![\"1be49f320baa443c_800\"](\"https:\/\/themillenniumreport.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/1be49f320baa443c_800.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe Armenian Genocide (Warning: gruesome pictures)<\/h1>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/files\/2015\/04\/armenian-genocide1.jpg\")
<\/div>\n\nPhoto Source: Flickr Creative Commons by young shanahan
\nhttp:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/youngshanahan<\/a><\/span>\/<\/p>\nPosted by\u00a0Mike Opelka
\n<\/a>mediachecker.wordpress.com
\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\nWhat do you call the 1915 \u201cmass deportation\u201d of Armenians from the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) that resulted in the death of 1.5 million people?<\/p>\n
Most historians and Armenians around the world call it genocide. The Turkish government and the United States are not among those who will officially accept the word \u201cgenocide\u201d when speaking of the decimation of the Armenian people in the early part of the 20th Century. (And that list also includes U.S. Presidents.)<\/p>\n
The lack of respect given to the Armenian genocide is shocking when you consider the scope and brutality of the event that killed 75 percent of the Armenians \u2014 a predominantly Christian group.<\/p>\n
The History:<\/strong><\/p>\nArmenia was a trendsetter when it came to Christianity. The country adopted that faith in 301 A.D. This was even before the formation of the Holy Roman Empire. For centuries the Armenian people built a healthy and prosperous country. However, in the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire absorbed Armenia and the Armenians. The non-Muslim Armenians were classified as \u201cinfidels\u201d and had to pay higher taxes and saddled with fewer rights than Muslims.<\/p>\n
The Ottoman Empire stayed dominant in the region through the 19th century and into the early part of the 20th century. But in the late 1890s, Armenians were growing tired of their status as second class citizens and continued their push for more rights. In 1894, that push was met with a violent response from the Sultan who turned loose his private army on the Armenians. In the ensuing battles between 1894-96, it was reported that as many as 200,000 Armenians were killed by Sultan Abdul Hamid\u2019s troops in what has been called the Hamidian Massacre<\/a>. However, the killing of the 200,000 Armenian Christians was nothing compared to the 1915 genocide.<\/p>\nWhat led to the near extermination of the Armenians? It appears a combination of a few factors were working together to create a rabid form of Turkish nationalism that saw the Armenians as the enemies of the state. After all, the non-Muslims were officially considered \u201cinfidels\u201d in the eyes of the Turks.<\/p>\n
In 1908, a group of young Turks forced the Sultan out and took control of the government. At first they talked of bringing new freedoms to the Armenian people. Unfortunately, those freedoms never were granted by the ruling \u201cYoung Turks.\u201d Instead the Armenians were seen as a threat to the shrinking Ottoman Empire.<\/p>\n
![\"Armenian](\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/www.armgate.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/armenian-genocide-128-550x346.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nPublished by permission from Wallstein Verlag, G\u00f6ttingen.<\/strong>
\nArmin T. Wegner. \u00a9 Wallstein Verlag, G\u00f6ttingen. All rights reserved.<\/strong><\/p>\n1912-13 had the Turks losing huge chunks of their land to Christian regions that were breaking away. Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia were all successful in their efforts to leave the Ottoman Empire. This was a devastating loss of power to the Turks and was the spark for even greater nationalism to foment.<\/p>\n
Muslim refugees from the now-Christian breakaway countries poured into Istanbul with tales of Christian violence against their families. Some of the more extreme members of the Young Turks formed the Committee of Union & Progress (CUP). The CUP was focused on pushing Turkish nationalism, their chant was \u201cTurkey for the Turks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The growing Turkish nationalism was also fuel for more hatred against the Armenian community, especially after Germany and Russia began warring in 1914. Turkey sided with Germany in this conflict. The Turks hoped a defeat of the Russians would help in the prospect of rebuilding their empire. In December of 1914, the Ottoman Turks tried to invade Russia, but suffered a horrible defeat. More than 100,000 Russian troops stormed across the border into Turkey and reports say that more than 5,000 Armenians helped the Russians, some even enlisting in the Russian Army.<\/p>\n
This was likely a move that enraged the Turkish leaders who saw the Armenians as a liability. The Armenian members of the military were immediately disarmed and moved into labor camps and subsequently executed.<\/p>\n
Not long after that, on April 24th, a group of 250 Armenian intellectual leaders of the community were rounded up and shipped off to a camp where they were killed.<\/p>\n
Turkey had killed off the Armenian soldiers and the cultural elites. All that remained was to order the rest of the population to comply with a relocation order that was essentially a death sentence. Most of the Armenians were forced to march for sixty days and many did not survive the trip.<\/p>\n
Like the Nazis, many Armenians were also transported via rail. And, also like the Nazis, the Turks forced their victims to purchase tickets for the ride to their own extermination.<\/p>\n
The accounts of the atrocities committed against the Armenians is as brutal and disgusting as any you have heard about from Hitler\u2019s attempts to exterminate the Jews from Germany and the world. Small children and old people were marched over mountains and in circles, without food and water, literally until they died. Young Christian girls were defiled by the Turkish soldiers. There are reports that many killed themselves after being raped. The barbaric treatment of the Armenian women went even further.<\/p>\n
On page 96 we see the following image on the Armenians being crucified by Turcs.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/image007.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFigure 6: Crucified Armenian women in the area of the Der-es-Zor.<\/p>\n
In his post on the genocide, (The Forgotten Genocide: Why It Matters Today<\/a>) Raymond Ibrahim recounted the story of a woman who claimed to have witnessed the brutal crucifixion of 16 young girls.<\/p>\nIn her memoir, Ravished Armenia<\/em>, Aurora Mardiganian<\/a> described being raped and thrown into a harem (which agrees with Islam\u2019s rules of war<\/a>).\u00a0 Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were discarded after being defiled, she managed to escape. In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 Christian girls crucified<\/a>: \u201cEach girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.\u201d\u00a0 Such scenes were portrayed in the 1919 documentary filmAuction of Souls<\/a>, some of which is based on Mardiganian\u2019s memoirs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n
Why Won\u2019t America Call It Genocide?<\/strong><\/p>\nIt\u2019s a good bet that Turkey and its leaders do not want to use the term genocide because it would likely cost them considerable sums of money in reparations, as well as the public embarrassment they would have to endure. But what about America?<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.xooimage.com\/files74\/d\/7\/f\/armin-wegner-in-t...-raflar--2ddd394.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nNo American president has officially called the mass killings that started in 1915 \u201cgenocide.\u201d President Bush went as far as publicly urging Congress to reject a resolution on the subject.<\/p>\n
In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that, as president, he would acknowledge it, saying; \u201cArmenian genocide is a widely documented fact.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite that very clear language, President Obama was not been so quick to follow up on his campaign promise. After he was elected, on Armenian Remembrance Day, the president issued a statement. The word that was conspicuously absent from the release \u2014 genocide. That term was also absent from every single April 24th Armenian Remembrance Day since 2009.<\/p>\n
\n\n- 2009 \u2013 Statement from President Obama<\/a><\/li>\n
- 2010 \u2013 Statement from President Obama<\/a><\/li>\n
- 2011 \u2013 President Obama\u2019s statement on April 24th.<\/a><\/li>\n
- 2012 \u2013 The President made another statement on April 24th<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
Instead of using the word \u201cgenocide\u201d the White House statements all use the term \u201cMeds Yeghern.\u201d What does that mean?\u00a0 Meds Yeghern is an Armenian phrase that has the same meaning as genocide in their language. But Armenians want the world to recognize the atrocity they suffered at the hands of the Turks.<\/p>\n
And while our presidents won\u2019t say the word or put it in statements, the Turks are actually forbidden from using it. The word \u201cgenocide\u201d is off limits \u2014 as in illegal. You can be locked up for saying the word or using it in a story. (The Blaze staff would likely be placed under arrest and receive death threats for this article alone.)<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/image005.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFigure 4: Armenians tortured and violated. Taken on the road from Trapesunt (Trabzon) to Ersnga by a German officer.<\/strong><\/p>\nSo, why won\u2019t a U.S. President call the very well-documented forced removal of 1.5 million people from their homes \u2014 many who were forced to march more than 50 miles into the desert where almost certain death awaited them \u2014 genocide?<\/p>\n
CBS\u2019s \u201c60 Minutes\u201d<\/a> filed a story that speculated our lack of ability to call this genocide and what it really is: That it might have something to do with America\u2019s military relationship with Turkey and that the country is vital to delivering supplies to our troops on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\nThe \u201c60 Minutes\u201d segment also includes a chilling video shot on the banks of the Euphrates River where it is believed 450,000 of the victims perished. In fact, the remains of the Armenians are so prevalent in the area that all you need to do is scratch the sand along the river banks and you will find pieces of human bones that have been there for 98 years.<\/p>\n
The Armenian people are persistent. Ninety-eight years after the genocide began in their country, they still hold out hope that Turkey will recognize what was done to the Armenians. They also hope that America will make good on the promises made by so many presidents.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Armenians are contributing in communities all over the U.S. As a matter of fact, one of the largest Armenian communities in the country is in Watertown, Massachusetts \u2014 a town that found itself in the center of the media spotlight this week. Watertown is also the home of the Armenian Library and Musuem of America<\/a>.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.theblaze.com\/stories\/2013\/04\/25\/the-1915-armenian-genocide-why-is-it-still-denied-by-turkey-and-the-u-s\/<\/a><\/p>\nhttp:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Armenian_genocide<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThe Forgotten Genocide: Why It Matters Today<\/h1>\nBy Raymond Ibrahim<\/a> on April 24, 2013\u00a0<\/abbr>in Islam<\/a>, Muslim Persecution of Christians<\/a><\/div>\nToday, April 24, marks the \u201cGreat Crime,\u201d that is, the Armenian genocide that took place under Turkey\u2019s Islamic Ottoman Empire, during and after WWI.\u00a0 Out of an approximate population of two million, some 1.5 million Armenians died. If early 20th<\/sup> century Turkey had the apparatuses and technology to execute in mass\u2014such as 1940s Germany\u2019s gas chambers\u2014the entire Armenian population may well have been annihilated.\u00a0 Mostobjective American historians<\/a> who have studied the question unequivocally agree that it was a deliberate, calculated genocide:<\/p>\nMore than one million Armenians perished as the result of execution, starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse.\u00a0 A people who lived in eastern Turkey for nearly 3,000 years [more than double the amount of time the invading Islamic Turks had occupied Anatolia, now known as \u201cTurkey\u201d] lost its homeland and was profoundly decimated in the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century.\u00a0 At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000\u2026.\u00a0 Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
A still frame from the 1919 documentary film Auction of Souls, which portrayed eye witnessed events from the Armenian Genocide, including crucified Christian girls.<\/p>\n
Indeed, evidence has been overwhelming.\u00a0 U.S. Senate Resolution 359 from 1920 heard testimony<\/a> that included evidence of \u201c[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death [which] have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages.\u201d\u00a0 In her memoir, Ravished Armenia<\/em>, Aurora Mardiganian<\/a> described being raped and thrown into a harem (which agrees with Islam\u2019s rules of war<\/a>).\u00a0 Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were discarded after being defiled, she managed to escape. In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 Christian girls crucified<\/a>: \u201cEach girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.\u201d\u00a0 Such scenes were portrayed in the 1919 documentary film Auction of Souls<\/a>, some of which is based on Mardiganian\u2019s memoirs.<\/p>\nWhat do Americans know of the Armenian Genocide?\u00a0 To be sure, some American high school textbooks acknowledge it.\u00a0 However, one of the primary causes for it\u2014perhaps the fundamental cause\u2014is completely unacknowledged: religion.\u00a0 The genocide is always articulated through a singularly secular paradigm, one that deems valid only those factors that are intelligible from a modern, secular, Western point of view, such as identity politics, nationalism, and territorial disputes. As can be imagined, such an approach does little more than project Western perspectives onto vastly different civilizations of different eras, thus anachronizing history.<\/p>\n
War, of course, is another factor that clouds the true face of the Armenian genocide.\u00a0 Because these atrocities occurred during WWI, so the argument goes, they are ultimately a reflection of just that\u2014war<\/em>, in all its chaos and destruction, and nothing more.\u00a0 Yet Winston Churchill, who described the massacres as an \u201cadministrative holocaust,\u201d correctly observed that \u201cThe opportunity [WWI] presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Christian race.\u201d\u00a0 Even Adolf Hitler had pointed out that \u201cTurkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/theredphoenix.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/12\/armenian_genocide-4.jpg?w=564&h=383\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIt is the same today throughout the Muslim world, wherever there is war: after the U.S. toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the nation\u2019s Christian minority were first to be targeted for systematic persecution<\/a> resulting in more than half of Iraq\u2019s indigenous Christian population fleeing their homeland.\u00a0 Now that war has come to Syria\u2014with the U.S. supporting the jihadis and terrorists\u2014the Christians there<\/a> are on the run for their lives.<\/p>\nMassacred Armenians.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/image009.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFigure 8: Skull of Armenians burnt alive in the village of Ali-Srnan. Source: Armjanskij Central\u2019nyj Komitet (Izd.): ,Al\u2019bom\u2019\u2019 armjan\u2019-be\u017eencev\u2019\u2019. Tiflis (um 1918) Ref. Nr.: 91 From: http:\/\/www.aga-online.org<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/image010.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFigure 9: Mass grave containing the bodies of killed Armenians. From Deutsche Welle, dw-world.de 24.04.2005<\/strong><\/p>\nThere is no denying that religion\u2014or in this context, the age-old specter of Muslim persecution of Christian minorities\u2014was fundamental to the Armenian Genocide.\u00a0 Even the most cited factor, ethnic identity conflict, while legitimate, must be understood in light of the fact that, historically, religion\u2014creed\u2014accounted more for a person\u2019s identity than language or heritage.\u00a0\u00a0 This is daily demonstrated throughout the Islamic world today, where Muslim governments and Muslim mobs persecute Christian minorities\u2014minorities who share the same ethnicity, language, and culture, who are indistinguishable from the majority, except, of course, for being non-Muslims.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/t0.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTmeevO07FJYJWKTw7RgkindWl6t43wnWW-7eK9w4iF3c5xFGju\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIf Christians are thus being singled out today\u2014in our modern, globalized, \u201chumanitarian\u201d age\u2014are we to suppose that they weren\u2019t singled out a century ago by Turks?<\/strong><\/p>\nSimilarly, often forgotten is the fact that non-Armenians under Turkish hegemony, Assyrians and Greeks for example, were also targeted for cleansing.\u00a0\u00a0 The only thing that distinguished\u00a0 Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks from Turks was that they were all Christian.\u00a0 As one Armenian studies professor asks<\/a>, \u201cIf it [the Armenian Genocide] was a feud between Turks and Armenians, what explains the genocide carried out by Turkey against the Christian Assyrians at the same time?\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/www.godlovespeople.com\/history\/armenian_genocide_1915.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nToday, as Turkey continues moving back to reclaiming its Islamic heritage<\/a>, so too has Christian persecution returned.\u00a0 If Turks taunted<\/a> their crucified Armenian victims by saying things like \u201cNow let your Christ come and help you,\u201d just last January, an 85-year-old Christian Armenian woman was repeatedly stabbed to death in her apartment, and a crucifix carved onto her naked corpse.\u00a0\u00a0 Another elderly Armenian woman was punched in the head and, after collapsing to the floor, repeatedly kicked by a masked man.\u00a0\u00a0 According to the report<\/a>, \u201cthe attack marks the fifth in the past two months against elderly Armenian women,\u201d one of whom lost an eye.\u00a0 Elsewhere, pastors of church congregations with as little as 20 people are targeted for killing<\/a> and spat upon in the streets.\u00a0 A 12-year-old Christian boy was beaten by his teacher and harassed by students for wearing a cross<\/a>around his neck, and three Christians were \u201csatanically tortured<\/a>\u201d before having their throats slit for publishing Bibles.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i2.wp.com\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/0\/06\/Armenian_Genocide_Museum-Institute_7.JPG\")
<\/a><\/p>\nOutside of Turkey, what is happening to the Christians of today from one end of the Muslim world to the other is a reflection of what happened to the Armenian Christians of yesterday.\u00a0\u00a0 We can learn about the past by looking at the present.\u00a0 From Indonesia in the east to Morocco in the west, from Central Asia in the north, to sub-Sahara Africa\u2014that is, throughout the entire Islamic world\u2014Muslims are, to varying degrees, persecuting, killing, raping, enslaving, torturing and dislocating Christians.\u00a0 See my new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam\u2019s New War on Christians<\/em><\/a> for a comprehensive account of one of the greatest\u2014yet, like the Armenian Genocide, little known\u2014atrocities of our times.<\/p>\nHere is one relevant example to help appreciate the patterns and parallels: in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria, Muslims, led by the Islamic organization, Boko Haram (\u201cWestern Education is Forbidden\u201d) are waging a bloody jihad on the Christian minorities<\/a>in their midst.\u00a0 These two groups\u2014black Nigerian Muslims and black Nigerian Christians\u2014are identical in all ways except, of course, for being Muslims and Christians.\u00a0 And what is Boko Haram\u2019s objective in all this carnage?\u00a0 To cleanse northern Nigeria of all Christians<\/a>\u2014a goal rather reminiscent of Ottoman policies of cleansing Turkey of all Christians, whether Armenian, Assyrian, or Greek.<\/p>\nHow does one explain this similar pattern of Christian persecution\u2014this desire to be cleansed of Christians\u2014in lands so different from one another as Nigeria and Turkey, lands which share neither race, language, nor culture, which share only Islam?\u00a0 Meanwhile, the modern Islamic world\u2019s response to the persecution of Christians is identical to Turkey\u2019s response to the Armenian Genocide: Denial.<\/p>\n
Finally, to understand how the historic Armenian Genocide is representative of the modern day plight of Christians under Islam, one need only read the following words written<\/a> in 1918 by President Theodore Roosevelt\u2014but read \u201cArmenian\u201d as \u201cChristian\u201d and \u201cTurkish\u201d as\u00a0 \u201cIslamic\u201d:<\/p>\nthe Armenian [Christian] massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey [the Islamic world] is to condone it\u2026 the failure to deal radically with the Turkish [Islamic] horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous nonsense.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/t2.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQhHxxySmlZmKYWz_r-ekuItXaI9BRmvUTaC_2X5EBdwv8_Ao-n\")
<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nIndeed, if we \u201cfail to deal radically\u201d with the \u201chorror\u201d currently being visited upon millions of Christians<\/a> around the Islamic world\u2014which in some areas has reached genocidal proportions<\/a>\u2014we \u201ccondone it\u201d and had better cease talking \u201cmischievous nonsense\u201d of a utopian world of peace and tolerance.<\/strong><\/p>\nPut differently, silence is always the ally of those who would commit genocide.<\/p>\n
In 1915, Adolf Hitler rationalized his genocidal plans, which he implemented some three decades later, when he rhetorically asked: \u201cWho, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nAnd who speaks today of the annihilation of Christians under Islam?<\/strong><\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.raymondibrahim.com\/islam\/the-forgotten-genocide-why-it-matters-today\/<\/a><\/p>\nArmenian Genocide \u2013 Wiki\u2026<\/strong>Armenian civilians, escorted by armed Ottoman soldiers, are marched through Harput<\/a>(known as Kharpert by Armenians, the kaza<\/a> of the Mamuret-ul Aziz<\/a>), to a prison in the nearby Mezireh (Ottoman: Mazraa<\/i>, present-day El\u00e2z\u0131\u011f<\/a>), April 1915<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Armenian_genocide<\/a><\/p>\nArmenians from Kesaria in front of jail one hour before all were murdered<\/b><\/p>\n
Armenians oone hour before they were murdered. One can see they were business men yet the Turks are putting out propaganda that they were plotting against them and had weapons hidden in their homes. This is their single excuse for the genocide they committed.<\/p>\n
More pictures here: http:\/\/www.bing.com\/images\/search?q=armenian+genocide+pictures&qpvt=armenian+genocide+pictures&FORM=IGRE#a<\/a><\/p>\nThe Massacre of 1.5 Million Armenian Christians by Muslim Turks that Inspired Hitler\u2019s Holocaust<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nYou can read more about the genocide here<\/a>, and view more shocking images here<\/a>.<\/em>
\nFrom the Mail Online<\/a>:<\/em><\/div>\nWhen the Turkish gendarmes came for Mugrditch Nazarian, they did not give him time to dress, but took him from his home in the dead of night in his pyjamas.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe year was 1915, and his wife, Varter, knew that she was unlikely to see her husband alive again. Armenian men like him were being rounded up and taken away. In the words of their persecutors, they were being \u201cdeported\u201d \u2013 but not to an earthly place.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nVarter never found out what fate her husband suffered. Some said he was shot, others that he was among the men held in jail, who suffered torture so unbearable that they poured the kerosene from prison lamps over their heads and turned themselves into human pyres as a release from the agony.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nHeavily pregnant, Varter was ordered to join a death convoy marching women and children to desert concentration camps.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/div>\nPhoto Source: Flickr Creative Commons by young shanahan Posted by\u00a0Mike Opelka What do you call the 1915 \u201cmass deportation\u201d of Armenians from the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) that resulted in the death of 1.5 million people?<\/p>\n Most historians and Armenians around the world call it genocide. The Turkish government and the United States are not among those who will officially accept the word \u201cgenocide\u201d when speaking of the decimation of the Armenian people in the early part of the 20th Century. (And that list also includes U.S. Presidents.)<\/p>\n The lack of respect given to the Armenian genocide is shocking when you consider the scope and brutality of the event that killed 75 percent of the Armenians \u2014 a predominantly Christian group.<\/p>\n The History:<\/strong><\/p>\n Armenia was a trendsetter when it came to Christianity. The country adopted that faith in 301 A.D. This was even before the formation of the Holy Roman Empire. For centuries the Armenian people built a healthy and prosperous country. However, in the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire absorbed Armenia and the Armenians. The non-Muslim Armenians were classified as \u201cinfidels\u201d and had to pay higher taxes and saddled with fewer rights than Muslims.<\/p>\n The Ottoman Empire stayed dominant in the region through the 19th century and into the early part of the 20th century. But in the late 1890s, Armenians were growing tired of their status as second class citizens and continued their push for more rights. In 1894, that push was met with a violent response from the Sultan who turned loose his private army on the Armenians. In the ensuing battles between 1894-96, it was reported that as many as 200,000 Armenians were killed by Sultan Abdul Hamid\u2019s troops in what has been called the Hamidian Massacre<\/a>. However, the killing of the 200,000 Armenian Christians was nothing compared to the 1915 genocide.<\/p>\n What led to the near extermination of the Armenians? It appears a combination of a few factors were working together to create a rabid form of Turkish nationalism that saw the Armenians as the enemies of the state. After all, the non-Muslims were officially considered \u201cinfidels\u201d in the eyes of the Turks.<\/p>\n In 1908, a group of young Turks forced the Sultan out and took control of the government. At first they talked of bringing new freedoms to the Armenian people. Unfortunately, those freedoms never were granted by the ruling \u201cYoung Turks.\u201d Instead the Armenians were seen as a threat to the shrinking Ottoman Empire.<\/p>\n Published by permission from Wallstein Verlag, G\u00f6ttingen.<\/strong> 1912-13 had the Turks losing huge chunks of their land to Christian regions that were breaking away. Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia were all successful in their efforts to leave the Ottoman Empire. This was a devastating loss of power to the Turks and was the spark for even greater nationalism to foment.<\/p>\n Muslim refugees from the now-Christian breakaway countries poured into Istanbul with tales of Christian violence against their families. Some of the more extreme members of the Young Turks formed the Committee of Union & Progress (CUP). The CUP was focused on pushing Turkish nationalism, their chant was \u201cTurkey for the Turks.\u201d<\/p>\n The growing Turkish nationalism was also fuel for more hatred against the Armenian community, especially after Germany and Russia began warring in 1914. Turkey sided with Germany in this conflict. The Turks hoped a defeat of the Russians would help in the prospect of rebuilding their empire. In December of 1914, the Ottoman Turks tried to invade Russia, but suffered a horrible defeat. More than 100,000 Russian troops stormed across the border into Turkey and reports say that more than 5,000 Armenians helped the Russians, some even enlisting in the Russian Army.<\/p>\n This was likely a move that enraged the Turkish leaders who saw the Armenians as a liability. The Armenian members of the military were immediately disarmed and moved into labor camps and subsequently executed.<\/p>\n Not long after that, on April 24th, a group of 250 Armenian intellectual leaders of the community were rounded up and shipped off to a camp where they were killed.<\/p>\n Turkey had killed off the Armenian soldiers and the cultural elites. All that remained was to order the rest of the population to comply with a relocation order that was essentially a death sentence. Most of the Armenians were forced to march for sixty days and many did not survive the trip.<\/p>\n Like the Nazis, many Armenians were also transported via rail. And, also like the Nazis, the Turks forced their victims to purchase tickets for the ride to their own extermination.<\/p>\n The accounts of the atrocities committed against the Armenians is as brutal and disgusting as any you have heard about from Hitler\u2019s attempts to exterminate the Jews from Germany and the world. Small children and old people were marched over mountains and in circles, without food and water, literally until they died. Young Christian girls were defiled by the Turkish soldiers. There are reports that many killed themselves after being raped. The barbaric treatment of the Armenian women went even further.<\/p>\n On page 96 we see the following image on the Armenians being crucified by Turcs.<\/p>\n Figure 6: Crucified Armenian women in the area of the Der-es-Zor.<\/p>\n In his post on the genocide, (The Forgotten Genocide: Why It Matters Today<\/a>) Raymond Ibrahim recounted the story of a woman who claimed to have witnessed the brutal crucifixion of 16 young girls.<\/p>\n In her memoir, Ravished Armenia<\/em>, Aurora Mardiganian<\/a> described being raped and thrown into a harem (which agrees with Islam\u2019s rules of war<\/a>).\u00a0 Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were discarded after being defiled, she managed to escape. In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 Christian girls crucified<\/a>: \u201cEach girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.\u201d\u00a0 Such scenes were portrayed in the 1919 documentary filmAuction of Souls<\/a>, some of which is based on Mardiganian\u2019s memoirs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Why Won\u2019t America Call It Genocide?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s a good bet that Turkey and its leaders do not want to use the term genocide because it would likely cost them considerable sums of money in reparations, as well as the public embarrassment they would have to endure. But what about America?<\/p>\n No American president has officially called the mass killings that started in 1915 \u201cgenocide.\u201d President Bush went as far as publicly urging Congress to reject a resolution on the subject.<\/p>\n In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that, as president, he would acknowledge it, saying; \u201cArmenian genocide is a widely documented fact.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite that very clear language, President Obama was not been so quick to follow up on his campaign promise. After he was elected, on Armenian Remembrance Day, the president issued a statement. The word that was conspicuously absent from the release \u2014 genocide. That term was also absent from every single April 24th Armenian Remembrance Day since 2009.<\/p>\n Instead of using the word \u201cgenocide\u201d the White House statements all use the term \u201cMeds Yeghern.\u201d What does that mean?\u00a0 Meds Yeghern is an Armenian phrase that has the same meaning as genocide in their language. But Armenians want the world to recognize the atrocity they suffered at the hands of the Turks.<\/p>\n And while our presidents won\u2019t say the word or put it in statements, the Turks are actually forbidden from using it. The word \u201cgenocide\u201d is off limits \u2014 as in illegal. You can be locked up for saying the word or using it in a story. (The Blaze staff would likely be placed under arrest and receive death threats for this article alone.)<\/p>\n Figure 4: Armenians tortured and violated. Taken on the road from Trapesunt (Trabzon) to Ersnga by a German officer.<\/strong><\/p>\n So, why won\u2019t a U.S. President call the very well-documented forced removal of 1.5 million people from their homes \u2014 many who were forced to march more than 50 miles into the desert where almost certain death awaited them \u2014 genocide?<\/p>\n CBS\u2019s \u201c60 Minutes\u201d<\/a> filed a story that speculated our lack of ability to call this genocide and what it really is: That it might have something to do with America\u2019s military relationship with Turkey and that the country is vital to delivering supplies to our troops on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n The \u201c60 Minutes\u201d segment also includes a chilling video shot on the banks of the Euphrates River where it is believed 450,000 of the victims perished. In fact, the remains of the Armenians are so prevalent in the area that all you need to do is scratch the sand along the river banks and you will find pieces of human bones that have been there for 98 years.<\/p>\n The Armenian people are persistent. Ninety-eight years after the genocide began in their country, they still hold out hope that Turkey will recognize what was done to the Armenians. They also hope that America will make good on the promises made by so many presidents.<\/p>\n In the meantime, Armenians are contributing in communities all over the U.S. As a matter of fact, one of the largest Armenian communities in the country is in Watertown, Massachusetts \u2014 a town that found itself in the center of the media spotlight this week. Watertown is also the home of the Armenian Library and Musuem of America<\/a>.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.theblaze.com\/stories\/2013\/04\/25\/the-1915-armenian-genocide-why-is-it-still-denied-by-turkey-and-the-u-s\/<\/a><\/p>\n http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Armenian_genocide<\/a><\/p>\n Today, April 24, marks the \u201cGreat Crime,\u201d that is, the Armenian genocide that took place under Turkey\u2019s Islamic Ottoman Empire, during and after WWI.\u00a0 Out of an approximate population of two million, some 1.5 million Armenians died. If early 20th<\/sup> century Turkey had the apparatuses and technology to execute in mass\u2014such as 1940s Germany\u2019s gas chambers\u2014the entire Armenian population may well have been annihilated.\u00a0 Mostobjective American historians<\/a> who have studied the question unequivocally agree that it was a deliberate, calculated genocide:<\/p>\n More than one million Armenians perished as the result of execution, starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse.\u00a0 A people who lived in eastern Turkey for nearly 3,000 years [more than double the amount of time the invading Islamic Turks had occupied Anatolia, now known as \u201cTurkey\u201d] lost its homeland and was profoundly decimated in the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century.\u00a0 At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000\u2026.\u00a0 Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A still frame from the 1919 documentary film Auction of Souls, which portrayed eye witnessed events from the Armenian Genocide, including crucified Christian girls.<\/p>\n Indeed, evidence has been overwhelming.\u00a0 U.S. Senate Resolution 359 from 1920 heard testimony<\/a> that included evidence of \u201c[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death [which] have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages.\u201d\u00a0 In her memoir, Ravished Armenia<\/em>, Aurora Mardiganian<\/a> described being raped and thrown into a harem (which agrees with Islam\u2019s rules of war<\/a>).\u00a0 Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were discarded after being defiled, she managed to escape. In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 Christian girls crucified<\/a>: \u201cEach girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.\u201d\u00a0 Such scenes were portrayed in the 1919 documentary film Auction of Souls<\/a>, some of which is based on Mardiganian\u2019s memoirs.<\/p>\n What do Americans know of the Armenian Genocide?\u00a0 To be sure, some American high school textbooks acknowledge it.\u00a0 However, one of the primary causes for it\u2014perhaps the fundamental cause\u2014is completely unacknowledged: religion.\u00a0 The genocide is always articulated through a singularly secular paradigm, one that deems valid only those factors that are intelligible from a modern, secular, Western point of view, such as identity politics, nationalism, and territorial disputes. As can be imagined, such an approach does little more than project Western perspectives onto vastly different civilizations of different eras, thus anachronizing history.<\/p>\n War, of course, is another factor that clouds the true face of the Armenian genocide.\u00a0 Because these atrocities occurred during WWI, so the argument goes, they are ultimately a reflection of just that\u2014war<\/em>, in all its chaos and destruction, and nothing more.\u00a0 Yet Winston Churchill, who described the massacres as an \u201cadministrative holocaust,\u201d correctly observed that \u201cThe opportunity [WWI] presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Christian race.\u201d\u00a0 Even Adolf Hitler had pointed out that \u201cTurkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n It is the same today throughout the Muslim world, wherever there is war: after the U.S. toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the nation\u2019s Christian minority were first to be targeted for systematic persecution<\/a> resulting in more than half of Iraq\u2019s indigenous Christian population fleeing their homeland.\u00a0 Now that war has come to Syria\u2014with the U.S. supporting the jihadis and terrorists\u2014the Christians there<\/a> are on the run for their lives.<\/p>\n Massacred Armenians.<\/p>\n Figure 8: Skull of Armenians burnt alive in the village of Ali-Srnan. Source: Armjanskij Central\u2019nyj Komitet (Izd.): ,Al\u2019bom\u2019\u2019 armjan\u2019-be\u017eencev\u2019\u2019. Tiflis (um 1918) Ref. Nr.: 91 From: http:\/\/www.aga-online.org<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Figure 9: Mass grave containing the bodies of killed Armenians. From Deutsche Welle, dw-world.de 24.04.2005<\/strong><\/p>\n There is no denying that religion\u2014or in this context, the age-old specter of Muslim persecution of Christian minorities\u2014was fundamental to the Armenian Genocide.\u00a0 Even the most cited factor, ethnic identity conflict, while legitimate, must be understood in light of the fact that, historically, religion\u2014creed\u2014accounted more for a person\u2019s identity than language or heritage.\u00a0\u00a0 This is daily demonstrated throughout the Islamic world today, where Muslim governments and Muslim mobs persecute Christian minorities\u2014minorities who share the same ethnicity, language, and culture, who are indistinguishable from the majority, except, of course, for being non-Muslims.<\/p>\n If Christians are thus being singled out today\u2014in our modern, globalized, \u201chumanitarian\u201d age\u2014are we to suppose that they weren\u2019t singled out a century ago by Turks?<\/strong><\/p>\n Similarly, often forgotten is the fact that non-Armenians under Turkish hegemony, Assyrians and Greeks for example, were also targeted for cleansing.\u00a0\u00a0 The only thing that distinguished\u00a0 Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks from Turks was that they were all Christian.\u00a0 As one Armenian studies professor asks<\/a>, \u201cIf it [the Armenian Genocide] was a feud between Turks and Armenians, what explains the genocide carried out by Turkey against the Christian Assyrians at the same time?\u201d<\/p>\n Today, as Turkey continues moving back to reclaiming its Islamic heritage<\/a>, so too has Christian persecution returned.\u00a0 If Turks taunted<\/a> their crucified Armenian victims by saying things like \u201cNow let your Christ come and help you,\u201d just last January, an 85-year-old Christian Armenian woman was repeatedly stabbed to death in her apartment, and a crucifix carved onto her naked corpse.\u00a0\u00a0 Another elderly Armenian woman was punched in the head and, after collapsing to the floor, repeatedly kicked by a masked man.\u00a0\u00a0 According to the report<\/a>, \u201cthe attack marks the fifth in the past two months against elderly Armenian women,\u201d one of whom lost an eye.\u00a0 Elsewhere, pastors of church congregations with as little as 20 people are targeted for killing<\/a> and spat upon in the streets.\u00a0 A 12-year-old Christian boy was beaten by his teacher and harassed by students for wearing a cross<\/a>around his neck, and three Christians were \u201csatanically tortured<\/a>\u201d before having their throats slit for publishing Bibles.<\/p>\n Outside of Turkey, what is happening to the Christians of today from one end of the Muslim world to the other is a reflection of what happened to the Armenian Christians of yesterday.\u00a0\u00a0 We can learn about the past by looking at the present.\u00a0 From Indonesia in the east to Morocco in the west, from Central Asia in the north, to sub-Sahara Africa\u2014that is, throughout the entire Islamic world\u2014Muslims are, to varying degrees, persecuting, killing, raping, enslaving, torturing and dislocating Christians.\u00a0 See my new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam\u2019s New War on Christians<\/em><\/a> for a comprehensive account of one of the greatest\u2014yet, like the Armenian Genocide, little known\u2014atrocities of our times.<\/p>\n Here is one relevant example to help appreciate the patterns and parallels: in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria, Muslims, led by the Islamic organization, Boko Haram (\u201cWestern Education is Forbidden\u201d) are waging a bloody jihad on the Christian minorities<\/a>in their midst.\u00a0 These two groups\u2014black Nigerian Muslims and black Nigerian Christians\u2014are identical in all ways except, of course, for being Muslims and Christians.\u00a0 And what is Boko Haram\u2019s objective in all this carnage?\u00a0 To cleanse northern Nigeria of all Christians<\/a>\u2014a goal rather reminiscent of Ottoman policies of cleansing Turkey of all Christians, whether Armenian, Assyrian, or Greek.<\/p>\n How does one explain this similar pattern of Christian persecution\u2014this desire to be cleansed of Christians\u2014in lands so different from one another as Nigeria and Turkey, lands which share neither race, language, nor culture, which share only Islam?\u00a0 Meanwhile, the modern Islamic world\u2019s response to the persecution of Christians is identical to Turkey\u2019s response to the Armenian Genocide: Denial.<\/p>\n Finally, to understand how the historic Armenian Genocide is representative of the modern day plight of Christians under Islam, one need only read the following words written<\/a> in 1918 by President Theodore Roosevelt\u2014but read \u201cArmenian\u201d as \u201cChristian\u201d and \u201cTurkish\u201d as\u00a0 \u201cIslamic\u201d:<\/p>\n the Armenian [Christian] massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey [the Islamic world] is to condone it\u2026 the failure to deal radically with the Turkish [Islamic] horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous nonsense.<\/p>\n Indeed, if we \u201cfail to deal radically\u201d with the \u201chorror\u201d currently being visited upon millions of Christians<\/a> around the Islamic world\u2014which in some areas has reached genocidal proportions<\/a>\u2014we \u201ccondone it\u201d and had better cease talking \u201cmischievous nonsense\u201d of a utopian world of peace and tolerance.<\/strong><\/p>\n Put differently, silence is always the ally of those who would commit genocide.<\/p>\n In 1915, Adolf Hitler rationalized his genocidal plans, which he implemented some three decades later, when he rhetorically asked: \u201cWho, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n And who speaks today of the annihilation of Christians under Islam?<\/strong><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.raymondibrahim.com\/islam\/the-forgotten-genocide-why-it-matters-today\/<\/a><\/p>\n Armenian Genocide \u2013 Wiki\u2026<\/strong>Armenian civilians, escorted by armed Ottoman soldiers, are marched through Harput<\/a>(known as Kharpert by Armenians, the kaza<\/a> of the Mamuret-ul Aziz<\/a>), to a prison in the nearby Mezireh (Ottoman: Mazraa<\/i>, present-day El\u00e2z\u0131\u011f<\/a>), April 1915<\/p>\n http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Armenian_genocide<\/a><\/p>\n Armenians from Kesaria in front of jail one hour before all were murdered<\/b><\/p>\n Armenians oone hour before they were murdered. One can see they were business men yet the Turks are putting out propaganda that they were plotting against them and had weapons hidden in their homes. This is their single excuse for the genocide they committed.<\/p>\n More pictures here: http:\/\/www.bing.com\/images\/search?q=armenian+genocide+pictures&qpvt=armenian+genocide+pictures&FORM=IGRE#a<\/a><\/p>\n The Massacre of 1.5 Million Armenian Christians by Muslim Turks that Inspired Hitler\u2019s Holocaust<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n When the Turkish gendarmes came for Mugrditch Nazarian, they did not give him time to dress, but took him from his home in the dead of night in his pyjamas.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The year was 1915, and his wife, Varter, knew that she was unlikely to see her husband alive again. Armenian men like him were being rounded up and taken away. In the words of their persecutors, they were being \u201cdeported\u201d \u2013 but not to an earthly place.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Varter never found out what fate her husband suffered. Some said he was shot, others that he was among the men held in jail, who suffered torture so unbearable that they poured the kerosene from prison lamps over their heads and turned themselves into human pyres as a release from the agony.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Heavily pregnant, Varter was ordered to join a death convoy marching women and children to desert concentration camps.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/youngshanahan<\/a><\/span>\/<\/p>\n
\n<\/a>mediachecker.wordpress.com
\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nArmin T. Wegner. \u00a9 Wallstein Verlag, G\u00f6ttingen. All rights reserved.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThe Forgotten Genocide: Why It Matters Today<\/h1>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nFrom the Mail Online<\/a>:<\/em><\/div>\n