With the arrests of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals beginning on April 24, 1915, mostly in the capital Constantinople and their massacre shortly thereafter, the first stage of the extermination of the Armenian population begins. Subsequently, Armenians scattered around the world began to celebrate April 24 as the Day of Commemoration of the Memory of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide.
At the start of the First World War, in an effort to preserve the remnants of the weakened Turkish Empire, the Young Turk government adopted the policy of pan-Turkism - the creation of a vast Turkish empire, which, extending to China, would unite all the Turkic-speaking peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia . The plan envisages the Turkification of all national minorities. The Armenian population is seen as the main obstacle in the implementation of this plan.
Although the genocide was planned as early as 1911-1912, the Young Turks used the beginning of the First World War as a convenient occasion for its implementation.
On the eve of the First World War, more than two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. About a million and a half of them were massacred in the period 1915-1923. The rest were forcibly converted to Islam or found refuge in other countries.
The second stage of the implementation of the Armenian genocide is related to the mobilization of nearly 60 thousand Armenians in the Turkish army, who were disarmed and killed a little later.
The third stage of the genocide is marked by the murders of women, children and the elderly, by their deportation to the Syrian desert. During the deportation, hundreds of thousands were massacred by Turkish soldiers and police or by Kurdish bandits, others died of starvation and disease along the way. Thousands of women and children are raped. Tens of thousands were forcibly converted to Mohammedanism.
Repression forces thousands of Armenians to flee. They find shelter in Bulgaria and France.
Armenians from Peyo Yavorov
Wretched exiles, worthless scrap
from an ever brave people a martyr,
children of a slave mother anxious
and victims of an audibly great feat -
far from the homeland, in the land of foreign nations,
exams and pale, in a dilapidated brothel,
they drink, and their hearts sink into wounds,
and they sing, as through tears sing.
They drink... When drunk, it is easy to forget
past troubles and present troubles,
in the boiling wine a state of memory drowned,
sleep will spirit sick in a broken breast;
head will be strained, from her then
disappeared will mother's suffering face
and they will not hear, in drunken oblivion,
for help sonovna the usual click.
Kat chased herd by some hungry beast,
they are already scattered everywhere -
a tyrant raging, a bloodthirsty merciless,
upon them he raised a sword forever;
left an unhappy homeland in blood,
left their father's place in flames,
unfriendly-unfriendly in a distant foreign country,
one - in the tavern! - a way is open to them.
They sing.. And wild is their song,
that wounds eat wounded hearts,
that malice drowns them in its seething rage
and tears squeeze on pale faces...
That a morsel overflows oppressed hearts,
that fire in the heads dries up reason,
that lightning shines in bloodshot eyes,
that must, must blood thirst for souls.
And the winter storm seemed to be approaching them,
booms and turns great at night
and a whirlwind raises, raises, spreads
the rebel song widely in the world.
And more and more ominously the sky darkens,
and the cold night frowns ever more,
and more and more hotly the band sings,
and a storm came with unheard of power...
They drink and sing... A scrap worthless
from an ever brave people a martyr,
children of a slave mother anxious
and victims of an audibly great feat -
far from homeland, and barefoot and naked,
at the edge of foreign gatherings, in a dilapidated brothel,
they drink - drunkenness forgets troubles,
and they sing, as through tears sing.