Today marks the 110th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks at the turn of the 20th century, which is widely recognized as the first genocide of the 20th century. It is estimated that 1.5 million Armenians perished during this systematic extermination campaign.
This brutal, systematic campaign is often regarded as part of the broader ethnic cleansing operation of what extreme nationalist Turkish forces deemed as non-Turks in Anatolia, which included Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians.
A plethora of historical, journalistic, diplomatic, and international literature of the day, as well as countries’ official state archives, affirm it was a premeditated crime, executed with calculated precision by the Young Turks, a nationalistic movement led by Mustafa Kemal, who later became the founding father of the modern state of Tukey. The methods employed included forced deportations, extreme hardship, torture, starvation, dehydration, and death camps located in the desert.
Hitler: Who Remembers the Armenians
Citing an excerpt of a speech delivered by Adolf Hitler in 1939, historian Kevork B. Bardakjian in his book “Hitler and the Armenian Genocide” notes, “Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness — for the present only in the East — with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) that we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?
Numerous testimonies, found in international literature and the official archives of many countries, document this horrific crime. The genocide of the Greeks occurred in parallel with similar genocides committed against other Christian populations within the Ottoman Empire—namely, the Armenians and the Assyrians.
On the occasion of the anniversary, the leader of the Greek opposition party PASOK, Nikos Androulakis, stated, “It is our duty to continuously fight for the preservation of historical memory and the international recognition of the crimes of the Genocide of the Armenians, the Assyrians, and all Greek populations of Asia Minor and Pontus.” “This is humanity’s only safeguard against the repetition of such atrocities in the future,” he emphasized.
Greece is among 32 countries and international institutions, including the European Parliament, that have recognized the Armenian Genocide through various official bodies. These also include Germany, France, and Australia, while the United States recognized it via a House and Senate Resolution in 2019. To this day Turkey refuses to recognize the crime.
