100 years since Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks (NSFW)

[Gollum]

WARNING: This post contains graphic depictions of a historical event, people with weak stomach kindly avoid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide https://onpoint.wbur.org/2015/04/23/armenian-genocide-100-anniversary-memory In 1915, leaders of the Turkish government set in motion a plan to expel and massacre Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Though reports vary, most sources agree that there were about 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the massacre. By the early 1920s, when the massacres and deportations finally ended, some 1.5 million of Turkey’s Armenians were dead, with many more forcibly removed from the country. The Turkish government does not acknowledge the enormity or scope of these events. Despite pressure from Armenians and social justice advocates throughout the world, it is still illegal in Turkey to talk about what happened to Armenians during this era. Timeline of events 1. The Roots of Genocide: The Ottoman Empire The Armenian people have made their home in the Caucasus region of Eurasia for some 3,000 years. For some of that time, the kingdom of Armenia was an independent entity–at the beginning of the 4th century AD, for instance, it became the first nation in the world to make Christianity its official religion–but for the most part, control of the region shifted from one empire to another. During the 15th century, Armenia was absorbed into the mighty Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman rulers, like most of their subjects, were Muslim. They permitted religious minorities like the Armenians to maintain some autonomy, but they also subjected Armenians, who they viewed as “infidels,†to unequal and unjust treatment. Christians had to pay higher taxes than Muslims, for example, and they had very few political and legal rights. In spite of these obstacles, the Armenian community tried their best to uplift their lives under Ottoman rule. They tended to be better educated than their Turkish neighbors, who in turn tended to resent their success. This resentment was compounded by suspicions that the Christian Armenians would be more loyal to Christian governments (that of the Russians, for example, who shared an unstable border with Turkey) than they were to the Ottoman caliphate. These suspicions grew more acute as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. At the end of the 19th century, the despotic Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid II–obsessed with loyalty above all, and infuriated by the nascent Armenian campaign to win basic civil rights–declared that he would solve the “Armenian question†once and for all. “I will soon settle those Armenians,†he told a reporter in 1890. “I will give them a box on the ear which will make them…relinquish their revolutionary ambitions.†Sultan Abdul Hamid II 2. The First Armenian Massacre Between 1894 and 1896, this “box on the ear†took the form of a state-sanctioned pogrom. In response to large scale protests by Armenians, Turkish military officials, soldiers and ordinary men sacked Armenian villages and cities and massacred their citizens. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were murdered. The first "box on the ear": Corpses of massacred Armenians in Erzurum in 1895 3. The Rise of the Young Turks In 1908, a new government came to power in Turkey. A group of reformers who called themselves the “Young Turks†overthrew Sultan Abdul Hamid and established a more modern constitutional government. At first, the Armenians were hopeful that they would have an equal place in this new state, but they soon learned that what the nationalistic Young Turks wanted most of all was to “Turkify†the empire. According to this way of thinking, non-Turks, especially Christians–were a grave threat to the new state. Declaration of the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. The Young Turks 3. World War I In 1914, the Turks entered World War I on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (At the same time, Ottoman religious authorities declared jihad, or holy war, against all Christians except their allies.) Military leaders began to argue that the Armenians were traitors: If they thought they could win independence if the Allies were victorious, this argument went, the Armenians would be eager to fight for the enemy. General Turkish suspicion of the Armenian people, led the Turkish government to push for the “removal†of the Armenians from the war zones along the Eastern Front. On April 24, 1915, the Armenian genocide began. That day, the Turkish government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals. After that, ordinary Armenians were turned out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. Frequently, the marchers were stripped naked and forced to walk under the scorching sun until they dropped dead. People who stopped to rest were shot. At the same time, the Young Turks created a “Special Organization,†which in turn organized “killing squads†or “butcher battalions†to carry out, as one officer put it, “the liquidation of the Christian elements.†These killing squads were often made up of murderers and other ex-convicts. They drowned people in rivers, threw them off cliffs, crucified them and burned them alive. In short order, the Turkish countryside was littered with Armenian corpses. Records show that during this “Turkificationâ€campaign government squads also kidnapped children, converted them to Islam and gave them to Turkish families. In some places, they raped women and forced them to join Turkish “harems†or serve as slaves. Muslim families moved into the homes of deported Armenians and seized their property. In 1922, when the genocide was over, there were just 388,000 Armenians remaining in the Ottoman Empire. From http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/ and http://historyrepeating.org/2015/03/09/armenian-genocide/ The massacre begins A line of naked, crucified Armenian girls 8 Armenian intellectuals beheaded by the Turks An Armenian woman kneeling beside a dead child in field Armenian intellectuals killed by Turks Decapitated heads of Armenian prisoners inTurkey Dead bodies of Armenian women and children Armenian leader Papasian looking at the human remains of the terrible massacres at Der-el-Zor in 1915-1916. Other bones have been washed away by the Euphrates Decapitated heads of Armenians placed on stakes Tortured Armenian woman next to child, as reported by the Iskri Newspaper of Russia Death everywhere Soldiers playing with the skulls of Armenian victims of the Armenian Genocide Armenian monastery of Bitlis with severed heads and corpses of the priests in the foreground Armenians ordered by the authorities to gather in the main square of the city to be deported. The crowd was eventually massacred. An Armenian mother beside the corpses of her five children Armenian political prisoners hung by Turkish guards Armenian deportees in Malatya who were eventually massacred Russian military officers and troops of the Armenian volunteer units standing next to the bodies of victims Armenian genocide bones Of this photo, the United States ambassador wrote, "Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces, in the spring and summer months of 1915. Death in its several forms—massacre, starvation, exhaustion—destroyed the larger part of the refugees. The Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise of deportation" Armenians being deported After the Ottomans surrendered in 1918, the leaders of the Young Turks fled to Germany, which promised not to prosecute them for the genocide. (However, a group of Armenian nationalists devised a plan, known as Operation Nemesis, to track down and assassinate the leaders of the genocide.) Ever since then, the Turkish government has denied that a genocide took place. The Armenians were an enemy force, they argue, and their slaughter was a necessary war measure. Today, Turkey is an important ally of the U.S. and other Western nations, and so their governments have likewise been reluctant to condemn the long-ago killings. What Obama’s Refusal to Acknowledge the Armenian Genocide Tells Us About the U.S. — and the Rest of the World https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/24/armenians-dont-understand-good-kind-holocaust-denial/ Leader of Country Behind Armenian Genocide Says Muslims Never Commit Massacres Erdogan accused the West of having a double standard with regard to Muslims. The Turkish leader said historically Muslims were never on the side of terror, nor did they perpetrate massacres. “The West’s hypocrisy is obvious. As Muslims, we’ve not once taken part in terrorist massacres. Behind these lie racism, hate speech and Islamophobia, We hope that those attacking nations, cease their assault on our mosques†Erdogan said. How come this event isn't talked about like the Jewish Holocaust? Also eerily similar to the Bangladesh genocide :(( Disgrace that US, Israel and so many western powers because of vested interests have forgotten this frightful chapter in human history. India and Armenia are great friends(unlike Turkey and Azerbaijan which abhor us and always support Pakistan), hope Namo Government issues a statement to soothe the hearts of the Armenians.

[amiret]

The western world will continue to be indifferent to Turkey's denials .

[amiret]

hope Namo Government issues a statement to soothe the hearts of the Armenians.

would be a welcome change , But I doubt the Indian govt has the courage to do anything.

[Gollum]

would be a welcome change ' date=' But I doubt the Indian govt has the courage to do anything.[/quote'] +1, there will be protests by a certain community if we do anything like that.

[gs]

If only we had photographic/video evidence of the carnage of Islamic invasions of India, it would have probably made Armenian or Auschwitz/Krakow pale in comparison. :(( But in all likelihood it would be classified/censored by our govt. in the name of "national interest".