Category: 2022

by TurkeyPurge | Apr 23, 2022

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu flashed the “Grey Wolf” sign in front of a group of Armenians marching for the anniversary of the Armenian genocide in Uruguay on Saturday.

Turkish nationalists often use the salutation of the Grey Wolves, “a fist with the little finger and index finger raised,” inspired by a she-wolf in the Ergenekon legend, a myth associated with the country’s Turkic origins in the Central Asian steppes.

It was banned in Austria in February 2019. In Germany, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Left Party proposed banning the salute in October 2018, calling it fascist.

https://turkeypurge.com/turkish-foreign-minister-flashes-racist-grey-wolf-sign-in-front-of-armenian-protesters-in-uruguay 

April 22 2022

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.

There was a strong nationalistic impulse to create a “Turkey for the Turks,” and that meant a homogeneous population based on “Turkishness” and the Muslim faith.

Initially, it was just a campaign of boycotting Armenian businesses and shops. But within months, it culminated in acts of violence and the murder of key Armenian politicians and persons of importance. By April 15, 1915, almost 25,000 Armenians were slain in the province of Van.

On April 24, 1915, the Ottomans arrested 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople and sent them to Chankri and Ayash, where they were later murdered.

On the same day, the editors and staff of Azadamart, the leading Armenian newspaper of Constantinople, were arrested, to be executed on June 15th in Diyarbekir, where they had been taken and imprisoned.

The Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople and Zohrab, an Armenian deputy in the Ottoman Parliament, petitioned the Turkish authorities on behalf of the arrested Armenians of Constantinople. The answer was that the government was dissolving the Armenian political organizations.

Within nine months, more than 600,000 Armenians were massacred. Of those who were  deported during that time, more than 400,000 died of the brutalities and privations of the southward march into Mesopotamia, raising the number of victims to one million. This became known to the rest of the world outside Turkey as the Armenian Genocide.

In addition, 200,000 Armenians were forcibly converted to Islam to give Armenia a new Turkish sense of identity and strip Armenians of their historical past as the first Christian state in the world.

On August 30, 1922, Armenians who were living in Smyrna were victims of yet more Turkish atrocities. The “Smyrna Disaster” of 1922, which was aimed at Christian Greeks who were living in the seaside city, involved thousands of Armenians, as well. Turkish soldiers and civilians set all the Greek and Armenian neighborhoods on fire, forcing the fleeing of Greeks and Armenians to the harbor, where thousands were killed or drowned.

On April 24, 1919, prominent figures of the Armenian community who had survived the atrocities held a commemoration ceremony at the St. Trinity Armenian church in Istanbul. Following its initial commemoration in 1919, the date became the annual day of remembrance for the Armenian Genocide.

Yet, somehow, ever since the horrific events of 1915, Turkey has methodically denied the fact that the Armenian genocide occurred. Despite Turkish denials, the genocide has been unanimously verified by the International Association of Genocide Scholars and become internationally recognized with the intention of upholding moral responsibility above political purposes.

The Armenian Genocide was officially recognized by US President Biden on April 24, 2021 in an official declaration. It ended a consistent policy of non-recognition that guided Biden’s predecessors.

“Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” the American President said.

 

The Bay Observer, Canada

Not too many people outside of the Armenian community were paying attention in 2019 when the US Congress, by an overwhelming majority in both houses, passed a resolution acknowledging the Armenian genocide of 1916-16. The reason was because then President Trump refused to sign the bill. At that time a spokesperson for the Armenian National Committee of America wrote “Despite last year’s near-unanimous Congressional recognition of the Armenian Genocide, President Trump has, once again, granted Turkish President Erdogan – an openly anti-American dictator – a veto over honest U.S. remembrance of Turkey’s WWI-era genocide of millions of Armenians and other Christians.”.

The facts briefly are these.

For centuries Armenians had occupied the eastern part of Turkey and parts of adjacent Azerbaijan and Russia. They were orthodox Christians and even before the genocide had been subject to abuse from the Turkish Muslim majority.

In January 1915 Turkey, which entered WWI on the side of the Germans, attempted to push back the Russians at the battle of Sarıkamış, only to suffer the worst Ottoman defeat of the war. Although poor generalship and harsh conditions were the main reasons for the loss, the Young Turk government sought to shift the blame to Armenian treachery. Armenian soldiers and other non-Muslims in the army were demobilized and transferred into labour battalions. The disarmed Armenian soldiers were then systematically murdered by Ottoman troops, the first victims of what would become genocide. About the same time, irregular forces began to carry out mass killings in Armenian villages near the Russian border.

A man surveying human bones in the Syrian desert

Throughout summer and autumn of 1915, Armenian civilians were removed from their homes and marched through the valleys and mountains of Eastern Anatolia toward desert concentration camps. The deportation, which was overseen by civil and military officials, was accompanied by a systematic campaign of mass murder carried out by irregular forces as well as by local Kurds and Circassians. Survivors who reached the deserts of Syria languished in concentration camps, many starved to death, and massacres continued into 1916. Conservative estimates have calculated that some 600,000 to more than 1,000,000 Armenians were slaughtered or died on the marches. Other estimates suggest the genocide reduced the Armenian population in the area by 90 percent.

Globe accounts of the genocide from 1915

Iraq, Kurdistan Province –

California –

Dignitaries speak from the heart and eloquently before Laying of Flowers caps the day.

One hundred and seven years ago today the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians began at the hands of the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) in the Ottoman Empire.

In front of City Hall on a bright, clear Saturday afternoon and before more than a hundred people and several guest speakers that numbered Mayor Jess Talamantes, State Senator Anthony Portantino, State Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, Armenian National Committee of America, Burbank chapter chairman Sarkis Simonian, Board of Education member Steve Ferguson, proclaimed this a Day of Remembrance and concluded with Laying of Flowers to commemorate this horrific atrocity.

Every speaker was eloquent and powerful, and each reminded the crowd to never forget the past and to honor those who lost their lives.

They also noted that days like this are for the younger members in the throng who need to continue to remember what their parents and grandparents have done to keep their ancestors’ memory alive.

As of this year, 31 countries have recognized those tragic events that took place from 1915 through 1917 as genocide, including this country under President Joe Biden.

“Burbank does have a large Armenian community. We live so close to Glendale. So today means that we are in solidarity with the Armenian community, and we show them support,” Talamantes said. “As far as the genocide, we completely agree with the Armenian community and the nation that there were some atrocities done that shouldn’t have happened. Some people have ignored them or just said it never happened, but we acknowledge that it did happen, and we are in full support of the Armenian community.”

Portantino also stands wholeheartedly behind the Armenian community.

“The Armenian community has been under a threat for more than a century,” he said. “Obviously the genocide was 107 years ago, but even in the late 1880s there were attempts to kill and harm the intelligentsia of the Armenian community in Turkey, so there’s been an assault on the community for over a century.”

Portantino went on: “With the recent activity in Artsakh and the aggression on the border by Azerbaijan and the Turks, it just continues,” he said. “It’s important for us as non-Armenians in California to stand in solidarity with our friends and neighbors from the Armenian-American community and to say we condemn the atrocities that are going on in Armenia and Artsakh and we stand in solidarity and most importantly, with respect for this proud, resilient community.”

Friedman, who represents the 43rd District, spoke about an individual in her speech who denied the Armenian Genocide.

“I found out last Thursday when someone from the Turkish counsel came to oppose the Genocide Resolution that we do every year in the Capitol,” she said. “That there are genocide deniers that are still out there. And when you erase history, you leave the door open for it to repeat.”

Freidman added: “We have to acknowledge that these are atrocities so that the next time they happen, and they do continue to happen, the world can say this is exactly what we don’t want to allow,” she noted. “This is what we have to stop and here’s why: We didn’t stop it over a hundred years ago and millions of people were killed. We didn’t stop it in the 1930s in Germany and nine million were killed. So, we can’t erase and forget history. It teaches and it reminds us.”

Simonian gave his thoughts on the ceremony. “Being an Armenian and my grandparents being survivors of the genocide and everybody here are survivors of the genocide, so it’s really meaningful to us because it reminds us that the thing continues, especially with what happened in Artsakh two years ago,” he pointed out. “How can you forget anything when it’s happening every couple of years?”

Simonian continued: “When Armenians are being killed and ethnically cleansed, so this is a reminder. I would say to people: Imagine what would happen if we were not doing this? If we’re not reminding people about it? How bold they would actually be when nobody is watching them, just calling their shots. It’s not just honoring their memory, but also preventing others in the future,” he said. “We don’t want other people to go through what we went through. The Holocaust happened because nobody said anything about the Armenians. Even [Adolf] Hitler mentioned that. Who remembers the Armenians? Now imagine what’s happening in Ukraine. It’s happening also in Armenia. So, it’s going to happen to every small country when nobody cares about them. So, we don’t want that.”

More photos at the link below: 

Sunday marks the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, and the Los Angeles-based Armenian Genocide Committee is commemorating the day with music, talks and scholars.

Mihran Toumajan, the committee’s chair, said he hopes the virtual event will generate a deeper understanding of Armenian culture and history.

Watch the program on the committee’s Facebook page

“It’ll include interviews with activists who are working on the frontlines to raise awareness about the continued destruction and erasure of Armenian cultural heritage that’s happening right now in a part of the homeland known as Artsakh,” he said.

Southern California has the largest population of Armenians outside Armenia and the community here has been instrumental in raising awareness of the tragedy in recent years.

On Friday, Governor Gavin Newsom issued a proclamation declaring as “A Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide” in the California.

“On April 24, 1915, the Ottoman Empire began its systematic genocide of Armenian people, a minority group that had long been treated as second-class citizens,” Newsom wrote. “Today and every day, let us recommit ourselves to making certain that we never forget the Armenian Genocide, and that we always speak out against hatred and atrocities anywhere they occur.”

On a national level, a bill introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives last week would fund education about the Armenian Genocide through the Library of Congress.

And a year ago, President Biden formally recognized the Ottoman Empire’s killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians as genocide. That recognition had long been sought by the Armenian community.