The Armenian Genocide: The History Of The Armenian Genocide

In 1915, leaders of the Turkish government set in motion a plan to expel and massacre the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Though reports vary, most sources agree that there were about 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the massacre. By the early 1920s, when the massacres and deportations finally ended, some 1.5 million of Turkey’s Armenians were dead, with many more forcibly removed from the country. Today, most historians call this event a genocide–a premeditated and systematic campaign to exterminate an entire people. However, the Turkish government does not acknowledge the enormity or scope of these events. Despite pressure from Armenians and social justice advocates throughout the world, it is still illegal

On that day, the Turkish government had arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals. After that, thousands of ordinary Armenians were turned out of their homes and forced on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water (Source A). They were also frequently stripped naked to walk under the burning desert sun until they dropped dead, and if they stopped for even a second to rest, they were shot. (It is believed that up to 450 000 Armenians perished along the Euphrates River and the remains of them are so prevalent in that area that all you need to do is scratch the sand along the river banks and you will find human

They argue that the Armenians were an enemy force and that their slaughter was a necessary war measure, but the real reason that Turkey still denies it is most likely because they want to avoid paying reparations and being publicly shamed. The Armenian genocide has been thoroughly studied and documented by genocide scholars and the historical record is most definitely unambiguous. Only in 1997 did the International Association of Genocide Scholars declare unanimously that the Turkish massacres of over one million Armenians was a crime of genocide. Many other countries have decided to public declare that the Armenian massacres by the Turks was a genocide, namely France, Russia, etc., but the United States have yet join. The reason that the United States is so reluctant to publicly acknowledged this genocide is because they have a huge airbase in Turkey that they desperately need for their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Turks have threatened to close that base, cancel all purchases of American military equipment, boycott American goods and even go as far as passing their own resolution condemning the 19th century massacres of the Native Americans, if the Americans even mention the genocide that took place. Denial is actually a continuation of the genocide itself, because it is a continuing attempt to destroy the victim further psychologically and culturally, to deny its members even the memory