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WHAT
IS GENOCIDE?
The replacement
was presented by the Armenians and hostile states as a massacre
and genocide against Armenians, and a massive propaganda
campaign was launched against the Ottomans.
Genocide is
the crime of annihilation of human groups because of racial,
national, ethnic and religious differences. It can be
perpetrated only directly by a Government or under its consent.
In order to prevent the crime of genocide in the world, the
United Nations General Assembly voted in 1948 the Genocide
Convention, to which Turkey adhered in 1950.
The mention
of genocide reminds the massive massacres perpetrated by Nazis
against Jews and other ethnic groups In World War II. In this
period lasting from 1939 to 1945 six million Jews, more than
three millions of Soviet prisoners of war, more than one million
Polish and Yugoslav civilians, about 200.000 Gypsies and 70.000
disabled persons were murdered. This is genocide in the true
sense of the word.
Similarly,
an imposing number of genocides have been committed in the
recent years despite the United Nations Convention. For example,
the confessions of two retired French generals published in
the daily Le Monde show that the French army murdered at least
one million Algerians between 1954 and 1962, while the Indonesian
army massacred a full one million communists and their family
members in 1965 and 1966, the Red Khmer killed 1,7 million
Cambodians between 1975 and 1979, 500.000 Tutsis were beheaded
by Huttus of Ruanda in 1994 and thousands of Moslems were
exposed to Serbian atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.
The crime of
genocide was committed in the above cases in its most blatant
form. Contrary to the Armenian pretensions, the measures adopted
regarding the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia was merely a replacement
in another region within the Empire for security reasons and
had nothing to do with genocide.
It is true
that there were Armenian losses during the war and the replacement
operation but they were actually due to the failure of establishment
of order because of the war and the revolts in Eastern Anatolia.,
together with hunger, lack of food and fuel, adverse climatic
conditions and epidemics such as typhus. There was no genocide
or a planned massacre whatsoever.
It is a fact
that the Armenians were subjected to many similar replacements
in the past for treason against the states under whose hegemonies
they were living. the Sasanites moved 70.000 Armenians to
Iran in 379 AD, the Byzantines relocated 40.000 East Anatolian
Armenians in Sivas and Kayseri in 1025, the Mameluks sent
10.000 to Egypt, the Iranians dispersed 24.000 into the country
and the Russians invading Crimea sent thousands of Armenians
into the Siberian steppes.
Without mentioning
any of these preceding replacements and exiles, the Armenians
strive to make a genocide issue out of their replacement undertaken
in 1915 for undeniably sound reasons by the Ottoman State.
This attitude is the product of policies designed to break
apart the integrity of Turkey. The most obvious evidence of
this phenomenon lies in the fact that the Western powers,
oblivious to the true genocide events in Africa, the Balkans
and several other parts of the world, lend support to the
claims of genocide against Armenians.
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