(Ahval-Turkey) The Christian population that had made up one-fifth of the Ottoman Empire's population was wiped out in waves of violence by successive Ottoman and Turkish republican governments, Israeli historians Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi conclude in their new book, The Thirty Year Genocide. Not only the Armenians but all Ottoman Christian communities were targeted between 1894 and 1924. Morris told Ha'aretz that "between 1.5 and 2.5 million Christians were murdered." Publisher Harvard University Press notes, "(The) killing of two million Christians was effected through the calculated exhortation of the Turks to create a pure Muslim nation." Morris says the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was responsible for "the liquidation of the last Armenians who remained in Turkey" as well as hundreds of thousands of Greek and Assyrian Christians.
2019-01-18 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive