Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (also known as the Armenian Holocaust or the Armenian Massacre) is a term which refer to the forced mass evacuation and related deaths of hundreds of thousands or over a million Armenians, during the government of Young Turks from 1915 to 1917 in Ottoman Empire. Several facts in connection with the genocide are a matter of ongoing dispute between parts of the international community and Turkey. Although it is generally agreed that events said to comprise the Armenian Genocide did occur, the Turkish government rejects that it was genocide, on the alleged basis that the deaths among the Armenians, were not a result of a state-sponsored plan of mass extermination, but from the result of inter-ethnic strife, disease and famine during the turmoil of World War I.

Military Trials, Istanbul, 1919

Many of those responsible for the genocide were sentenced to death in absentia, after having escaped their trials in 1918. The accused succeeded in destroying the majority of the documents, that could be used as evidence against them, before they escaped. Admiral Calthorpe, the British High Commissionar, report about the destroying of documents: ?Just before the Armistice, officials had been going to the archives department at night and making clean sweep of most of the documents.? Aydemir, S.S., on the other hand, writes in his "Makedonyadan Ortaasyaya Enver Pasa.": ?Before the flight of the top Ittihadist leaders, Talat Pasa stopped by at the waterfront residence of one of his friends on the shore of Arnavudköy, depositing there suitcase of documents. It is said that the documents were burned in the basement's furnace. Indeed ... the documents and other papers of Ittihad's Central Committee are nowhere to be found.? The martial court established the will of the Ittheadists to eliminate the Armenians physically, via its special organization. The Court Martial, Istanbul, 1919: "The Court Martial taking into consideration the above-named crimes declares, unanimously, the culpability as principle factors of these crimes the fugitives Talat Pasha, former Grand Vizir, Enver Efendi, former War Minister, struck off the register of the Imperial Army, Cemal Efendi, former Navy Minister, struck off too from the Imperial Army, and Dr. Nazim Efendi, former Minister of Education, members of the General Council of the Union & Progress, representing the moral person of that party;... the Court Martial pronounces, in accordance with said stipulations of the Law the death penalty against Talat, Enver, Cemal, and Dr. Nazim."

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