In the span of only two years, the Muslim Ottoman empire destroyed an entire ancient Christian civilization. The first genocide of the 20th century was not the massacre of Jews in Europe by the Nazis but it was carried out by the Islamic Ottoman Empire against the ancient Christian nation of Armenia from 1915–17.

Today’s eastern Turkey used to be the homeland of the first Armenian Christians which was the first empire to accept Christianity as a state religion. Armenian Orthodox Church is one of the most ancient and distinct groups of early Christian churches and communities. Yerevan, the Armenian capital, is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. Armenians used to be pagans before. And even after their conversion to Christianity, they maintained many pagan rituals such as their reverence for Mount Ararat.

However, Armenia usually suffered genocide by Muslim countries throughout its long history after the Muslim Turks spread into Anatolia (now Turkey). After the Islamization of neighboring countries, it was divided between Shia Islam in the east and Sunni Turkey in the west. Western Armenia, which was ruled by the Sunni Ottoman Empire, continued with atrocities, genocide, rape of Armenian women, etc. And eastern side was ruled by Russia.

300,000 Armenians perished in a massacre of Armenian Christians ordered by the Ottoman Sultan Hamid II in 1896. This foreshadowed the upcoming genocide of the Armenian people. The Adana Massacre, which saw 30,000 Armenian Christians killed by Turkish Muslims, took place in 1909. A political upheaval occurred in Turkey in 1908, and the Young Turks, a new generation of Turkish politicians, took power. They truly wanted to “purify” Turkey of minorities in order to create a “pure modern nation,” even if it meant committing genocide.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the occasional killings of Armenian Christians developed into a planned genocide. The massacre of Armenian Christians had begun in December 1914. The Turkish Muslim state wanted to completely eliminate the Armenians. The Armenians were asked to ‘hand over all weapons’ otherwise they were charged with ‘disobeying Turkish orders’ and would be executed en masse. Van, the ancient city of eastern Turkey, became one of the first centers of the 1915 Christian massacre.

When the Russians arrived in May 1915, they found 55,000 bodies of Armenian Christians, more than half of the Van population before the massacre. As of June 15, there were only 10 Christians left in this ancient stronghold of Armenian Christians.

Source: Twitter

When Ottoman armies entered Armenian villages to massacre Christians, the men were immediately killed and the women raped and abducted. Then nearby citizens and Kurdish Muslims took Christian children into slavery.

The Turkish Muslim organization that organized the massacre was called the Union and Progress Committee (CUP), ironically! The CUP absolutely did not want Armenian Christians to have any place in modern Turkey.
According to Ottoman Muslim records the solution was to reduce the Armenian Christian population to less than 5%, even in places where Armenians were more than 50%.

As a result, wherever Armenian Christians were in the war zone, they were killed. The strategy was different in the peace sector. Peace Zone Armenians were ordered to ‘march towards the Syrian desert, as they could not be relied upon during the war.
There was no show of tolerance in the barbaric Muslim state of the Ottomans. Sending Armenians to the desert was initiating another genocide and the Turks proudly accepted it. The Turkish state took over the houses, villages, and entire towns vacated by Armenian Christians.

Muslim imams were appointed by Ottoman Muslim authority to incite migrant Muslim tribes to murder Armenian Christians. Muslims who carried out the state’s orders and murdered Armenian Christians received financial awards.

In 1915, the massacre started. Armenian Christians were taken to the desert after being forced from their houses. The ladies and children were kept apart from the men, who were then shot first. The execution sites of Armenian Christians were chosen near highways, in rugged mountainous areas, and near lakes, wells, cisterns, and rivers so that bodies could be hidden and disposed of easily. Armenian Christians were thus taken on a death march. These caravans were accompanied by Turk Muslim soldiers. They demanded a ransom to save Armenian Christians knowing that no Armenian was actually able to pay them.

Camps were set up near Erzindajan to control the flow of killings. The bodies of the massacred Armenians were dumped in the nearby Kemah Wadi. Armenian Christians were forced to march without food and water. And whoever fell due to extreme exhaustion, was immediately shot, whether it was a child or a woman. There was so much massacre that Turkish highways would be covered for miles with the bodies of Armenian Christians.

Armenians were slaughtered in their millions and dumped into rivers. All of these rivers were used to connect to the massive Euphrates and Tigris rivers. There was so many Armenian dead dumped in these rivers that they got obstructed and required cleaning. Armenian Christians’ remains stuck on riverbanks. However, Turkish Muslims killed so many people that some Armenian bodies went more than 2000 kilometers via Iraq to get to the Persian Gulf.

Some Armenians had converted to Islam. Those who resisted were killed. Where they were more than 5%, they were massacred by the Ottomans. 99% of the Armenian Christians in Erzerum were massacred.

Armenian women were also abducted and used as sex slaves. During World War I, the markets of the Muslim city of Damascus sold many Armenian women – naked – like cattle. Many were sold in Arab markets and bought by Hajj pilgrims. During the two years of 1915–17, 1.5 million Armenian Christians were killed by Turkish Muslims, roughly half of the entire Armenian population. Only eastern Armenia which was under Russian control escaped such a fate.

But almost the whole of Western Armenia was massacred in one of the most barbaric and horrific genocides in the history of mankind. And it was a ‘necessary’ act to create a ‘pure Turkish Muslim nation state’, for modern Turkey.

Credit: https://twitter.com/PankajSaxena84/

DISCLAIMER: The author is solely responsible for the views expressed in this article. The author carries the responsibility for citing and/or licensing of images utilized within the text.