1 november 2019
End October 2019 the American House of Representatives recognised the Armenian Genocide. As is well known the Turkish Government denies such Genocide took place.
I do not intend to discuss wether there was a genocide or not; Whether a Turkish government gave the instruction to perform a genocide or not ; Whether the regular Turkish army performed that genocide or was involved ; How many Armenian died during the genocide.
What I want to discuss is the story that the Armenian genocide was the first genocide of the modern times. This is certainly not true. The first systematic ethnic cleansing took place during the liberation wars of Eastern Europe and Greece and during the Russian occupation of Ukrain (the Tatar territories) and the Caucasus. During these wars a lot of Muslims or Turkish speaking people were chased and resettled within the smaller territory of the Ottoman empire, where they sometimes ran into conflict with local populations like e.g. the Armenians. If there was a genocide, it was not a Turkish invention but a Turkish reaction to the ethnic cleansing that took place in Europe and Ukrain in the hundred years of the 19th century when nationalism took the lead in the liberation of the people’s of Europe.