Armenian Genocide: The Mass Murder of Christians in Turkey

(Source: GreekReporter)

The Armenian Genocide, the systematic mass murder and expulsion of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians carried out in Turkey and adjoining regions by the Ottoman government between 1914 and 1923, is commemorated on April 24th every year.

The Armenian Genocide was an atrocity that occurred within the context of a wider religious cleansing across Asia Minor that lasted 10 years and included Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians. They were all Christians who were also subjects of the Ottoman Empire.

The religious cleansing was actually the first in modern times, and it fit the pattern of genocides that would follow in the century ahead.

It is worth noting that the Nazis in the following decades were transfixed by the events that occurred in Turkey in those nightmarish years of mass killings and deadly deportations—and saw in them a pattern that they could emulate for their own twisted ends.

The Armenians, in many ways, bore the brunt of the slaughter, but ethnic Greeks and Assyrians were also massacred in similar ways—and for the same reason: They were scapegoats in a crumbling empire that saw Christians as a dangerous and potentially treasonous population inside the country.