Must we learn: the Armenian genocide lecture by Pr. Richard Hannisian

Richard Hannisian is the director of the Near East studies at UCLA, he has authored and edited many books in the field and collaborated an article on Armenia in National Geographic. His father was born in Armenia. When he started the lecture he started with the mysteries of genocide; why a race or government tries to selectively eliminate a race or tribe of people. Though he is not a genocide scholar, he addressed the many other infamous genocides that have occurred over the 20th century. During the year of 1915 the Turkish government killed 1.5 million Armenians by the newly established order of the Young Turks, who were Turkish college students that brought down the Sultan. There was no blood shed in this coup.

After the Balkan Wars, the Ottoman Empire suffered grave lost of their most valuable territories in Eastern Europe. However, they still had their territories in Asia Minor which consisted of several different ethnic groups: including Armenians, Kurds and Arabs. The big division between the Armenians and the rest of the Empire was religion. Armenians were primarily Catholic while the rest was Islamic. And after the Russo-Turkish War and the Treaty of Berlin, The russians announced that they were the protectors of the Christains in the Ottoman Empire. This automatically gave the government the impresssion that all Armenians were PRo-west, Pro-Russian and against Russian ideals. Over the years during, WW1 the armed forces participated in rounding up Armenians for forced evacutions and had mass murders done. It didnt take that many people to kill alot of people.The Turkish people could not speak against the strocities without harsh punishment or even death. Even After so many years and many people speaking out the turkish government still denies the event even occured. So does texas.