Why do Armenians Remember April 24th 1915?

........I would like to thank Adrine for
putting me in contact with J George.

We tend to think of the Holocaust with a capital H as the Nazi genocide of the Jews - and others - in the 1930s and 1940s, but there was an earlier planned mass-murder which Churchill described as a holocaust during World War I. The perpetrators were the Young Turks, fanatics fired with the idea of extending the Ottoman Empire to the east, thus creating a Turkey-for-the-Turks. Minorities, especially Christians, were to be eliminated as they occupied lands essential to the Turkish plan. Turkey's ally, Germany, provided military expertise and organisation for the scheme. Several of the senior officers later became Nazi leaders. In 1915-16 a British Parliamentary "Blue Book" provided eyewitness accounts and documentary evidence of the planned massed-killings of Armenians throughout the Ottoman Empire. This treatment of their "fellow-Christians" was deplored by the wartime Allies and America. Funds were raised for refugees and orphans, and pledges were given by Lloyd George, President Wilson and Clemenceau, that those responsible for "the crimes against humanity" would be accountable after the war. An autonomous Armenia was to be reclaimed within the Ottoman Empire, and protection would be guaranteed against Turkish aggression. At the time, a denial of the events by Turkey would have been unthinkable. So what went wrong? The answers are many and complex. The Allies' pledges were lost in a sea of post-war malaise, uncertainty and disunity. There was a scramble among the Europeans for the spoils of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, coupled with fear of Bolshevism. Russia, a former ally, was now suspect. Turkey, on the other hand - never disarmed after the war - had a charismatic leader, Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) who defied defeat, ignored treaties, and , by the early 1920s, was able to impose his own terms on the "victors," who sought concessions in oil, mining, railways, etc. Britain, for example, had the mandate for oil-rich Mesopotamia (Iraq.) So Turkey-for-the-Turks was back on its feet with Ataturk continuing the policy of ethnic-cleansing, aided by the deposed Young Turks. By 1923 the number of Christians (Greeks and Armenians) slaughtered was in the region of two million. The eighty-five year old Turkish denial of genocide is strident and emphatic, but increasingly unconvincing. The recent assassination of the Armenian newspaper editor, Hrant Dink, brought out thousands of demonstrators protesting: "We are all Armenians, we are all Hrant Dinks." The Turkish people are at last seeing through their government's lies and propaganda. Last year their best-selling author, Orhan Pamuk narrowly escaped a prison sentence for mentioning "a million dead Armenians." The Armenians remember that for centuries they had suffered persecution and occasional massacre for their religion. On April 24th 1915 it was reported from Constantinople (the capital of the Ottoman Empire) that "The cream of Western Armenian intelligentsia were arrested and deported to Asia Minor where they were subsequently executed by Turkish gendarmes. That was only the beginning. What followed was a systematic clearance of towns and villages inhabited by Armenians. The men were shot, stabbed, drowned, thrown over precipices, or into wells; the women and children were sent on death marches into the desert, raped or carried off to Turkish harems, their homes plundered, clothes and jewellery stolen. Traditionally Armenians had looked to the West for cultural influences, and to Russia for military protection. This was seen as a threat by the Turks despite the Armenians being the highest tax-payers, and, in many respects, loyal Ottoman subjects. Turkey's paranoia killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Many of the towns and villages ruined by the genocide never regained their former prosperity, because the skilled artisans, merchants, teachers and doctors could not be replaced. On April 24th Armenians worldwide congregate in their churches to mourn their loss - a loss made bitter by Turkey's persistent denial and blockade of the tiny, landlocked Armenian republic, now struggling with the problems of emancipation from the Soviet system. To "get away with murder" is bad enough, to deny genocide is an insult to history and a lethal example for the future. Hitler memorably asked: "Who now remebers the Armenians?"