The persecution of Christians in our age is only the latest manifestation of a sadly recurring hatred. Over 1,000,000 Greek Orthodox Christians were massacred in the Ottoman Empire during the period of the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides. The Ottoman government also pursued the systematic extermination of 1.5 million Armenians, mostly Ottoman citizens within the Ottoman Empire and its successor state, the Republic of Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of people were forcibly converted to Islam. To this day, the Turkish government refuses to acknowledge this atrocity as a genocide, saying that it was simply a religious conflict between Christians and Muslims. As we continue to see our own Mother Church of Constantinople suffering from religious persecution, we remember these horrifying events, note with sorrow the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere today, and pray that such inhumanity will never again be seen anywhere in the world.
For previous ChristianPersecution.com coverage of the persecution of Christians in some of the areas where the faith once flourished, and the imminent disappearance of Christianity from some of its ancient strongholds, see here.
“Armenian Genocide: Remembering the Mass Murder of Christians in Turkey,” by Tasos Kokkinidis, Greek Reporter, April 23, 2020:
The systematic mass murder and expulsion of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians carried out in Turkey and adjoining regions by the Ottoman government between 1914 and 1923 is commemorated on April 24 every year.
The Armenian Genocide was an atrocity which occurred within the context of a wider religious cleansing across Asia Minor that lasted 10 years and included Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians. They were all Christians who were also subjects of the Ottoman Empire.
The religious cleansing was actually the first in modern times, and it fit the pattern of genocides that would follow in the terrible century ahead. It is worth noting that the Nazis in following decades were transfixed by the events that occurred in Turkey in those nightmarish years of mass killings and deadly deportations — and saw in them a pattern which they could emulate for their own twisted ends.
The Armenians in many ways bore the worst of the slaughter, but ethnic Greeks and Assyrians also were massacred in similar ways — and for the same reason: They were scapegoats in a crumbling empire that saw Christians as a dangerous and potentially treasonous population inside the country.
There was a strong nationalistic impulse to create a “Turkey for the Turks,” and that meant a homogeneous population based on “Turkishness” and the Muslim faith.
The persecution of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire began in 1914. Initially, it was just a campaign of boycotting Armenian businesses and shops. But within months it culminated into acts of violence and the murder of key Armenian politicians and persons of importance. By April 15, 1915, almost 25,000 Armenians were slain in the province of Van.
On April 24, 1915, the Ottomans arrested 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople and sent them to Chankri and Ayash, where they were later murdered.
On the same day, the editors and staff of Azadamart, the leading Armenian newspaper of Constantinople, were arrested, to be executed on June 15 in Diyarbekir, where they had been taken and imprisoned.
The Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople and Zohrab, an Armenian deputy in the Ottoman Parliament, petitioned to the Turkish authorities on behalf of the arrested Armenians of Constantinople. The answer was that the government was dissolving the Armenian political organizations.
Within nine months, more than 600,000 Armenians were massacred. Of those who were deported during that time, more than 400,000 died of the brutalities and privations of the southward march into Mesopotamia, raising the number of victims to one million. This became known to the rest of the world outside Turkey as the Armenian Genocide.
In addition, 200,000 Armenians were forcibly converted to Islam to give Armenia a new Turkish sense of identity and strip the Armenian people of their historical past as the first Christian state in the world.
On August 30, 1922, Armenians who were living in Smyrna were victims of yet more more Turkish atrocities. The “Smyrna Disaster” of 1922, which was aimed at Christian Greeks who were living in the seaside city involved thousands of Armenians as well. Turkish soldiers and civilians set all the Greek and Armenian neighborhoods on fire, forcing the fleeing of Greeks and Armenians to the harbor, where thousands were killed or drowned…
