Armenian genocide how long did it last

In the United States, a powerful Armenian community centered in Los Angeles has been pressing for years for Congress to condemn the Armenian genocide. Turkey, which cut military ties to France over a similar action, has reacted with angry threats. A bill to that effect nearly passed in the fall of , gaining a majority of co-sponsors and passing a committee vote. The roots of the genocide lie in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Minority religious communities, like the Christian Armenians, were allowed to maintain their religious, social and legal structures, but were often subject to extra taxes or other measures.

Concentrated largely in eastern Anatolia, many of them merchants and industrialists, Armenians, historians say, appeared markedly better off in many ways than their Turkish neighbors, largely small peasants or ill-paid government functionaries and soldiers.

They were led by what became an all-powerful triumvirate sometimes referred to as the Three Pashas. They attacked to the east, hoping to capture the city of Baku in what would be a disastrous campaign against Russian forces in the Caucuses. They were soundly defeated at the battle of Sarikemish. Armenians in the area were blamed for siding with the Russians and the Young Turks began a campaign to portray the Armenians as a kind of fifth column, a threat to the state.

Indeed, there were Armenian nationalists who acted as guerrillas and cooperated with the Russians. They briefly seized the city of Van in the spring of Unknown numbers of others converted to Islam or in other ways survived but were lost to the Armenian culture.

At the time a number of influential people spoke out against these atrocities, most notably the distinguished historian Arnold J. Toynbee, but it has only been since the s that scholars have devoted anything like sustained attention to this human catastrophe.

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B2B Publishing. Business Visionaries. Hot Property. Times Events. Times Store. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options. A couple walk at the Tzitzernakaberd memorial to the victims of mass killings by Ottoman Turks, in the Armenian capital of Yerevan.

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