The Armenians are a small community of Christians from pre-Islamic and Ottoman dispensations. Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, Anatolia, Antioch and Ephesus, Churches that pre dates Rome (and all in Armenia and present day Turkey), together with Alexandria (Egypt), Libya and Jerusalem were active Christian communities during the days of Christ and as a result of missionary work by the 1st Century disciples and apostles, especially Paul and his cohorts. 

By the look of things, it would take a bold Turkish leadership that would overlook the nationalistic sentiment of the entire Turkish state to finally own up to the former empire's systematic killing of close to two million Armenians, under the guise of protecting the empire from collaborators with Tsarist Russian and World War I Allied military incursions.

 As far back as 1839, the Great Powers (Great Britain, France and Russia) had threatened a military solution to ensure the human rights of the Ottoman Empire's Christian minorities. Some of them (Greeks and some of the countries of the Balkans) with the help of the Christian Great Powers, would often break free of the Ottomans. But for the most part the Armenians were quiet about their second class citizenship under the Moslem Empire.

Under the Moslem dhimmi system Christians and Jews were subjected to rules such as being denied the right to carry a weapon; could not ride atop horses; their houses could not overlook those of Moslems; deferral of their religious practises to those of Moslems; and refusal of their testimony in court against Moslems. Although these rules were ridiculous to say the least, violating them resulted in serious fines, even death.

The Armenians, who had quietly suffered under successive heavy-handed Ottoman regimes were quite docile until the Empire's 1875 brutal suppression of Christian uprisings in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Serbia. Citing that the 1856 Treaty of Paris gave them the right to intervene and protect the Empire's Christian minorities, the Great Powers pressured the Ottomans to institute reform promises made during the Tanzimat Reforms of 1839. After deflecting a possible military expedition against the Empire through negotiations, the regime, under the leadership of successive heads went on to rid itself of the Armenian menace, since the Greeks, Serbs, Bosnians and Bulgarians had been wrestled from their control. Their Armenian Solution was the precursor to the German's Final Solution for the Jews of Europe.

The current Turkish government's and national denial of the bestial way the Armenians were killed is no different from the then Ottoman Turkish government's. They have been in denial since 1839. Turkey's continued denial in this day of revelation and absolving the ghosts of lives lost during the national orgy is not in the spirit of belonging to a community of nations. Imagine the German government denying that the Jewish Holocaust did happen.

The years that the nation and government of Turkey are in denial of is from 1915, when over 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders were rounded up by the Ottoman authorities in Constantinople, to 1917. But events leading to the close of the 19th Century would show a clear picture of the regime's intent of riding the empire of the minority Christian Armenians. From as far back as 1839, when the empire was forced by the Great Powers to ensure the human rights of its Christian minorities, to 1895, the Ottoman Turks were against the presence of Christians (Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Assyrians, and Bosnians) and Jews within their borders.

After the Russian military victory during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8, the Armenians were certain that the Christian empire would be the guarantor of their rights under the Ottomans. But a horrible mistake by the then biddable Armenians would see them only asking for autonomy as opposed to independence from the Turks.

Unfortunately these events were taking place at a time when God's chosen of Europe were carving out Africa for themselves. The Great Powers, minus Russia, especially Great Britain, had a problem with Russia making expansionist gains on the continent, and during the convening of the Berlin Congress Russia was forced to withdraw from the Ottoman territory of Armenia with the Turks promising to implement reforms.

In 1876 the Ottoman Empire was ruled by Sultan Abdul Hamid II who sought to stall the reforms. He formed a paramilitary outfit of Kurdish irregulars in 1890 called the Hamidiye to deal with the Armenian problem. The Hamidiye provocations by increased taxation led to the Sasun Resistance of 1894 when Armenian militias successfully fought off the Sultan's irregulars long enough to bring the events and violations to the attention of the Great Powers.

Tired of enduring the increasing numbers of land seizures, forced conversions, murder, and rape, in 1895, 2000 Armenians assembled in Constantinople to demand the implementation of the promised reforms. The brutal suppression of this revolt led to massacres in the predominantly Armenian towns of Bitlis, Divarbekir, Harput, Sivas, Trabzon and Van. The Hamidian Massacre of 1895 resulted in the death of between 100, 000 and 300, 000 Armenians.

 Tired of the decadent state of the Empire, soldiers from the Turkish 3rd Army based in Salonika soon overthrew Hamid in a coup d'etat. The Toung Turks comprised  the secular liberal constitutionalists and the nationalists. The former accepted Armenians within their ranks while the nationalists were against any inclusion of Armenians, even in the empire. Another of the many factions within the Young Turks movement was the Congress of Union and Progress (CUP), a former secret society of soldiers based in Salonika.

The CUP became the organisation that would almost take the extermination of the Armenians to near completion. The ultra conservative CUP were nationalists bent on preserving a Moslem heritage throughout the empire. The events leading to the onset of World War I would be the platform for the Congress of Progress and Union to stage their extermination of the Armenians.

After successfully putting down a revolt against the military junta in 1909, elements within the counter coup blamed the Armenians for supporting the Young Turks and for ousting the Sultan. These pogrommes resulted in the pillaging and massacre of Armenians in the town of Adana. The end result of the Adana Massacre was the death of between 15, 000 and 30, 000 Armenians. Still nursing ambitions of regaining lands in the Caucasus, the Turks entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers. But War Minister Enver Pasha's plans to wrestle Turkish territory out of Russian control were reduced to nothing after his forces were defeated at Sarikamis in 1914. Pasha blamed Armenian support for Russian forces as the main reason for losing the Battle of Sarikamis. Pasha then devised the master plan that finally rid the empire of the Armenian menace. In 1915 Pasha ordered the demobilisation of all Armenians serving in the Ottoman military and relegating them to unarmed labour units. Many of these recruits were eventually murdered by Turkish gangs. Their disarming was the prelude to the bloodbath that ensued.

Reports from European and American diplomats during the holocaust of the Armenians painted a picture that would have even shocked a young Adolf Hitler; or probably inspired him. Armenians were first deported from their own country and force marched into the desert of modern day Syria and Iraq. There some were buried alive, killed in large numbers and buried in mass graves; this was apart from those who died or were killed on the way to the desert.

Western diplomats also reported people being packed into churches and railroad cars that were later burnt to the ground. Boatloads of children and the old were taken into the seas and dumped alive into the icy waters.

 Today, despite calls from the international community for Turkey and the Turks to recognise and apologise for the sins of their forefathers, the government and people are still reluctant as the republic attempts to join the European Union. Turkish intellectuals have been silenced (some killed by nationalists), prevented from writing about the genocide by a draconian law, which prohibits "insulting Turkishness".

Even the mighty US, which needs its training facilities in Turkey and ports to dock its warships to keep an eye on the situation to the east, would not call on the Turks to own up to the last vestiges of the dying days of the Ottoman Turk Empire.