The Burning Tigris by Peter Balakian has a look at in great detail the massacres of over a million Armenians by the Turkish government during the late 19th century and during World War I. With over 1, 100 footnotes to the work, Balakian leaves no stone unturned in this breathtaking work which focuses on a little-known area of Armenian, Turkish, and American history.
The story starts with the first massacres of Armenians in the late 19th century, and the first instances of organized killings by groups of Turks. As Christians, the Armenians (and to a lesser extent, Greeks and other Christian ethnic groups) were treated the the lording it over Muslim Turks as second class citizens, at best, and expendable, at worst. This became in contrast to the fact that Armenians made up a large the main intelligent and economic life of Turkey in the late 19th and early the twentieth centuries. With the firstly the massacres, however, the stage was set for future atrocities contrary to the Armenians.
The rise of the "Young Turks" as leaders of the government was the point at which the plan to eliminate the non-Muslim groups was accelerated. ermeni soykırımı The Young Turks, who located power in 1908 under a guise of taking a stand for the protection under the law of all the groups living in the country at the time, furthered the dangerous path of their precursor: Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The expectations of the Armenians for the lighter future stated by the Young Turk government, however, were met only with prejudice, hatred, and physical violence from the new rulers, who initiated a plan to eliminate the Armenians entirely.
With Turkey's involvement in World War I, quietly of Germany, the costa rica government saw its chance to begin the methodical genocide of the Armenians. On one occurrence, April 24, 1915, in Constantinople, the Turks round in the intelligent and artistic leaders of the Armenians and proceeded to eliminate the vast majority of them. This scene, and much more scary ones, were played out across Turkey. Men and boys were burned alive, shot, stabbed, drowned, starved, and deported. Women lived with the same fates as the men, along with various forms of sexual do it yourself committed by the Turks. The trek of burned towns and dead Armenians extended across the entirety of Turkey.
Balakian cites sources as diverse as official government documents, letters from ambassadors, consuls, diplomats, and other witnesses to the events. The same descriptions of massacre and do it yourself are played out over and over again in numerous aspects of Turkey and are seen by numerous representatives of foreign governments and aid institutions.
The Turks culminate their activities in a nationwide deportation of the Armenians, who are forced to 03 from the homes hundreds of miles away into the desert, given no food or water, with spotty killings and rape committed along the way. As should be expected, few Armenians survive the mass deportation.
By the end of the war, between one million and 1. 5 million Armenians meet their luck at the hands of the Turkish government's genocide, effectively wiping out two-thirds of the Armenian population of Turkey. If not for the philanthropic and activist involvement of important American organizations who provided aid to the Armenians, the number of dead may have been even more catastrophic. Such organizations as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Red Cross provided aid during the initial massacres and during the wide-scale genocide of World War I.
Balakian goes on to help expand examine the response of the world to the Armenian genocide from the end of the war until present. Unfortunately, the genocide has been pushed into the background of the twentieth century genocides, with Turkey try really hard to denying the entire mess as Armenian propaganda, and America failing the Armenians both after the war, and even now, neglecting to invoke the frustration of Turkey by recognizing the genocide. In fact, the us will not formally support using the word "genocide" to describe the methodical elimination of over one million people, in contrast to numerous other countries who have accepted the massacres as a genocide.
America's giving in to Turkish influence is, of course, based on the lack of power practiced by the new Armenian nation, and the strategic location of Turkey. With two-thirds of its population destroyed, the Armenians got their own country far from their original homes in Turkey, and were forced to simply accept the aid of the You. S. S. Ur. in order to gain protection against further attacks by Turkey after the war. Even with their current freedom, their military power and natural resources do not compare with those of the more influential Turkey.
