What is Genocide?

The replacement was presented by the Armenians and hostile states as a massacre and genocide against Armenians, and a massive propaganda campaign was launched against the Ottomans.

Genocide is the crime of annihilation of human groups because of racial, national, ethnic and religious differences. It can be perpetrated only directly by a Government or under its consent. In order to prevent the crime of genocide in the world, the United Nations General Assembly voted in 1948 the Genocide Convention, to which Turkey adhered in 1950.

The mention of genocide reminds the massive massacres perpetrated by Nazis against Jews and other ethnic groups In World War II. In this period lasting from 1939 to 1945 six million Jews, more than three millions of Soviet prisoners of war, more than one million Polish and Yugoslav civilians, about 200.000 Gypsies and 70.000 disabled persons were murdered. This is genocide in the true sense of the word.

Similarly, an imposing number of genocides have been committed in the recent years despite the United Nations Convention. For example, the confessions of two retired French generals published in the daily Le Monde show that the French army murdered at least one million Algerians between 1954 and 1962, while the Indonesian army massacred a full one million communists and their family members in 1965 and 1966, the Red Khmer killed 1,7 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979, 500.000 Tutsis were beheaded by Huttus of Ruanda in 1994 and thousands of Moslems were exposed to Serbian atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.

The crime of genocide was committed in the above cases in its most blatant form. Contrary to the Armenian pretensions, the measures adopted regarding the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia was merely a replacement in another region within the Empire for security reasons and had nothing to do with genocide.

It is true that there were Armenian losses during the war and the replacement operation but they were actually due to the failure of establishment of order because of the war and the revolts in Eastern Anatolia., together with hunger, lack of food and fuel, adverse climatic conditions and epidemics such as typhus. There was no genocide or a planned massacre whatsoever.

It is a fact that the Armenians were subjected to many similar replacements in the past for treason against the states under whose hegemonies they were living. the Sasanites moved 70.000 Armenians to Iran in 379 AD, the Byzantines relocated 40.000 East Anatolian Armenians in Sivas and Kayseri in 1025, the Mameluks sent 10.000 to Egypt, the Iranians dispersed 24.000 into the country and the Russians invading Crimea sent thousands of Armenians into the Siberian steppes.

Without mentioning any of these preceding replacements and exiles, the Armenians strive to make a genocide issue out of their replacement undertaken in 1915 for undeniably sound reasons by the Ottoman State. This attitude is the product of policies designed to break apart the integrity of Turkey. The most obvious evidence of this phenomenon lies in the fact that the Western powers, oblivious to the true genocide events in Africa, the Balkans and several other parts of the world, lend support to the claims of genocide against Armenians