April 24, 1915: remembering the Armenian Genocide On April 24 marks the 95th anniversary of the genocide of the Armenians, called "Metz Yeghern," the Great Evil.
Historical Background
The origins of the Armenians in Asia Minor dating to the second century BC
The geographical location of ancient Armenia lies between the Caucasus and Euphrates, in a vast territory between the lakes Van, Sevan and Urmia.
Armenians throughout history were often divided and incorporated under the sway of various empires suffered the domination of the Medes and Persians, then the Roman Empire, and Byzantine, Arab-Islamic empire then again, what Seljuk and finally from the fourteenth century and the Ottoman Empire in the twentieth century than the Russian.
The conversion to Christianity took place at the end of the third century AD and influenced dramatically their historical identity: it was the first people to convert and to place Christianity as state religion. It was the Christian religion that allowed these people to maintain a cultural identity through the centuries, despite numerous invasions.
Facts
The 1821 years of Greek Independence from the Ottoman Empire, marked the beginning of the crisis and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.
Many were the ethnic groups that sought independence and increasing the pressure was the Tsarist Russian empire. Within the Empire there were many minorities as Christian Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks of Asia Minor, Assyrians and Armenians who sought political and religious autonomy. In addition, the European powers, notably France and England, saw the empire as a bulwark against the expansionist Russia. In the nineteenth
there is a great cultural awakening, intellectual and economic for the Armenians.
It was a hard-working and peaceful people, farmers, traders, intellectuals who asked not so much an independent state since the recognition of equality and cultural freedom within the empire. The Armenians in the empire were concentrated not only in Cilicia, in the six vilayet (= district) East Van, Bitlis, Erzerum, Diyarbekir, Kharput and Sivas.
ascended the throne in 1876, Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The empire was now a "big sick" in crisis on the Russian front and Europe, but also on the internal revolts of the Kurds.
The birth of independence movements and some Armenian political parties, was seen as a threat to the empire. The sultan said hamidiès organized regiments consisting of para military and Kurdish prisoners, in order to suppress the Armenian minority.
The beginning of the genocide
In 1894 began the first massacres and mass killings. The first massacre took place in a planned and systematic Sassun region west of Lake Van.
were often fueled rumors of plots Armenians (Armenian bakers were accused of poisoning the bread) and were extracted under torture admissions of guilt in order to incite the fanaticism of the Turkish population. All this gave way to numerous massacres in the eye and indifferent complicity of local authorities.
Between 1894 and 1896 were estimated between two hundred to three hundred thousand victims with tens of thousands of forced conversions to Islam, and thousands of Armenians fleeing from the empire.
The massacres were fueled by the fact that the empire was disintegrating, there was continuous pressure on the Russian front, the Armenians were organized in movements of resistance that sometimes sympathized with the Russian enemy.
In this crisis situation, an important role was played by the turkish nationalist party that wanted a strong return to the roots. The goal was to unite all people of ethnic Turks, Tatars as Azerbaijan, the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, partly incorporated in the Russian Empire or the Persian one, into one great nation. This project was based on the theory of "pan-Turkish" and "turanesimo", based on the homogeneity of ethnicity, religion and language of the new state turkish.
E 'must be recalled that the empire consisted of a heterogeneous population: Christians (Slavs, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians) and Muslims (Turks, Kurds, Arabs). In particular the Armenians, Christian, intellectually and economically active, facing west, with the demands of autonomy is an obstacle to the project to establish a state of Islamic culture and ethnicity and the Turkish language.
In 1908 the party of the Young Turks began the rise to power by establishing the Committee of Union and Progress (Ittihad ve Terraki), the role of the sultan became progressively less and less important and was subsequently relegated to a purely symbolic role.
The second wave of massacres occurred Cilicia in April 1909 with thirty thousand victims.
In 1913 was established a military dictatorship run by three strong men of the regime: Enver, Djemal Pasha respectively Taalat and future ministers of War, Interior and the Navy.
In 1914, the Special Organization was established, headed by the two doctors and Nazim Behaeddin Chakir, whose task is to deport all the Armenians of Anatolia, merge them and eliminate them in the Syrian desert.
sided with Germany, the Turkish government under the leadership of Enver, went to war against France, England and Russia.
At that time some two million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and were about one million in Russia. Just the militancy of Russian Armenians in the Russian army to unleash repression, accusing the Armenians of treason. Self-defense of the Armenians in Van Djevded threatened by the commander of the Turkish army and temporarily saved by the advance of the Russian army, he served as a pretext to begin the massacre.
April 24, 1915
dawn on Saturday, April 24, 1915 leading experts were arrested Armenians of Constantinople as the poet Daniel Varujan intellectuals, politicians like Congressman Krikor Zohrab, traders, bankers. In one month more than a thousand Armenians were arrested, deported to the interior Anatolia and massacred on the road.
in Eastern notables were extracted under torture admissions of guilt, after which they proceeded to execution for treason.
The deportees had to perform hundreds of miles on foot up in Aleppo in Syria (collection point), and then were sent to die in the deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia. The purpose of deportation was as follows: "Destination: nowhere."
Most of the deportees died from disease, hunger, thirst, the torture of the rapes and killings in place over hundreds of kilometers on foot. Survivors were drowned in the waters of the Euphrates or burned alive in caves near the desert. Many thousands of Armenians also were drowned in the Black Sea and the sea in front of Trabzon.
In three months, at the end of July 1915 did not stay longer in Eastern Armenian.
In Syria, on the banks of the Euphrates, the desert of Deir ez Zor was the culmination of the martyrdom of the Armenian people.
Taking advantage of the retreat of the Russian army following the October Revolution of 1917, the Ottoman Empire launched a further offensive against Armenia in Eastern Europe. The offensive was halted at the Battle of the end Sardarabad May 1918. So it was proclaimed the first Republic of Armenia and 30 October 1918 the Ottoman Empire capitulated and signed an armistice with the allies of Mudros.
Later August 10, 1920 the Treaty of Sèvres sanctioned the existence in the eastern part of the former Ottoman territory of a State Armenian independence and an autonomous Kurdistan.
However, after the flight of Enver, and Taalat Djemal, a young politician Mustfà Kemal took up the situation with a new wave of nationalism in the name of secularism.
In defiance of the Treaty of Sevres, near the end of September 1920 the Turkish government sent troops led by General Karabekir and had massacred the entire Armenian population of the area just to the newly formed Republic of Armenia.
In 1921 there was a new exodus of Armenians from Cilicia, until then under French control but then immediately returned to Turkey.
In September 1922 the city of Smyrna was sacked and burned by a new exodus to the Greeks and Armenians. In 1923, the Conference of Lausanne annulled the agreements signed at Sèvres.
After the Ottoman defeat, the leaders of the genocide fled to Germany.
In 1919 in Constantinople took place on process to managers, who were sentenced in absentia. Was not carried out any request for extradition and sentencing verdicts were later canceled.
Faced with the reluctance of allies and the Turkish authorities in the execution of judgments, the party formed an organization of Armenian Dashnag executioners. So it was that they were taking out some of the most ruthless perpetrators of the massacres: Behaeddin Chakir member of the Special Azmi Djemal the Executioner of Trebizond, and Taalat Djemal Pasha. The latter was killed in Berlin March 15, 1921 by Solomon Tehlirian.
In 1922, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk said (the father of Turks), founder of modern Turkey, was endorsed and completed the project with the Young Turks and new massacres that the systematic denial of liability for their crimes.
What remained of Armenia was incorporated into the Soviet Union.
In 1988 occurred a number of killings of citizens of Armenian language and Sumgai Kirovabad, Azerbaijan.
In 1989 conflict broke out between the Soviet Republic of Armenia and the Azerbaijani control over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijani land, following the pogroms in Sumgait and Kirovabad.
In 1990 you have new persecutions and killings against the people of Armenian origin with the pogroms in Baku in 1990 committed by Azeri Turks. The
Armenia became an independent republic in 1991 after the collapse of the USSR.
90% of Armenia Historical remains under the control of Turkey.
The current archaeological sites, churches and ancient tombs located in the Armenian and Azerbaijani territorioturco, polygons are used as military and are subject to systematic destruction.
Conclusions
The Armenian genocide was the first genocide of the twentieth century and was taken as the paradigm by Hitler himself to undertake the extermination of the Jews ("... now who's talking more than the genocide of the Armenians ?..." ).
The main motivation of genocide, designed with the support and complicity of the German Government, was a political one. The goal was the removal the Armenian community as a subject of history, culture and politics.
The current Turkish government, which aims at the European Union, and most Turkish historians, firmly deny that in 1915 there has been genocide of the Armenian people. In Turkey about the Armenian genocide is a crime punished by Article 301 of the Criminal Code turkish, because it represents "an insult Turkish identity."
Many journalists, writers, intellectuals or sub-trial in Turkey for having dared to speak of genocide. The same
Oran Pamuk, the Nobel Prize for Literature, was tried for saying that one million Armenians were massacred in 1915, and then finally decided to leave Turkey for the repeated death threats.
remember the murder in Istanbul of Hrant Dink Armenian writer and journalist, already sentenced to six months in prison for having called a "genocide" the Armenian massacres of 1915-1916.
But do not think about the Armenian genocide as a result of a holy war, because the Arab people of Syria, many Armenians saved from certain death in the desert. The Turkey of today is obviously not responsible for the crimes committed in 1915, but a serene and impartial assessment of the historical facts would be useful for the Turkish people to free themselves from the oppressive weight of a recent and infamous past, both the Armenian people that would finally approved a historical truth extremely painful.
The Armenian genocide as historical reality has been recognized by the UN in 1985 and the European Parliament in 1987.
In 1995 the Duna of Russia has recognized the Armenian genocide, as well as the parliaments of Bulgaria and Cyprus, Greece and Lebanon in 1996, Belgium, Argentina and France in 1998, Sweden in 2000.
In Italy, during the years 1997-98, the Armenian genocide has been recognized by numerous city councils of various cities and so by the Regional Council of Lombardy.
In 1998, the Honourable Paglierini submitted a proposal for approval of the Armenian genocide at the Chamber of Deputies, signed by over 170 MPs.
Even Pope John Paul II recalled the persecutions suffered by the Armenians because of their Christian faith and in a joint statement with Catholicos spoke of the Armenian genocide by the Turks, declaring that "the Armenian genocide, which began the century, was the prologue to horrors that would follow. "
Bibliography
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Franz Werfel. Ed Corbaccio
The Lark Farm. Antonia Arslan. Rizzoli Ed
Mari
wheat and other Armenian poems. Daniel Varujan. Ed Pauline
Song of the bread. Daniel Varujan. Ed Guerini and Associati
Metz Yeghern. A Brief History of the Armenian genocide. Claude Mutafian. Ed Guerini e Associati
Voices in deserto.Giusti and witnesses for the Armenians. Peter Kuciukian. Ed Guerini e Associati
Journey among the Christians of the East. Peter Kuciukian. Ed Guerini e Associati
www.comunitaarmena.it
www.turchia.it
www.ambasciataditurchia.it
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