Armenian Genocide

Can you imagine yourself living during the time that WWI was going on? I’m pretty sure you’d be terrified to even walk out of your house. Like it wasn’t bad enough that the whole world was at each other’s throat, but to know that your country may be at the hands of another leader. A leader who may have different perspectives on every day life, with the benefit of doubt that it may be extremely foreign to you, is pretty scary. I’m pretty sure that it would make you or anyone else feel extremely unsafe and uncomfortable. But imagine being unaware of the underlying plan to “cleanse” your ethnic group. The Armenian people faced this situation during the time of WWI. Life between the Turks (Armenia’s rival) and the Armenians was very complex. Not all Armenians hated the Turks, and not all

Turks hated the Armenians. Consequently, the Armenian people were not aware of any forms of annihilation that were being plotted at the time.

What exactly is the definition of a Genocide?? According to the World

Book Dictionary, genocide means: The systematic extermination or destruction of a political, racial, or cultural group1. When the word genocide is brought up, many people usually think of the Holocaust. Although the Holocaust was a massive tragedy, many don’t recall the Armenian Genocide. The Armenian

Genocide was just as terrifying as the Holocaust, and we should commemorate this tragedy. The people who are held responsible for this tragedy are a young group of Turks. Their plan was to exterminate all of the Armenian population.

The Turks desired a Turkish State that extended to Central Asia, and thus to carry through the unity of the Turkish speaking people. This creation of such a state would create what they call “Pan-Turkism”2.

The Armenians had their first taste of aggression by the Turks on April 24,

19153. Three hundred Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers, and professionals in

Constantinople were imprisoned in many parts of Turkey without any advanced warning. Shortly after they were imprisoned, they were brutally tortured and beaten by the Turkish authorities. Other methods of brutality included pulling out fingernails, teeth, and beards, branding on the chest with hot horseshoes and raising the feet abo...

... middle of paper ...

...everal facts that backed up my thesis. My sixth grade teacher once told me that a genocide seeks no difference between men and women, between children and adults. That it understands no righteousness and tolerates no principle which invests life with meaning and individuals with rights. The Turks believed it was okay to kill a

Armenian and to get away with it. They believed that it was okay to starve them and send them on “death marches”. They believed it was okay to rape the women, and it was okay to kill the men as well as the children. The Armenians were not humans in their eyes, they were considered animals, or even objects.

Mechanically operated robots of some sort, who were expected to walk practically-forever, in the middle of a deserted desert with nothing living within hundreds of miles away. No one to witness the killings. No one to hear their cries for help. No one to come and rescue them. And the Turks are blameworthy.

Between 1915-1923, more than one million Armenian lives were taken. It is described as the first genocide in the twentieth century. The people of Armenia suffered prolong despair, devastation, torture, and brutality that will remain in history forever.