By Mike Scruggs – The beginning of the Armenian Genocide is usually dated as April 24, 1915, now over 102 years ago. It was a planned operation of the Ottoman Empire that exterminated at least 1.5 million Armenian Christians in Eastern Turkey from 1915 through 1918. According to George Horton, a U.S. State Department Consul General in Turkey from 1917 to 1922, it was actually preceded by sixteen massacres of Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, and Maronite Christians from 1822 to 1909, killing a total of over 358,000 men, women, and children. He noted that this was only a partial list. This was under the Ottoman Caliphate, which was replaced by the Turkish Republic in 1923.
In 2016, I wrote a series of six articles for the Tribune Papers in North Carolina and the Times Examiner in South Carolina (June 22 to July 27) about the Greco-Turkish War and the genocide of Greek Christians by Turkish troops and auxiliaries from 1919 to 1922. According to Rutgers University research, 1.5 million Greek civilians died. Of these, between 260,000 and 360,000 perished by fire, drowning, systematic massacre, and related causes during the Great Smyrna Fire in 1922. This includes 160,000 men who were marched off for hard labor and never heard from again. The Turks systematically exterminated residents of the Armenian quarter of Smyrna, before they started the fire. In addition to the Smyrna deaths, Greek soldiers suffered 43,000 deaths from battle, wounds, and captivity. According to League of Nations reports, 50,000 Greek and Armenian girls were sold into sex slavery.
According to “Democide” scholar, Dr. Rudolph Rummel, various Turkish regimes killed from 3.5 million to 4.3 million Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, Maronite, and other Christians from 1900 to 1923. The non-Muslin population of Turkey, which was probably over 20 percent in 1900 and was 19.1 percent in 1914, dropped to 2.5 percent by 1927 and is now less than 0.3 percent.
There have been some recent break-throughs in research on the Armenian Genocide bravely reported in a New York Times article by Tim Arango on April 22, 2017. These included a “smoking gun” original ciphered telegram proving official Ottoman/Turkish government planning and execution of the genocidal series of actions resulting in the death of 1.5 million Armenian Christians from 1915 through 1918. Dr.Taner Akcam, professor and researcher of Turkish history at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, unearthed the document among many others from the archives of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Akcam has studied the Armenian Genocide for decades, methodically putting the pieces of the murderous puzzle together in the analytical fashion of Sherlock Holmes.
The Ottoman official who sent this telegram was Behaeddin Shakir. He was convicted based on a deciphered copy, but the original and most of the records of his trial had mysteriously disappeared as the Ottoman and later Turkish governments began to deny any responsibility for the genocide and to downplay its numerical significance. Shakir escaped to Germany, where he was later assassinated by “swarthy foreign men” believed to be Armenians.
Dr. Akcam is a patriotic Turk who believes that only truth and not denials and propaganda are worthy of true patriotism. He made this statement in that regard:
“My firm belief as a Turk is that democracy and human rights in Turkey can only be established by facing history and acknowledging historic wrongdoings.”
Patriots everywhere should give this courageous brand of patriotism a hearty “Amen.” This has a Biblical precedent:
“Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”—Proverbs 28: 13 ESV.
Many of the photos recovered in the archive are grim and emotionally wrenching. There are piles of and shelves of decapitated heads, men being hung on Turkish tripod devices, and dead and starving children. There are railroad cattle cars filled with families probably heading toward death. The most memorable to me was a photo of eight Armenian Christian girls, probably in their teens, being crucified on traditional Christian crosses.
The Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas terrorist front in the United States, seems to have been successful in convincing WordPress to take down the webpage that had the photos mentioned above. CAIR makes constant use of the Islamic doctrine of Taqiyya, which provides that Muslims may lie or deceive non-Muslims for the purpose of advancing or defending Islam. CAIR spokesmen on Network TV news shows spew tirades of falsehoods and half-truths that are incredibly and obviously disingenuous, yet many media pundits and politicians take them seriously.
Turkey continues to deny responsibility for the Armenian genocide. For many decades Turkish leaders moved the country to a more secular practice of Islam. Under President Erdogan that secularism is disappearing and being actively persecuted and replaced by the Jihadic Islam of the Koran and Muhammad. Erdogan may view himself as the new Caliph of a resurrected salafist (fundamentalst-revivalist) Ottoman Empire imposing Islam and Sharia Law on Europe first and then the world. He wants to send ten million more Muslim “immigrants” to Europe.
The Greek Genocide is less well known in the West, probably because the Italian, French, British, and U.S. governments attempted to minimize the number of deaths and atrocities reported in order to maintain favorable diplomatic relations and commercial opportunities with the nationalist government of Kemal Ataturk, which had taken effective control of the Turkish government and army in May 1919. In Smyrna in 1922, Allied naval vessels were ordered to observe strict neutrality in evacuating only their own nationals from the burning city, while tens of thousands of Greek refugees attempting to escape the wrath of the Turks perished by fire, slaughter, and drowning. Finally, British, American, French, and Italian naval commanders, acting against the orders of their own governments, began rescuing thousands of Greeks, eventually totaling 250,000. An American YMCA employee, Rev. Asa Jennings, negotiated the use of over 50 Greek Navy ships and their crews, which rescued over 250,000 people, bringing the total rescued from Smyrna to over 500,000. In 1927, the Greek government awarded Jennings its highest military and civilian medals. He never received any official recognition by the U.S. government.
Tragically, most of Western Europe is still deceived by the Big Lie that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Many American leaders are also ignorant of the true nature of fundamentalist Islam and suffer under the delusion that Islam can be accommodated or appeased without fatally undermining the foundations of Western civilization and Judeo-Christian survival and religious liberty.
Source: http://www.thetribunepapers.com/2017/05/10/the-genocide-of-armenian-and-greek-christians-revisited-new-discoveries-and-politically-correct-memory-loss/