It's historical fact that more than 650,000 Armenians (about 40% of the total population of 1.75 million) were mass murdered by the Ottomans in 1915-16. Incidentally, the term "genocide" was coined by the Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to describe Hitler's on-going holocaust. But what first drew his attention to the horrors of holocausts was the one conducted by Turks against Armenians. He used the term holocaust to describe any planned attempt to destroy an entire people or ethnic group - and that describes what happened to the Armenians. In fact, that catastrophe is often desrcibed as "the first genocide of the 20th century". In the early 4th century Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion. By the early 16th century most Armenians had become subjects of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Even though Turkey has always denied a genocide (which always presupposes a planned, premediated onslaught), even they can't dispute the reality of the numbers.
Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that between 300,000 and half a million Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife during World War I when Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with Russian troops invading the crumbling empire.
Apparently Turkey does not deny the deaths. For the life of me I cannot understand why a similar number of Ottoman Turk deaths matters not. Probably most of those deaths were at the hands of Russia and their Armenian allies. It was war -- W.W.I-style.
Another point that has me flummoxed is why is the modern secular Republic of Turkey founded in 1923 blamed for the crimes of the Ottoman Empire. I'd understand it more if modern Germany was being blamed for the crimes of the National Socialists. Go figure.
I'd appreciate any explanation preferably with nonpartisan sources which would allow me to do additional research. I have much respect for the Turks I've known and worked with in years past. Thanks.
Not related to you but yet another similar puzzle is Turkey is blamed for 30,000 Kurd deaths in Eastern Turkey. The Marxist PKK revolutionaries were just trying to get Kurd "rights" -- yet the current government of Kurdistan (northern Iraq) has no use for the PKK and wants nothing to do with them and to the best of my knowledge the Kurdistan government backs Turkey is Her efforts to destroy the PKK. Nevertheless from time to time someone posts accusations against Turkey and for the PKK.
Discombobulated in California.
Thanks for those facts. I didn't know Armenia was the first Christian state. Was it the Armenians who invented the device we call the Crusader's cross?