An Alternate history: What is the Armenian Genocide?The Armenian Genocide was mass extermination of Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks carried out by the Ottomans from 1915 until 1923.
What is the Armenian Genocide?
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It's often considered the first major genocide of the 20th Century. This article won't be like my others because it's almost impossible to predict how things would have been, had this event not occur.
So I'll leave you to ponder after I show the facts. This article is merely going to state history. Armenia has existed for millennia.
The predominantly Christian people lived in Eastern Anatolia, being swept up by the numerous empires which conquered the state. At the end of the 19th Century, the current leaders, the Ottoman Empire, began to collapse.
Why were the Armenians targeted
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Fearing a rise of Armenian Nationalism, the Turks started cracking down on these people. During the 1890s, the government massacred hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The treatment got even worse when a Nationalistic group known as the Young Turks took control in 1908. Their goal was to purge the land of any non-Turks. Sound familiar?
So, once World War I broke out, by 1915, the Ottomans saw the Christian Armenians as a threat, fearing they would help the Christian Russians against Turkey.
Armenian genocide 1915 history
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Killing squads hunted down any survivors. Once again, sound familiar?
Under the context of war, the Ottomans went on a mass genocide against those they deemed unworthy. Two million Armenians lived in Turkey before 1915. 1.5 million were killed.
Reason forArmeniann genocide
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Greeks and Assyrians who lived in the Anatolian Peninsula since Roman times faced mass killings as well. Around 450,000 Greeks were killed, and 300,000 Assyrians, ending all three cultures in the region.
Now, I'm sure numerous are thinking, "This was a century years ago.Why is it so significant?"
Today, the Turkish government, the successor of the Ottomans, deny calling these actions a genocide.
Since Turkey is a NATO ally and controls some critical chunk of land, other nations, the United States included, are uneasy about dropping the g-word when discussing these events.
Who was responsible for theArmeniann genocide
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Turkey actively goes out of its way to punish those who mention genocide, even their own citizens. Crazy, right?
It was in 2015. Just refusing to accept that these actions are genocide means that a prominent government does not listen to history. The equivalent is Germany denying the Holocaust, cracking down on those who bring it up, and cutting diplomatic ties with nations who do.
So what's the point of this article? To spread the collective knowledge. Not many people know of the refusal of history happening today.
So let's change that. People revise history every day to suit their needs, and that needs to stop. History is ugly, and every group, ethnicity, and nation has done something we're not proud of.
But it's the 21st Century, and in this modern world, we need to accept events by what they were. Denying doesn't give closure, and it doesn't help us learn.
Many countries are finally calling this a genocide, and many more will, too. It's been a hundred years of denial. Hopefully, it won't be a hundred and one.
* This article was originally published here
