With the expression “Armenian Genocide” (“Մեծ եղեռն/Medz Yeghern” – “The Great Evil/The Great Genocide”, in the Armenian language) means the systematic physical destruction of the Armenian people and their cultural identity completed within the period included between 1915 and 1923 come on Turks (with the active collaboration of numerous Kurdish tribes) which ultimately resulted in completion elimination of the Armenian element from the ethno-cultural panorama of Anatolia (the peninsula on which Turkey lies), provoking Between 600,000 and 2 million deaths. We are talking about an event whose echo continues to produce its effects today, denied by Ankara, but recognized by around thirty states and international organisations, including theItaly el’European Union. The event is commemorated by Armenians every April 24.
The Armenians and the Ottoman Empire: a troubled history
The Armenianspeople Indo-European of very ancient origin, they have traditionally inhabited for millennia a vast mountainous area located between the Anatolian peninsula, the Caucasus, the Iranian plateau and the Middle East which, thanks to them, is known in most of the world as “Armenian Plateau” or “Armenian Taurus”. In this area their civilization developed over the centuries, which lived constantly in contact with other neighboring populations (for example, the Assyrians) as well as with the great empires that, at one time, dominated the area (for example the Persian Empire And the Roman Empire).
The Armenians came into contact with the Turkish people starting from second half of the 11th century AD when, after the defeat suffered byEastern Roman Empire in the course of battle of Manzicerta (26 August 1071 AD), the area of their traditional settlement fell permanently into the hands of the Seljuk Turks. The latter succeeded in 1299 The Ottomanswhose power would last for 623 yearsuntil 1922shortly after the end of the First World War.
For much of the historical parable of the Ottoman Empire, the Armenians, although legally confined to a position of “inferior” based on the system of “millet” which separated the subjects of the “Sublime Door” based on religious affiliation, they still managed to carve out one extremely important position at the political, economic and cultural level within the large multinational and multi-confessional state.
Starting from 1700 However, with the beginning of the long Ottoman decadencetheir social condition (like that of other minorities) gradually worsened so much that, when the revolutionary/reform movement of the so-called “Young Turks” (formally: Union and Progress Committee) organized, in 1908a revolution to abolish absolute monarchy and reform and modernize the Empire, Armenians (as well as other ethno-religious minorities) enthusiastically supported it, hoping that this would signify the beginning of a new era.
The Armenian Genocide
The confidence with which the Armenians greeted the establishment of the government of “Young Turks” proved to be absolutely misplaced. In fact they established a ruthless military dictatorship headed by the triumvirate made up of ministers İsmail Enver Pasha, Mehmed Talât Pasha and Ahmed Cemâl Pasha that in 1914 they pushed the Ottoman Empire to enter the war on the side of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria) against the powers ofUnderstandingespecially the Russia.
The war, however, went very badly for the Turks, so much so that the ruling triumvirate decided, especially after the defeat suffered between 22 December 1914 and 17 January 1915 in battle of Sarikhamis against Russia, of accusing the Armenians and other Christian ethnic groups within the Empire of preparing a pro-Russian uprising and of wanting to stab Muslims in the back.
In the night between 23 and 24 April 1915hundreds of members ofintelligentsia of the influential Armenian community of Constantinople they were arrested and deported towards the internal areas of the Empire. In the following weeks and months the deportation orders were extended to the entire territory of Anatolia involving the entire local Armenian population. Millions of Armenians of all ages and social backgrounds were deported on foot in terrifying conditions to the desert areas around the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor which became sort of huge “open-air concentration camp” for the unfortunate poor.
Furthermore, the Armenians were not the only victims of the government’s policies “Young Turks” given that, at the same time, they also ordered the deportation and extermination of the Greeks and Assyrians and only the deterioration of the situation at the front in the last period of the war prevented the Lebanese Maronite Christians they Jews of Palestine suffered a similar fate.
However, it must not be believed that the odyssey of the Armenians and the other Christian populations of Anatolia ended with the end of the First World Wargiven that in the following years, during what went down in history as “Turkish War of Independence” (1919-1923)the general Mustafa Kemal Atatürk to all intents and purposes he completed what had been left pending by the “Young Turks”, completing the work of ethnic cleansing to the detriment of non-Muslim communities, basis of institution upon basis ethnonational of the modern Republic of Türkiye.
A denied memory and an uncertain future
It is very difficult to say with certainty what the final cost in terms of human lives was Armenian genocide he inflicted on his people. Most sources speak of a number of victims ranging from 600,000 to 1,500,000 (the latter is the most recurring figure in history books) but it is necessary to specify here that the sources themselves limit the time frame of the investigation to the inclusive period between 1915 and 1918.
If the massacres of the “Turkish War of Independence”At that time the total could reach 2,000,000out of a total population of Armenians, inside and outside the Ottoman Empire, which did not exceed 3,500,000. The practical result of this violent eradication process was that, after 1923the multi-millennial presence of the Armenian people in their lands of origin has completely ceased to exist.
Today, in the modern Türkiyelive no more than 40-50,000 Armeniansalmost entirely concentrated in the city of Istanbul while all that is left of them in the internal territories of Anatolia are the ruins of a glorious past. Hundreds of thousands of survivors scattered around the world, laying the foundations for what is today the thriving Armenian diaspora (“Spyurk”) that matters millions of individualsespecially in Russia and Western countries. A similar fate befell the Greeks and to Assyrianswhich also for all intents and purposes disappeared from Anatolian territory.
For decades, survivors and their descendants have fought for justice, but this has never happened. Even today, in fact, although 34 countries have recognized it The Armenian genocide as “genocide” in full order (theItaly is among these), and although there has been an almost unanimous pronouncement on the matter by the international community of historians, it has not yet obtained the overall and total international recognition that the Jewish Holocaust occurred during the Second World War.
There are also three countries (the PakistantheAzerbaijan and the Türkiye) who explicitly deny that there ever was a genocide. The question of Turkish denialism in relation to Armenian genocide it is important not only for what concerns the reconciliation between Armenians and Turks and to the dialogue betweenEuropean Union and the Republic of Türkiye, but also to assess the realistic possibilities of permanence of Türkiye in the field of the so-called “enlarged West”.
