Armenian Genocide
From 1915 to 1918, the Turkish leaders of the Ottoman Empire carried out the killings of 1.5 million Armenians living there at the time. Over the course of those terrible 3 years, innocent people were murdered with death marches, execution, drowning, burning and other inhumane ways. Turkey has refused to take blame, and even denied the genocide’s existence and occurrence. There has been much dispute about whether or not countries outside of Armenia and Turkey should recognize these mass killings of Armenians in 1915-16 as a genocide or something else. The Ottoman Empire was multinational, but had always favored Muslims to Jews and Christians, so when World War I started and a substantial group of Christian Armenians were still in Turkey and
…show more content…
A lieutenant named Sayied Ahmed Moukhtar Baas, recounted some of the horrors that he saw and heard throughout his experiences deporting Armenians in 1915. Baas said that in July of 1915, he was given an order to deport all of the Armenians from the Vilayet of Trebizond. “Being a member of the Court Martial I knew that deportations meant massacres,” he said. There were no exceptions. In secret documents, there were orders to shoot and kill all Armenians without a trial. There were unproven conspiracies that Armenians had killed Muslim Turks, and that all of them needed to be killed for it, whether they be young or old, woman or man. However, it was not only the mass shootings of them that disturbed Baas, it was also the fact that many of the guards raped and abused the women and children before having them shot as well. The men would be separated from their families, and shot into a mass grave, while the women and children were hurt in unimaginable ways. Eventually the woman and older children would be shot, and the infants were, “taken out to sea in little boats. At some distance out they were stabbed to death, put in sacks and thrown into the sea,” says Baas. There was truly no mercy for the Armenians from the Turks, and after hearing about proof of what these horrible people did, it can be realized why the Turks really did not want to own up to this
A lieutenant named Sayied Ahmed Moukhtar Baas, recounted some of the horrors that he saw and heard throughout his experiences deporting Armenians in 1915. Baas said that in July of 1915, he was given an order to deport all of the Armenians from the Vilayet of Trebizond. “Being a member of the Court Martial I knew that deportations meant massacres,” he said. There were no exceptions. In secret documents, there were orders to shoot and kill all Armenians without a trial. There were unproven conspiracies that Armenians had killed Muslim Turks, and that all of them needed to be killed for it, whether they be young or old, woman or man. However, it was not only the mass shootings of them that disturbed Baas, it was also the fact that many of the guards raped and abused the women and children before having them shot as well. The men would be separated from their families, and shot into a mass grave, while the women and children were hurt in unimaginable ways. Eventually the woman and older children would be shot, and the infants were, “taken out to sea in little boats. At some distance out they were stabbed to death, put in sacks and thrown into the sea,” says Baas. There was truly no mercy for the Armenians from the Turks, and after hearing about proof of what these horrible people did, it can be realized why the Turks really did not want to own up to this