As the world continues to look on in dismay at the barbaric atrocities committed against Christian minorities by the Islamic State—the self-proclaimed new “caliphate”—today, April 24, marks the genocide of Armenian and other Christian minorities by Turkey’s Islamic Ottoman Empire—the last caliphate.
Most American historians who have examined the question agree that what the Armenians experienced was a deliberate, calculated genocide:
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 [that is, 2,500 years before the Islamic Turks invaded and 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.
One-and-a-half million Armenians were eradicated. If early 20th century Turkey had the apparatuses and technology to execute in mass—such as 1940s Germany’s gas chambers—the entire Armenian population could well have been annihilated.
The atrocities suffered by Armenian and other Christian minorities are too long to list. As occurs under the current caliphate—the Islamic State—the Muslims of the Ottoman caliphate abducted, raped, and slaughtered or sold countless Christian women and children on the Muslim slave markets.
Armenian Christians were also sadistically tortured—as Christians are today under the Islamic State. On FrontPage Magazine, Lloyd Billingsley writes:
Torture squads would apply red-hot irons, tear off flesh with hot pincers, then pour boiled butter into the wounds. The soles of the feet would be beaten, slashed, and laced with salt. Dr. Mehmed Reshid tortured Armenians by nailing horseshoes to their feet and marching them through the streets. He also crucified them on makeshift crosses.
The Muslims hacked Armenians to pieces and dashed infants on the rocks before their mothers. They burned bodies not for sanitary reasons but in search of gold coins they believed the Armenians had swallowed. The Muslims also tore apart the victims’ feces in the search for gold. U.S. consul Leslie Davis, a former attorney and journalist, documented the Islamic zeal.
“We could all hear them piously calling upon Allah to bless them in their efforts to kill the hated Christians,” Davis wrote. “Night after night this same chant went up to heaven and day after day these Turks carried on their bloody work.” Around Lake Goeljik, Davis wrote, “thousands and thousands of Armenians, mostly innocent and helpless women and children, were butchered on its shores and barbarously mutilated.”
In her memoir, Ravished Armenia, Aurora Mardiganian described being raped and thrown into a harem—akin to the experiences of today’s non-Muslims under Islamic State authority. Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were killed after being defiled, she managed to escape. She recalls seeing 16 Christian girls crucified in Malatia: “Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.”
Because there is no dearth of evidence concerning the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, 44 U.S. States have recognized it. South Dakota, which recently joined the list, passed a resolution in February 2015 calling on
Congress and the president of the United States to formally and consistently recognize and reaffirm the historical truth that the atrocities committed against the Armenian, Greek, and other Christians living in their historical homelands in Anatolia constituted genocide and to work towards equitable, stable, and durable Armenian-Turkish relations.
Turkey, of course, continues to deny that its forbears ever committed any genocide. As a group of American academics wrote back in 1995,
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.
Nor is the Islamic government of Turkey alone in denying the genocide. President Obama still refuses to acknowledge it—even though when he was running for office in 2008 he professed his
firmly held conviction that the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence. The facts are undeniable…. [A]s President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide…. America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend to be that president.
Since taking office, Obama has refused to stand by his word. On Tuesday, April 21, the White House announced that it would again, for the seventh year since Obama’s pledge, not use the word “genocide,” thereby disappointing many human rights activists.
Writes the New York Times:
The president’s continued resistance to the word stood in contrast to a stance by Pope Francis, who recently called the massacres “the first genocide of the 20th century” and equated them to mass killings by the Nazis and Soviets. The European Parliament, which first recognized the genocide in 1987, passed a resolution last week calling on Turkey to “come to terms with its past.”
The Armenian National Committee of America responded by saying “The president’s surrender represents a national disgrace. It is a betrayal of the truth, and it is a betrayal of trust.” The Armenian Assembly of America said “His failure to use the term genocide represents a major blow for human rights advocates.”
But the president’s actions are consistent in other ways. Put differently, it is no marvel that Obama denies the genocide of Armenian and other Christian minorities at the hands of Muslims from a century ago, when one considers that he denies the rampant Muslim persecution of Christians taking place under—and often because of—his leadership today.
Benedict says
Can’t figure what is stopping the President from calling the deaths of Armenians in Turkey as genocide, the world knows it.
umbra says
Perhaps because his best friend erdogan does not like it, and so he cannot say it. After all, he would not want to be dis-invited to the opening of the Maryland mosque by erdogan.
Scott says
Because Obama’s declared that Turkey’s President Erdogan is his best friend in the Middle East.
Talk about an unholy alliance.
Don’t forget, Erdogan is a huge supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood….just like Barack Obama.
Spot On says
Absolutely Scott, but I don’t see any Rinos calling him out on this. Sometimes it gets frustrating when both sides seem to want to take the position that will satisfy only the MSM best for a day. These are only band-aids and no solutions or real understanding. This usually leaves Christians hanging out to dry (or die).
JamesonRocks says
We have “strategic” military bases in Turkey. He doesn’t want to piss off Erdogan. To the point that several months ago VP Joey Biden had to publicly apologize to Turkey for his comments about terrorists being freely able to cross borders in and out of Turkey. It didn’t matter that Biden’s comments were accurate – don’t offend the Turks…
RonaldB says
Obama lying, or breaking a promise, is like a “dog bites man” news story.
I want to comment South Dakota and the other 44 states that took the initiative and recognized the Armenian genocide on their own. It’s much more productive to act locally than to try to move a federal government which actively facilitates the dawah of political Islam.
Thomas says
Most write-ups of this genocide identify the perpetrators as Turks.
However, the fact that the perpetrators were Turks has nothing to do with their evil deeds. When the Turks did their evil deeds, they were wearing their “Islamic Hats.”
Also, the Armenians were not killed because they were Armenians. They were killed because they were Christian.
A more accurate description of the genocide would be “The Islamic Genocide of Christians.”
Michael Copeland says
It was not the Turks: the Koran says so (8:17):
“And you did not kill them, but it was Allah who killed them.”
mortimer says
“A more accurate description of the genocide would be “The Islamic Genocide of Christians.”
Correct. The Assyrians and Anatolian indigenes of the region were slaughtered BECAUSE they were Christians. Though hated by the Turks as an ‘inferior race of barbarians’, the Islamized Kurds were used as executioners of the Christian subjects of the Turkish Empire.
gravenimage says
Very true, Mortimer. Besides the Armenians, Greek, Assyrian, and Levantine Christians were targeted, as well as Jews. In other words, all Infidels in Anatolia.
Scott Stolnitz says
We all must remember, that President Obama declared that Erdogan was his FAVORITE LEADER in the Middle East.
What else need be said?
If we had a real President in the White House, he/she would stand up and tell the Turks the truth and then kick their asses out of NATO!
Scott says
If the EU is stupid enough to let the Turks into the EU….The new “Eurabia” will be no more than a decade away. (Yes I know the Turks aren’t Arabs, but their government has become Islamist).
The EU (if it even needed to exist) should absolutely make it clear that an Islamist Government has no place inside it. It would be a metastasizing cancer of the first order, with no cure in sight.
As it is, Europe is teetering on having Western Civilization excised and it’s Islamist hordes instituting their own version of an IS (Islamic State).
Allowing Turkey into the EU would be the last nail in the coffin.
mariam rove says
Allowing Turkey into the EU would be the last nail in the coffin.
You said that one right!!! M
Januk36 says
Turkey entering the EU is not going to happen after all the troubles cause by the most european of all european countries – Greece.
PRCS says
Well, such an atrocity couldn’t possibly happen today, of course. I mean, with the Internet, phones with built-in cameras, instant worldwide communications, 7/24/365 hour cable news, etc.
gravenimage says
I’m afraid this is not the case, PRCS. The Armenian Genocide did not happen in secret. It went on in waves from 1895 through 1915 until 1922. It was amply documented—second only to the Holocaust.
There are vast quantities of photographs, film footage, articles from Western newspapers, diplomatic dispatches, official Turkish records, and accounts from aid workers, missionaries, Western diplomats and businessmen, as well as survivors.
And it *is* happening today—this is *exactly* what is going on in the Islamic State today. In fact, many of the victims there are survivors of the genocide from a century ago in what was then the eastern Ottoman Empire.
Bukkdem Jizheads says
Coincidentally, the Gallipoli battle happened at this same time. The Turkish general who defeated the Australians so definitively became president of Turkey and took the name Kemel Ataturk. He changed that country, the citadel of the Ottomans, into a Western-thinking rebuke of Arab Islam. He banned the veil, he banned polygamy, he changed the alphabet and curriculum to Western, he opened universities to women, he took the Sophia Hagia cathedral away from the imams and opened it as a museum for tourists. Obviously, he had to use brutal tactics to destroy the fanatics. He was a dashing figure who loved women, wine, dancing and Paris.
Since both things happened exactly 100 years ago, it’s very alarming to me why we can’t elevate this man who converted the most barbaric empire on earth, the Ottomans, after it’s defeat in WW1, into the now docile Turkey (for now). Why is nothing mentioned about Gallipoli at the same time as the Armenian genocide? Why were we not taught in school about the horrors of Islamic/Ottoman expansion over 500 years into Europe, N. Africa, East Africa and Persia????????
Bukkdem Jizheads says
Additionally, I want to say, as sorry as I am for the Armenians, the millions of people whose entire culture was wiped out by the Ottomans, whose youths were sold into slavery or taken as “wives”, over centuries, all their parents, crops, villages, literature, wealth, decimated: dwarf the Armenian genocide. At least Armenians had enough survivors to record it.
I daresay none of the American blacks searching for their roots will ever find any in N. Africa, or East Central Africa.
zulu says
Congress Must Recognize Jihad Genocide of the Armenians. by Andrew G. Bostom
http://pjmedia.com/blog/congress-must-recognize-jihad-genocide-of-the-armenians/
“During the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid, the Ottoman Turks massacred over 200,000 Armenians between 1894-96. This was followed, under the Young Turk regime, by the Adana massacres of 25,000 Armenians in 1909, and the first formal genocide of the 20th century, when in 1915 alone, an additional 600,000 to 800,000, or even 1 million Armenians were slaughtered. The massacres of the 1890s had an “organic” connection to the Adana massacres of 1909, and more importantly, the events of 1915. As Vahakn Dadrian, the leading scholar of the Armenian genocide, argues, these earlier massacres facilitated the genocidal acts of 1915 by providing the Young Turks with “a predictable impunity.” The absence of adverse consequences for the Abdul Hamid massacres in the 1890s allowed the Young Turks to move forward without constraint.”
Jihad, Still: “100 Years On, Armenians in the Middle East are still on the run”
http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2015/04/22/jihad-still-100-years-on-armenians-in-the-middle-east-are-still-on-the-run/
Georg says
The only terrible deeds he’ll discuss are those done in the name of Christ while people are trying to eat breakfast on Easter.
He kept one promise: He stood with the Muslims. Wowee, does he cling to that one.
Clay says
Remember, President Obama stated that the future does not belong to those who slander the prophet. A Muslim considers they have been slandered not by a lie being told about them. They consider themselves to be slandered when a truth is told about them they do not want revealed.
Georg says
Right.
Cartimandua says
Remind me again which Christian church does this president of the US go to, besides Jeremiah Wrights church which Oprah you are the one also went to? Any evidence of church going there? Any evidence of Christianity there? Mark Steyn once asked and forgive me for probably getting it all wrong, but Steyn asked something like suppose Obama was a Muslim, what other than what he is doing, would he be doing?
mortimer says
“America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide”
It does…we are still waiting for that leader, because it isn’t OBAMA! Obama broke his promise at the MOST critical moment…the 100th Anniversary of the Genocides.
Cartimandua says
To Mortimer and I cannot believe I am saying this America needs a leader who speaks about the Armenian genocide on its terrible 100 anniversary, it surely is not the American president. Pictures have been released and the survivors look every bit as terrible as the Jewish Holocaust of WW2. Germans have face up to what they did, why won’t Turks? The Japanese still haven’t but that is for another day. I originally said I can’t believe I am saying this because Kim Kardashian has proved to be the leader that the President of the United States of America Barrack Hussein Obama refuses to be.
gravenimage says
I never thought I would give kudos to the usually vapid Kim Kardashian, but bravo for her speaking out here. And she has a huge following, many of whom have probably never even heard of the Armenian Genocide before now.
That a reality TV star is showing more gravitas here than the president of the United States is truly shameful.
Proud Pork Fan says
Obama is appalling in his refusal to name Islamic atrocities as they are in reality. This idiotic tactic is why we see an emboldening of not only the terrorists here and abroad, but even the muslim “students” in the US. Case in point: the piggish arrogant behavior of the muslim audience at Pamela Geller’s talk at Brooklyn College on Wednesday. This is what happens when the POTUS and the media apologizes for all muslim atrocities saying “they have nothing to do with Islam”. It is abominable and destroying the entire free-world. Thanks Obama.
Plamen says
Obama must recognize Armenian Genocide. It will result in no problem – only several weeks of grumble.
Nathan says
Political islam.. enough said…
It’s a sorry state of affairs for the leader of the USA to be so into islam that he can’t even acknowledge some basic facts. The USA is so, SO f**ked. You have satans follower as your leader and commander in chief! You’re so up mohammed’s backside you can’t even smell the truth.
American freedom? It’s just a dream you once had…. and what a nice dream.
How could you vote in a slave of satan, twice? How could you?
Plamen says
Jihad was implemented for the purpose of Genocide.
In 1914, last Ottoman caliph declared World Jihad by a fatwa call to all Muslims against all Christian enemies / powers in WWI :
http://www.forgottenbooks.com/readbook_text/Declarations_of_War_1000248104/67
In 1915, again using fatwa, call for internal jihad against all local Christians was resumed (quoting Quran 8:12, 2:191, 9:5, indirectly, “kill them wherever you find them”, etc.):
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015010805615;view=1up;seq=572
Dazzle says
Beware a Turkey that will have a population of well over 90 million by 2050.
Today Turkey has more than a million men under arms – what for?
http://www.moreorless.net.au/killers/pashas.html
Includes fascinating contemporaneous testimony
Cartimandua says
Turkey must NEVER be allowed to join the EU. I remember a show with Michael Palin a few years ago where he and a Turkish guy were so thrilled that Turkey might join. They were walking across an imaginary border at the time. Before Erdogan. Before Erdogan’s wife and daughters in the scarf. Before Obama told Erdogan ,that he wanted advice from Erdogan on how to raise daughters just like Erdogans. I wonder what Michael Palin thinks now. At the time I was quite upset thinking that millions of peasants, muslim and uneducated might be allowed freedom of movement through the EU. Now with the invasion of illegals in boats from Libya, it is even more horrifying. Let’s just call it what it is. A planned muslim invasion. Now we know Erdogan plans the largest mosque in the USA in Maryland, supported by Obama who says he will attend the opening. Does anyone seriously have any questions any more?
Dazzle says
See the link below if you really want to know what is going on between the EU and Turkey. The link is to a 9 page pdf and it is not an easy read though it merits being read all the way through.
http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/sites/devco/files/awp-2015-turkey-deleg_en_0.pdf
This is just one example. The EU is pouring money (European taxpayers money) into Turkey despite the ever growing Islamic fundamentalist rhetoric coming from the democratically elected government.
That in itself should be a wake-up call – The Turks voted for their despotic leaders.
No doubt city dwelling Turks will be pleased to acknowledge that EU funding has and is paying for new drainage and sewerage systems at a cost running into the hundreds of millions of Euros…why? Simply so that Turkey may meet EU standards so that their application for EU membership moves forward.
Turkish Presidential and Prime Ministerial political sabre rattling and bellicose warnings have changed nothing – the EU machine is in full swing spending our money on a country where the elected leader believes that women should not laugh loudly in public.
Lesley says
I am surprised to say that I am very pleased that Kim Kardashian has called attention to the Armenian genocide… she is finally using her celebrity status for something important.
I am horrified that Erdrogan is opening a mega-mosque on our soil with the blessings of our traitor president. I dream of a day when there are no mosques on American soil, period.
Cartimandua says
I could not agree more. I never paid any attention to her but knowing she cares about her ancesters and that horrific holocaust makes me regard her in a new light. Bravo.
Richie says
It could be Obama doesn’t care about Christians who were killed a century ago, and his loyalties are with Islam. Has he denounced the genocide Muslims are currently carrying out against Christians? of course not.
Obama’s first instinct will always be to defend Islam
Baucent says
What is not often remembered is that the Armenians later hunted down and assassinated the key leaders of the genocide. Soghomon Tehlirian in 1922 shot dead Mehmet Talatl Pasha who had been minister of the interior of the Ottoman Empire and one of the trio of Turkish leaders known as the “commitee of three”. They got the other two as well, including the former Prime Minister. Justice of sorts perhaps.
Plamen says
Current ruling AKP party & Erdogan in Turkey come from their Islamic movement that was established in 1969, with its first party in 1970.
Then, all four successive movement’s parties were (very relevantly) closed by the military.
Al last, after decades of struggle – similar to their brother in arms, the Muslims Brothers in Egypt – movement took power by its government in 2002 and still rules there.
No-One of those successive parties has in its programs goal for country to join the EU.
Only last, AKP party, managed after 2002 to include that taquiya-approach of “EU accession” in its program and in its leaders’ rhetoric. It did so in order to be supported by America and Europe, and for them not to support another coup. And Europe and America trusted. All the more, America was in a middle of its task to support Brothers to come to power in Egypt and president Obama delivered later that speech in Cairo in 2009 (and “spring” was unleashed, and toppled military Mubarak regime in 2011).
In Egypt, the military regained.
However, in Turkey, the military couldn’t.
Perhaps, they were smashed more efficiently by the Islamic movement.
With a little help from some foreign friends (?)
ninetyninepct says
Is obama trying to set up his own version of a caliphate here in America? It sure seems so.
Jerry says
And even today, there is growing evidence that IS, who renewed the ongoing Muslim genocide of Christians, is being logistically supplied via and with the connivance of Turkey.
Mulakush says
Turkey should be turfed out from NATO.
Maybe, then our presidents will feel free to call genocide as it is.
Billy Battle says
So Kim Kardashian – who is of Armemian descent – stated that the US should formerly recognise the 1.5 million Armenian Christians killed by the Turks 100 years ago, yet Erdodan’s muslim friend Obama refuses to do so.
It has been said that the most beautiful women in the world come from the East Turkey – Armenian area where great numbers of muslim harems were located. These harems contained sex slaves captured by the muslims for their sexual gratification. Because there was a great deal of diversely ethnic women brought to these harems, the resultant children became very beautiful. KIM, do you realise that your direct descendents may include a captured beautiful Armenian Christian girl and a brutal Islamic killing-machine thug around 1915???
Gary Bovey says
This pretty much covers it all !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVs9psi_G5k
It appears under the title of “Gun control history-must see.”
The full weight has nothing to do with guns, but evil !
Guns are incidental because stick, stone, knife or gun, when it comes down to resisting, the victor is always left standing while the loser dies.
You can’t kill them all, and when the overwhelming scourge hits, it is every man’s decision on how he is going to die, either with integrity, or dishonor.
As a Christian, I deplore evil. I hate evil ! When I see such disadvantaged persons as the Coptic Christians meeting their deaths with dignity, I praise God. Their abusers have not won anything over them because not only is God the Creator of all things, He is the sustainer of all things. He is not only a God of love, but a God of righteousness and judgement. Those so abused on the beaches of Libya shall be vindicated, and their tormentors made to answer for their crimes.
I do fully believe in the second death.
Plamen says
Erdogan already accused Obama of siding with Armenia, Germany, France and Russia and all the evil rest. That, regardless of the fact Obama stopped short of using “Genocide” and instead used the Armenian term Medz Yeghern (Great catastrophe).
I.e. Turkish government fully equalized US, which did Not admitted Genocide, with those who Did acknowledge it.
So, Why why Obama didn’t do it?
Other strategic allies of Turkey did it – so what?
What ensued for them? Only Erdogan mustaches’ prickling.
Screeminmeeme says
Clearly, Obama is a man on a mission. He doesn’t address the Armenian ”genocide” or the fact that there is a ”Christian genocide” being committed by ISIS. Why? Because, as a Muslim who believes that Christians are inferior and to be killed if they won’t convert to Islam, he doesnt care one whit about the Armenians of 100 years ago or about any Christian anywhere in the world today.
He is a ruthless jihadist on a mission to advance the objectives of Islam and nothing will alter his course. Not the terrorized cries of brutalized and tortured children nor the anguished pleas of raped and violated women.
Like all of Satan’s emesaries, he winks at the suffering and pain of others.
Hell awaits him.
Kardashian deserves to be re-judged says
I always thought Kim Kardashian was a vacuous air-head. Reading the articles and other articles on her campaigning has changed my opinion. Good luck with her campaign of the Obama government recognising the Armenian genocide. If only there was a genocide of muslim people reaching over 1 million people and then I am guessing Obama would recognise that…
Hypocrite, a liar and a deceiver – isn’t that the example he is following of his leader Muhammad?