A Brief Look at Armenia

Between the years of 1915 and 1918 the Ottoman Empire, under the Young Turks began a deliberate program of removing and exterminating the Armenian population; a population already dismantled through previous massacres. The Armenians were a minority in both population and religion. Because most Armenians were Christians, they were made an easy scapegoat in an empire that was mostly Islamic. With the world’s eyes on the First World War, the Armenian Genocide went mostly unnoticed and there were no punishments such as ones received by Germany after the Holocaust. The United States has deliberately avoided the recognition of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in order to maintain an ally in the Middle East and to avoid American genocidal policies,

The Armenian massacres of the 1890 's are an important marker in the history of humanitarian aid by the United States. Before this point, American humanitarian aid had been up to small committee efforts thrown together for an individual international crisis. During the 1890 's humanitarian reformers became more organized and elected officials began to look at the role the United States federal government could play in international humanitarian aid. (Wilson 27) At this time Protestant missionaries and Armenian nationals joined forces with former abolitionists, woman suffragists, and newspapermen to bring the condition of the Armenians to the attention of the citizens of the United States.

The Armenian Genocide also referred as the Armenian Holocaust was a horrific act done by the Turkish Ottoman government to exterminate and kill many Armenians. Millions of Armenians lost their lives due to this event and Turkey refutes that any event ever happened or occurred. The start of the genocide took place in April 24 1915 where the ottoman empire took many Armenian leaders to eventually murder them. The event was carried out during and after World War 1. The genocide was implemented in two phases which where the wholesale killing of the male population, then the death marches of the children and women leading to starvation because their food and water were deprived as well as their dignity since they raped and robbed them. There were

To put the names “Armenia” and “Turkey” together evokes a wave of grief and anger. Over the years, a very few have challenged the two and strived to bridge the gap between Armenians and Turks. Dink “crossed that bridge to become a symbol of the struggle for human and minority rights, and of the struggle for democracy and European integration” (Cheterian, 16). Hrant Dink was one of whom who challenged the perceptions of the relationship between Armenians and Turks, starting with his discovery of the newspaper Agos, founded in 1996. The newspaper, which was written and published in both Armenian and Turkish, confronted topics about the complexities that existed between both countries over the years and advocated human rights and democratization.

In a letter to Cleveland Hoadley Dodge on May 11th, 1918 the 26th US President Theodore Roosevelt in less than a year before his death made a prophetic prediction: "... the Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war (WWI), and failure to act against Turkey is to condone it; because the failure to deal radically with Turkish horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous nonsense". The prediction was right.

The actions made by the Ottoman Empire during the World War one were a contribution and establishment of a genocide. The Armenian genocide resulted in 1.5 million deaths of Armenians that were caused by starvation, exhaustion, dehydration, and mainly from being slaughtered. " The decision to carry out a genocide against the Armenian people was made by the political party in power in the Ottoman Empire" (Full of Facts: Armenian Genocide). Since the Committee of Union and Progress came to a conclusion to organize this event, it proves that the decrease in the Armenian population was intentional.

To quote the words of Vahan Kenderian, “My grandmother would have told me that it was man, not God, who made the misery in the world and that it was only God’s grace that made that misery bearable” (Bagdasarian 76). Forgotten Fire’s main character provides truthful insight as to what people felt during the Holocaust and other genocides. Vahan experiences one of the largest genocides, and is forced to experience the deaths of almost every member of his family. This can easily compare to the Holocaust. The novel Forgotten Fire delves into the Armenian genocide, an event similar to the Holocaust that featured genocidal persecutions, cruel punishments, and corrupt governments.

Since a hundred years ago, the discussion over the barbarous actions of the Ottoman Empire murdering and deporting of its Armenian community has come down to one question. Was the viscous acts of the Ottoman Empire considered Genocide or not? This is the real global issue that has been debated for so long throughout the world. While the vast American-Armenian community truly believes the word Genocide should be openly used to describe the massacre that took place a hundred years ago, the United States has not let the word out of their mouth. Many Armenians wonder why the United States choose not to express the G-Word when they know more than a million Armenians were massacred during the final days of the Ottoman Empire.

The Armenian Genocide is the name given to the events of 1915-1923 in the Ottoman Empire, which was renamed Turkey after its founding father, Mustafa Ataturk. The Muslim majority destroyed the Armenians' homes, churches, and livelihoods in a continuous murderous event that took its course over 8 years. An estimated 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians died in this Genocide, and other ethnicities died as well including Greeks and Azerbaijanis who happened to be living in Armenian neighborhoods. (University of Michigan) The victims were sometimes forced to walk on endless marches that were intended to move the entire population out of the country and east to the mountains. Any Armenians who died on the march were left on the road to rot. The Armenian Genocide was first recognized by the Russian Empire in 1915, who saw what was happening before Europe did. The leaders of the Ottoman Empire, including Ataturk, were creating a modern Turkey for Turks, at the expense of all the minorities of the Ottoman Empire, and without mercy for any who would resist.

The Armenian Genocide Ronald Reagan, once said, like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it, the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten. Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. The ethic group the Ottoman Empire was deporting and killing were Christians. They were forced from their homes and into deportation and massacres from 1915 to 1918, one of the most brutal and traumatizing genocide that we have knowledge of. The Armenian Genocide was the first genocide of the 20th century, after World War 1. It occurred when two million Armenians were living in the Ottoman Empire. For three thousand years, an

The beginning of the twentieth century was a very horrifying beginning for the Armenian race. Over 1,500,000 Armenians were enslaved, raped, and murdered by the Ottoman Empire and Young Turk government to abolish the Armenian race from their inherited lands. The Ottoman Empire and the government of Turkey committed Genocide to the Armenian race. This is called the Armenian Genocide today, which was a major stage in the human struggle for Armenians. I will discuss the history of the Armenian race, their struggles throughout history to present, and give analogies to topics discussed in class, which can be related to the Armenian Genocide.

There are more than one ways that the holocaust is very similar to the Genocide in Armenia. Like Hitler, The Turkish government had devised and set into motion a plan to exterminate more than one million of turkeys Armenians. Like the holocaust in Germany, the genocide in Armenia had a lot to do with religion and in almost a super similar situation to the holocaust, it all started to go bad when a group called the "young Turks" decided they wanted all the power and wanted any religion but theirs out of turkey. By April of 1915 hundreds were arrested and thousands were taken from their homes and put on death marches without food and water through the desert and just like in the holocaust, people were also tortured and killed in very cruel manors.

Elie Wiesel is quoted saying “Denial is the final phase of genocide, a second killing.” This can be seen when on April 24th, 1915, a group of Armenians were forcibly removed from their homes, and unknown to them, marched to their death. This would begin the period known to many as the Armenian Genocide. However, many still refuse to acknowledge the killings that took place. The mass genocide of Armenians is still a taboo subject in Turkey, almost 100 years after two million citizens lost their lives.

From 1915 to 1918, the Turkish leaders of the Ottoman Empire carried out the killings of 1.5 million Armenians living there at the time. Over the course of those terrible 3 years, innocent people were murdered with death marches, execution, drowning, burning and other inhumane ways. Turkey has refused to take blame, and even denied the genocide’s existence and occurrence. There has been much dispute about whether or not countries outside of Armenia and Turkey should recognize these mass killings of Armenians in 1915-16 as a genocide or something else. The Ottoman Empire was multinational, but had always favored Muslims to Jews and Christians, so when World War I started and a substantial group of Christian Armenians were still in Turkey and

The Armenian genocide has several main causes: European meddling in Ottoman internal affairs, nationalism, economic jealousy, and Armenian involvement in the Russian war effort. Though, a lot of the causes are interrelated. For example, nationalism and European meddling go hand in hand. What exactly was the Armenian genocide? Well, the Armenian genocide was a state orchestrated machine of mass-murder and rape of the Armenian people, and several other ethnic groups, of the Ottoman Empire 1915-1923. The Armenians were one of many ethnic groups of the Ottoman Empire, and they had lived in eastern Asia Minor for around three thousand years prior to the atrocity .