The massacres of the Armenians in Turkey were quite frequent and extensive in the last hundred years. The Armenians were the scapegoat of the Turks during the rapid decline of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The Armenians were also punished for their ability to be good businessmen and for being a Christian nationality that worked hard and managed to prosper even under the oppressive Ottoman Administration.

Enver Pasha and the Young Turk Party were never able to assimilate the different nationalities that made up the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, it became a matter of historical record, the slaughter of the various minorities throughout the empire, in order to achieve this goal of a pure national state. Within this political framework the Armenians have paid perhaps the greatest share of blood tax.

One can summarize the genocide of the Armenian nation by giving the figure of 300,000 dead during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid and 1.5 million killed under Enver Pasha and the Young Turk Party during World War I. Countless others were crippled or listed as missing. The Turkish State used every criminal method in order to complete this genocide: oppression, hunger, thirst, murder, rape, fire, cold, heat, and sword. The Turks used everything that could exterminate these innocent people whose only crime was their Armenian Nationality. We are not referring to those Armenians who were killed fighting the Turks in the battlefields during their revolution, but to the non-combatants, such as women, children, the sick and the old who perished during this period.

Unfortunately, these Turkish crimes have remained unpunished. An International Court has not condemned the holocaust of an entire nation to this date, and this impunity [unpunished crime] has permitted the Turks to repeat similar crimes against the Greek inhabitants of Asia Minor, the Syrian Orthodox people and recently, against the Cypriota.

The impunity of the assassins of the Armenian people became the inspiration to the Nazis in using similar methods of genocide against the Jews, the Poles, the Russians and the other nationalities during World War II. “Who remembers the Armenian Genocide?” said Hitler to justify these latter crimes.

The Armenian genocide still awaits its Nuremberg Trials. The impunity of the Turks undermines the concept of International Justice and Moral Law and is an offense against any civilized man on earth. We ask for recognition of our holocaust and that the punishment for the crime of Genocide be applied. Document #1 is a secondary source from Armenian-Genocide.org – Doc 1 Questions are below:

  1. According to the article, what is the writer’s perspective of why the Ottoman Turks wanted to eliminate the Armenians?
  1. What was the goal of the Young Turks, were they able to achieve this goal?
  1. According to the article have the Turks ever been punished for their crimes and what has been the result of the lack of action?
  1. According to the article, who did this genocide inspire and why do you think it was an inspiration for that group?
  1. What do the Armenian people want from Turkey in the future?