news.am, Armenia
April 24 2010

Armenians perished on road out of famine and disease: Hurriyet Daily

17:38 / 04/24/2010 NEWS.am posts excerpts from Mustafa Akyol article in
Hurriyet Daily News.

`Ninety-five years ago, on this very day, a dark episode began in the
crumbling Ottoman Empire. Around 250 Armenian intellectuals and
community leaders were arrested in Istanbul and deported to Anatolia,
never to return.

The real catastrophe began a month later. Armenians were the real
target. Soon, in almost every city and town in eastern Anatolia, they
were forced out of their homes and destined to the far and arid Syria.
In some places, they were transported by trains, but most were forced
to march for hundreds of kilometers, often without food and water.
Many perished on the road, out of famine, dehydration and disease.
(The photos showing these victims, especially the starving children
and babies, are painful for anyone with a conscious.) In other cases,
there were massacres committed by the locals, driven either by hatred
or the lust to confiscate the victim’s properties.

In total, at least 600,000 Armenians, and probably more, perished in
1915, in one of history’s most tragic ethnic cleansings. I, as a
Muslim Turk, feel only pain and remorse for those tortured souls,
whose memory deserves remembrance and respect. Yet, the same memory
also leads me to ask why this great catastrophe took place, and how my
nation created it.

A combination of fear and nationalism, as I understand, was the
driving force. In 1915, the Ottomans were at war on three deadly
fronts (with the British and the French at Gallipoli and the Middle
East, and with Russia on the East), and Armenians were increasingly
seen as in league with the enemy. The Ottoman elite, and especially
the Balkan-originated Young Turks, had seen how the Greeks or
Bulgarians ethnically cleansed great portions of their Muslim
populations during their national uprisings. Now they feared the same
thing would happen in Anatolia, with an independent Armenia emerging
under Russian tutelage.

But now, I believe, is the time to be fairer. For our part, I think we
Turks have made a terrible mistake for decades by totally overlooking
the enormous suffering that the Armenian people went through in 1915.’