Do you know about
Armenian Genocide? It happened in present day Turkey. Ottoman Empire, whose
official religion was Islam, systematically massacred Armenians in their
homeland for years. Armenians were by and large Christians of different sects.
How many were killed? 15 Lakh people! First able bodied males were killed and
then old people, women and children were asked to march into the desert - so as
to die and disappear. Mass killings started in 1915 and by 1923 virtually the
entire Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey had disappeared!
You can read more about
it on its Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide
Describing Armenian
Genocide, Rouben Paul Adalian writes the following in his comprehensive summary
of the events at the website: http://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocide.html
"In April 1915 the
Ottoman government embarked upon the systematic decimation of its civilian
Armenian population. The persecutions continued with varying intensity until
1923 when the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist and was replaced by the Republic
of Turkey. The Armenian population of the Ottoman state was reported at about
two million in 1915. An estimated one million had perished by 1918, while
hundreds of thousands had become homeless and stateless refugees. By 1923
virtually the entire Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey had disappeared.
The Ottoman Empire was
ruled by the Turks who had conquered lands extending across West Asia, North
Africa and Southeast Europe. The Ottoman government was centered in Istanbul
(Constantinople) and was headed by a sultan who was vested with absolute power.
The Turks practiced Islam and were a martial people. The Armenians, a Christian
minority, lived as second class citizens subject to legal restrictions which
denied them normal safeguards. Neither their lives nor their properties were
guaranteed security. As non-Muslims they were also obligated to pay
discriminatory taxes and denied participation in government. Scattered across
the empire, the status of the Armenians was further complicated by the fact
that the territory of historic Armenia was divided between the Ottomans and the
Russians.
In all, it is estimated
that up to a million and a half Armenians perished at the hands of Ottoman and
Turkish military and paramilitary forces and through atrocities intentionally
inflicted to eliminate the Armenian demographic presence in Turkey. In the
process, the population of historic Armenia at the eastern extremity of
Anatolia was wiped off the map. With their disappearance, an ancient people
which had inhabited the Armenian highlands for three thousand years lost its
historic homeland and was forced into exile and a new diaspora. The surviving
refugees spread around the world and eventually settled in some two dozen
countries on all continents of the globe. Triumphant in its total annihilation
of the Armenians and relieved of any obligations to the victims and survivors,
the Turkish Republic adopted a policy of dismissing the charge of genocide and
denying that the deportations and atrocities had constituted part of a
deliberate plan to exterminate the Armenians. When the Red Army sovietized what
remained of Russian Armenia in 1920, the Armenians had been compressed into an
area amounting to no more than ten percent of the territories of their historic
homeland. Armenians annually commemorate the Genocide on April 24 at the site
of memorials raised by the survivors in all their communities around the
world."
Learning about such
events makes us interested in history. Why care about history, in particular
about such disturbing parts? I think it is because if we don’t understand
history, we risk the same getting repeated in the future…
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