Hundreds of thousands of Armenians massacred in Turkey
Turkey, 25 September 1915 - Reports continue to emerge of wholesale murder of Armenians by Turkish troops.
At least 450,000 Armenians are reported to have been killed with a further 600,000 homeless or exiled.
One report notes: ‘The Armenian population, peaceable peasants and artisans in the eastern provinces of Turkey, were remaining quiet. They had not rebelled. They were unarmed. Many of them were serving in the Turkish Army.’
‘Over the whole of Eastern and Northern Asia Minor and Armenia, the whole Christian population is being deliberately exterminated. The men of military age have been killed. The younger women have been seized for Turkish harems, compelled to become Mohammedans, and kept - sometimes with their children, also forcibly converted - in virtual slavery.’
LISTEN: RTÉ History Show Book Club - Armenian Golgotha by Grigoris Balakian
The report continues: ‘The rest of the inhabitants - old men, women and children - have been torn away from their homes and driven under convoys of Turkish soldiers.’
‘Many die or are murdered along the way; all perish sooner or later. Lest any should, if they escaped, try to regain their homes, Muslims have been brought in from other places to occupy the houses and farms from which the Christians have been expelled.’
It is reported that the murder, kidnap and rape of Armenians continues on a daily basis.
[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
