Word: armenian
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France's inability to protect the Turkish diplomatic community from terrorist attack has outraged the Ankara government. Turkish-French relations were further strained last April by a speech that French Interior Minister Gaston Defferre gave at a ceremony in Marseilles honoring the Armenians who died in 1915. Said Defferre: "The French government recognizes the genocide of which the Armenian people have been victim." The Turkish Foreign Minister protested that Defferre was "contributing to an atmosphere that encourages Armenian violence...
...majority of the world's 6.5 million Armenians* deplore the terror tactics of the extremist groups, who experts believe have less than 1,000 members. Last week the Armenian Patriarch in Istanbul, Shnork Kaloustian, issued a plea to Armenians everywhere to "disown these misguided and fanatical elements." Still, hatred for the Turks has festered over the years in the face of indifference in most parts of the world to the Armenian national tragedy...
During World War I, the Turks exterminated or deported virtually their entire Armenian population because they held the unfounded suspicion that members of the ethnic group were disloyal. The decision to undertake the genocide was communicated to the local leaders by the Interior Minister, Talaat Pasha, in 1915. One of his edicts stated that the government had decided to "destroy completely all Armenians living in Turkey. An end must be put to their existence, however criminal the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to age, or sex, or to scruples of conscience...
...Turkish authorities rounded up all able-bodied men in the Turkish army and bludgeoned them to death. Intellectuals and community leaders in Istanbul were herded aboard ships, then drowned at sea. Armenian babies were thrown live into pits and covered with stones. Women, children and old people were forced to march hundreds of miles, over mountains, presumably to a place of deportation in Syria, but actually to their deaths. Forbidden supplies of food and water, they were waylaid by brigands. Turkish gendarmes raped and sometimes disemboweled or cut the breasts off women before finally killing them. While the horrified...
Survivors of the holocaust fled throughout the world, mostly to parts of the Middle East, Western Europe and the U.S. Still others joined Armenians in Russia, where they founded an independent Armenian republic...