Fact #164, 201 days to go: In 1948, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Under these terms, the widespread massacres and deportations of Armenians in 1915- which included the use of 25 major concentration camps, forced marches, mass burnings, drownings, and gassings- were in every way a genocide by the Turks against the Armenians. So why is Turkey so against calling it as such, let alone apologizing? After all, Germany has made great steps to publicly acknowledge and profusely apologize for the Jewish Holocaust, even paying reparations, making holocaust denial and the display of symbols of Nazism a criminal offense and establishing a National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Berlin. But Turkey? They wont even allow the US to label the Armenian genocide as such or acknowledge it in any way. Here is why: land. Take a look at a map of pre-genocide Armenia in the attachments. What you will notice is that a huge chunk of what is now Turkey was then considered Armenia. If the 1915 Turkish actions were indeed recognized as a genocide, current day Armenia could potentially petition for the return of its land. Note that this may even include the area known as Cilicia, a separate but ethnically connected entity bordering the Mediterranean Sea that dates back to the Kingdom of Cilician Armenia in the early part of the second Millenium. These historically grounded lands could rightfully be considered Armenian if they could establish that they were unlawfully taken from them via the genocide. The evidence is there and so is the history. Armenia itself was officially named way back in 512 BC when it was annexed to Persia, while Cilicia was established as a principality it 1078. After years of struggle under Turkish, Kurdish and Mongol rule, the Ottoman Empire ruled Armenia from 1453-1829, after which the Russian Empire ruled through the rest of the 19th century. After the Genocide and WWI, whats left of Armenia was annexed by Bolshevist Russia and became part of the Soviet Union from 1922-1991, after which Armenia declared its independence. #ArmenianGenocide #100yearsofdenial #RecognizeGenocide #Turkeyfailed #Obamafailed #Countdown #365facts #Armenian #ReturnChurches #ReturnLands
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 16:25:46 +0000
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