The Armenian Genocide Controversy
The Armenian Genocide was a tragic event from 1915 to 1917 during World War I. While the Ottoman Empire is allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary taking on Britain, France, and Russia; they also executed a genocide which eliminated a substantial amount of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Before the massacres began, the Armenians were already a minority group in the Ottoman Empire because they are Christian and the the rest of the Ottoman Empire is Muslim, therefore; the Armenians were already disliked. When war began, many Turks suspected the Armenians would assist Russia in the war since they shared a border and religion. Today, the Turks claim the killing of the Armenians was not a genocide, but because…show more content… As supplied by the Armenian community in Document 4, there are statistics of the Armenian population in Bardizag before and after WWI when the genocide occurred. Since one of the steps of genocide is to concentrate the targeted people, the targeted must be taken from their homes so they can be concentrated in one specific area. Out of 2,200 houses pre-war in Bardizag; 250 were half habitable, 300 were uninhabitable, and 1600 were dismantled or destroyed by the end of the war. That means 97.7% of the houses in the city of Bardizag were ruined which shows that this is a very large scale event. In the same town there were 12000 Armenians living there previous to the war, 8450 of which were killed and 1400 required assistance. Therefore, 70.4% of the Armenian population in one city were killed and 11.6% of the population needed assistance. “The great bulk of the Armenian population was forcibly removed from Armenia and Anatolia to Syria, where the vast majority was sent into the desert to die of thirst and hunger. Large numbers of Armenians were methodically massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire.” (Document 1) This document is an excerpt from the Armenian genocide website where information from the eyes of those affected is presented. Obviously, this genocide was large scale if large numbers of the Armenian people were killed throughout the Ottoman Empire. Since a large number of the Armenian people were killed this event is without a doubt large scale, and the last step to proving this is a genocide is confirming government
