April 24 was chosen specifically since this was the day when on April 24, 1915, approximately 250 prominent Armenian intellectuals were arrested and killed in Istanbul, marking the beginning of a strategy to genocide this people through systematic massacres aided by plunder, arson, displacement, and rape.
Related: The Assyrian Genocide
From the Hamidian Massacres to the Great Genocide: The Chronology of Ottoman Atrocities
The genocide committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Syriacs, Assyrians, and Chaldeans was not an arbitrary act or a by-product of war but rather an organized process carried out under the auspices of the Ottoman state, with international complicity and silence at the time. Its catastrophic chapters have been recorded with incriminating numbers and testimonies of eyewitnesses, diplomats, and historians.
The Beginning of the Massacres: The Dark Years
The first phase of the massacres of the Armenians began in the late nineteenth century, between 1894 and 1896, when they demanded political reforms and constitutional rights. Sultan Abdul Hamid II unleashed his army to carry out what became known as the "Hamidian Massacres."
According to the data compiled by the German missionary Johann Lepsius, during these years approximately 88,243 Armenians were killed and 546,000 were wounded. 2,493 villages were pillaged, and 456 villages were forced to convert Islam. 649 churches and monasteries were destroyed, 328 of which became mosques.
One of the most terrible of these massacres occurred at Ruha (Urfa), where 2,500 Armenian women were burned alive in a single cathedral. The deaths were later estimated at more than 300,000 Armenians.
Systematic Genocide in World War I
The horror culminated in 1915, when the Ottoman administration began implementing their blue print to eliminate the Christians of Armenia, Syria, Assyria, and Chaldees from the East.
After declaring war in World War I, Turkey was engaged on several fronts with Germany. On the Russian and Iranian front, Ottomans committed gigantic atrocities against the Armenians. Through April 1915, 5,000 Armenian villages were pillaged and 27,000 Armenians and large numbers of Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christians were massacred.
In the Eastern Front, Enver Pasha, one of the leaders of Union and Progress, lost a disastrous battle to the Russians at the Battle of Sarikamish in January 1915. Enver Pasha, at the time, apprised the newspaper "Tannin" and the Vice-President of the Turkish Parliament that the defeat resulted from Armenian treachery and that the moment had come to deport the Armenians from the eastern zone. By this time, the Ottomans started to disarm 100,000 Armenian soldiers and rob Armenian civilians of their weapons that they had previously been permitted to carry in 1908. Once the Armenians were disarmed, the soldiers were slit at the throat or buried alive.
The American ambassador to Turkey at the time, Henry Morgenthau, characterized the Armenians' disarmament as an invitation to Armenians' permissiveness and extermination. During a meeting between Talat Pasha, the Turkish foreign minister, and the American ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, Talat Pasha uttered the following words: "We have managed to get rid of three-quarters of the Armenian people. There is no sign of them in Bitlis, Van, and Erzurum. The Armenians should be annihilated. If we do not do this, they will certainly take revenge upon us."
The Deportation Caravan. Death Caravans
Following the massacres, those Armenian and Syriac women, children, and elderly people who survived were forced to march in long caravans across desert deserts. They were neither given any food nor water, and were vulnerable to Bedouin attack or, if not able to continue marching, killed.
Mass executions of the Armenian men initially rounded up have been reported. Women survivors confirmed that children were left to dehydrate, whereas women were raped and killed in front of their families.
The Sayfo Massacres: An Open Wound in the Syriac, Assyrian, and Chaldean Memory
The Armenians were not only massacred, but the Assyrian and Chaldean Syriacs were also targeted by the Ottoman Empire. The Sayfo Massacres, or "Assyrian and Syriac Massacres," are regarded as one of the Middle East's most heinous crimes against Christians. It is believed that between 250,000 to 500,000 Syriac, Assyrian, and Chaldeans were killed during these periods.
The ferocity of the massacres included the mass murder of civilians, rape, plunder of goods, and pushing the population into the desert, where thousands starved to death, died from thirst, and from gang warfare. Horrible reports have been made of such actions by Ottoman forces, including slitting the pregnant women and aborting fetuses in their wombs.
The Outcome: Peoples Killed and Scattered
More than 1.5 million Armenians had been killed by the end of 1923, historians and international agencies estimated. Armenians, together with the Syriac, Assyrian, and Chaldean minorities, were reduced to minority refugee status that they had previously held as a fundamental part of Anatolia's demography. Hundreds of thousands immigrated to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and France, and the rest immigrated to the Americas. Entire villages and towns were destroyed, and cultural, religious, and historical landmarks were obliterated.
International Recognition. and Turkish Denial
Despite overwhelming strong evidence, Turkey still to this day refuses to accept the genocide. It makes it a crime to acknowledge it under Article 305 of the Penal Code, while 20 nations officially acknowledge the genocide, including France, Russia, Canada, Lebanon, and Greece. It is also acknowledged by 43 US states and municipal councils in Australia, Spain, and Canada, and also by the European Parliament, the United Nations, the World Council of Churches, and other global bodies.
Syria Today. A Repeated Tragedy
As Armenians are remembering the genocide, Syrians have been experiencing a similar disaster for over ten years. The current war in the country, Turkish occupation of some northern Syrian territories, demographic change, and systematic murder and displacement in Kurdish and Christian-majority regions evoke the same ominous specters faced by Armenians and Syriacs a century ago.
Displacing the indigenous people, settling foreigners at their expense, and aiming at the cultural and religious identity are nothing but the continuity of the very same policy of Turkification in Afrin, Serekaniye, and Gire Spi/Tal Abyad.
Self-Defense: A Safety Valve Against Genocide
The experience of the Armenians', Syriacs', Assyrians', and Chaldeans' past highlights a painful reality: "Peoples who lack means of self-defense are more vulnerable to genocide and persecution."
The North and East Syria people know this fact. The Autonomous Administration has managed to create a model based on the democratic state, which maintains the multiplicity of people and cultures and guarantees their rights and identities. One of the bases of this model is self-defense.
Without the ability to defend themselves, communities are at the mercy of control and extermination forces. Self-defense does not always mean bearing arms; it also means being politically aware, organizing in communities, defending culture, and having an independent education.
A Call from the Past to the Present: No to Recurring Disasters
Armenian Genocide and Sayfo massacres were not a crime against Christian countries alone, but also against humanity. They are a grim reminder that silence on crimes and turning one's back on self-defense encourages repeated tragedies.
Thus, the celebration of this anniversary is not just to commemorate the victims, but also to warn again: the dignity of peoples and cultures will not be preserved and defended unless they organize, resist, and build fair democratic institutions that preserve their diversity, as the populations of North and East Syria are trying to do today.
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