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Today, April 24, President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, in connection with the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide, visited the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex and paid tribute to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide: the President laid a wreath at the memorial and flowers at the eternal flame in memory of the innocent victims of Mets Yeghern.
After the ceremony, as stated in a statement from the presidential press service, Serzh Sargsyan also visited the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, examined the unique exhibits dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the independence of the Republic of Armenia, the temporary exhibition “From Yeghern to the Restoration of Independence” and exhibits intended for the exhibition dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Armenian Genocide memorial complex.
In connection with the day of remembrance of the victims of the Armenian Genocide, Serzh Sargsyan delivered a traditional message, which reads:
“Today is April 24 - Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Armenian Genocide. We invoke the memory of our holy martyrs. The massacre, carried out under the pretext of resettlement, was a state plan of the Ottoman Empire, which was carried out with exceptional, unprecedented cruelty and tenacity.
On April 24, 1915, Armenian history, going back thousands of years, was divided in two: before this tragic date and after it. The fragments of the miraculously saved Western Armenians scattered throughout the world, becoming the Armenian Diaspora.
The material, cultural and political losses of the Armenians are immeasurable, but the greatest loss is the people who were the bearers of an ancient, rich and original civilization.
It is our duty, the living, not only to remember and respect them, but also to live, work and fight with redoubled energy, also for them. Live, work and fight with a life-affirming worldview, believing in goodness, humanity and justice.
More than a century has passed since that monstrous date of 1915. We know what we have gone through during this time and we know that we have conquered death. The heroic Artsakh struggle is evidence that we will not allow a new genocide. We will never allow it again!
The revival of the Armenian people is a reality, and this became a reality thanks to the descendants of the surviving people. The restoration of Armenian statehood in their native land became a reality thanks to these descendants, the revival of Armenian culture and science became a reality thanks to these descendants.
During this time, we have given the world a whole constellation of creative geniuses. Also, through the great Armenians, the world learned what happened to us and learned that they are the descendants of a people who were on the verge of destruction.
I list all this to emphasize the gigantic vital and creative potential of our people and my unshakable faith in our capabilities and in the future. Yes, in 1915 we found ourselves in hell, but if on the way back to life we found the strength for great achievements, then in the conditions of an independent state in the 21st century we will be able to do more.
Today, April 24, on the day of remembrance of the victims of the Armenian Genocide, we will climb the Tsitsernakaberd Hill or visit other monuments in different settlements of Armenia and abroad. Let us remember that this annual procession is a procession of a reborn people who have not forgotten what they left behind, but look forward with confidence.”
YEREVAN, April 24. News-Armenia. The Armenian people around the world remember on April 24 the victims of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire. 2017 marks the 102nd anniversary of the tragedy, the victims of which were about 1.5 million Armenians.
Every year, on this day, the leadership of the republic, together with tens of thousands of citizens from the capital and regions of the country, lay wreaths and flowers at the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial in Yerevan.
This year, on Genocide Remembrance Day, the names of candidates for the second Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, the Armenian equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded for exceptional contributions to the preservation of human lives and the promotion of humanist ideas, will be announced.
The award ceremony, which is expected to be attended by Hollywood star George Clooney and the first winner of the award, Marguerite Barankits, will take place on May 28.
On the day of the Armenian Genocide, the first concert of the “All-Armenian Orchestra” will also take place with the participation of 90 professional musicians of Armenian origin from 20 countries. Among them are the world famous Hasmik Papyan, Hasmik Torosyan and Liparit Avetisyan.
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The concert will take place at the National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater named after A. Spendiaryan. The program included works by Armenian composers. At the concert, composer Tigran Mansuryan will perform for the first time, which he dedicated to the heroes of the April 2016 war.
History of the Genocide
The physical extermination of Armenians on ethnic grounds in Ottoman Turkey in 1915 was the first genocide of the 20th century. April 24 is considered a symbolic day of remembrance for the victims of a planned crime aimed at destroying the Armenian people.
It was on this day in 1915 in Constantinople (Istanbul) that about a thousand representatives of the Armenian intelligentsia - scientists, writers, artists, teachers, doctors, publicists, representatives of the clergy, public figures - were arrested and subsequently killed.
The second stage of the “final solution” of the Armenian Question was the conscription of about 300 thousand Armenians into the Turkish army, who were later disarmed and killed by their own Turkish colleagues.
The third stage of the Genocide was marked by massacres, deportations and “death marches” of women, children and the elderly into the Syrian desert. During the deportations, hundreds of thousands of people were killed by Turkish soldiers, gendarmes and Kurdish gangs. The rest died from hunger and epidemics. Thousands of women and children were raped, and tens of thousands were forcibly converted to Islam.
On the eve of World War I, two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. About one and a half million were destroyed between 1915 and 1923. The remaining half a million Armenians were scattered throughout the world.
But the history of the targeted extermination of Armenians is not limited only to the period of the Genocide. After the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-1878. The Christian peoples of the Balkan countries were freed from the yoke of the Ottoman Empire. By 1912, the Ottoman Empire had lost almost all of its possessions in Europe, except for Istanbul and its environs. As a result, the most numerous Christian people remaining under the imperial yoke were the Armenians of Western Armenia.
In order to maintain its power in the Asian part of the territory, the government of the Ottoman Empire set the task of forcibly assimilation or destruction of Western Armenians who were preventing the creation of a pan-Turkic state.
The systematic policy of exterminating Armenians in their historical homeland began in the 90s of the 19th century and reached its peak during the First World War.
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The direct organizer of the genocide was the Young Turk Party "Unity and Progress", which was supported by the government of Kaiser Germany, an ally of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. The organizers of the crime managed to escape punishment, but the leaders of the Young Turks were found and destroyed by Armenian patriots in different parts of the world.
The best representatives of the world intellectual elite spoke in support of the Armenian people during the years of the Genocide: Anatole France, Franz Werfel, Valery Bryusov, Maxim Gorky, Fridtjof Nansen and many others.
International recognition
The first international reaction to the extermination of the Armenians was expressed in a joint statement by Russia, France and Great Britain in May 1915, which defined the atrocities against the Armenian people as “new crimes against humanity and civilization.”
The superpowers warned the Sublime Porte of responsibility for this crime. Decisions concerning the situation of Armenians in 1916, 1919, 1920 were made by the American Senate.
The first special decree in the world recognizing and condemning the terrible tragedy of 1915 was adopted by the Parliament of Uruguay (April 20, 1965). Laws, regulations and decisions on the Armenian Genocide were subsequently adopted by the European Parliament, the State Duma of Russia, and the parliaments of other countries, in particular Chile, Austria, Cyprus, Argentina, Canada, Greece, Lebanon, Belgium, France, Sweden, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Poland , Germany, Venezuela, Lithuania, as well as the Vatican.
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The Armenian Genocide was recognized by 44 American states, the Brazilian states of Sao Paulo, Ceara, Parana, the Australian state of New South Wales, Catalonia, the Basque Country, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario, the Swiss cantons of Geneva and Vaud, the Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires and Cordoba, over 40 Italian communes, dozens of international organizations, including such authoritative ones as the World Council of Churches, the Association of Genocide Scholars, the League of Human Rights, the Elie Wiesel Humanitarian Foundation, and the Union of Jewish Communities of America.
In 2015, on the eve of the centennial anniversary of the Genocide, a new wave of recognition began. The parliaments of Chile and Austria made a corresponding statement, the President of Germany called the incident genocide.
Nevertheless, the legal successor of the Ottoman Empire, modern Turkey, denies the fact of the Genocide, reacting sharply to the process of international recognition and condemnation of this crime and using methods of diplomatic pressure against parliaments and entire countries. The object of such pressure is also the United States, which has not yet recognized and condemned the Genocide at the state level, fearing that this step will spoil relations with its strategic ally, Ankara.
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US Presidents traditionally address the Armenian people on April 24 with words of sympathy and support. However, the term “genocide” in these appeals is replaced by other formulations: “massacre”, “pogroms”, “great tragedy”.
The previous occupant of the White House, Barack Obama, who before his election promised to officially recognize and condemn the Armenian Genocide, several times used the Armenian expression “Mets Yeghern” in his traditional address, which means “genocide” in Armenian.
Attempts to pass resolutions condemning the Genocide are also being made in the US Congress. The “Group of Friends of Armenia”, operating in the legislative body of the United States, as well as authoritative Armenian lobbying organizations are actively working in this direction. -0--
YEREVAN, April 24 – RIA Novosti, Hamlet Matevosyan. Armenians around the world mark the mournful date on April 24, remembering the victims of the 1915 genocide in Ottoman Turkey, which killed more than 1.5 million Armenians.
Many states and international organizations recognized the actions of the then Turkish authorities as genocide.
In Yerevan on Sunday evening, according to tradition, a procession took place to the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial to the Victims of the Genocide. The same processions took place in regional centers - Gyumri, Vanadzor, Ijevan, Armavir.
On Monday, the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, Speaker of Parliament Galust Sahakyan, Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, members of the government and parliament members, the diplomatic corps accredited in the republic, numerous guest politicians, cultural figures and intellectuals from different countries will visit the Memorial. An ecumenical funeral service will take place at the Cathedral of St. Gregory the Illuminator in Yerevan.
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By 1914, there were approximately 4.1 million Armenians worldwide. Of these, 2.1 million lived in the territory of the Ottoman Empire, 1.7 million in Russia, 100 thousand in Persia and 200 thousand in other countries of the world.
In 1915-1923, according to Armenian historians, about 1.5 million Armenians were killed in the Ottoman Empire, more than 60 Armenian cities and 2.5 thousand villages were burned and plundered. About 1 million fled or were deported by the Turks to Mesopotamia, Lebanon, and Syria.
“The true purpose of the deportation (of the Armenians) was robbery and destruction; it is indeed a new method of massacre. When the Turkish authorities ordered these deportations, they were in effect pronouncing the death sentence on an entire nation,” wrote the US Ambassador to Turkey in 1913-1916, Henry Morgento .
The genocide caused the dispersion of Armenians, who today mostly live outside their historical homeland. In today's Turkey, with the exception of Istanbul, where an approximately 50,000-strong Armenian community remains, there are practically no Armenians left.
For more than 100 years, Armenian public and political organizations have been fighting in various countries around the world for official recognition and condemnation of the Armenian genocide of 1915. In 1987, the European Parliament adopted a corresponding resolution. Of the individual countries, Uruguay was the first to recognize genocide in 1965, then France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Canada, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Vatican, Bolivia, Czech Republic, Austria, Luxembourg.
In 1995, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted a resolution “On condemnation of the genocide of the Armenian people of 1915-1922 in their historical homeland - Western Armenia.”
The Armenian Genocide was also recognized by the World Council of Churches. Of the 50 US states, 44 states have officially recognized and condemned the Armenian genocide, and also declared April 24 as the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide. The issue of recognition of the Armenian genocide has been repeatedly raised in the US Congress, but so far this has not happened.
Armenian-Turkish relations
The issue of recognition of genocide is one of the main obstacles to the normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey. In modern Turkey, the fact of the mass deportation of Armenians during the First World War is not denied, but they categorically refuse to recognize it as genocide. As a result, Yerevan and Ankara have not yet established diplomatic relations, and the 330-kilometer border has been closed since 1993 on Turkey’s initiative.
The process of normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations began at the initiative of Armenian President Sargsyan only in the fall of 2008. On September 6, 2008, Turkish President Abdullah Gul visited Yerevan for the first time at the invitation of Sargsyan to jointly watch a football match between the national teams of Armenia and Turkey as part of the qualifying cycle for the 2010 World Cup.
A meeting of the heads of two neighboring states took place there, which was called a historical event in Turkey. This visit was called “football diplomacy” and was widely covered in the world press. In turn, Sargsyan visited Turkey on October 14, 2009 to watch the return match between the football teams of the two countries.
Then, in October 2009, the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Turkey Edward Nalbandian and Ahmet Davutoglu signed in Zurich the “Protocol on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations” and the “Protocol on the Development of Bilateral Relations,” which must be ratified by the parliaments of the two countries. However, on April 22, 2010, Sargsyan signed a decree suspending the process of ratification of the Armenian-Turkish protocols, saying that Turkey was not ready to continue the process that had begun.
The Armenian Church filed a lawsuit against Turkey in the European CourtThe Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia of the Armenian Apostolic Church filed a claim against Turkey with the European Court of Human Rights for the return of property, according to the Catholicosate's Facebook page.The process of ratification of documents by the Turkish Parliament is frozen. On August 22, 2011, parliament removed almost 900 bills from the agenda, including the Armenian-Turkish protocols. The main reason for the withdrawal of the protocols was the position of the parliament, which considers the issue of opening the Armenian-Turkish border to have lost its priority in Turkey’s political course. In addition, according to the regulations of the Turkish parliament, an issue that is not adopted by the parliament within one half of the year loses its legal force. Although on September 24, 2011, the Turkish government returned the Armenian-Turkish protocols to the parliamentary agenda, the timing of their ratification has not yet been determined.
Today, April 24, Armenia and Armenians around the world celebrate the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.
The Armenian genocide refers to the massacre of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
These beatings were carried out in different regions of the Ottoman Empire by the government of the Young Turks, who were in power at that time.
The first international response to the violence was expressed in a joint statement by Russia, France and Great Britain in May 1915, which defined atrocities against the Armenian people as "new crimes against humanity and civilization." The parties agreed that the Turkish government should be punished for committing the crime.
Why was the genocide against the Armenians carried out?
With the outbreak of the First World War, the Young Turk government, hoping to preserve the remnants of the weakened Ottoman Empire, adopted a policy of pan-Turkism - the creation of a huge Turkish Empire, absorbing the entire Turkic-speaking population of the Caucasus, Central Asia, Crimea, the Volga region, Siberia, and extending to the borders of China. The policy of Turkism assumed the Turkization of all national minorities of the empire. The Armenian population was considered the main obstacle to the implementation of this project.
Although the decision to deport all Armenians from Western Armenia (Eastern Turkey) was made at the end of 1911, the Young Turks used the outbreak of World War I as an opportunity to carry it out.
How many people died during the Armenian Genocide?
On the eve of World War I, two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. About one and a half million were destroyed between 1915 and 1923. The remaining half a million Armenians were scattered throughout the world.
Mechanism for carrying out the Genocide
Genocide is the organized mass destruction of a group of people, requiring central planning and the creation of an internal mechanism for its implementation. This is what turns genocide into a state crime, since only the state has the resources that can be used in such a scheme.
April 24, 1915, with the arrest and subsequent extermination of about a thousand representatives of the Armenian intelligentsia, mainly from the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople (Istanbul), the first stage of the destruction of the Armenian population began. Nowadays, April 24 is celebrated by Armenians all over the world as the day of remembrance of the victims of the Genocide.
Second stage The “final solution” of the Armenian question was the conscription of about three hundred thousand Armenian men into the Turkish army, who were later disarmed and killed by their Turkish colleagues.
Third stage The genocide was marked by massacres, deportations and death marches of women, children and the elderly into the Syrian desert, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed by Turkish soldiers, gendarmes and Kurdish gangs, or died from hunger and epidemics. Thousands of women and children were subjected to violence. Tens of thousands were forcibly converted to Islam.
The last stage Genocide is the total and absolute denial by the Turkish government of the massacres and extermination of Armenians in their own homeland. Despite the process of international condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, Turkey continues to fight against its recognition by all means, including propaganda, falsification of scientific facts, lobbying, etc.
Based on materials from the official website of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute
On April 24, Armenian communities around the world commemorate the victims of the genocide that killed one and a half million people, approximately a third of the nation at the time. Of course, there is a lot of conditionality here. Firstly, when the extermination of Armenians unfolded in the Ottoman Empire, the concepts genocide didn't exist yet. But the Polish Jew Raphael Lemkin, who later coined the term and introduced it into international legal use, had as his fundamental example the extermination of the Turkish Armenians. Conditionally, secondly, the number of victims. Researchers take into account various sources; It is hardly possible to reduce dissimilar terms to a single answer. Thirdly, it is conditional that casualties usually include only human losses. But the Armenian people also lost their ancestral territory, on which they were steadily formed by the last centuries of the pre-Christian era. Geographical symbols and shrines - Ararat, Lake Van - were taken away from him by superior force. He lost thousands of man-made monuments, the first being architectural - fortresses, churches, khachkars. Countless manuscripts, manuscripts, church and book paintings disappeared irretrievably. And finally, the day of remembrance of the victims itself is conditional, because genocide is not a one-time event. The executioners could not complete their tedious work in either a week or a year. Historians date the Armenian catastrophe to 1915−1923, some insist on a broader scope: 1893−1923. And in fact, the waves of pogroms, subsiding for a short while, rolled for decades across the Armenian Highlands, which occupied a good quarter of the vast Ottoman Empire, and across its other cities and villages - Armenians, where more and where less, lived in almost all its ends. By the way, the geographical name itself—the Armenian Highlands—becomes a victim. They are persecuting him with persistence and anger, replacing him with the much more uncertain Eastern Anatolia.
The “broad” dating is easy to confirm. Peculiar milestones of the Great Massacre are the publications dedicated to it in different countries: the monumental Russian volume “Brotherly assistance to the Armenians who suffered in Turkey” (1897 and 1898), the American “Red Book” (1897) with the subtitle “The last holistic and accurate assessment of the massacre by eyewitnesses”, French two-volume “Yellow Book” (1897). And in the next century: the “White Book” (1904) - mainly British diplomatic messages, the “Orange Book” - one and a half hundred documents (1912-1914) of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the London “Blue Book” (1916) by James Bryce...
So April 24 is, no doubt, a conditional date. But for several hundred Constantinople intellectuals - doctors, writers, lawyers, architects - this particular day became fatal, and only then did it turn into a symbol. The arrests, it’s easy to guess, took place at night; While foreign diplomats and correspondents were figuring out what had happened, the intelligentsia, taken from pre-compiled lists, were sent into exile, to remote places far from the capital. Almost none of those deported survived. Perhaps the only exception was Komitas, a musician with a European name. Having heard his lecture and concert in Paris, Claude Debussy said about one folk melody he arranged: “If Komitas had not created anything else, he would have left his mark on art.” In an attempt to hush up the scandal, the composer was returned home. But what he experienced side by side with the others forever clouded his mind; he died twenty years later in France, in a mental hospital...
Among the dead were many writers, publishers, and journalists. Let's limit ourselves to just one name - lawyer and prose writer Grigor Zohrab. Neither membership in the Ottoman parliament, nor even close acquaintance, in fact, friendship with a member of the ruling triumvirate, Talaat Pasha, saved him.
A particularly heavy blow fell on poetry. Its prominent representatives Siamanto, Daniel Varuzhan and Ruben Sevak were killed in exile. If we remember that during the years of great terror in Yerevan, the greatest poet of that time, Yeghishe Charents, and the greatest prose writer, Aksel Bakunts, died, then the repressions caused unprecedented damage to Armenian literature. By the way, just as Stalin’s terror of the 30s is often said to be the thirty-seventh, in the same way the Armenian tragedy is often briefly referred to as the “genocide of the fifteenth” or simply “the fifteenth.”
And everything is clear to everyone.
