Islam - This Day in History - The Armenian Genocide 1915 - 2021

The Armenian Genocide Forges On

by Raymond Ibrahim

April 24, 2021 at 5:00 am

*** "At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000.... denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present." — The Genocide Education Project.

*** Not only has Turkey repeatedly denied culpability for the Armenian Genocide; it appears intent on reigniting it, most recently by helping Azerbaijan wage war on Armenia in the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, which again erupted into armed conflict in late 2020.

*** "Why has Turkey returned to the South Caucasus 100 years [after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire]? To continue the Armenian Genocide." — Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Facebook, October 1, 2020.

*** These mercenaries and their Azerbaijani partners, among other ISIS-like behavior, "tortured beyond recognition" an intellectually disabled 58-year-old Armenian woman by hacking off her ears, hands, and feet -- before murdering her. Her family was only able to identify her by her clothes.

*** Answering the question, "If you could get away with one thing, what would you do?" -- asked to random passersby on the streets of Turkey -- a woman recently replied on video: "What would I do? Behead 20 Armenians." She then looked directly at the camera and smiled while nodding her head.

*** Much of this genocidal hatred should be unsurprising: Turkish public school textbooks, as a recent study found, continue demonizing Armenians -- as well as Jews and Christians.

Armenian churches have been desecrated after coming under Azerbaijani control during and since the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute erupted into armed conflict in late 2020 -- despite promises from the Azerbaijani authorities to protect them. Pictured: The Ghazanchetsots (Holy Saviour) Cathedral in Shusha, Nagorno-Karabakh, on October 13, 2020, shortly after it was bombed. (Photo by Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)

Today, April 24th, is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, marking 106 years since the start of the Armenian Genocide, when the Ottoman Turks massacred approximately 1.5 million Armenians during World War I.

Most objective historians who have examined the topic unequivocally agree that it was a deliberate, calculated genocide. According to the Genocide Education Project:

"More than one million Armenians perished as the result of execution, starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse. A people who lived in eastern Turkey for nearly 3,000 years [more than double the amount of time the invading Islamic Turks had occupied Anatolia, now known as "Turkey"] lost its homeland and was profoundly decimated in the first large-scale genocide of the twentieth century. At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000.

"Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present."

Not only has Turkey repeatedly denied culpability for the Armenian Genocide; it appears intent on reigniting it, most recently by helping Azerbaijan wage war on Armenia in the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, which again erupted into armed conflict in late 2020.

As Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia's prime minister, observed in October 2020: "Why has Turkey returned to the South Caucasus 100 years [after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire]? To continue the Armenian Genocide."

During this recent conflict, which did not concern it, Turkey sent sharia-enforcing "jihadist groups." According to French President Emmanuel Macron, they -- including the pro-Muslim Brotherhood Hamza Division were sent from Syria and Libya to terrorize and slaughter Armenians. The Hamza Division reportedly kept naked women in prison while operating in Syria.

These mercenaries and their Azerbaijani partners, among other ISIS-like behavior, "tortured beyond recognition" an intellectually disabled 58-year-old Armenian woman by hacking off her ears, hands, and feet -- before murdering her. Her family was only able to identify her by her clothes.

"Armenians," according to a December 2020 report, "are being brutalized" and have "lost territory to their jihadist neighbors before agreeing to a cease-fire enforced by Russia.... Prior to violating the so-called peace agreement, the Turkish Muslims of Azerbaijan did as Muhammad commanded in beheading Christians."

The report linked to a video of soldiers in camouflage overpowering a struggling, elderly Armenian man to the ground, before casually carving at his throat with a knife.

"Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of violating the peace deal first," the report continues, "but observers note the only provocation Muslims need to attack Armenians is their continued existence."

Anti-infidel rhetoric underscores this view. A captured terrorist confessed that he was "promised a monthly 2000 dollar payment for fighting against 'kafirs' in Artsakh, and an extra 100 dollar for each beheaded 'kafir.'" (Kafir, often translated as "infidel," is Arabic for non-Muslims who fail to submit to Islamic authority, which by default makes them enemies worthy of slavery or death.)

Armenian churches that came under Azerbaijani control have been desecrated -- despite promises from the Azerbaijani authorities to protect them. In one instance, a soldier -- it is unclear whether he was an Azeri or a jihadi mercenary from Syria or Iraq -- was videotaped standing on top of a church chapel, where the cross had been broken off, and triumphantly shouting "Allahu Akbar!" Azerbaijani forces also shelled and destroyed Holy Savior, an iconic Armenian cathedral which was "consecrated in 1888 but was damaged during the March 1920 massacre of Armenians of the city by Azerbaijanis and experienced a decades-long decline."

More recently, according to a March 29, 2021 report, during just two weeks, at least three Armenian churches in the Nagorno-Karabakh region were recently vandalized or destroyed by Azerbaijani forces -- even though a ceasefire had been declared in November. Video footage of the desecration of one of these churches shows Azerbaijani troops entering the Christian place of worship, and then laughing, mocking, kicking, and defacing Christian items inside it, including a fresco of the Last Supper. Turkey's flag appears on the Azerbaijani servicemen's uniforms, further implicating the Erdogan government of involvement. As they approach, one of the Muslim soldiers says, "Let's now enter their church, where I will perform namaz" -- a reference to Muslim prayers; when Muslims pray inside a non-Muslim temple, it immediately becomes a mosque.

In response to this video, Arman Tatoyan, an Armenian human rights activist, issued a statement:

"The President of Azerbaijan, and the country's authorities have been implementing a policy of hatred, enmity, ethnic cleansing and genocide against Armenia, citizens of Armenia and the Armenian people for years. The Turkish authorities have done the same or have openly encouraged the same policy."

As an example, he said that Azerbaijan's President Aliyev had proudly stated in early March that "the younger generation has grown up with hatred toward the enemy " -- meaning Armenians.

Such hate, a precursor to genocide, seems evident everywhere. One need only listen to a Turkish man rant in a video about how all Armenians are "dogs," and that any Armenians found in Turkey should be slaughtered:

"What is an Armenian doing in my country? Either the state expels them or we kill them. Why do we let them live?... We will slaughter them when the time comes.... This is Turkish soil. How are we Ottoman grandchildren?.... The people of Turkey... have honor, dignity, and Allah must cut the heads of the Armenians in Turkey. It is dishonorable for anyone to meet and not kill an Armenian... If we are human, let us do this—let us do it for Allah.... Everyone listening, if you love Allah, please spread this video of me to everyone..."

Answering the question, "If you could get away with one thing, what would you do?" -- asked to random passersby on the streets of Turkey -- a woman recently replied on video: "What would I do? Behead 20 Armenians." She then looked directly at the camera and smiled while nodding her head.

Much of this genocidal hatred should be unsurprising: Turkish public school textbooks, as a recent study found, continue demonizing Armenians -- as well as Jews and Christians.

If Turks, who are not affected by the Armenian/Azerbaijani conflict, feel this way, why it should be a shock that any number of Azerbaijanis do, too? "We [Azerbaijanis]," noted Nurlan Ibrahimov, head of the press service of Qarabag football club of Azerbaijan, "must kill all Armenians—children, women, the elderly. [We] need to kill [them] without [making a] distinction. No regrets, no compassion."

Today, therefore, marking the anniversary of the start of the Armenian Genocide, we would do well to remember not only what happened then, but what is clearly being primed to happen again.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Sword and Scimitar, The Al Qaeda Reader, and Crucified Again, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Follow Raymond Ibrahim on Twitter and Facebook

Armenian Genocide - The Massacres of 1915 - Can it Happen Again?

Historian Unearths Evidence that Istanbul Directed Armenian Genocide

Where was God in the Armenian 'Genocide' by Ottoman Turks?

Islam - Current Day - History Gearing Up to Repeat the Very Worst of Itself

Erdogan's Ottoman Empire Ambitions Suffering from His Own Eroding Base

This may have been the first time I accused Erdogan of wanting to re-establish the Ottoman Empire with himself as Caliph. I still believe that is his goal. Miss Turkey Faces Prison for Anti-Erdogan Instagram Post

Islam - Current Day - History Gearing Up to Repeat the Very Worst of Itself

..

What a perverse and evil generation that allows history to repeat the worst of itself in less than a century. Antisemitism is rising rapidly in the world just 75 years after the Holocaust, and the Armenian genocide seems to be getting ready to prove again the real purpose of Islam is to destroy Christianity and Judaism, and the media are largely silent.

Armenian Churches Under Attack at the Hands of

Azerbaijan and Turkey

JAN 2, 2021 4:00 PM

BY UZAY BULUT

While many historic churches across Turkey are systematically used for sacrilegious purposes, churches in the Azerbaijani occupied-Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucuses) are bombed. Their statues, bell towers and other symbols are destroyed, bulldozed or vandalized by Azerbaijani forces.

Churches and other elements of Armenian cultural heritage in the parts of Artsakh that are now occupied by Azerbaijan have been attacked by Muslim Azeris. The Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi, also known as Holy Savior Cathedral, for instance, was severely damaged from two air raids conducted by the Azerbaijani military on October 8. Videos of the destruction reveal extensive external and internal ruin. This includes broken pews, scattered rubble and a partially collapsed ceiling, reported the Armenian Weekly.

From September 27 to November 10, Azerbaijan targeted Armenians in the Armenian Republic of Artsakh throughout its invasion campaign of the region with the support of Turkey and Al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters imported from Syria.

Through a deal brokered by Russia and imposed on Armenia on November 9, parts of Artsakh were granted to Azerbaijan. War crimes committed by the Azerbaijani government during that period – such as indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas, beheadings of civilians and prisoners of war, and the destruction of Armenian graves – are widely documented.

For instance, some of the crimes committed against churches by Azeri forces from November 12 to 19 included:

One of the angel statues at Ghazanchetsots was destroyed and Ghazanchetsots was desecrated with graffiti. Garegin Njdeh statue and the cross on Mekhavan’s St. Zoravor Astvatsatsin church were also destroyed by Azerbaijani soldiers. The Statue of Vazgen Sargsyan was vandalized. Another statue in Artsakh was bulldozed and bell towers of Kanach Zham bell was destroyed.

Yet the international community has remained deaf and blind in the face of these blatant crimes and Azerbaijan remains a proud perpetrator. On December 23, the Armenian media reported:

All previous attempts to involve UNESCO in preservation of cultural heritage within the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have been thwarted by Azerbaijan, Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Anna Naghdalyan said.

The comments come after the UNESCO Secretariat publicly announced that only Azerbaijan has not responded on sending an expert mission of UNESCO to the Nagorno-Karabakh and the adjacent areas, in fact, clearly highlighting Azerbaijan’s destructive approach.

“Let me remind that upon the request of the Armenian side regarding the barbaric destruction of the cross-stones (khachkars) in Old Jugha, UNESCO expressed readiness to visit the region, but it was rejected by Azerbaijan,” the Spokesperson added.

Meanwhile, violations against historic churches across Turkey are ongoing. The Surp Yerrortutyun Church in the Aksehir district of the province of Konya in Turkey has been converted into a “cultural center,” the weekly Armenian newspaper Agos reported on December 28. The church is known as one of the once largest Armenian churches in Anatolia.

The former church will be used as the “The Art House of Humor Masters of the World.” The official date of the opening has not yet been announced.

The Aksehir district no longer has an Armenian Christian population because of the 1914-23 Christian genocide by Ottoman Turkey, in which around 1.5 million Armenians perished. Around 1 million Greeks and Assyrians also lost their lives during the same genocide.

According to professor Raymond Kevorkian’s book Armenians in the Ottoman Empire Before 1915, an approximately 4,950 Armenians lived in Akşehir, Konya before the genocide. In addition to the Surp Yerortutyun Church (built in 1859) there were also four Armenian educational institutions in the district. Among these schools, the Surp Istepannos School was famous in all provinces for its “superior education quality.”

Despite being a small and oppressed community today, Armenians are among the most ancient peoples of Asia Minor. What is now Turkey was colonized by the Turkic peoples originally from Central Asia during the eleventh century after the Seljuk Turks arrived in Asia Minor and vanquished the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Manzikert. Historian Raymond Ibrahim refers to the invasion of Manzikert as “the first genocide of Christian Armenians at the hands of Muslim Turks.”

Yet despite severe persecution and the second class “dhimmi” status, the presence of Armenians and other Christian peoples remained in the region during the Seljuk and later the Ottoman rule.

This situation dramatically changed when Armenians were targeted in massacres by Ottoman Turks and Kurds between 1894–96 and during the genocide of 1914-23. During these attacks, Armenian cultural heritage was also systematically violated. Author Raffi Bedrosyan writes in his 2011 article “Searching for Lost Armenian Churches and Schools in Turkey”:

Considering that every Armenian community invariably strove to build a school beside its church, how many Armenian schools were there in Turkey before 1915, and how many are there now? How many Armenian churches and schools are left standing now in Turkey is the easier part of the issue: There are only 34 churches and 18 schools left in Turkey today, mostly in Istanbul, with about less than 3,000 students in these schools. The challenging and frustrating issue is how many were there in the past.

Recent research pegs the number of Armenian churches in Turkey before 1915 at around 2,300. The number of schools before 1915 is estimated at nearly 700, with 82,000 students. These numbers are only for churches and schools under the jurisdiction of the Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate and the Apostolic Church, and therefore do not include the numerous churches and schools belonging to the Protestant and Catholic Armenian parishes. The American colleges and missionary schools, mostly attended by Armenian youth, are also excluded from these numbers. The number of Armenian students attending Turkish schools or small schools at homes in the villages are unknown and not included. Finally, these numbers do not include the churches and schools in Kars and Ardahan provinces, which were not part of Turkey until 1920, and were part of Russia since 1878.

As researchers are striving to determine the exact number of lost or stolen Armenian schools and churches in their ancient lands in Turkey, Armenian lives and their churches are currently being targeted and destroyed in Artsakh.

Turkey and Azerbaijan, two historic perpetrators of crimes against Christians, are once again brutalizing Armenians in the indigenous Armenian lands before the eyes of the entire world.

What are the Christians in the West and the global human rights community doing today to stop these crimes and demand security and basic human rights for the Armenian people?

Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist and political analyst formerly based in Ankara.

Islam - Current Day - Rocket Blows-Up Children in Home; Islam Restarting Armenian Genocide; Links to Muslim Horror Stories

Three children among five civilians killed in rocket attack

outside Baghdad airport

28 Sep 2020

Baghdad International Airport. © Reuters / Thaier al-Sudani

Two women and three children were killed when two Katyusha rockets struck a residential area near Baghdad airport on Monday, Iraq’s military has said, in what were the first civilian casualties in months from attacks in the city.

The rockets apparently targeted the airport but ended up hitting a nearby home, which was completely destroyed. Besides the five fatalities, two children were also severely wounded in the attack.

The strike came from the Iraqi capital's al-Jihad neighborhood, the military said in a statement. It described the incident as a “cowardly crime” by “gangs” looking to sow chaos and to terrorize the population.

Iraqi PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi has ordered that those who fired the rockets be brought to justice, the statement read.

Rocket attacks have intensified in Iraq in recent weeks, targeting the US embassy in Baghdad, American troops and the airport.

Washington has blamed Shia militias with links to Iran, who have intensified their activities after Tehran’s top military commander, Qassem Soleimani, was assassinated in a US drone strike outside Baghdad airport in January.

The deteriorating security situation has prompted the US to threaten to shut down its Baghdad embassy altogether if Iraqi authorities won’t deal with the militias.

Preparations for the withdrawal of diplomatic staff were being made at the US mission in Baghdad over the weekend, American and Iraqi sources told Reuters.

Armenia braced for LONG WAR in Nagorno-Karabakh, PM Pashinyan's adviser warns saying Turkey behaves like ‘regional terminator’

28 Sep 2020 

FILE PHOTO © RIA Novosti / Ilya Pitalev

The ongoing fighting over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region is unlikely to end quickly, a top Armenian official has warned. He said Yerevan is preparing for a protracted conflict, not least because of Turkey’s role in events.

“We are preparing for a long-term war. Why? Because, I say it again, the main player here is not Azerbaijan but Turkey,” Vagarshak Harutyunyan, a senior adviser to Armenia’s Prime minister Nikol Pashinyan told a Latvian YouTube channel on Monday. 

Turkey, a close partner for Baku but a historical foe for Yerevan, is “directly involved” in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian-populated landlocked enclave within Azerbaijan. Fierce fighting erupted on the disputed region’s borders on Sunday, with both Armenian and Azeri troops using heavy weaponry, large-caliber artillery, and combat aircraft in the clashes.

Harutyunyan, formerly Armenia’s Defense Minister, spoke of the universal conscription call-up recently issued in his own country as well as Nagorno-Karabakh, indicating that he wasn’t convinced the conflict will end any time soon.

The duration of the war will depend on many factors: on how the hostilities will proceed, [and] on the reactions of the international community.

The PM’s aide has further criticized Turkey, suggesting it is using Azerbaijan and “push[ing] it towards war in order to achieve its geopolitical goals in this region.” Ankara “behaves like a regional terminator, and is practically at war with all of its neighbors,” Harutyunyan opined.

Earlier, Baku denounced allegations of Turkish involvement in the crisis. “There is no foreign interference,” Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency.

Turkey has vocally supported Baku since the border fighting started, with top officials pulling no punches when it came to blaming Armenia for escalating the conflict. Earlier on Monday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Armenian “occupation” of Nagorno-Karabakh – which he described as “Azerbaijani land” – must end to secure peace in the region.

So far, there has been no proof presented of any material support provided by Turkey. However, Yerevan claims Turkey had transported some 4,000 Syrian militants to Azerbaijan to help it gain the upper hand in Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku brushed aside these allegations, accusing its arch-enemy of funneling Syria-based “ethnic Armenian militants” into the region.

It's been a century since the Turkish Ottomans murdered, or drove 1.5 million Armenians from their homeland. It seems Erdogan thinks that is long enough - time to resume. He probably hates that there are Christians living in the midst of what was once the Ottoman Empire. I believe he has ideas on restoring that Islamic empire with himself as Caliph. However, he is not getting any younger and may be in a mood to rush things. 

Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion, an event traditionally dated to AD 301.

The predominant religion in Armenia is Christianity. Its roots go back to the 1st century AD, when it was founded by two of Jesus' twelve apostles – Thaddaeus and Bartholomew – who preached Christianity in Armenia between AD 40–60. Wikipedia

I don't suppose they could just trade Nagorno-Karabakh for the Nakhchivan Region?

Also see 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th and 8th posts on Today's Global Pervs and Paedos List for more stories of Islamic Insanity. 

Historian Unearths Evidence that Istanbul Directed Armenian Genocide

New documents suggest the Armenian genocide was both sanctioned and assisted by leaders of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul

By Brooks Hays

Armenian civilians, escorted by armed Ottoman soldiers, are marched to a nearby prison.

Photo by Wikimedia Commons

(UPI) -- Between 1914 and 1923, during and after World War I, hundreds of thousands of Armenians living in Turkey were systematically rounded up and murdered. Thousands more were forced to flee their homes. Some estimates put the death toll at more than 1.5 million.

Now, researchers say newly discovered documents suggest the Armenian genocide was both sanctioned and assisted by leaders of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul.

The fact that the Armenian genocide happened is well-accepted within academic circles. However, the Turkish government has continued to deny the culpability of their predecessors.

"The Armenian diaspora is trying to instill hatred against Turkey through a worldwide campaign on genocide claims ahead of the centennial anniversary of 1915," Turkey's president, Recep Erdogan, said in 2015. "If we examine what our nation had to go through over the past 100 to 150 years, we would find far more suffering than what the Armenians went through."

Erdogan's sentiments aren't without the support of the vast majority of the Turkish population. As the New York Times reported in 2015, a poll conducted by the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, an Istanbul research organization, fewer than one in ten Turks believe the government should label the atrocities genocide and apologize.

"Turkish government officials continue to use the same argument, the argument that the Ottoman government never had the intent," Taner Akçam, an Armenian genocide expert and history professor at Clark University in Massachusetts, told UPI. "They accept that there were casualties and some massacres, but they claim the Ottoman government was not able to control the remote areas and that some Kurdish tribes or bandits or some other group, they committed these kinds of crimes."

What was missing, Akçam said, was a "smoking gun" linking the atrocities to the Ottoman government. That's exactly what Akçam found.

"This new evidence is a major blow against Turkish denialist arguments," Akçam said.

His discovery suggests the genocide was indeed carried out on periphery, not by rogue agents and bandits, but by provincial governors. These governors were in communication with and assisted by leaders in Istanbul.

"This shows the radicalization process started in the provinces," Akçam told UPI.

The evidence, a series of telegrams transcribed, decoded and signed by Turkish officials, was discovered among a slate of new documents released into the Ottoman archive, a collection of historical documents in Istanbul, organized by the government and made available to researchers.

The newly discovered letters feature the first unambiguous use of the terms "extermination" and "annihilation" by Ottoman officials, both among the provinces and in Istanbul. Analysis of the signatures confirmed several of the transcribed telegrams were authored by Bahaettin Şakir, head of the para-military Special Organization and one of the architects of the Armenian Genocide.

Though the plan to exterminate all of the Armenians living in Turkey began as a provincial idea, the new evidence suggests Istanbul was eventually convinced to back the genocidal approach.

In addition to the documents retrieved from the Ottoman archive in Istanbul, Akçam also discovered similar letters -- transcribed telegrams -- that were used as evidence in tribunals organized by the postwar Ottoman government.

"There were 63 different trials and more than 200 defendants," Akçam said. "The materials from these court procedures went missing. Government officials never made these court proceedings available to researchers."

Researchers only knew about these tribunals from reports written by daily newspapers in Istanbul. A few of the verdicts were also published by the Ottoman government. But some of the documents from these tribunals ended up in the private archive of a Catholic priest in Armenia.

Among the tribunal documents, Akçam found transcribed telegrams using the same coding system -- a series of Arabic letters and numerals to represent words and suffixes -- found among the letters unearthed from the Ottoman archive.

"I went to the Ottoman archive, I discovered that this four digit coding system was the same for both sets of telegrams," he said. "The authenticity cannot be disputed, this was the major discovery."

The transcribed telegrams provided further evidence of communication between those carrying out the genocide in the provinces and military and political officials in Istanbul, including messages that Akçam characterized as "killing orders."

As to why these revealing documents were publicly released by a government intent on denying its predecessors culpability, Akçam guesses officials simply didn't read them thoroughly. The documents in the archives were summarized by officials before being released, and the summaries of the newly discovered telegraphs mention nothing of the details relating the Armenian genocide.

Akçam said his discoveries, summarized in the Journal of Genocide Research, will further solidify the truth of the Armenian genocide. It's a truth he hopes will soon be accepted by the Turkish government.

According to Akçam, the genocide has implications for the political situation in modern Turkey.

"Turks and the Turkish government has the same problems today with Kurds as the Ottomans had with Armenians in the past," he said. "Armenians were making demands for legal and social equality. The Kurds are making similar demands today."

As a result, Akçam said, the Kurds have been labeled as a security threat and the Turkish government has attempted to suppress these democratic demands.

"Without acknowledging historical wrongdoings, Turkey cannot establish a democratic future," Akçam said.

According to the historian, reconciling with the record of the Armenian genocide is essential for improved relations between Turkey and its neighbors.

"Speaking regionally, if you continue this policy of denialism, this means you have the potential to repeat the same policy against your neighbors," Akçam said. "This is why many of Turkey's neighbors consider the Turkish government a security threat. Without reconciling history, peace will not be achievable in the region."

Armenian Genocide - The Massacres of 1915 - Can it Happen Again?

BY: Ronald Grigor Suny, Encyclopedia Brittanica

Armenian Genocide, campaign of deportation and mass killing conducted against the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire by the Young Turk government during World War I (1914–18). Armenians charge that the campaign was a deliberate attempt to destroy the Armenian people and, thus, an act of genocide. The Turkish government has resisted calls to recognize it as such, contending that, although atrocities took place, there was no official policy of extermination implemented against the Armenian people as a group.

Armenians In Eastern Anatolia

For centuries the great mountain plateau of Eastern Anatolia—in present-day eastern Turkey—was inhabited primarily by Christian Armenians who shared the area with Muslim Kurds. In antiquity and the Middle Ages the area was ruled by a succession of Armenian dynasties, although it often faced incursions by outside powers. Armenian political independence was largely brought to an end by a wave of invasions and migrations by Turkic-speaking peoples beginning in the 11th century, and in the 15th and 16th centuries the region was secured by the Ottoman Turks and integrated into the vast Ottoman Empire. Armenians retained a strong sense of communal identity, however, embodied in the Armenian language and the Armenian Church. That sense of distinctiveness was fostered by the Ottoman millet system, which accorded non-Muslim minorities significant administrative and social autonomy.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were about 2.5 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire, mostly concentrated in the six provinces of Eastern Anatolia. A significant number of Armenians also lived beyond the eastern border of the Ottoman Empire, in territory held by Russia. In Eastern Anatolia Armenians lived intermixed with the dominant Kurdish nomads. Armenians did not constitute a majority in any of the regions in which they lived, although they often resided in homogeneous villages and neighborhoods within towns and cities.

Life for Armenian villagers and townspeople in the Ottoman Empire was difficult and unpredictable, and they often received harsh treatment from the dominant Kurdish nomads. Because local courts and judges often favoured Muslims, Armenians had little recourse when they were the victims of violence or when their land, livestock, or property was taken from them.

The great majority of Armenians were poor peasants, but a few found success as merchants and artisans. Armenians’ involvement in international trade led in the 17th and 18th centuries to the establishment of significant Armenian settlements in Istanbul and other Ottoman port cities and as far away as India and Europe. Although Ottoman society was dominated by Muslims, a small number of Armenian families were able to attain prominent positions in banking, commerce, and government. For several generations in the 18th and 19th centuries, for example, the chief architects of the Ottoman court were in the Armenian Balian family. The prominence and influence of the well-educated and cosmopolitan Armenian elite had a drawback, however, in that it became a source of resentment and suspicion among Muslims. In the 19th century Armenians struggled against the perception that they were a foreign element within the Ottoman Empire and that they would eventually betray it to form their own independent state.

Young Armenian activists, many of them from Russian Caucasia, sought to protect their compatriots by agitating for an independent state. They formed two revolutionary parties called Hënchak (“Bell”) and Dashnaktsutyun (“Federation”) in 1887 and 1890. Neither one gained wide support among Armenians in Eastern Anatolia, who largely remained loyal and hoped instead that sympathizers in Christian Europe would pressure the Ottoman Empire to implement new reforms and protections for Armenians. The activities of the Armenian revolutionaries, however, did stoke fear and anxiety among the Muslims.

Anti-Armenian feelings erupted into mass violence several times in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When, in 1894, the Armenians in the Sasun region refused to pay an oppressive tax, Ottoman troops and Kurdish tribesmen killed thousands of Armenians in the region. Another series of mass killings began in the fall of 1895, when Ottoman authorities’ suppression of an Armenian demonstration in Istanbul became a massacre. In all, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed in massacres between 1894 and 1896, which later came to be known as the Hamidian massacres. Some 20,000 more Armenians were killed in urban riots and pogroms in Adana and Hadjin in 1909.

The Young Turks And World War I

In 1908 a small group of Ottoman revolutionaries—the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), popularly referred to as the “Young Turks”—came to power. Armenians welcomed the restoration of the Ottoman constitution, and the promise of elections led Armenians and other non-Turks within the empire to cooperate with the new political order. Over time, however, the ambitions of the Young Turks became more militant, less tolerant of non-Turks, and increasingly suspicious of their Armenian subjects, whom they imagined were collaborating with foreign powers. Increasingly authoritarian, the Young Turks consolidated power and sidelined their more-liberal opponents, and in January 1913 the most-militant members of the party, Enver Paşa and Talat Paşa, came to power in a coup d’état.

Antipathy toward Christians increased when the Ottoman Empire suffered a humiliating defeat in the First Balkan War (1912–13), resulting in the loss of nearly all its remaining territory in Europe. Young Turk leaders blamed the defeat on the treachery of Balkan Christians. Furthermore, the conflict sent hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees streaming eastward into Anatolia, intensifying conflict between Muslims and Christian peasants over land.

Fearful Armenians capitalized on the Ottoman defeat to press for reforms, appealing to the European powers to force the Young Turks to accept a degree of autonomy in the Armenian provinces. In 1914 the European powers imposed a major reform on the Ottomans that required supervision by inspectors in the east. The Young Turks took that arrangement as further proof of the Armenians’ collusion with Europe to undermine the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire.

As World War I began in the summer of 1914, the Young Turks joined the Central Powers (Germany and Austro-Hungary) against the Triple Entente (Great Britain, France, and Russia). Because Armenians and Assyrians lived along the Russian-Ottoman front, both the Russians and the Ottomans attempted to recruit the local Christians in their campaigns against their enemies. The Young Turks proposed to the Dashnaktsutyun, by then the leading Armenian political party, that it convince Russian Armenians as well as those in Ottoman lands to fight for the Ottoman Empire. The Dashnaks replied that Armenian Russian and Ottoman subjects would remain loyal to their respective empires. That was seen by powerful Young Turks as an act of treachery.

Armenians in the Ottoman Empire fought alongside the Ottomans, while Armenian volunteer units made up of Russian subjects fought on the Russian side. In the areas where Ottoman and Russian troops faced each other, there were massacres of both Christians and Muslims.

Genocide

In January 1915 Enver Paşa attempted to push back the Russians at the battle of Sarıkamış, only to suffer the worst Ottoman defeat of the war. Although poor generalship and harsh conditions were the main reasons for the loss, the Young Turk government sought to shift the blame to Armenian treachery. Armenian soldiers and other non-Muslims in the army were demobilized and transferred into labour battalions. The disarmed Armenian soldiers were then systematically murdered by Ottoman troops, the first victims of what would become genocide. About the same time, irregular forces began to carry out mass killings in Armenian villages near the Russian border.

Armenian resistance, when it occurred, provided the authorities with a pretext for employing harsher measures. In April 1915 Armenians in Van barricaded themselves in the city’s Armenian neighborhood and fought back against Ottoman troops, On April 24, 1915, citing Van and several other episodes of Armenian resistance, Talat Paşa ordered the arrest of approximately 250 Armenian intellectuals and politicians in Istanbul, including several deputies to the Ottoman Parliament. Most of the men who were arrested were killed in the months that followed.

Soon after the defeat at Sarıkamış, the Ottoman government began to deport Armenians from Eastern Anatolia on the grounds that their presence near the front lines posed a threat to national security. In May the Ottoman Parliament passed legislation formally authorizing the deportation. Throughout summer and autumn of 1915, Armenian civilians were removed from their homes and marched through the valleys and mountains of Eastern Anatolia toward desert concentration camps. The deportation, which was overseen by civil and military officials, was accompanied by a systematic campaign of mass murder carried out by irregular forces as well as by local Kurds and Circassians. Survivors who reached the deserts of Syria languished in concentration camps, many starved to death, and massacres continued into 1916. Conservative estimates have calculated that some 600,000 to more than 1,000,000 Armenians were slaughtered or died on the marches. The events of 1915–16 were witnessed by a number of foreign journalists, missionaries, diplomats, and military officers who sent reports home about death marches and killing fields.

Causes And Consequences Of The Genocide

The Armenian Genocide laid the ground for the more-homogeneous nation-state that eventually became the Republic of Turkey. By the end of the war, more than 90 percent of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were gone, and many traces of their former presence had been erased. The deserted homes and property of the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia were given to Muslim refugees, and surviving women and children were often forced to give up their Armenian identities and convert to Islam. Tens of thousands of orphans, however, found some refuge in the protection of foreign missionaries.

An Armenian refugee camp in the Caucasus, 1920.

George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. 27082)

The Armenian Genocide had both short- and long-term causes. Although the expulsion and murder of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915–16 was an immediate response to the crisis of World War I and not the result of a long-held plan to eliminate the Armenian people, its deeper causes go back to Muslims’ resentment of Armenians’ economic and political successes—a reversal of traditional Ottoman social hierarchies that had Muslims superior to non-Muslims—and to a growing sense on the part of Young Turk leaders and ordinary Muslims that Armenians were an alien and dangerous element within their society.

Turkey has steadily refused to recognize that the events of 1915–16 constitute a genocide, even though most historians have concluded that the deportations and massacres do fit the definition of genocide—the intentional killing of an ethnic or religious group. While the Turkish government and allied scholars have admitted that deportations took place, they maintain that the Armenians were a rebellious element that had to be pacified during a national security crisis. They acknowledge that some killing took place, but they contend that it was not initiated or directed by the government. Major countries—including the United States, Israel, and Great Britain—have also declined to call the events a genocide, in order to avoid harming their relations with Turkey. In 2015 government officials in Turkey offered condolences to the Armenian victims, but Armenians remained committed to having the killings during World War I recognized as a genocide.

Just over 100 years ago is pretty recent history for such an astonishing act of genocide. It shows what can happen when a few ambitious Muslims take control of a government. Early in the second half of this century, European countries like France and Belgium will be predominantly Muslim and will be vulnerable to government takeovers like that of the Young Turks. It's almost too late to stop it.

From a more spiritual perspective - One might wonder why God would allow the slaughter of up to a million Christians in such a short period of time? I can't answer that; only God can, but I will point out that the Ottoman Empire and the Young Turks came to a very quick end at the hands of Ataturk, after ruling much of eastern Europe and western Asia for hundreds of years. 

Ataturk secularized the government of what became Turkey and the military ensured it stayed secular for the rest of the 20th century. Then came Erdogan, the ambitious Muslim, who replaced most of the top military officers with devout Muslim officers, loyal to Erdogan, not Ataturk's policy. 

Again, an example of how quickly a government can be taken control of by ambitious Muslims. 

One more issue I would like to raise and that has to do with the 12th Imam, the Mahdi. He appears in Muslim texts as the redeemer of Islam. He rules for 5, 7, 9 or 12 years before the Great Day of Judgment. In the Bible, He is the Antichrist. He brings in great destruction and the deaths of non-Muslims, or Muslim who do not embrace the murder of non-Muslims, before Jesus Christ returns and destroys him.

I want you to consider what will happen to ordinary, peace-loving Muslims living in Christian countries around the world when the Mahdi appears and performs miracles and demands Islam rise up and destroy the infidels wherever they are. Islam's real goal is to have a global caliphate where everyone worships Allah under Sharia Law. 

What is most disconcerting about all this is the left and far-left politicians are doing everything they can to enable this, from encouraging Muslim immigration, curbing free-speech criticizing Islam, to gun-control legislation. They, and the predominantly left-wing media hide or minimize Muslim atrocities from massacres of Christians, to grooming and raping thousands of young, white, British girls.

Suicide Attack Kills 3 at Christian Massacre Memorial in Syria

Found this story in the Manila Times

QAMISHLI, Syria: Three people were killed in northeast Syria on Sunday when a suicide bomber attacked an event commemorating the massacre of Christians more than a century ago, state media and a security source said.

The attack in the city of Qamishli took place as locals gathered at a hall to commemorate the deaths of tens of thousands of Christians by the Ottoman army starting in 1915 in what is known as the Sayfo (“Sword”) massacre.


Armenian Massacre, Turkey 1915

The Sayfo massacre was decidedly the Ottoman's (read Islam's) genocide of Assyrian Christians in southeast Turkey and northwestern Iran. It amounted to between 150,000 and 300,000 dead. It was done concurrently with genocides of Greek and Armenian Christians.

The Greek genocide was instigated by the government of the Ottoman Empire against the Greek population of the Empire and it included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches, summary expulsions, arbitrary execution, and the destruction of Christian Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. According to various sources, several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period.

The Armenian Genocide, also known as the Armenian Holocaust and the Armenian Massacres, was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of up to 1.5 million of its minority Armenian subjects inside their historic homeland, which lies within the present-day Republic of Turkey.

The Armenian community was made up of three Christian denominations: the Armenian Apostolic to which the overwhelming majority of Armenians belonged, and the Armenian Catholic and Armenian Protestant communities.


More Armenian Genocide, Turkey 1915

A photographer working with Agence France-Presse and attending the event said he heard the blast and saw pieces of flesh lying next to damaged cars.

“The suicide attacker tried to enter the hall where people were gathered but was stopped by local security forces, and he detonated himself among them,” a security source at the scene told AFP.

The security forces belonged to the Sotoro, a Christian militia based in Syria’s northeast.

“Three Sotoro members were killed and five wounded,” the security source said.

One Sotoro member told AFP that the suicide bomber “detonated himself near our checkpoint after he couldn’t reach his real target, Patriarch Ignatius.”

Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II is the head of the Syriac Orthodox church and was leading the commemoration.


More Armenians massacred by Ottomans, Turkey 1915-1919

Syria’s state news agency SANA also reported three people killed in a “terrorist suicide explosion” in Qamishli but did not specify whether they were civilians or security forces.

Situated along the border with Turkey, Qamishli has been regularly targeted by suicide bombings, many of which have been claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

Control of the Kurdish-majority city is split between Kurdish militia and pro-government fighters.

Syriac Christians belong to the eastern Christian tradition and pray in Aramaic. They include both Orthodox and Catholic branches, and constitute around 15 percent of Syria’s 1.2 million Christians. 
AFP

    Qamishli, Syria

Where Islam is involved, some things don't change!

Greek Officials Say Reading of Koran at Sacred Turkish Landmark 'Incomprehensible'

By Doug G. Ware
ISTANBUL, Turkey, June 7 (UPI) -- Greek foreign affairs ministry officials expressed opposition and disappointment in the Turkish government this week, for its allowing the reading of prayers from the Koran at a former religious landmark that remains sacred to both Christians and Muslims.


Turkey's Hagia Sophia museum, a UNESCO world heritage site since 1985, was formerly a Christian church, a Greek Orthodox cathedral and Imperial Ottoman mosque before it became a secular museum in 1935. The landmark is recognizable around the world for its iconic dome and unique architecture. File Photo by Mehmet Cetin/Shutterstock

The first prayer was read at Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, a former Byzantine cathedral, on Monday to mark the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. In addition to those in attendance, faithful throughout the heavily-Muslim nation also listened to the prayers via broadcast by the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT).

As Hagia Sophia is considered a sacred site to many for its history, Greece's Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to the prayer readings by saying they are inappropriate for such a revered and secular landmark.

"We condemn as regressive the Turkish authorities' announcement of the scheduling of a Koran reading in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, on the occasion of Ramadan," the ministry said in a statement Monday.

"Obsessions, verging on bigotry, with Muslim rituals in a monument of world cultural heritage are incomprehensible and reveal a lack of respect for and connection with reality," the ministry added. "Such actions are not compatible with modern, democratic and secular societies"

Turkey is no longer a secular society. Erdogan is slowly turning it into his own private caliphate!

Another Greek politician said the prayers amount to "disrespect against Orthodox Christians across the world."

Did you really expect Erdogan to respect Christians?

Turkish officials, though, decided last month to allow the Muslim prayers and broadcasts at the site, which is now a heritage museum, until the end of the month.

"Since the United States are siding with the PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party], and Germany has clung to the [Armenian] genocide lie, friendship has shifted," Samil Tayyar, a deputy for Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party, tweeted last week. "It's our turn. [Hagia] Sophia should be open for worship."

So, Christians will be allowed to worship there as well? The government's defence of the Ottoman slaughter of Armenians reveals the distance Erdogan has taken the country from Attaturk's secular vision of Turkey. That has been abandoned completely as Erdogan attempts to rebuild the Ottoman Empire with himself as Sultan.

Tayyar was referring to a resolution passed by Germany last week that considered mass killings of Americans (sic - Armenians) by Ottoman Turks in World War I a genocide. The declaration upset the Turkish government, which responded by recalling its ambassadors from Berlin.

Hagia Sophia, recognizable around the world for its large dome, was originally a Christian church and a Greek Orthodox cathedral centuries ago before it became an imperial mosque when the Ottoman Empire took power in the 15th century. It was turned into a secular museum in 1935 and designated a UNESCO world heritage site 50 years later.

Ramadan, a holy month of of fasting that commemorates the first revelation of the Koran to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, runs through July 5.

Marguerite Barankitse - A World Class Hero

Burundi

A deeply Catholic woman, Marguerite (“Maggie”) Barankitse is the founder of Maison Shalom, a complex of schools, hospitals, and a network of care extending throughout Burundi, and has focused on children’s welfare and rights while challenging ethnic discrimination. 



Born in 1957 in Ruyigi, southern Burundi, she grew up identified as a Tutsi in that ethnically divided country. After her father died when she was six years old, her mother raised Maggie and her brother, and she became a teacher.

When Burundi’s terrible civil war erupted in 1993, Barankitse, then 36 years old, had seven adopted children, both Hutus and Tutsis. She witnessed and was the victim of murderous attacks but survived.

She found herself caring for hundreds of children who had no one to care for them, prompting her to found Maison Shalom. It is believed she has affected, either directly or indirectly, the lives of 20,000 children.

She is the winner of many international awards, including the US$1 million Opus Prize in 2008.

Just today she was awarded the $1.1 million Aurora Prize, presented to her by George Clooney at a celebration of the 101st anniversary of the beginning of the Armenean genocide of 1.5 million people by the Ottoman Turks.

Marguerite Barankitse receiving Aurora Prize from George Clooney

Other prizes Maggie has been awarded:

1998 : « prix des droits de l'homme » (Human Rights award) of the French government

2000 : North-South Prize from the Council of Europe

2003 : World's Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child

2004 : Voices of Courage Award of the Women's Commission for Women and Refugee Children

2004 : Nansen Refugee Award

2008 : Opus Prize

2008 : UNESCO Prize

On November 24, 2011, Prize for Conflict Prevention presented by Kofi Annan.

You are a genuine modern-day hero, Maggie, and my hero of the year so far. God bless you!