It's almost April 24 here, so I thought I'd share some information with you all. I'm Armenian, from Armenia, which is in the middle East. April 24 is Armenian Genocide day...
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The Plan Was Mastered And Called Genocide
The Genocide of the Armenians by the Turkish government during World War I represents a major tragedy of the modern age. In this the first Genocide of the 20th century, almost an entire nation was destroyed. The Armenian people were effectively eliminated from the homeland they had occupied for nearly three thousand years. This annihilation was premeditated and planned to be carried out under the cover of war.
During the night of April 23-24, 1915, Armenian political, religious, educational, and intellectual leaders in Istanbul were arrested, deported to the interior, and mercilessly put to death. Next, the Turkish government ordered the deportation of the Armenian people to "relocation centers" - actually to the barren deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia. The Armenians were driven out brutally from the length and breadth of the empire. Secrecy, surprise, deception, torture, dehumanization, rape and pillage were all a part of the process. The whole of Asia Minor was put in motion.
The greatest torment was reserved for the women and children, who were driven for months over mountains and deserts, often dehumanized by being stripped naked and repeatedly preyed upon and abused. Intentionally deprived of food and water, they fell by the hundreds of thousands along the routes to the desert.
There were some survivors scattered throughout the Middle East and Transcaucasia. Thousands of them, refugees here and there, were to die of starvation, epidemics, and exposure. Even the memory of the nation was intended for obliteration. The former existence of Armenians in Turkey was denied. Maps and history were rewritten. Churches, schools, and cultural monuments were desecrated and misnamed. Small children, snatched from their parents, were renamed and farmed out to be raised as Turks. The word " genocide" had not yet been coined. Nonetheless, at the time, many governmental spokesmen and statesmen decried the mass murder of the Armenians as crimes against humanity, and murder of a nation.
In effect, the Turkish government had succeeded in its diabolical plan to exterminate the Armenian population from what is now Turkey. The failure of the international community to remember, or to honor their promises to punish the perpetrators, or to cause Turkey to indemnify the survivors helped convince Adolph Hitler some 20 years later to carry out a similar policy of extermination against the Jews and certain other non-Aryan populations of Europe.
The Genocide Monument is designed to memorialize the innocent victims of this first genocide of the 20th century. The Genocide Museum teaches that understanding the Armenian Genocide is an important step in preventing similar tragedies in the future, and that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
Before the Armenian Genocide, the Turks and Armenians lived in relative harmony until the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Armenians were established as the major Christian minority, and when the Empire fell it went into a corrupt state, and Christians were denied basic civil, religious, and human rights. The Young Turks of the falling Ottoman Empire began to envision a new Pan-Turkic empire, joining all the Turkic speaking regions together, stretching from Turkey to Central Asia. The Armenians were the only thing in their way. So, inspired by neo-fascist and Pan-Turanian ideologies, they decided to rid themselves of the Armenians.
The Genocide, lasting from 1915 to 1916, with 1922 and 1923 subsidiaries, covered by World War I, effectively demolished the Armenian population of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire, claiming over 1.5 million victims of the 2.5 million Armenians living in the Empire. They were killed in a systematic way, first they were asked to turn in their weapons for the war effort, and communities were often given quotas and would have to buy additional weapons from Turks to meet the quota. Later, the Turkish government would claim these weapons to be proof that the Armenians were on the edge of rebellion. Armenian men were then drafted to help in wartime effort, and they were either immediately killed or worked to death. It left Armenian women, children, and elderly in the villages, and they were also systematically emptied. They were told to gather for temporary relocation, and walked in death marches, denied of food and water, to the Syrian Desert where they were killed when they arrived or were left to die. Some were placed on a barge for deportation, and the barge was sunk halfway out in the sea, drowning the Armenians.
Presently, Turkey denies any of this ever happened. But in the official Turkish record, they engaged in:
The Armenian Genocide remains unrecognized, unlike other Genocides such as the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide and the Kosovian Genocide. April 24 is Genocide Memorial Day though, the day when over 300 political and intellectual figures of Armenia were gathered and killed, leaving Armenia leaderless. It honors everyone who died as a result of the Turks fascist and racist ideologies, and actions.Quote:
wholesale massacres, mass drowning, mass burnings, mass rape, mass pillage, and mass plunder. There were also deportations, expropriations, destruction of villages and towns, and the murder of innocent people.
"What on earth do you want? The question is settled. There are no more Armenians" - Talat Pasha, Turkish ruller of wartime
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I did not make this thread because I want people to feel sorry for me. I did not make this thread to make the Turkish people look bad, I have nothing against Turks, at all. I made this thread because I feel the Armenian Genocide was a forgotten chapter in World History. Recognize the Armenian Genocide...
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Photos (graphic):
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Posters:
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Video:
<a href='http://www.genocide1915.info/media/ABC_World_News.asp]ABC World News - "The Forgotten Genocide"
Feature on the Armenian Genocide - April 24, 1999 (About 5 min.)
