______________________________
On Wednesday, the First Hierarchs of the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Syriac Orthodox Church urged all Christians to remember and reflect on the genocide of Armenians and Syriac Christians in Turkey in 1915, where up to 2 million people died or disappeared without a trace. A joint statement by Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of all Armenians Karekin Nersessian and Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch Moran Mor Ignatius Aphrem Karim said, “We invite the entire Christian world to unite in prayer at the Armenian Genocide and the Syriac Sayfo centennial commemorative events in 2015. We call upon the civilised world to recognise and condemn the crimes committed against the Armenian and Syriac peoples as well as other Christian communities”. Since Armenians made up nearly 1.5 million of the victims, many call the 1915 massacre during World War I in Ottoman Turkey the Armenian Genocide. The attacks on Christians eliminated almost the entire Christian population in present day Turkey, leaving almost an entirely Muslim nation {not so… the expulsion of the Greek Orthodox population from Ionia in the 20s did so: editor}.
As the centennial commemoration approaches, the Armenian and Syriac leaders want the international community to recognise and condemn the atrocities committed at the time. Earlier this week, the two patriarchs met at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, the spiritual centre of all Armenians, to sign a declaration affirming the shared faith of the two sister churches. In September, Assyrian International News Agency reported that a documentary film is in preparation on the 1915 genocide, scheduled to première in 2015 as part of the commemoration. Produced by the Assyrian Federation of Sweden and the Assyrian Youth Federation of Sweden, the documentary explains the circumstances and details behind the genocide to a wider audience. Directed by Aziz Said from Berlin, the film crew spent close to three weeks in southeast Turkey shooting footage for the film. The documentary also seeks to expose the denial of the genocide as maintained by the Turkish state, and highlight the effect the massacre still has on Assyrians today. The Genocide1915 website provides a comprehensive history of the conflict. It notes that 24 April is the commemoration day of the genocide as the genocide began that night in 1915, when the Turks rounded up and executed close to 250 Armenians within 72 hours, including doctors, lawyers, and politicians.
15 October 2014
Christian Post
World Marks 98th Anniversary of Armenian Genocide
Tags: Armenian, Armenian Genocide, genocide, history, Ottoman Empire, Pan-Turkism, political commentary, politics, Religion, Religion and Spirituality, Turkey, World Council of Churches, World War I, Young Turks
______________________________
On 24 April, Armenians worldwide, along with many countries, commemorated the 98th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians went to Tsitsernakaberd Memorial in Yerevan to remember the victims of the Armenian Genocide. Turkey denies the fact of Armenian Genocide. Uruguay (1965), the Republic of Cyprus (1982), Argentina (1993), Russia (1995), Canada (1996), Greece (1996), Lebanon (1997), Belgium (1998), Italy (2000), the Vatican (2000), France (2001), Switzerland (2003), Slovakia (2004), the Netherlands (2004), Poland (2005), Germany (2005), Venezuela (2005), Lithuania (2005), Chile (2007), and Sweden (2010) recognise and condemn the Armenian Genocide. The Council of Europe and the World Council of Churches also recognise and condemn the Armenian Genocide.
The atrocities committed against the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire during World War I are what we now call the Armenian Genocide. The Young Turk government perpetrated these massacres throughout all of the regions of the Empire. The first international reaction to the violence came in a joint statement by France, Russia, and Great Britain in May 1915, where they defined the Turkish atrocities directed against the Armenian people as “a new crime against humanity and civilisation”, with an agreement that that the Ottoman government must be punished for committing such crimes.
Why did the Armenian Genocide happen?
When World War I erupted, the Young Turk government, hoping to save the remains of the weakened Ottoman Empire, adopted a policy of Pan-Turkism, that is, the establishment of a Turkish empire comprising all Turkic-speaking peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia extending to China, with the additional intention of Turkifying all ethnic minorities of the empire. The Armenians were the main obstacle standing in the way of the realisation of this policy. Although the government took the decision to deport all Armenians from Western Armenia (Eastern Turkey) in late 1911, the Young Turks used World War I as a suitable opportunity for its implementation.
How many people died in the Armenian Genocide?
There were an estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of World War I. Approximately one-and-a-half million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923. Another half-million found shelter abroad.
The mechanism of implementation
Genocide is the organised killing of a people for the express purpose of putting an end to their collective existence. Because of its scope, genocide requires central planning and internal machinery to implement it. This makes genocide the quintessential state crime, as only a government has the resources to carry out such a scheme of destruction. On 24 April 1915, the first phase of the Armenian massacres began with the arrest and murder of hundreds of intellectuals, mainly from Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire (now, Istanbul in present-day Turkey). Subsequently, Armenians worldwide commemorate 24 April as a day to memorialise all the victims of the Armenian Genocide.
The second phase of the “final solution” was the conscription of some 60,000 Armenian men into the Ottoman Army. Then, Turkish soldiers disarmed them and killed them. The third phase of the genocide was massacres, deportations, and death marches of women, children, and the elderly into the Syrian Desert. During those marches, Turkish soldiers, gendarmes, and Kurdish mobs killed hundreds of thousands. Others died of famine, epidemic diseases, and exposure to the elements. Turkish soldiers raped thousands of women and children. Tens of thousands were forcibly-converted to Islam. Finally, the fourth phase of the Armenian genocide was the total and utter denial by the Turkish government of the mass killings and elimination of the Armenian nation. Despite the continuing international recognition of the Armenian genocide, Turkey’s consistently fought the acceptance of the Armenian Genocide by any means, including false scholarship, propaganda campaigns, lobbying, etc.
24 April 2013
Pravmir.com
Orthodox Christianity and the World
http://www.pravmir.com/world-marks-98th-anniversary-of-armenian-genocide/