Christian Genocide: The Ottoman Holy War to Erase Every Christian
“Eighteen of the most beautiful young girls were hauled into a church, stripped naked, and violated in turn on top of the Holy Gospel.”
Last April 24 was Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (as discussed here).
It also bears remembering that it was not just Armenians who were massacred at the hands of Turks. For example, the opening sentence of U.S. House Resolution 296 correctly acknowledges “the campaign of genocide against Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites, and other Christians.”
That last word—Christians—is key to understanding this tragic chapter of history: Christianity is what all those otherwise diverse peoples had in common, and therefore it—not nationality, ethnicity, or grievances—was the ultimate determining factor concerning who the Turks would and would not “purge.”
The genocide is often conflated with the Armenians because many more of them than other ethnicities were killed—causing them to be the face of the genocide.
According to generally accepted figures, the Turks exterminated 1.5 million Armenians, 750,000 Greeks, and 300,000 Assyrians.
Regarding the Assyrians (a designation that also encompasses Chaldeans, Syriacs, and Arameans) half of their population of 600,000 was slaughtered in the genocide. In other words, relative to their numbers, they lost more than any other Christian group, including the Armenians.
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