From Nazi Germany to Ottoman Turkey, Genocides Begin in the Wilderness, Far From Prying Eyes

http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/29/from-nazi-germany-to-ottoman-turkey-genocides-begin-in-the-wilderness-far-from-prying-eyes/
Date Written:  2019-07-29
Publisher:  Counterpunch
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23729

Recent research shows that the Armenian genocide began before its usually accepted date in 1915. This is consistent with other genocides which start away from the metropolises with only minimal instructions from higher government.

Abstract: 
--

Excerpt:

Most historians still think the Armenian Holocaust was hatched up by the Ottoman Turks in Istanbul in 1915....

But now, almost incredibly, we discover that the liquidation of Christian Armenian men, women and children was first instigated on 1 December 1914 in the far away city of Erzurum – not on 24 April 1915, when Armenians commemorate the first killings of the genocide perpetrated against them. And that back in that fatal December month, the Turkish "Special Organisation" – the Ottoman equivalent of the later German SS and Einsatzgruppen – organised the immediate liquidation of Armenians "liable to carry out attacks against Muslims"....

But it is that fine Turkish historian Taner Akcam, in his self-imposed American exile, to whom we this month owe the historically seminal revelation that the Armenians were targeted for death exactly 31 days after the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War on 31 October 1914. The first Armenian victims were only men – the bloodlust to kill their families would come later – in the provinces of Van and Bitlis. But they prove how deeply this war crime was embedded in the countryside of eastern Turkey, in the cities of the periphery rather than the capital.