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Arpie Akopian
Representing History
History has molded our future. Every single one that we have read in our history books,
from our parents and even the stories we have never even heard of. Many people interpret history
in different ways, I see it as important events that happen throughout our life. I think you can
make history every minute of every day. It does not have to be a huge event like a war or a
passing of a law, it can be you getting over a fear or winning your high schools decathlon. It
something that can be talked about in the future and a story to be passed on. The Armenian
Genocide is something that is not talked about a lot. It not as known as World War I or the
bombing on Pearl Harbor. It is a crime committed by the Ottoman Empire that has not been
accepted in many countries, including the most important, the United States. It has been more
than 100 year since this act of genocide and it still goes unnoticed. People do not even accept this
as an act of genocide. It is something that needs to have attention brought to. Trying to get people
to recognize it or even knowledge them in a tiny bit of information, the first question they will
immediately ask, Is Armenia even a country? Of course it is! More than half of it is in Eastern
Turkey. It was not a massacre of just hundred people but millions. Men were killed and woman
and children were used as slaves. Pictures, precious memorabilia, jewelry all burnt down with
the homes the families had lived in. How is this fair? Myself and many other young adults want
others to know the truth, we want them to feel what our ancestors had felt, we want them to
know that we are not going down without a fight.
The word Genocide was not used before 1944. A man named Raphael Lemkin created
this weird, with a breakdown of geno and caedere. Geno meaning a tribe or rice and
Caedere in Latin meaning to kill. Lemkin was a Polish-Jewish lawyer who also considered the

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murders by the Nazis a genocide. The exact meaning of Genocide would be the deliberate
killing of a group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. It also
defined as a coordinated strategy to destroy a group of people, a process that could be
accomplished through total annihilation as well as strategies that eliminate key elements of
groups basic existence, including language, culture, and economic infrastructure. Lemkin had
categorized the Nazi extinction of the Jews a genocide and also the Armenian Genocide.
Creating that word had brought much attention to the Armenians. He had a huge impact on the
amount of recognition we have had today.
Here is how it startedThe first Armenian massacre took place between 1984 and 1896.
It due to Armenians protesting for their freedom of religion, in response Turkish military
officials, soldiers and other men terminated Armenian villages and cities and massacred all of
their citizens. Hundreds and even thousands of Armenians were murdered.
A little more than 10 years later, in 1908, a new government had taken over Turkey. They
called themselves the Young Turks. The Armenians thought that
they were there to actually help them and it gave the Armenians some
hope. After a while they learned that these Young Turks only wanted
to Turkify the empire. The Armenians lived scared and were under
threat for many years.
In 1914, Turkey entered World War I on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. Also during that time the Ottoman religious authorities declared war against all
Christians except their allies. This included Armenia. Military leaders argued that the Armenians
were traitors. Armenians found out about this and they organized volunteer armys to help the

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Russian army fight against the Turks. These events lead the Turkish Government to organize the
plan for the removal of the Armenians. This is where the plan started, a year in the making.
The world was in chaos after World War I, they were distracted and trying to rebuild the
whole entire world back. The Ottoman Empire, trying to restore Turkeys shattered national
pride decided to persecute and deport the whole entire population of Armenia, consisting of
around 1.5 million Armenia to Syria and other countries.
On April 24, 1915, The Armenian genocide began. Known to be the first genocide of the
20th century. That day the Turkish government arrested and killed many Armenian intellectuals.
After that, they had raided many Armenian homes and sent them on death marches or killed them
right in their homes. They were sent to walk
through the Mesopotamian desert without food or
water. They were forced to walk naked and walk
under the blazing hot sun until they dropped dead.
The people who stopped to take a breath were shot
right on the spot. This did not take a couple days but years. Their goal was to get rid of the
intellectuals first and then straight for the middle and lower class. As this went on, the Ottoman
Empire created small organizations called kill squads, which made up of murders and felons, to
find any Christian Armenians and they drowned them in rivers, threw them off cliffs, crucified
them and even burned them alive. For the children, they had a campaign called Turkification.
The people involved in this kidnapped children and converted them Islam and sent them to
Turkish families. In many other places they raped the women and forced them to be slaves.
The ones who could escaped fled to Russia, Lebanon, Syria, France, the United States
and even Turkey. This was not the only thing that the Ottoman Empire had done. This was

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hidden from the people due to the fact that the world was still recovering from World War I. It
was kept under the shadows and gone unnoticed. France and Great Britain had noticed but turned
their heads scared that the
Young Turks would head
towards their way.
The genocide
continued throughout 19151923, the main part being
between 1915 and 1916. In the end, 1.5 million out of the 2 million of the population were
deported, massacred or completely disappeared from their homelands by the Ottoman Empire. In
1923, for the first time in about 2000 years, the Armenians no longer lived on 85% of their native
land. The Armenian Army re-occupied the region after the war, only in certain areas. The
government in the capital, Yerevan created a fund called A Gold Piece for an Armenian. This
fund was made to recover about 5000 to 6000 Armenian woman and children who were forced to
convert to Islam and live with Turkish families. This did not last long, the Republic of Turkey
shut it down and did not let the plan go through. It is estimated that not only Armenians but
Assyrians, Syrians, Chaldeans and also Greeks fell victim for the Genocide. This allowed the
1915 genocide to be considered a successful genocide because in 1923, Turkey had a pure
Turkish Turkey.
At the end of 1918, the leaders of the Young Turks, Talaat, Enver, Behaeddin and Shakir
along with other 30 young individuals fled to Germany to avoid being prosecuted. The genocide
still continued on. However a group of Armenians created a plan, called Operation Nemesis to
track down and assassinate these leaders of the genocide. Ever since then the Turkish

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government has denied that a genocide ever took place. They argue that the slaughter was
necessary because the Armenians were attacking them. Some will say that the Armenians
committed Genocide against them. Until this day, this thought is still put into peoples heads.
The ones who saw everything and survived. They told the stories of the terrible massacres
and the deportations of the Armenians and even had taken pictures of what had happened. Many
of these people were doctors, nurses, and school and university teachers. Many were also from
Turkeys allied countries which were Germany and Austria-Hungary, but also people from
neutral countries like the United States, Sweden, Norway and Denmark who happened to be in
the Ottoman Empire. The Armenians are thankful for these people. What have anyone known
that this massacred had taken place if there was not story to tell? Books and articles were
published. The New York Times covered the issue, 145 articles in 1915 alone by one count, with
headlines like Appeal to Turkey to Stop Massacres. The Times described the actions against
the Armenians as systematic, authorized, and organized by the government. Reports,
memoirs and real photographs of the events were published everywhere.
Until this day, Armenians still fight for their freedom. Does not matter how many years
has passed. Does not matter that millions of Turks have occupied their lands. They want
recognition! They want the world to know who is at fault! They do not want the people to be in
denial. At this moment, 27 countries have recognized the genocide. That is not enough but the
Armenians take what they can get. They march every year on the 24th of April to show the world
how strong they are. Shutting down busy streets of Los Angeles, Beirut, New York It works,
people stop on the streets to ask what is happening and many foreigners even join in because
they know the right from the wrong. I, myself, am I survivor of the genocide. As are my
ancestors. I survive to keep the Armenians going. Our people united are strong than ever.

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101 years ago the Ottoman empire committed a genocide again the Armenian People.
101 years later and we are still here and stronger than ever. They have failed to annihilate the
Armenian people. They tried to burns our books. They tried to erase our history and our culture.
They tried to bury us but did not know we were seeds. 101 years later and we have many
generations of Armenians living all across the world. Armenians will walk on this Earth till the
end of time. 1915 will never be forgotten no matter how long ago it was. Christian
Shakhbazyan