100 YEARS AGO; Armenia 1915's Genocide By Turkey

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       

Turkey after WWI on October 8, 1920

There is never an excuse for causing the genocide of a people. This means an extermination of a race.   A country may give their reason, but it only shows that they did not have the humane capacity to think of a good solution to an easy problem .  Turkey is still in denial. they had tried to exterminate all the Armenians living in Turkey.   There were foreign  people living in the Ottoman Empire.  It covered much of the world.  Jews were in Palestine and Christians of Armenia were actually then living in Turkey.  The Turks are Muslims. 1.2 million Armenians were killed from 1915 to 1918 in an ethnic cleansing.

                                         HERE ARE EVENTS LEADING UP TO THEIR DEATHS
                     JEWS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT BUT WERE IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

The Turks occupied the Greek city of Salonica in 1430.  Salonica, and after 1492 when Jews were seeking new lands in lieu of having to convert to Catholicism and immigrating to Constantinople (Turkey)  were centers for Jews.  The Greeks took back Salonica in 1912, just before WWI.  With 80,000 Jews, it was mainly a Jewish city.

Turkey was represented by the Ottoman Empire.  Jews were in Salonica when it was taken by the Empire in 1430.   They were in Constantinople (Istanbul) when it was taken in 1453.  After 1492 when Spain made its ultimatum that Jews were either to convert or leave the country quickly,  the Sultans opened the gates of the Ottoman Empire generously to the refugees from Spain, and later from Portugal and other places. and the Turkish Jewish community, mainly of Sephardi Jews, were very important community members.  They were favored as a trading and artisan asset.  They acted as the counterpoise to the possible disloyal Christian minorities.

Palestine became part of the Empire in 1517.  So was Egypt, Yemen, Iraq and others.  Jews had the normal Muslim code held on them, but not always strictly.  Jews such as Joseph Nasi and Solomon Ashkenazi were able to use their influence in the state.
                                                                     

Ottoman Empire

Then things changed and became harsher for the Jews.
The Ottoman Empire became the 3rd largest Jewish community  after Russia and Astro-Hungary Empires with a. 350,000 population by 1900.  From there on the Ottoman Empire faced gradual disintregration and Jews slowly came under other authorities, which was worse.

With the 1st Balkan War and WWI, the Ottoman Empire was destroyed. They went through all their money as well.
                                                                       

Turkey had the Armenian War from 1915 to 1923.  The Ottoman Empire had rounded up and arrested 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders living in Constantinople on April 24, 1915, the middle of WWI.  The Empire had sided with Germany in the war and were a part of the Axis.
                                                                         

They also then took many men for forced laborers through army conscripts.  Then they deported the women, children, elderly and infirm and had them in death marches leading to the Syrian desert.  They were driven forward by military escorts and were deprived of food and water.  Along the way they were robbed, raped and then massacred.

Other groups such as Christians, Assyrians and the Ottoman Greeks were also targeted for extermination by the government of the Ottoman Empire.  Their treatment was part of the same genocidal policy.  Armenians were suffering from being wiped out in many communities.

The total number of people killed was between 800,000 to 1.5 million.  This was picking on non-Muslims. The Armenians' deaths were done in  an organized manner, meant to eliminate them all.   23 countries have officially recognized the mass killings as a genocide, but Turkey refuses to accept this.  It seems to have showed us early on what man is capable of doing to another different group, a prelude to the Nazi actions.

                                     England's Mandate in Palestine started after WWI in 1920.

Jews in Palestine were siding and fighting with England in WWI when under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, but being in Palestine were in the clear as far as coming under pogroms from the Ottoman Empire.  The Jewish Palestinian population in 1915 was 83,000.  In 1896 the Jerusalem Jewish population was 28,112, and by 1922, after WWI, it was 33,971.
                                                                   

Armenia

For 3,000 years, Armenians had lived there in what is known as Anatolia which is the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa.  They were ruled by Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, and Mongols.  Mount Ararat was part of their kingdom that came into being in 600 BCE, later than the Israelite Kingdom.  Their choice of being the first Christian kingdom probably caused this rift with the Ottoman Empire, though they had accepted Jews.
                                                                     

Abdul Hamid II, Sultan of Ottoman Empire 1876-1909

Fighting started between 1894 and 1896, just when Jews were still coming to Palestine.  The Sultan was ordering pogroms against the Armenians.  They slaughtered 100,000.  By 1908, the younger Turks got the older ones to stop such practice and become more in tune with the times.  It didn't last long.  There was a coup in 1913 and the War started in 1914 with a new batch of Turks that were power-hungry. 1915  to 1918 saw 1.2 million Armenians killed by Turks.

This genocide was an example to Hitler who copied it and used the taking of Poland as a need for space.  Seeing no one bothered when the Ottoman Empire killed off all the Armenians, he decided to do the same thing to the Poles.  Isn't this like all the nations?  Monkey See-Monkey do.  They learn by example.  If there's no punishment, they will continue to get away with the same behavior.

However, Turkey's side of the issue  was:  
1. "Rather, they point to an empire at the verge of collapse fighting for survival on various fronts, 
2. major European powers strategizing, at least since the 1870s, to exploit the spoils, including the manipulation of ethnic groups like the Ottoman Armenians, 
3. politically-motivated missionary activities within Ottoman Turkey (possibly coming from the Armenians) , 
4. radicalization and militarization of nationalistic Armenian groups, some of whom joined forces with the invading Russian army in the hope of creating an ethnically homogenous Armenian homeland.  
In other words, the Armenians were seditionists, a 5th column working against the government.  They had their own agenda in the fight and were taking advantage of the situation the Ottoman Empire found themselves in.  

An Armenian leader of that time, Katchaznouni, who became the first Prime Minister of the short lived independent Armenian Democratic Republic stated the following in 1923: “In the fall of 1914 Armenian volunteer units organized themselves and fought against the Turks…We had no doubt that the war would end with the complete victory of the Allies; Turkey would be defeated and dismembered…”   So within Turkey they had Armenians who were helping the enemy, and this brought on their total slaughter.  The Ottomans could not think of ways that were humanitarian to stop their help, evidently.  Their lack of humaneness.  

                                                                                    

German soldier 1914

Why did the Ottomans side with Germany August 1914

1. 1913's German military mission organized the Turkish army and navy and brought in the Turco-

German alliance.  

2. The Turkish Minister of War, Enver Pasha, was an opportunist.  He was one of 5 people in Turkey who knew that they had signed a secret treaty with Germany on August 2, 1914.   The Turkish people never knew what was going on.  

Enver Pasha (1881-1922)  

3. Germany had put pressure them to join by dangling their early victories.  Turkey was having problems with the Triple Entente.  

4.  Turkey joining caused Romania and Bulgaria to join the Axis team.  

5. Allies had interests in the Turkish Straits but didn't plan a defense of Turkey from Germany

Resource:  http://www.timesofisrael.com/why-israel-still-refuses-to-recognize-a-century-old-genocide/ Armenia-Turkey

http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-armenian-jews-where-they-came-from.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/2009/05/the-armenian-genocide-1915-1923
http://www.mfa.gov.tr/the-events-of-1915-and-the-turkish-armenian-controversy-over-history_-an-overview.en.mfa
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/ottoww1.html
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/demograhics.html
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/ww1.html
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-armenian-genocide-anniversary-20150424-htmlstory.html