Armenian and Syriac Orthodox Patriarchs Ask Christians to Remember the 1915 Genocide as Centennial Nears

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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

http://www.christianpost.com/news/armenian-and-syrian-orthodox-patriarchs-ask-christians-to-remember-the-1915-genocide-as-centennial-nears-128129/

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World Marks 98th Anniversary of Armenian Genocide

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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/

 

27 March 2012. “The More Things Change, The More that They Stay the Same”… The Armenians in 1915… The Jews in 1942… The Kosovo Serbs in 2012

“They Bowed the Knee Before Him”: The Extermination of Armenian Christians, Autumn of 1915

Louis Raemaekers

1915

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The book from whence I got the above image said this:

These atrocities had as their deliberate object the extermination of the Armenian race, and it isn’t difficult to assess the guilt. The guilt lay with the Young Turk Government at Constantinople and with the local officials who acted in collusion with them. However, there was a greater criminal even than the Young Turk Government, for behind Turkey stood the country that was Turkey’s ally and the dominant partner in the policy she pursued. There was a considerable variation in the conduct of individual Germans in Turkey. The German missionaries seem to have stood laudably by their principles, and the German Vice-Consul at Erzurum is said to have sent the exiles relief. But, in Aleppo Province and Cilicia, the German officials, both military and civil, threw themselves actively into the Young Turks’ scheme; at Muş and Van, German officers are believed to have participated directly in the slaughter, and, at Erzurum, they’re reported to have taken their share of the Armenian girls.

Times History of the War

as found in:

Louis Raemaeker, Raemaekers’ Cartoon History of the War, Volume 2: The Second Twelve Months of War (The Century Company: New York NY USA, 1919), p 53

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Whether it was the Armenians getting the chop from the Turks in 1915, the Galician and Byelorussian Orthodox getting it in the neck from the Poles in the ’30s, the Jews getting pushed into ovens in the ’40s, the Iranians screaming under the torture of the SAVAK in the ’50s, the Palestinians getting the Royal Red Rooster from the Zionists since the ’60s, the Serbs getting kicked around by NATO (and the USA) since the ’90s, and the Christians in the Middle East facing down the Islamists… it’s all the same, in the end, isn’t it? Reflect on this… Germany stood aloof whilst Turkey murdered Armenians in 1915… today, Germany stands aloof whilst Kosovar Albanians murder Serbs. They haven’t changed their spots, have they?

Don’t be fooled by Victoria Nuland‘s false umbrage… she’s the protege of Strobe Talbott and Richard Holbrooke, the Butchers of the Balkans. That’s why the Golgotha of the Kosovo Serbs bothers her not one little bit. For Orthodox Christians, I have to tell you, the same’s true of Paffhausen… he supports US aggression throughout the world, and he expects us to follow him. You can follow His Holiness, and support the Kosovo Serbs, Free Cuba, and Free Palestine… or, you can follow Paffhausen and support the Albanian butchers in Kosovo (they do sell human organs on the black market), the twisted hate-filled Cuban émigrés in Miami, and the Zionist squatters in West Bank Palestine. The USA did, after all, steal the Northwest quadrant of Mexico. Now, that’s the so-called Southwestern US, including Texas… the squatter origins of the Anglo ruling class there explain the acrid barbaric political culture in those parts. Oh, yes… don’t forget that the Anglo revolt in Texas was due to the Mexicans abolishing slavery (and the slippery Anglos wanted to keep their slaves under the whip). If that’s so, the support of the USA for land-grabbing and murdering Zionists, Greater Albanian fanatics, and Islamists is no stretch, is it?

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Tuesday 27 March 2012

Albany NY