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 now, 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.
Up to the second half of XIX For centuries, 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 get Ottoman Sultan Abdul-Hamid II granting them autonomy. 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 Berlin Congress 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 the Armenian revolutionaries and fighters for independence began to organize terrorist attacks against Ottoman officials and organize partisan detachments he took drastic 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 the 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 flee Asia Minor, mainly - in the areas of residence of 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. Turkish garrison expelled, the local fortress and state institutions 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 specific plan extermination of the 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 young men, 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, in state archives separate service records have been preserved, indicating the participation in the repression of many state institutions.
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 on the way is a transit point, in fact, a 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 large 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 to 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 half of the gold, money and precious stones will give to me."
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 off. 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 wish that you instruct the American insurance agencies to provide us with full list Armenians who entered into 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.
On the prospects for resolving the conflict in, the aggravation of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, on the history of Armenia and Armenian-Turkish relations political observer websiteSaid Gafurov talks with political scientist Andrei Epifantsev.
Genocide issue: "Armenians and Turks behaved in the same way"
Armenian Genocide
— Let's start with the controversial topic right away ... T Tell me right away, was there a genocide of Armenians by the Turks in general or not? I know that you wrote a lot on this topic and understood this topic.
— What is certain is that there was a massacre in Turkey in 1915 and that such things should never be repeated. My personal approach is that the official Armenian position, according to which it was a genocide caused by the terrible hatred of the Turks for Armenians, is not correct in a number of ways.
Firstly, it is quite obvious that the cause of what happened was largely the Armenians themselves, who staged an uprising before this. Which began long before 1915.
All this dragged on late XIX century and covered, including Russia. The Dashnaks didn't care who they blew up, Turkish officials or Prince Golitsyn.
Secondly, it is important to know what is usually not shown here: the Armenians, in fact, behaved like the same Turks - they staged ethnic cleansing, massacres, and so on. And if all the available information is put together, you get a comprehensive picture of what happened.
— The Turks have their own genocide museum, dedicated to the territory, which, with the help of English gold and Russian weapons, was "liberated" by Armenian pre-Shnak units. Their commanders indeed reported that not a single Turk remained there. Another thing is that the Dashnaks were then provoked into action by the British. And, by the way, the Turkish court in Istanbul, even under the Sultan, condemned the organizers of mass crimes against Armenians. True, in absentia. That is, the fact of a mass crime took place.
- Certainly. And the Turks themselves do not deny this, they offer condolences. But they do not call what happened a genocide. From the point of view of international law, there is a Convention on the Prevention of Genocide, signed, among other things, by Armenia and Russia. It indicates who has the right to recognize a crime as genocide - this is the court in The Hague, and only he.
Neither Armenia nor the foreign Armenian diaspora has ever appealed to this court. Why? Because they understand that they will not be able to prove this genocide in legal, historical terms. Moreover, all international courts - the European Court of Human Rights, the French Court of Justice and so on, when the Armenian diaspora tried to raise this issue, they were denied. Only since last October there were three such courts - and the Armenian side lost everything.
Let's go back to the first half of the 20th century: even then it was obvious that both the Turkish and the Armenian sides resorted to ethnic cleansing. Two American missionaries sent by the Congress after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire saw a picture of ethnic cleansing carried out precisely by the Armenians.
We ourselves saw in 1918 and in 1920, before Soviet power was firmly established, either Armenian or Azerbaijani purges. Therefore, as soon as the "factor of the USSR" disappeared, they immediately received Nagorno-Karabakh and the same purges. Today, this area has been cleared to the maximum. There are practically no Armenians left in Azerbaijan, and no Azerbaijanis in Karabakh and Armenia.
The positions of Turks and Azerbaijanis are fundamentally different
— And in Istanbul, meanwhile, there is a large Armenian colony, there are churches. By the way, this is an argument against genocide.
- The positions of the Turks and Azerbaijanis are fundamentally different. At the ethnic level, at the household level. There is no real territorial conflict between Armenia and Turkey now, but there is one with the Azerbaijanis. Secondly, some events were 100 years ago, while others are today. Thirdly, the Turks set themselves the goal not to destroy the Armenians physically, but to call them to loyalty, albeit by wild means.
Therefore, many Armenians remained in the country, whom they tried to Turkify, so to speak, to Islamize, but they remained Armenians inside themselves. Some of the Armenians survived, who were resettled away from the battle zone. After World War II, Turkey began to restore Armenian churches.
Now Armenians are actively going to work in Turkey. There were Armenian ministers in the Turkish government, which is impossible in Azerbaijan. The conflict is now going on for very specific reasons - and the main thing is land. The compromise option offered by Azerbaijan is a high degree of autonomy, but within Azerbaijan. So to say, the Armenians should become Azerbaijan. The Armenians categorically disagree with this - it will again be a massacre, deprivation of rights, and so on.
There are, of course, other options for a settlement, for example, as was done in Bosnia. The parties have created a very complex state, consisting of two autonomous entities with their own rights, an army, and so on. But this option is not even considered by the parties.
Monostates, states created on the basis of an ethnic project, are a dead end. The question is this: history is not finite, it continues. For some states, it is very important to get the dominance of their people on this earth. And after it is provided, it is already possible to develop the project further, involving other peoples, but already on the basis of some kind of subordination. In fact, the Armenians now, after the collapse Soviet Union, and Azerbaijanis, in fact, are at this stage.
Is there any solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh problem?
— The Azerbaijani official line: the Armenians are our brothers, they must return, that is, all the necessary guarantees, let them leave us only external defense and international affairs. Everything else will remain with them, including security issues. And what is the position of Armenia?
Here everything runs into the fact that Armenia and the Armenian society have this position of the historical land - "this is our historical land, and that's it." There will be two states, one will be a state, it doesn't matter. We will not give up our historical land. We are more likely to die or leave from there, but we will not live in Azerbaijan. No one says that nations cannot make mistakes. Including the Armenians. And in the future, when they are convinced of their mistake, they will probably come to a different opinion.
Armenian society today is, in fact, very much divided. There are diasporas, there are Armenians of Armenia. Very strong polarization, more than in our society, oligarchies, a very large spread between Westerners and Russophiles. But with regard to Karabakh, there is a complete consensus in it. The Diaspora spends money on Karabakh, there is a powerful lobbying of the interests of Karabakh Armenians in the West. The national-patriotic upsurge is preserved, it is warmed up and will be preserved for a long time.
But everything national projects have their moment of truth. In the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, this moment of truth has not yet come for any of the parties. The Armenian and Azerbaijani sides are still on maximalist positions, each of the elites has convinced its people that victory is possible only on maximalist positions, only by fulfilling all our demands. "We are everything, our enemy is nothing."
People, in fact, have become hostages of this situation, it is already difficult to win back. And the same mediators who work in the Minsk Group face a difficult task: to persuade the elite to turn to the people and say - no, guys, we must lower the bar. Therefore, there is no progress.
- Bertolt Brecht wrote: "Nationalism does not feed hungry stomachs." Azerbaijanis rightly say that the most affected by the conflict is the ordinary Armenian people. The elite profit from military supplies, and life ordinary people meanwhile, it gets worse: Karabakh is a poor land.
“And Armenia is not a rich land. But so far, people are choosing guns from the "guns or butter" option. In my opinion, the resolution of the Karabakh crisis is possible. And this decision lies in the division of Karabakh. If you just divide Karabakh, although I understand that it is difficult, but nevertheless: one part is one, the other part is another.
Legitimize, say: "The international community accepts this option." It is possible to calculate the percentage of the population at the time of 1988 or 1994. Divide, fix boundaries and say that anyone who unleashes a conflict that violates the established status quo will be punished. The issue will resolve itself.
Prepared for publication by Sergey Valentinov
The Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915, organized on the territory of the Ottoman Empire, became one of the most terrible events of its era. Representatives were deported, during which hundreds of thousands or even millions of people died (depending on estimates). This campaign to exterminate Armenians is today recognized as genocide by most countries of the entire world community. Turkey itself does not agree with this wording.
Prerequisites
The massacres and deportations in the Ottoman Empire had different backgrounds and reasons. 1915 was due to the unequal position of the Armenians themselves and the ethnic Turkish majority of the country. The population was discredited not only by nationality, but also by religion. The Armenians were Christians and had their own independent church. The Turks were Sunnis.
The non-Muslim population had the status of a dhimmi. People who fell under this definition were not allowed to carry weapons and to appear in court as witnesses. They had to pay high taxes. Armenians, for the most part, lived in poverty. They were mainly engaged agriculture in their native lands. However, among the Turkish majority, the stereotype of a successful and cunning Armenian businessman was widespread, etc. Such labels only aggravated the hatred of the townsfolk towards this ethnic minority. These complex relationships can be compared to the widespread anti-Semitism in many countries of that time.
In the Caucasian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the situation worsened also due to the fact that these lands, after the wars with Russia, were filled with Muslim refugees, who, due to their everyday disorder, constantly came into conflict with local Armenians. One way or another, but the Turkish society was in an excited state. It was ready to accept the forthcoming Armenian genocide (1915). The reasons for this tragedy were a deep split and hostility between the two peoples. All that was needed was a spark that would ignite a huge fire.
Start of World War I
As a result of an armed coup in 1908, the Ittihat (Unity and Progress) party came to power in the Ottoman Empire. Its members called themselves the Young Turks. The new government hastily began to look for an ideology on which to build their state. Pan-Turkism and Turkish nationalism were taken as the basis - ideas that did not presuppose anything good for Armenians and other ethnic minorities.
In 1914, the Ottoman Empire, in the wake of its new political course, entered into an alliance with Imperial Germany. According to the treaty, the powers agreed to provide Turkey with access to the Caucasus, where numerous Muslim peoples lived. But there were also Armenian Christians in the same region.
Assassinations of Young Turk leaders
On March 15, 1921, in Berlin, in front of many witnesses, an Armenian killed Talaat Pasha, who was hiding in Europe under an assumed name. The shooter was immediately arrested by the German police. The trial has begun. Tehlirian volunteered to defend the best lawyers in Germany. The process led to a wide public outcry. Numerous facts of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire were again voiced at the hearings. Tehlirian was sensationally acquitted. After that, he emigrated to the United States, where he died in 1960.
Another important victim of Operation Nemesis was Ahmed Jemal Pasha, who was killed in Tiflis in 1922. In the same year, another member of the triumvirate Enver died during the fighting with the Red Army in present-day Tajikistan. He fled to Central Asia, where for some time he was an active participant in the Basmachi movement.
Legal assessment
It should be noted that the term "genocide" appeared in the legal lexicon much later than the events described. The word originated in 1943 and originally meant the mass murder of Jews by the Nazi authorities of the Third Reich. A few years later, the term was officially fixed in accordance with the convention of the newly created UN. Later, the events in the Ottoman Empire were recognized as the Armenian genocide in 1915. In particular, this was done by the European Parliament and the UN.
In 1995, the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was recognized as genocide in Russian Federation. Today, this view is shared by most of the states of the United States, almost all countries of Europe and South America. But there are also countries where the Armenian Genocide (1915) is denied. The reasons, in short, remain political. First of all, the list of these states includes modern Turkey and Azerbaijan.
In 1915-16, 1.5 million Armenian civilians living in their historical homeland became victims of genocide. The Armenian Genocide is an unprecedented monstrous atrocity in the world history of mankind, which was organized and carried out with critical cruelty by the Turks.
The Day of Remembrance of the Innocent Victims is April 24th. It was on this day in 1915, in Constantinople (Istanbul), that the main part of the intelligentsia of the Armenian population was taken out of their homes and brutally massacred in the streets of the city. The dead included well-known writers, composers, scientists, businessmen and other members of high society - individuals most likely to rally the Armenians and organize resistance.
By 1915, the most intensive period of the process of extermination of the Armenian population belongs, which gained momentum after April 24th. In general, the Armenian genocide refers to the period from 1894-1916, during which 2.5 million Armenians were killed.
Causes: Ever since the time of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the Turkish government had a plan to seize the territory from Asia Minor to Siberia. Despite the revolutions, this plan was inherited from one government to another and exists to this day. The cherished dream of the Turks turned out to be impossible without the complete annihilation of the Armenian people, which was the reason for the genocide.
Despite the absolute victory over the Turks in the First World War, in which Armenian soldiers and generals played a big role, royal Russia suddenly withdraws its troops from the region. Taking with them all weapons, ammunition, military equipment and the bulk of the army, Russia leaves the front, leaving the small and unorganized Armenian population alone with the brutal Turkish army. Having reached their finest hour, the Turks begin their business ...
Process: The Turks had enough fantasies for cruel methods of painful death. Women who did not have time to commit suicide were raped in front of their children. In the squares, the soldiers stood close with their sabers stretched upwards, and from the stands they threw babies onto these sabers. Turkish children enjoyed the pleasant sound of the crackling of the head skull, which their fathers brought to them in bags. Only those who managed to escape from their native village and home managed to escape.
During the genocide, there was absolutely no attempt on the part of the developed countries to prevent the catastrophe. Defensive battles were organized in Armenian cities, which, however, were doomed to failure in advance. Each of the defensive battles was a special heroic deed. Both women, and children, and the elderly, and the disabled took part in the battles. The organized Turkish army was opposed by a crowd armed with pitchforks, axes and everything that came to hand. The distraught poor fellows did not throw this parody of a weapon from their hands to the last drop of blood.
The complete annihilation of the Armenians in the region was prevented in 1918 on May 26, heroic battle at Sardarapat (near Yerevan). From all areas of the country, people converged on the destination of the battle. Regardless of the type of activity and social status, starting with writers, cultural figures, ending with merchants and vagabonds, the Armenians stood in a military formation to meet a cruel and powerful enemy. Despite the sharp lack of numbers and weapons, the defenders won a "victory over evil" and saved themselves and their descendants from non-existence...
Result: As a result of the genocide, the main part of the Armenian population of the world suffered. Most of the Armenians living in Western Armenia (on the territory of the Ottoman Empire) were killed, the smaller part scattered around the world. Most of the population of present-day Armenia are immigrants from Western Armenia. Today there is not a single Armenian who did not have an ancestor who suffered from the genocide.
Nikolai Troitsky, political observer for RIA Novosti.
Saturday, April 24 is the Day of Remembrance of the victims of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire. This year marks the 95th anniversary of the start of this bloody massacre and terrible crime - the mass extermination of people along ethnic lines. As a result, from one to one and a half million people were destroyed.
Unfortunately, this was not the first and far from the last case of genocide in recent history. In the twentieth century, humanity seemed to have decided to return to the darkest times. In enlightened, civilized countries, medieval savagery and fanaticism suddenly revived - torture, reprisals against the relatives of convicts, forcible deportation and the total murder of entire peoples or social groups.
But even against this gloomy background, two of the most monstrous atrocities stand out - the methodical extermination of Jews by the Nazis, called the Holocaust, in 1943-45 and the Armenian genocide, staged in 1915.
In that year, the Ottoman Empire was effectively ruled by the Young Turks, a group of officers who overthrew the Sultan and introduced liberal reforms in the country. With the outbreak of the First World War, all power was concentrated in their hands by the triumvirate - Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha and Jemal Pasha. It was they who staged the act of genocide. But they did not do this because of sadism or innate ferocity. There were reasons and prerequisites for the crime.
Armenians have lived in Ottoman territory for centuries. On the one hand, they were subjected to certain religious discrimination, as Christians. On the other hand, for the most part, they were distinguished by wealth, or at least prosperity, because they were engaged in trade and finance. That is, they played approximately the same role as the Jews in Western Europe, without which the economy could not function, but which at the same time regularly fell under pogroms and deportations.
The fragile balance was disturbed in the 80s-90s of the 19th century, when underground political organizations of a nationalist and revolutionary nature were formed in the Armenian environment. The most radical was the Dashnaktsutyun party, a local analogue of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries, moreover, the Socialist-Revolutionaries of the very left wing.
Their goal was to create independent state on the territory of Ottoman Turkey, and the methods to achieve this goal were simple and effective: the seizure of banks, the killing of officials, explosions and similar terrorist attacks.
It is clear how the government reacted to such actions. But the situation was aggravated by the national factor, and the entire Armenian population had to answer for the actions of the Dashnak militants - they called themselves fedayins. In different parts of the Ottoman Empire, unrest broke out every now and then, which ended in pogroms and massacres of Armenians.
The situation escalated even more in 1914, when Turkey became an ally of Germany and declared war on Russia, which the local Armenians naturally sympathized with. The government of the Young Turks declared them a "fifth column", and therefore it was decided to deport them all to hard-to-reach mountainous areas.
One can imagine what the mass migration of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women, the elderly and children, is like, since the men were drafted into the active army. Many died from deprivation, others were killed, there was an outright massacre, mass executions were carried out.
After the end of the First World War, a special commission from Great Britain and the United States was engaged in the investigation of the Armenian genocide. Here is just one brief episode from the testimony of eyewitnesses of the tragedy who miraculously survived:
“Approximately two thousand Armenians were gathered and surrounded by the Turks, they were doused with gasoline and set on fire. I, myself, was in another church that they tried to set on fire, and my father thought it was the end of his family.
He gathered us around... and said something I will never forget: don't be afraid, my children, because soon we will all be in heaven together. But fortunately, someone discovered the secret tunnels... through which we escaped."
The exact number of victims was never officially counted, but at least a million people died. More than 300 thousand Armenians took refuge in the territory Russian Empire, since Nicholas II ordered the borders to be opened.
Even if the killings were not officially sanctioned by the ruling triumvirate, they are still responsible for these crimes. In 1919, all three were sentenced to death penalty in absentia, as they managed to escape, but then they were killed one by one by avenging militants from radical Armenian organizations.
Enver Pasha and his comrades were convicted of war crimes by the Allies from the Entente with the full consent of the government of the new Turkey, which was headed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He began to build a secular authoritarian state, the ideology of which was radically different from the ideas of the Young Turks, but many organizers and perpetrators of the massacre came to his service. And the territory of the Turkish Republic by that time was almost completely cleared of Armenians.
Therefore, Ataturk, although he personally had nothing to do with the "final solution of the Armenian question", categorically refused to acknowledge the accusations of genocide. In Turkey, the precepts of the Father of the Nation are sacredly honored - this is the translation of the surname that the first president took for himself - and they still firmly stand on the same positions. The Armenian Genocide is not only denied, but a Turkish citizen can get a prison term for its public recognition. What happened recently, for example, with the world famous writer, laureate Nobel Prize in literature by Orhan Pamuk, who was released from the dungeons only under pressure from the international community.
At the same time, some European countries provide for criminal punishment for the denial of the Armenian genocide. However, only 18 countries, including Russia, officially recognized and condemned this crime of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkish diplomacy reacts to this in different ways. Since Ankara dreams of joining the EU, they pretend that they do not notice the "anti-genocide" resolutions of the states from the European Union. Turkey does not want to spoil relations with Russia because of this. However, any attempt to introduce the issue of recognition of the genocide by the US Congress is immediately rebuffed.
