Armenian genocide
The Armenian Genocide (also known as the Armenian Holocaust) was an event that occurred from 1915 to 1923, when over a million Armenians were murdered by soldiers of the Young Turk government. It is seen as one of the first major instances of ethnic cleansing in the 20th century.
The most widely-stated reason behind the massacre is said to be the intent to remove the Armenian people from the country of Turkey, in order to create a fully Islamic, Turkish-dominated country. While the Muslim Ottoman dynasty had allowed various religious factions to exist in the Ottoman Empire since its foundation, the ruling body had become less tolerant and was seen as sliding into decline and corruption through the 19th and 20th centuries. The Armenians were primarily Catholic, and they had been more and more persecuted as changes came to the Middle East in the years before and during World War I.
The disaster is said by some historians to have begun as early as 1894, though it is usually marked by historians as taking place on April 24, 1915, when 300 Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in Constantinople were gathered together by military officers and killed. At the same time, approximately 5,000 of the poorest Armenians were butchered in the streets and in their homes.
The actions continued primarily for the next year, with further atrocities being committed through 1923. During this period, it is estimated that 1.5 million to 2 million Armenians perished. Many accounts have been documented of massacres, rapes, forced marches resulting in deaths from exhaustion and dehydration among the Armenian people in this period. A not-so-dissimilar number of Greek and Semitic Christians suffered the same fate.
The Ottoman Empire fell and the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923. Though the Turkish government officially enforces a separation of church and state that differs from the more theocratic Muslim nations, the government of Turkey has not acknowledged the Armenian Genocide. Spokespersons for the Turkish government officially deny that there was any genocide, claiming that most of the Armenian deaths resulted from armed conflict, disease and famine during the turmoil of World War I. It is commonly claimed by Turks that the Armenians attempted genocide against them.
Political activists often use the issue of the Armenian Genocide as an example of the tendency of modern historians to ignore historical events not directly related to popular culture. The term "Holocaust" is seen in modern-day society as irrevocably linked with the Nazi regime's infamous act of genocide against the Jewish people; but other major human catastrophes have been largely ignored by historians, including the Armenian Genocide, the killing fields of the Pol Pot era of Cambodia, and the Russian purges, where Stalin's government murdered over twenty million Russian citizens.
Upon talking about the " Jewish question", Hitler is said to have refered to the Armenian Genocide by saying "Who now remembers the Armenians?", as an example that nobody would remember actions taken against the Jews.
In a sense, one of the first Usenet spamming incidents can be linked to the Armenian Genocide. During the first few months of 1994, a person using the Internet name of Serdar Argic posted thousands upon thousands of messages to many different newsgroups; these messages contained long diatribes claiming that the genocide had never taken place. Similar campaigns on usenet over this issue and others relating to attempted-genocide still continue today.
The Armenian genocide is the subject of a 2002 film by Canadian director Atom Egoyan, Ararat.
The events of 1915-1924 were officially recognised by the French Senate in 2000. Further recognitions by assemblies in other countries have been stalled by Turkish diplomatic lobbying.