in memory of the Armenian victims of genocide perpetrated by the Islamic Ottoman Turks

July and August 1916 - Deir ez-Zor Massacres: The second wave of mass murder of Armenians carried by the Islamic Ottoman Turks.

According to the Armenian National Institute, during August of 1916, and specifically on August 14, 1916, records indicate that around 200,000 Armenian deportees were systematically slaughtered in massacres across the Zor District, particularly along the Euphrates and Khabur rivers, such as at Suwar, Marrat, and Elbusayra).

During World World I the Islamic Turks -The Ottoman Empire- carried out the mass murder of Armenians, a Christian ethnic minority living as second-class citizens in the Ottoman Empire centered on Turkey. The genocide was the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian desert and the forced Islamization of others, primarily women and children.

Before World War I, large-scale massacres of Armenians had already occurred in the 1890s and 1909. Wikipedia notes that the Ottoman Empire suffered military defeats and territorial losses, especially during the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars. The Turks feared that the Armenians would seek greater rights and self-determination, and during World War I the Turks increased their campaigns to commit genocide against Armenians.

Wikipedia caption for the photo: "The corpses of Armenians beside a road, a common sight along deportation routes"

Wikipedia observes that on April 24, 1915, Ottoman officials rounded up and expelled hundreds of prominent Armenian leaders and intellectuals from Constantinople. Under the direction of Talaat Pasha, between 800,000 and 1.2 million Armenians were subsequently forced on brutal death marches toward the Syrian desert over the course of 1915 and 1916. Paramilitary guards marched the victims through harsh conditions while denying them food and water, leaving them exposed to rampant robbery, sexual violence, and mass executions. Those who survived were herded into desert concentration camps.

A second wave of targeted killings was launched in 1916, reducing the surviving deportee population to roughly 200,000 by year's end. Additionally, an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly converted to Islam and absorbed into Muslim families. The slaughter and systemic displacement of remaining Armenians persisted well after World War I, carried out by Turkish nationalist forces during the Turkish War of Independence.

Widely viewed prior to World War II as the ultimate human tragedy, the genocide effectively wiped out over two millennia of Armenian heritage and presence in eastern Anatolia. Executed in tandem with the destruction of the region's Assyrian and Greek Orthodox Christian populations, these atrocities paved the way for the establishment of an ethno-nationalist state, the Republic of Turkey. Today, the Turkish government continues to deny the genocide label, insisting the forced relocations were a justified military response. However, 36 nations alongside the vast majority of international historians officially recognize these events as a genocide.

The few Turkish public figures that acknowledge the genocide, like Orhan Pamuk, Taner Akçam, and Hrant Dink, are branded traitors, prosecuted by the Turkish government and face massive outrage and death threats in Turkey. The journalist Hrant Dink was murdered in 2007 in Istanbul, Turkey for his acknowledgement of the genocide.

Judas Priest - Genocide