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Tax collection was pretty brutal.

In a village called Semal, the Armenians, led by a priest who had received assurances from the colonel of the Turkish forces that they would be unharmed, gave themselves up. But as soon as they surrendered . . . gave the order to seize the priest, and they proceeded to gouge out his eyes and bayonet him to death. Then they separated the men from the women and that night raped the women. The next night they bayoneted the men to death, within the hearing of the terrified women. . . . culminating in a massacre of some three thousand Armenians in the district . . .
[T]he massacre at Susan was the first instance of organized mass murder of Armenians in modern Ottoman history that was carried out in peace time and had no connection with any foreign war . . . the object was extermination, pure and simple.
pp. 55-56, with the later wuote being frmo British vice-consul H.S. Shipley.

No distinctions were made between persons or villages as to whether they were loyal and had paid their taxes or not. The orders were to make a clean sweep. A priest and some leading men from one village went out to meet an officer, taking in their hands their tax receipts, declaring their loyalty and begging for mercy; but the village was surrounded, and all human beings put to the bayonet.
p. 55
 
The result of the petition in the above post?

Around the city the softas (Islamic theological students) in their white turbans and some policemen dressed as softas appeared on the streets and alleyways and boulevards and began massacring Armenians. Many of the police and zaptiyes either stood by watching or joined in the killing. . . .
During the first week of October, massacres continued throughout Constantinople day and night.
p. 59
 
There were places where they fought back. For example, in Zeitun.

After more than three months in the severe highlands, often in brutal winter weather, twenty-four Turkish battalions with twelve cannons backed by eight thousand men from a division from Smyrna, and about thirty to thirty-five thousand Kurdish, Turkish, and Circassian irregulars, could not put down fifteen hundred Armenian mountaineers with their flintlock guns and four hundred Martin rifles.
So the European powers intervened and got the sultan to negotiate. The result was tax relief, a Christian governor, the leaders expelled from the empire, "and the fighters of Zeitun were forced to give up all of their weapons."

p. 60
 
Children were placed in a row, one behind another, and a bullet fired down the line, apparently to see how many could be dispatched with one bullet.
. . . countless numbers of people were helpless, walking around mutilated, hands and right arms cut off, and eyes gouged out. They continually heard the Turks taunt the Armenians: "Where is your Christ now? Where is your Jesus? Why does He not save you?"
They even had crucifixions!

I'll stop now, but you really should read this book. It will put a stop to the lies and propaganda about this not being genocide and about the largest massacres being a mere by product of WWI and accusations of rebellion. It was genocide with a religious component, pure and simple.
 
tace said:
Please don't say Turkish government or a party within cause whatever happened preceded the Turkish government by more than a decade.
A decade? I guess math is not taught any better than history there. Fair enough to claim that the Young Turks leading the massacres were not one and the same government as the Turkish Republic established in 1923, but then why all the denials by Turkey TODAY about the genocide? The party line is that rebellious Armenians were simply relocated away from the war zone.

Why all the lies?
 
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