has been revised downward.

In addition, according to Johannes Lepsius, between 250,000 and 300,000 Armenians were forcibly converted to Islam, prompting protests from some Muslim leaders. Thus, the Mufti of Kutahya declared the forced conversion of Armenians to be contrary to Islam. Forced conversion to Islam had the political aims of destroying the Armenian identity and reducing the number of Armenians in order to undermine the basis for claims of autonomy or independence by the Armenians.

Recognition of the Armenian Genocide

UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights 18 June 1987 - European Parliament adopted a decision to recognize the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire of 1915-1917 and to appeal to the Council of Europe to put pressure on Turkey to recognize the genocide.

18 June 1987 - Council of Europe adopted a decision according to which the refusal of today's Turkey to recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915, carried out by the government of the Young Turks, becomes an insurmountable obstacle to Turkey's entry into the Council of Europe.

Italy - 33 Italian cities recognized the genocide of the Armenian people in Ottoman Turkey in 1915. The first on July 17, 1997 was the City Council of Bagnocapaglio. Today, they include Lugo, Fusignano, S.Azuta Sul, Santerno, Cotignola, Molarolo, Russi, Conselice, Camponozara, Padova and others. The issue of recognizing the Armenian Genocide is on the agenda of the Italian parliament. It was discussed at the meeting on April 3, 2000. On March 18, 2019, the Lazio region recognized the Armenian Genocide. The Lazio Regional Parliament is the 136th Parliament of Italy that passed a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

France - On May 29, 1998, the French National Assembly adopted a bill recognizing the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

On November 7, 2000, the French Senate voted for the resolution on the Armenian Genocide. The senators, however, somewhat changed the text of the resolution, replacing the original "France officially recognizes the fact of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey" with "France officially recognizes that the Armenians were victims of the 1915 genocide." On January 18, 2001, the National Assembly of France unanimously adopted a resolution according to which France recognizes the fact of the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey in 1915-1923.

On December 22, 2011, the lower house of the French parliament approved a draft law criminalizing the denial of the Armenian genocide. On January 6 , Nicolas Sarkozy , who served as President of France , sent the bill to the Senate for approval . However, on January 18, 2012, the Senate Constitutional Committee rejected a bill criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide, deeming the text unacceptable.

On October 14, 2016, the French Senate passed a bill to criminalize the denial of all crimes committed against humanity, listing among them the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.

Belgium - In March 1998, the Belgian Senate adopts a resolution, according to which the fact of the Armenian Genocide in 1915 in Ottoman Turkey is recognized and appealed to the government of modern Turkey to also recognize it.

Switzerland - The issue of recognizing the Armenian Genocide of 1915 was periodically raised in the Swiss Parliament by a parliamentary group headed by Angelina Fankevatzer.

On December 16, 2003, the Swiss parliament voted to officially recognize the killings of Armenians in eastern Turkey during and after World War I as genocide.

Russia - On April 14, 1995, the State Duma adopted a statement condemning the organizers of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1922. and expressing gratitude to the Armenian people, as well as recognizing April 24 as the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide.

Canada - On April 23, 1996, on the eve of the 81st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, on the proposal of a group of Quebec parliamentarians, the Parliament of Canada adopts a resolution condemning the Armenian Genocide. "The House of Commons, on the occasion of the 81st anniversary of the tragedy that claimed the lives of almost one and a half million Armenians, and in recognition of other crimes against humanity, decides to designate the week from April 20 to 27 as the Week of Remembrance for the victims of the inhumane attitude of man to man," the resolution says.

Lebanon - April 3, 1997 The National Assembly of Lebanon adopted a resolution in which it recognized April 24 as the Day of Remembrance of the tragic massacre of the Armenian people. The resolution calls on the Lebanese people to be united with the Armenian people on April 24. On May 12, 2000, the Lebanese parliament recognized and condemned the genocide carried out in 1915 against the Armenian people by the Ottoman authorities.

Uruguay - On April 20, 1965, the Main Assembly of the Senate of Uruguay and the House of Representatives adopted the law "On the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide".

Argentina - On April 16, 1998, the legislature of Buenos Aires adopted a memorandum in which it expressed solidarity with the Armenian community of Argentina, which is celebrating the 81st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire. On April 22, 1998, the Argentine Senate adopted a statement condemning genocide of any kind as a crime against humanity. In the same statement, the Senate expresses its solidarity with all the national minorities that became victims of the genocide, especially emphasizing its concern about the impunity of the organizers of the genocide. At the basis of the statement, examples of the massacre of the Armenian, Jewish, Kurdish, Palestinian, Gypsy and many peoples of Africa are given as a manifestation of genocide.

Greece - On April 25, 1996, the Greek Parliament decided to recognize April 24 as the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the genocide of the Armenian people carried out by Ottoman Turkey in 1915.

Australia - On April 17, 1997, the parliament of the South Australian state of New Wales adopted a resolution in which, meeting the needs of the local Armenian diaspora, it condemned the events that took place on the territory of the Ottoman Empire, qualifying them as the first genocide in the 20th century, recognized April 24 as the Day of Remembrance of the Armenian victims and urged the Australian government to take steps towards the official recognition of the Armenian genocide. On April 29, 1998, the Legislative Assembly of the same state decided to erect a memorial obelisk in the parliament building to commemorate the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide.

USA - On October 4, 2000, the Committee on Foreign Relations of the US Congress adopted resolution No. 596, recognizing the fact of the genocide of the Armenian people in Turkey in 1915-1923. At various times, 49 states (of which 35 are at the level of law) and the District of Columbia have recognized the Armenian Genocide. In the list of states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington , Wisconsin, Indiana. In 2017, the states of Iowa and Indiana did this, and on March 20, 2019 – Alabama. Mississippi remains the only state that has not done so.

Slovakia - On November 30, 2004, the National Assembly of Slovakia recognized the fact of the Armenian Genocide. .

Slovenia - recognized the Armenian genocide in 2004.

Poland - On April 19, 2005, the Polish Sejm recognized the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. The parliamentary statement noted that "respect for the memory of the victims of this crime and its condemnation is the duty of all mankind, all states and people of good will."

Cyprus - The Cyprus Parliament adopted a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide in 1982.

Venezuela- On July 14, 2005, the Venezuelan parliament announced its recognition of the Armenian genocide, noting: “90 years have passed since the commission of the first genocide in the 20th century, which was planned and carried out in advance by the Young Turks, embraced by the idea of ​​pan-Turkism, against the Armenians, as a result of which 1, 5 million people".

Lithuania- On December 15, 2005, the Seimas of Lithuania adopted a resolution condemning the Armenian genocide. "The Seimas, condemning the fact of the genocide of the Armenian people committed in 1915 by the Turks in the Ottoman Empire, calls on the Republic of Turkey to recognize this historical fact," the document said.

Chile - On July 6, 2007, the Chilean Senate unanimously called on the country's government to condemn the genocide committed against the Armenian people. "These terrible actions were the first ethnic cleansing of the 20th century, and much earlier than such actions received their legal formulation, the fact of the grossest violation of the human rights of the Armenian people was registered," the Senate said in a statement.

Great Britain - In February 2010, the majority of members of the British Parliament voted for the recognition of the fact of the genocide of Armenians and Assyrians in the territory of Ottoman Turkey.

Bolivia - On November 26, 2014, both houses of the Bolivian Parliament recognized the Armenian Genocide. "On the night of April 24, 1915, the authorities of the Ottoman Empire, the leaders of the "Unity and Progress" party began arrests and the planned expulsion of representatives of the Armenian intelligentsia, politicians, scientists, writers, cultural figures, clergy, doctors, public figures and specialists, and then massacre of the Armenian civilian population on the territory of historical Western Armenia and Anatolia," the statement said.

Bulgaria - In April 2015, the Bulgarian Parliament adopted a resolution condemning the "mass killings" of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. Parliamentarians abstained from the wording "genocide"

Roman Catholic Church- On April 12, 2015, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Francis, during a Mass commemorating the 100th anniversary of the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, called the massacres of Armenians in 1915 the first genocide of the 20th century: "In the last century, mankind experienced three massive and unprecedented tragedies. The first tragedy, which many consider to be the 'first genocide of the 20th century,' hit the Armenian people."

Syria - The Chairman of the Syrian Parliament stated in 2015 that Syria fully recognizes the Armenian Genocide. On February 13, 2020, the Syrian parliamentarians unanimously adopted a resolution recognizing and condemning the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey.

Luxembourg - On May 6, 2015, the Parliament of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg unanimously supported the resolution on the Armenian Genocide.

Brazil - the Armenian genocide is recognized at the state level of Rio de Janeiro. In July 2015, the State Parliament declared April 24 the Day of Recognition and Remembrance of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide, and the Governor signed the law into law.

Paraguay - On October 29, 2015, the Senate of Paraguay unanimously adopted a resolution recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey.

Spain - 12 cities of the country recognized the Armenian genocide: on July 28, 2016, the city council of Alicante adopted an institutional declaration and publicly condemned the genocide of the Armenian people in Ottoman Turkey; On November 25, 2015, the city of Alzira was recognized as a genocide.

Ukraine - the Armenian genocide was recognized at the local level in a number of regions of the country. Deputies of several district, city and regional councils from 2010 to 2017 supported an appeal to the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine with a call to declare April 24 the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide. The draft resolution on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire has been registered in the country's parliament since 2013.

Czech – On April 25, 2017, the Czech Parliament voted for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

Denmark - The Danish parliament in January condemned the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, but the word "genocide" is missing from the adopted resolution.

Netherlands - On February 22, 2018, the Dutch Parliament decided to recognize the Armenian Genocide and decided in a separate resolution that on April 24, 2018, a member of the Dutch government would attend memorial events in Yerevan. In the future, a representative of the Dutch Cabinet will have to appear at such events every five years.

Libya - The interim government of Libya announced the recognition of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey on April 18, 2019.

Portugal - Resolution on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey in 1915 was adopted by the Parliament of Portugal on April 26, 2019.

Genocide denial

Most countries of the world have not officially recognized the Armenian Genocide. The authorities of the Republic of Turkey actively deny the very fact of the Armenian genocide, they are supported by the authorities of Azerbaijan.

The Turkish authorities categorically refuse to recognize the fact of the genocide. Turkish historians note that the events of 1915 were by no means ethnic cleansing, and as a result of clashes, a large number of Turks themselves died at the hands of Armenians.

According to the Turkish side, there was an Armenian rebellion, and all operations for the resettlement of Armenians were dictated by military necessity. Also, the Turkish side disputes the numerical data on the number of dead Armenians and emphasizes the significant number of casualties among the Turkish troops and the population during the suppression of the rebellion.

In 2008, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested that the Armenian government establish a joint commission of historians to study the events of 1915. The Turkish government has declared that it is ready to open all the archives of that period to Armenian historians. To this proposal, Armenian President Robert Kocharian replied that the development of bilateral relations is the business of governments, not historians, and proposed the normalization of relations between the two countries without any preconditions. Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian, in a response statement, noted that "outside of Turkey, scientists - Armenians, Turks and others, have studied these problems and made their own independent conclusions. The most famous among them is a letter to Prime Minister Erdogan from the International Association of Genocide Scholars in May 2006 year, in which they together and unanimously confirm the fact of the genocide and appeal to the Turkish government with a request to recognize the responsibility of the previous government.

In early December 2008, Turkish professors, scientists and some experts began collecting signatures for an open letter that apologized to the Armenian people. "Conscience does not allow not to recognize the great misfortune of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915," the letter says.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan criticized the campaign. The head of the Turkish government said that he "does not accept such initiatives." "We did not commit this crime, we have nothing to apologize for. Whoever is to blame can apologize. However, the Republic of Turkey, the Turkish nation has no such problems." Noting that such initiatives by the intelligentsia hinder the settlement of issues between the two states, the French prime minister concluded: "These campaigns are wrong. Approaching issues with good intentions is one thing, but apologizing is quite another. It is illogical."

The Republic of Azerbaijan has shown solidarity with the position of Turkey and also denies the fact of the Armenian genocide. Heydar Aliyev said, speaking about the genocide, that there was nothing of the kind, and all historians know this.

In French public opinion, tendencies also prevail in favor of initiating the organization of a commission to study tragic events 1915 in the Ottoman Empire. French researcher and writer Yves Benard on his personal resource Yvesbenard.fr calls on impartial historians and politicians to study the Ottoman and Armenian archives and answer the following questions:

• What is the number of Armenian victims during World War I?
• What is the number of victims of Armenians who died during the resettlement, and how did they die?
• How many peaceful Turks were killed by "Dashnaktsutyun" during the same period, became victims?
• Was there a genocide?

Yves Benard believes that there was a Turkish-Armenian tragedy, but not a genocide. And he calls for mutual forgiveness and reconciliation between the two peoples and two states.

Notes:

1. Genocide // Online Etymology Dictionary.
2. Spingola D. Raphael Lemkin and the Etymology of "Genocide" // Spingola D. The Ruling Elite: Death, Destruction, and Domination. Victoria: Trafford Publishing, 2014. P. 662-672.
3. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide December 9, 1948 // Collection of international treaties. V.1, part 2. Universal agreements. UN. N.Y., Geneve, 1994.
4. The Armenian Genocide in Turkey: a brief historical overview // Genocide.ru, 08/06/2007.
5. Berlin Treaty // Official site of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University.
6. Cyprus Convention // "Akademik".
7. Benard Y. Genocide arménien, et si on nous avait menti? Essay. Paris, 2009.
8. Kinross L. Rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire. Moscow: Kron-press, 1999.
9. Armenian Genocide, 1915 // Armtown, 04/22/2011.
10. Jemal Pasha // Genocide.ru.
11. Red. Part twenty nine. Between Kemalists and Bolsheviks // ArAcH.
12. Switzerland recognized the killings of Armenians as genocide // BBC Russian Service, 12/17/2003.
13. International Affirmation of the Armenian Genocide // Armenian National Institute. Washington; The US state of Indiana recognized the Armenian Genocide // Hayernaysor.am, 06.11.2017.
14. Who Recognized the Armenian Genocide of 1915 // Armenika.
15. Decision of the Parliament of the Slovak Republic // Genocide.org.ua .
16. Turkish Ambassador in Slovenia recognizes Armenian Genocide: Ashot Grigoryan // Armenian Community and Church Council of Great Britain
17. Poland Parliament Resolution // Armenian National Institute. Washington.
18. Cyprus House of Representatives Resolution // www.armenian-genocide.org
19. National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Resolution A-56 14.07.05 // Genocide.org.ua
20. Lithuania Assembly Resolution // Armenian National Institute. Washington.
21. The Senate of Chile adopted a document condemning the Armenian Genocide // RIA Novosti, 06.06.2007.
22. Bolivia recognizes and condemns the Armenian Genocide // Website of the Museum-Institute of the Armenian Genocide, 01.12.2014.
23. Bulgarian Parliament adopts resolution on ‘mass killing’ of Armenians – but not genocide // The Sofia Globe
24. Türkei zieht Botschafter aus Berlin ab // Bild.de, 06/02/2016.
25. Syria recognized the Armenian genocide // News Press
26. Zaporozhye deputies called on the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to honor the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide // Panarmenian.net
27. Libyan Interim Government to commemorate the Armenian Genocide // addresslibya.com
28. Turkish Prime Minister is not going to apologize for the Armenian Genocide // Izvestia, 12/18/2008.
29. Erdogan called the position of the Armenian diaspora "cheap political lobbying" // Armtown, 11/14/2008.
30. Lyudmila Sycheva: Türkiye yesterday and today. Are the claims for the role of the leader of the Turkic world justified?
31. The Armenian Genocide: Not Recognized by Turkey and Azerbaijan // Radio Liberty, 17.02.2001.

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In the history of the genocide, some historians distinguish two periods. If at the first stage (1878-1914) the task was to hold the territory of the enslaved people and organize a mass exodus, then in 1915-1922 the destruction of the ethnic and political Armenian clan, which prevented the implementation of the pan-Turkism program, was put at the forefront. Before the First World War, the destruction of the Armenian national group was carried out in the form of a system of widespread single killings, combined with periodic massacres of Armenians in certain areas where they constituted an absolute majority (the massacre in Sasun, murders throughout the empire in the autumn and winter of 1895, the massacre in Istanbul in Van area).

The original number of the people who lived in this territory is a moot point, since a significant part of the archives was destroyed. It is known that in the middle of the XIX century in the Ottoman Empire, non-Muslims made up about 56% of the population.

According to the Armenian Patriarchate, in 1878, three million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. In 1914, the Armenian Patriarchate of Turkey estimated the number of Armenians in the country at 1,845,450. The Armenian population decreased by more than a million due to the massacre in 1894-1896, the flight of Armenians from Turkey and forced conversion to Islam.

The Young Turks, who came to power after the revolution of 1908, continued the policy of brutally suppressing the national liberation movement. In ideology, the old doctrine of Ottomanism was replaced by no less rigid concepts of Pan-Turkism and Pan-Islamism. A campaign of forcible Turkification of the population was launched, and non-Turkish organizations were banned.

In April 1909, the Cilician massacre took place, the massacre of the Armenians of the vilayets of Adana and Allepo. The victims of the massacre were about 30 thousand people, among whom were not only Armenians, but also Greeks, Syrians and Chaldeans. In general, during these years, the Young Turks paved the way for a complete solution of the "Armenian issue".

In February 1915, at a special meeting of the government, the Young Turk ideologist Dr. Nazim Bey outlined a plan for the complete and widespread annihilation of the Armenian people: “It is necessary to completely exterminate the Armenian nation, leaving not a single living Armenian on our land. memory..."

On April 24, 1915, the day now celebrated as the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide, mass arrests of the Armenian intellectual, religious, economic and political elite began in Constantinople, which led to the complete destruction of a whole galaxy of prominent figures of Armenian culture. More than 800 representatives of the Armenian intelligentsia were arrested and subsequently killed, including writers Grigor Zohrab, Daniel Varuzhan, Siamanto, Ruben Sevak. Unable to bear the death of his friends, the great composer Komitas lost his mind.

In May-June 1915, a massacre and deportation of Armenians began in Western Armenia.

The general and systematic campaign against the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire consisted in the expulsion of Armenians into the desert and subsequent executions, death by bands of marauders or from hunger or thirst. Deportations were subjected to Armenians from almost all the main centers of the empire.

On June 21, 1915, during the final act of the deportation, its main mastermind, Interior Minister Talaat Pasha, ordered the deportation of "all Armenians without exception" living in ten provinces of the eastern region of the Ottoman Empire, with the exception of those who were deemed useful to the state. Under this new directive, the deportation was carried out on the "ten percent principle", according to which Armenians should not exceed 10% of the Muslims in the region.

The process of expulsion and extermination of the Turkish Armenians culminated in a series of military campaigns in 1920 against the refugees who had returned to Cilicia and during the massacre in Smyrna (modern Izmir) in September 1922, when troops under the command of Mustafa Kemal slaughtered the Armenian quarter in Smyrna, and then, under pressure from the Western powers, the survivors were allowed to evacuate. With the destruction of the Armenians of Smyrna, the last surviving compact community, the Armenian population of Turkey practically ceased to exist in their historical homeland. The surviving refugees scattered around the world, forming diasporas in several dozen countries.

Modern estimates of the number of victims of the genocide vary from 200,000 (some Turkish sources) to more than 2 million Armenians. Most historians estimate the number of victims between 1 and 1.5 million people. Over 800 thousand became refugees.

It is difficult to determine the exact number of victims and survivors, since since 1915, fleeing murders and pogroms, many Armenian families have changed their religion (according to some sources - from 250 thousand to 300 thousand people).

For many years, Armenians around the world have been striving for the international community to officially and unconditionally recognize the fact of the genocide. The first special decree recognizing and condemning the terrible tragedy of 1915 was adopted by the Parliament of Uruguay (April 20, 1965). Laws, resolutions and decisions on the Armenian Genocide were subsequently adopted by the European Parliament, the State Duma of Russia, the parliaments of other countries, in particular Cyprus, Argentina, Canada, Greece, Lebanon, Belgium, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Venezuela, Lithuania, Chile, Bolivia, and the Vatican.

The Armenian Genocide has been recognized by over 40 American states, the Australian state of New South Wales, the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Ontario (including the city of Toronto), the Swiss cantons of Geneva and Vaud, Wales (Great Britain), about 40 Italian communes, dozens of international and national organizations, including including the World Council of Churches, the Human Rights League, the Elie Wiesel Humanitarian Foundation, the Union of Jewish Communities of America.

On April 14, 1995, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted a statement "On the condemnation of the genocide of the Armenian people in 1915-1922."

The US government massacred 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, but refuses to call it a genocide.

The Armenian community of the United States has long adopted a resolution recognizing the fact of the genocide of the Armenian people by Congress.

Attempts to carry out this legislative initiative have been made in Congress more than once, but they have not been crowned with success.

The issue of recognition of the genocide in the normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey.

Armenia and Turkey have not yet established diplomatic relations, and the Armenian-Turkish border has been closed since 1993 at the initiative of official Ankara.

Turkey traditionally rejects accusations of the Armenian genocide, arguing that the victims of the 1915 tragedy were both Armenians and Turks, and reacts extremely painfully to the process of international recognition of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire.

In 1965, a monument to the victims of the genocide was erected on the territory of the Catholicosate in Etchmiadzin. In 1967, the construction of a memorial complex was completed in Yerevan on the hill of Tsitsernakaberd (Swallow Fortress). In 1995, the Museum-Institute of the Armenian Genocide was built near the memorial complex.

The motto of Armenians around the world for the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide is the words "I remember and I demand", and the forget-me-not is the symbol. This flower in all languages ​​has a symbolic meaning - to remember, not to forget and remind. The memorial in Tsitserkaberd with its 12 pylons is graphically depicted in the cup of the flower. This symbol will be actively used throughout 2015.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

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.