Armenians’ horror

Now that the centennial commemorations for Anzac Day are past, perhaps we can feel a pang or two of sympathy for the Armenians, as they commemorate the 100th anniversary of a human horror that began one day before the Gallipoli landings, just a poetic stone’s throw away from New Zealand’s theatre of war.

On April 24, 1915, using the distraction of the world war to full advantage, the Turkish government of the day began the genocide of the Armenian people on its border, eventually murdering a substantial percentage of the Armenian population.

Through deportation, starvation, mass murder, they succeeded in killing around 1.5 million Armenians by popular estimate, impounding the wealth of many of their victims. As a percentage of Armenians, the genocide was certainly on a scale comparable with the worst atrocities of the Nazis.

For Germany, the Turkish Voelkermord of the Armenian people also has its dark side. Well aware of what was happening to the Armenians, the Imperial German Government condoned the horror in order not to provoke their ally-in-arms, Turkey. Berlin considered the annihilation of the Armenian people acceptable in the world of realpolitik.

But, no longer. The German Parliament last week, to its credit, voiced its determination to have the Armenian genocide at last accepted internationally for what it was. Turkey has some soul searching ahead of it and the world can no longer delude itself that the genocide against the Jewish people was a unique event in the modern world. HAYDN RAWSTRON

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