The Armenian Genocide
Background Information
On April 24, 1915 many Armenians awoke to their own deaths. Everywhere you looked massacres took place, and Armenians suffered. Death marches were held every single day, to the point where it seemed like it was a daily routine. Do you know how devastating that is to fear every day of your life, because it could be you next in the death roll? Well Thousands and thousands of Armenians have experience this phobia. The people responsible for this horrendous crime are the people from the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire consisted of Turkish people, whom wanted to exterminate the whole Armenian population. The Armenian genocide is a dreadful crime that people world-wide should be informed about and should take into consideration.
Armenian Lives
Thousand upon thousands of Armenians were killed due to the Turks.
The killing started on 1915 when Ottoman authorities arrested around 250 Armenian teachers, scholars and community
leaders. Thus, massacres, death marches, and the Armenian genocide began. The
Ottoman Empire took away the Armenian’s independent and political privileges.
For example, they made policies to move some of the Armenian population into
their Ottoman capital (Dhilawala 28-29). After time and time of constant
warfare, thousands of Armenians were reported murdered and thousands more were
reported to go next in the “death toll” (Hintz 46-50).
Ottoman Empire
Talat Pasha, leader of the Ottoman Empire
The unnecessary and cruel massacres that took
place during the Armenian genocide were horrible actions towards the innocent
victims. The Turks had a wide variety of approaches in exterminating the
Armenians. The main techniques were the death marches toward the desert,
deportations, underground chambers, and by a process of actions.The Turks had a well-organized plan of
elimination the Armenians.They also used the Istanbul-Bagdad railway
system to transport tens of thousands of Armenians to the desert, and even the
Armenian employees of the railway were ordered by Talat Pasha to kill prominent
men at Constantinople. Thus, lawyers, clerics, government workers, and more
Armenians were killed (Vartanian p15).
Genocide Map
This is the map of the genocide during 1915-1923
The 3 major massacre sites with the most deaths reported were the Sepastia, Bitlis, and Der-el-Zor. Alogn with them are the second to largest reported massacre sites with less deaths, but the same effect were Kharpert, Van, Erroum ,etc. The other massacre sites were substantially less than the others, but does it really make a difference if in that place they killed 1,000 people or 10? No, the fact is they tortured and murdered innocent victims throughout Armenia, Turkey, Syria, and parts of Iraq. Concentration camps were scattered along Syria, where tens of thousands of people were horrifically tortured.
