The last remaining Christians in Syria’s Raqqa are being forbidden from leaving “under any condition” by the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists who control the de-facto capital of the terrorist group, as forces loyal to dictator Bashar al-Assad and their allies advance towards the city.
Contents: Azerbaijan forced to choose between Russia and Turkey; Azerbaijan becomes the hub of the Caspian Trade Corridor, part of the new Silk Road
Contents: Russia and Turkey try to ‘blackmail’ Armenia into their conflict; The mirror images: Donald Trump and Barack Obama
Armenian families who fled Kobane, Syria, do not plan to return home even though the Kurdish army successfully defeated the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). “There were only eight families left before the ISIL attack [in October 2014],” explained Agop Tomasyon. “All of these families left Kobane after the attack.”
On Sunday, Pope Francis denounced “the great powers” of the time for not stopping the Holocaust out of “self-interest,” by failing to bomb the railroads heading to concentration camps when they knew what was going on there.
The Turkey government lashed out at the Russian government after they acknowledged the 1915 massacre of Armenians as genocide.
LOS ANGELES, California — Over 130,000 Armenians marched through the streets of Hollywood and Los Angeles on Friday to remind the world of their calls for recognition of the genocidal killing of 1.5 million of their people 100 years ago. The Turkish government has refused to recognize it as such.
LOS ANGELES, California — Between 50,000 to 100,000 Armenians took to the streets of Little Armenia on the centennial anniversary of the day that marked the start of the Armenian genocide 100 years ago.
On April 24, 1915 the Ottoman Turkish leaders ordered the arrest of hundreds of notable Armenians in Istanbul and launched the systematic annihilation of Armenian as well as Assyrian Christians within the empire’s borders and throughout the Middle East. This day would become known as “Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day,” and a century later is the center of a persistent geopolitical controversy.
This week the world is marking the gruesome 100th anniversary of events that took lives of some 1.5 million of Turkey’s Armenians. The Ottoman Empire was falling apart, fighting as one of the Axis powers in WW1, fearful of its Christian minorities and their possibly joining the Allied effort led by Czarist Russia to liberate them.
As if on safari, the hunters proudly display their dead prey. But the circa 1915 photograph depicts an undeniable horror. The hunters flank a dozen or so human bodies, laid out upon a dirt mound. The distinctive hunters’ uniforms identify them as Turkish soldiers of the Ottoman Empire; their victims are Armenian Christians.
LOS ANGELES, California — Friday will mark the centennial of the start of the Armenian genocide, in which nearly 1.5 million Armenians were massacred at the hands of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. A host of businesses will be closing in the area in observance of the anniversary. A march through Los Angeles has also been planned.
After he broke his 2008 campaign promise to recognize the Armenian genocide by refusing to use the term “genocide” this week on the 100th anniversary of the tragedy, most of the mainstream media, unwilling to slam their beloved president, has been conspicuously silent.
On the eve of the commemoration of the 1915 Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire, a Turkish professor is suggesting that Turkish forces had nothing to do with the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians, and that the Armenians disguised themselves as Turks to kill their own people.
On April 24, 1915 the Turkish genocide of Assyrians, Greeks and Armenians began very simply, without pomp and circumstance. “We have made a clean sweep of the Armenians and Assyrians of Azerbaijan.” Those were the words of Djevdet Bey, the governor of Van Province in Ottoman Turkey, who on April 24, 1915 lead 20,000 Turkish soldiers and 10,000 Kurdish irregulars in the opening act of the genocide of Assyrians, Armenians and Pontic Greeks. In three short years, 750,000 Assyrians (75%) would be killed, 1.5 million Armenians and 500,000 Greeks.
In 2006, then-Senator Barack Obama wrote a letter to Secretary of State Condi Rice urging her to acknowledge historical facts and use the word “genocide” to describe the massacre of 1.5 million Armenian Christians. As President, Obama has never used the word, despite a written promise to do so.
President Obama will once again avoid using the word “genocide” at a ceremony to designed to memorialize more than a million Armenians murdered by the Ottaman Turks 100 years ago. During his 2008 campaign, then-Senator Obama repeatedly promised he would label the massacre a genocide as president.
The Armenian genocide is a very sensitive subject with Turkey, as it prefers to think of that horrendous century-old bloodbath as a military clash with the Ottoman Empire, which the Armenians lost very badly–badly enough to kill about 1.5 million of the 2 million Christian Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire at the time, to be specific.
A senior advisor to the Prime Minister of Turkey was declared “retired” today after having called the death of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks in 1915 a “genocide” and praising Pope Francis for condemning those who deny the genocide took place.
Access to the Vatican website, www.vatican.va, was blocked twice in the space of 24 hours this week following Pope Francis’s comments Sunday regarding the Armenian genocide.
ANKARA (Reuters) – President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey would disregard the European Parliament’s vote later on Wednesday on the 1915 mass killings of Armenians, which the pope this week described as genocide.
The U.S. State Department wants a “full, frank” acknowledgement of the facts surrounding the mass killing of Armenians in World War I, but demurred when it came to labeling it “a genocide.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that he “condemns” Pope Francis for his use of the expression “genocide” when referring to the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Empire from 1915-1917.
Pope Francis took a brave leap forward on Sunday, risking backlash from the Turkish government, when he spoke out against the Armenian genocide that took place almost 100 years ago at the hands of Ottoman Turks. Members of California’s over 200,000-strong Armenian community rejoiced at his courage to name and condemn the genocide.
The day after publicly commemorating the Armenian genocide and risking a hostile response from Turkey, Pope Francis spoke of the need for courage to proclaim the truth boldly, no matter what the consequences.
Turkey’s reaction to Pope Francis’s comments Sunday on the Armenian genocide was swift and resolute, as the country recalled its Vatican ambassador back to Ankara and denounced the Pope for instigating “hatred and animosity” by spreading “unfounded allegations.”
Rampant speculation on whether Pope Francis would employ the “G-word” in describing the Turkish massacre of 1.5 million Armenians a century ago has been definitively answered as the Pope called the slaughter “the first genocide of the twentieth century” Sunday
In preparation for a special Mass commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide to be celebrated Sunday, Pope Francis received a delegation Thursday from the Armenian-Catholic Church.
A French-Armenian protester attacked Turkish Ambassador to France Hakkı Akil on Monday during a talk at Paris’s Descartes University, running up to his podium and drenching him in pomegranate juice.
As Armenians are gearing up to commemorate the centenary of the Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Foreign Ministry has “mistakenly” published a picture of the Armenian Genocide Monument amidst a collage of photos in a 2015 calendar.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invited world leaders, including Armenian President Serzh Sarkysian, to participate in festivities to be held in Turkey to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli on April 24. Coincidentally, that is the very day when Armenians are preparing to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks.
