Armenians commemorate 105th anniversary of Genocide today

Today marks the 105th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Since 1965, the main commemoration site of the tragic events has been the hilltop monument in Tsitsernakaberd, a park close to the Hrazdan Gorge in south-east Yerevan, where hundreds of thousands of people have been heading every year to lay flowers around the eternal fire in remembrance of the 1.5 million martyrs.   

The memorial is closed this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, with no public events and marches being allowed.

The Armenian Genocide Monument features twelve slabs positioned in a circle to symbolize the twelve lost provinces currently on Turkey's territory.

April 24 is traditionally marked as the Genocide anniversary, because on that day in 1915, the Armenian intellectual elite - around 600 people - were arrested in Constantinople and later marched to exile. Among them were such prominent writers and thinkers as Grigor Zohrap, Daniel Varuzhan, Simanto, Ruben Sevak, and many other.

The systemic killings of the Armenians spanned from 1892 until 1923, a period when the regions under Turkish rule (initially, the Hamidian government and later also the Young Turks) organized the massacres, deporting and annihilating the Armenian population in Western Armenia, Cilicia and the provinces in the Ottoman Empire.

The perpetrators first targeted the males, aged between 15-45, whom they disarmed and killed to leave the rest of the population (the elderly, women and children) unprotected. What followed was a massive deportation, exile and pogroms. The Armenians were either forced to renounce Christianity or were marched into exile. Those who survived emigrated to the deserts in Mesopotamia, mainly to Deir ez-Zor, where they were eventually slain.

The 1919-1920 Paris Peace Conference declared the estimated damages caused to the population of Western, and Eastern Armenia (amounting to 14,598,510,000 Francs and 4,532,472,000 Francs, respectively). Also, thousands of cultural monuments, rich literature and manuscripts and other handwritten records were destroyed.

Available statistics suggests that 66 towns and 2,500 villages lost their Armenian population. An estimated 2,350 churches and monasteries, schools and colleges were looted.

The self-defense battles of Musa Dagh, Van, Urfa and Mush are the heroic episodes known from the tragic period.

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, a famous novel by  Austrian-Bohemian writer Franz Werfel, features the self-defense operations of Musa Dagh in the World War I era battles.

International recognition and restitution

The first international reaction to the tragic events dates back May 24, 1915, when the governments of France, Russia and the United Kingdom adopted a joint statement characterizing the brutalities against the Armenians as a "crime against humanity and civilization". The parties found the Turkish government responsible for the atrocities committed.

The Armenian Genocide has been recognized by 23 countries, including Brazil, Luxembourg, Austria, Bolivia, Sweden, France, Greece. Vatican, Canada, Lebanon, Lithuania, Poland, etc. But the first country to acknowledge the big tragedy was Uruguay which in 1915 adopted a resolution declaring the 1915 events as a crime of Genocide.

Apart from world countries, the Armenian Genocide has received recognition also by such international organizations as the European Union, the Council of Europe, the European Movement International, and the World Council of Churches. Several US states, and hundreds of provincial administrations and parliaments have also acknowledged the tragedy.