The Armenian Genocide Հայոց Ցեղասպանություն

On this day in 1915, the events which would eventually lead to the destruction of between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians began in the Ottoman Empire.

From Wikipedia:

The Red Sunday - (Armenian: Կարմիր Կիրակի) is the night which the leaders of Armenian community of the Ottoman capital, Constantinopole, and later extending to other centers were arrested and moved to two holding centers near Ankara by than the minister of interior Mehmed Talat Bey with his order on April 24, 1915 and later deported with the passage of Tehcir Law on 29 May 1915. In the larger framework of the Armenian Genocide the date 24 April, Genocide Remembrance Day, commemorates the Armenian notables deported from the Ottoman capital in 1915, which was a precursor to the ensuing events.

This precursor to the actual genocide saw around 270 notable Armenians deported from Constantinople. They included doctors, lawyers, teachers, writers, political leaders and clergy. A second wave of arrests swelled this figure to around 600 individuals.

The modern state of Turkey still insist that the word 'genocide' does not accurately depict the events which occurred; its government claims that mutual hostility led to civil war.

In reality the only hostility came from the fact that these non-Muslim 'dhimmis' might relinquish their second class status under secular democracy and would certainly concentrate power in certain regions; therefore they had to b destroyed, as did the Greeks, as did the Assyrians, and to a lesser extent as did the Kurds.

These events, and Turkey's refusal to accept them or the mindset which led to them, are a major reason why I see it as a backward, potentially dangerous state.

Like most Muslim countries, the Turks are more than happy to play the victim card when it suits them, but very rarely acknowledge the wrongs they have committed, and continue to commit.

Hypocrisy is not a very attractive trait - and after their behaviour in northern Iraq, that's exactly what their criticism of Israel's operations in Gaza is.

I would like this post to stand as a tribute to the Armenians killed in the early part of last century, and also to the current victims of the Turkish state.

We should never forget this slaughter and why it happened - nor should we forget who refuses to recognise it.