Turkey’s Hypocrisy Exposed by Israeli Recognition of Armenian Genocide

Turkey’s Hypocrisy Exposed by Israeli Recognition of Armenian Genocide Israel's recognition of the Armenian Genocide is an important step toward historical truth and exposes the profound hypocrisy of Turkey's genocide accusations against Israel while it continues to deny its own history.

Turkey’s Hypocrisy Exposed by Israeli Recognition of Armenian Genocide Key Takeaways:

Israel’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide affirms an essential historical truth. Acknowledging one of the twentieth century’s first genocides reinforces the principle that mass atrocities must be remembered honestly, regardless of political convenience. Turkey’s genocide accusations against Israel are undermined by its own century-long denial of the Armenian Genocide. While insisting the destruction of over 1.5 million Armenians was merely a wartime tragedy without genocidal intent, Ankara simultaneously labels Israel’s war against Hamas a genocide. History demonstrates that genocide denial carries consequences. Hitler’s infamous question, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” serves as a reminder that erasing past atrocities can embolden future perpetrators

My mother’s parents came here from Turkey before 1910.

WIKI

The Hamidian massacres, also called the Armenian massacres, were massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1890s. Estimated casualties ranged from 100,000 to 300,000, resulting in 50,000 orphaned children. The massacres were named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who, in his efforts to maintain the imperial domain of the declining Ottoman Empire, reasserted pan-Islamism as a state ideology. Although the massacres were aimed mainly at the Armenians, in some cases they turned into indiscriminate anti-Christian pogroms, including the Diyarbekir massacres, where, at least according to one contemporary source, up to 25,000 Assyrians were also killed.

The massacres began in the Ottoman interior in 1894, before they became more widespread in the following years. The majority of the murders took place between 1894 and 1896. The massacres began to taper off in 1897, following international condemnation of Abdul Hamid II. The harshest measures were directed against the long-persecuted Armenian community as its calls for civil reform and better treatment were ignored by the government. The Ottomans made no allowances for the victims on account of their age or gender.

massacres of Armenians broke out in Constantinople and then engulfed the rest of the Armenian-populated vilayets of Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Erzurum, Mamuret-ul-Aziz, Sivas, Trebizond and Van. Thousands were killed at the hands of their Muslim neighbours and government soldiers, and many more died during the cold winter of 1895–96.

William Sachtleben, an American journalist who happened to be in Erzurum after the massacre there in 1895, recounted the grisly scene he came across in a lengthy letter to The Times:

What I myself saw this Friday afternoon [November 1] is forever engraven on my mind as the most horrible sight a man can see. I went with one of the cavasses of the English Legation, a soldier, my interpreter, and a photographer (Armenian) to the Gregorian [i.e., Armenian Apostolic] Cemetery ....Along the wall on the north, in a row 20 ft (6 m) wide and 150 ft (46 m) long, lay 321 dead bodies of the massacred Armenians. Many were fearfully mangled and mutilated. I saw one with his face completely smashed in with a blow of some heavy weapon after he was killed. I saw some with their own necks almost severed by a sword cut. One I saw whose whole chest had been skinned, his fore-arms were cut off, while the upper arm was skinned of flesh. I asked if the dogs had done this. “No, the Turks did it with their knives.”

The telegraph spread news of the massacres around the world, leading to a significant amount of coverage of them in the media of Western Europe, Russia and North America.

The chief dragoman (Turkish interpreter) of the British embassy wrote that the reason the Ottomans committed these atrocities was because they were “guided in their general action by the prescriptions of Sheri [Sharia] Law. That law prescribes that if the ‘rayah’ [subject] Christian attempts, by having recourse to foreign powers, to overstep the limits of privileges allowed to them by their Mussulman masters, and free themselves from their bondage, their lives and property are to be forfeited, and are at the mercy of the Mussulmans. To the Turkish mind, the Armenians had tried to overstep these limits by appealing to foreign powers, especially England. They, therefore, considered it their religious duty and a righteous thing to destroy and seize the lives and property of the Armenians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamidian_massacres

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