YOUNG TURKS PLANNED TO ANNIHILATE THE ENTIRE ARMENIAN POPULATION, TURKISH HISTORIAN SAYS

PanARMENIAN.Net
01.04.2010 15:44 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A prominent Turkish historian told Taraf newspaper
in an interview published Wednesday that "the Young Turks planned to
annihilate the entire Armenian population."

Historian Selim Deringil said that there was also a distinction between
the aims of the Young Turks and their predecessor Sultan Abdul Hamid
at the turn of the 19th century. "The difference between Sultan
Abdul Hamid and the Young Turks was that the Young Turks wanted to
completely destroy and annihilate the Armenians, while Sultan Abdul
Hamid sought to get rid of a certain element of Armenians, to diminish
their economic dominance and to create and Islamic bourgeoisie,"
he said. "There were Armenians [living] everywhere [in Turkey]. The
massacre of Armenians took place in different cities. Today, the
official history states that in all the areas where people were
killed there were Armenians revolts; however, the majority of those
were not rebellions."

The historian said that 300 000 Armenian were massacred under Sultan
Adbul Hamid between 1841 and 1897 and 800 000 were murdered during
the Armenian Genocide.

He also referred to Turkish policy failures after the establishment
of the modern-day Republic. "At the onset of the Republic an estimated
300 000 Armenians lived in Turkey, while today that number has dwindled
to 70 000," he said.

"Annihilation does not only happen through killings," Derengil
claimed. "If you make life unbearable [for people] they will pick up
and leave."

Derengil also criticized Turkish historians, who "spend all of their
time trying to rationalize Turkey’s official denialist position on
the Genocide." "They work only to prove that Armenian assertions
are baseless."

"After World War I, there was plenty of evidence that demonstrated the
crimes, kidnapping and rape of Armenian women in Anatolia beginning
in 1915," Derengil concluded, Asbarez.com reported.

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic
destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during
and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and
deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to
lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths
reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the
Genocide survivors.