Source: FSSPX.NEWS
October 31, 2019
On October 29, 2019, the United States House of Representatives, by a vote of 405-to-11, officially recognized the 1915 genocide perpetuated by the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) against its Armenian population. In the years that followed, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians perished.
The Genocide in Context
As the Ottoman Empire began to fracture during the First World War, attitudes within the government and military began to turn against the Empire’s Armenians, most of whom were Christian. After a failed 1914 military action to take back territories lost to the Russian Empire in the eastern region of modern-day Turkey, Armenians in the territory were accused of supporting the Russians. Subsequent military setbacks combined with a general distrust of the Armenian Christians as pro-Russian traitors prompted a series of targeted attacks on military-age Armenian men. This first wave of anti-Armenian animus culminated in the April 1915 arrest and assassination of approximately 250 Armenian intellectuals and leaders.
The following month, the Ottomans began to mass deport the Empire’s Armenians under the pretext they were a security threat. In reality, this deportation effort resulted in horrendous death marches where the Armenians were deprived of food, water, and shelter. Tens of thousands died during this period. Moreover, Armenian women and girls were subject to repeated sexual abuse, gang rapes, sex slavery, and murder.
Concentration camps were also established to hold the surviving Armenians, but they hardly provided a reprieve from genocide. Many in the camps died of disease and starvation, and thousands were rounded up and burned alive. Other terrors, including mass drownings and physician-assisted killings, contributed to the atrocities. Those who managed to survive the genocide scattered into nearby countries such as Russia or sought asylum further abroad. For all intents and purposes, the Empire’s Armenian population was eradicated.
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