Другое : World War I and the Armenian Genocide
World War I and the Armenian Genocide
World War I and the
Armenian Genocide
With onslaught of World War I, the
Ottoman Empire and Russian Empire engaged during the Caucasus and Persian
Campaigns, the new government began to look on the Armenians with distrust and
suspicion. This was due to the fact that the Russian army contained a
contingent of Armenian volunteers. On April 24, 1915, Armenian intellectuals
were arrested by Ottoman authorities and, with the Tehcir Law (29 May 1915),
eventually a large proportion of Armenians living in Anatolia perished in what
has become known as the Armenian Genocide. There was local Armenian resistance
in the region, developed against the activities of the Ottoman Empire. The
events of 1915 to 1917 are regarded by Armenians and the vast majority of
Western historians to have been state-sponsored mass killings, or genocide.
However as Turkey is an ally of the west and holds a strategic position near to
the Middle East, both the United States and United Kingdom governments continue
to maintain that there is a lack of unequivocal evidence to categorise the
events as genocide. Turkish authorities maintain that the deaths were the
result of a civil war coupled with disease and famine, with casualties incurred
by both sides. Most estimates for the number of Armenians killed range from
650,000 to 1.5 million. Armenia and the Armenian diaspora have been campaigning
for official recognition of the events as genocide for over 30 years. These
events are traditionally commemorated yearly on April 24, the Armenian Martyr
Day, or the Day of the Armenian Genocide.
Although the Russian army succeeded
in gaining most of Ottoman Armenia during World War I, their gains were lost
with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. At the time, Russian-controlled Eastern
Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan attempted to bond together in the
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. This federation, however, only
lasted from February to May 1918, when all three parties decided to dissolve
it. As a result, Eastern Armenia became independent as the Democratic Republic
of Armenia (DRA) on May 28.
Список литературы
Для
подготовки данной работы были использованы материалы с сайта http://en.wikipedia.org
|
