IMPORTANT QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

• FALSE: The events of 1915 constitute a clear-cut genocide against the Armenian people.

  There is no legal consensus to support the Armenians attempts to portray these actions as a willful, deliberate attempt to commit genocide of the Armenian people – a specific crime defined by international law. Despite being given multiple opportunities to do so, international courts have never designated these tragic events as genocide.

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• FALSE: The events of 1915 were a systematic attempt to eliminate an entire race.

  The events of April 1915 were triggered in response to years of violence perpetrated by Armenian separatists. The Dashnaks and Hunchakians, Armenian socialist political parties, led 40 uprisings over a 20-year period, evidenced by documents issued during that time.

  The Ottoman response in April 1915, in which Armenian intellectuals were arrested for inciting uprisings against the Ottoman government, was not a move to cleanse an ethnic group, but a response to a terrorist resistance launched against the Ottoman government.

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• FALSE: Ottoman Armenians are the only group that suffered during the tragic events of 1915.

  During this great tragedy, millions of former Ottoman citizens suffered, including Turks, Kurds, Arabs, and Armenians.

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• FALSE: Turkey committed a major genocide on April 24, 1915.

  On April 24, 1915, the government closed Armenian political Committees and arrested – not killed or massacred – more than 2,300 Armenian leaders for carrying out these crimes against the government.

  After numerous Armenian rebellions in the decades leading up to 1915 and the Armenian massacres of tens of thousands of Turks, the government informed the high-level Armenian representatives that “[the] Government will take the necessary precautions if Armenians continue to backstab and assassinate the Turks.”

  Unfortunately, this warning was ignored by the Armenian rebels, who increased their attacks upon defenseless Turkish women and children. The celebration of April 24 as the day that the so-called “Armenian Genocide” began is but one of many efforts to propagandize and distort history by the Armenian diaspora.

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• FALSE: 1.5 million Armenians were killed during the events of 1915.

  Dr. Justin McCarthy, an American demographer, Ottoman Empire expert, and historian at the University of Louisville, notes 1.3 million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire pre-World War I, half of which resided in warzone areas.

  As such, McCarthy argues, 1.5 million Armenians could not have been killed during the 1912-1922 period. By his accounts, the number of Armenians casualties is closer to 600,000. Prominent scholars, such as British historian Arnold Toynbee, have since confirmed McCarthy’s figure.

  But in discussing the Armenian casualties, we cannot overlook the two to three million Ottoman citizens, Muslims, Jews, Kurds, and Christians, who too lost their lives— a count far higher than the total Armenians killed. Yet, no matter the lives lost, no matter which side one stands on, a common school of thought holds: 1912-1922 reflected a grim period for Turks, Kurds, Arabs, and Armenians alike, and for humanity as a whole.

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