Theodore Roosevelt on the pacifism of the Armenians. April 24 is the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.

April 24 is the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire

It was on this day that mass arrests of the Armenian intellectual, religious, economic and political elite began in Constantinople, which led to the complete destruction of an entire galaxy of prominent figures of Armenian culture because of their nationality. The purpose of the action was to decapitate the Armenians, to deprive the people of even the slightest chance to organize themselves in the face of the danger of total extermination. The result of the policy of the Turkish rulers was not just the death of more than two million Armenians, but the complete disappearance of the original population from the historical regions of Western Armenia, where Armenians had lived for about three thousand years.

Despite the process of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, Turkey continues to fight against the recognition of the Genocide by all means, including propaganda and falsification of scientific facts. The massacre of Armenians, ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Armenian population, and the consistent policy of artificial assimilation of Armenians and other non-Turkic peoples in Azerbaijan has been carried out since the very beginning of the creation of the state under that name and continued under Soviet rule. The policy of ethnic cleansing continued intensively in Soviet Azerbaijan. When the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic was established, there were about 50% of Armenians there, and by the mid-80s they were gone! By 1992, almost 500,000 Armenians had been expelled from more than 300 settlements. Almost the same number of Jews and Russians were expelled. Why did Armenians and representatives of other nations leave or rather flee Azerbaijan? From pogroms, massacres and forced evictions!

The genocide in Sumgait also gave the green light to new unprecedented crimes against civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh, and led to the beginning of Azerbaijan's open armed aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh in 1991-94. The culmination of Azerbaijan's genocidal policy was the 44-day war in 2020, the 280-day blockade of all transport communications connecting the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic with the outside world, the large-scale military aggression against it on September 19, 2023, accompanied by violence, killings of civilians, including children and the elderly, and other acts of vandalism, - which testifies to deliberate acts aimed at the genocide of Armenians by expelling them from their native land. The entire Armenian population left Nagorno-Karabakh. In line with the active continuation of the genocidal policy of Azerbaijan, an illegal trial of the leaders of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic has been organized in Baku, which is a kind of continuation of Sumgait.

In the book "Fear God and Follow Your Cause," U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt wrote that Armenians for centuries deliberately avoided militarism and war because they were pacifists, unlike their Turkish neighbors, who were and still are militarists. As a result, the militarism of the Ottoman authorities prevailed over the peaceful aspirations of the Armenians. The horror that has gripped the Armenians is a fait accompli. To a large extent, this is the result of the policy of pacifism that these people have pursued over the past four years.

Today, the Armenian government officials are trying to pursue such a policy of "pacifism", noted by Theodore Roosevelt. Whether its authors want it to or not, it can only contribute to the realization of the genocidal policy of Azerbaijan, which publicly makes territorial claims against Armenia, including the capital of Armenia, the city of Yerevan. The Azerbaijani armed forces have occupied the sovereign territories of the Republic of Armenia. There are dead and wounded, including among the civilian population. Following the policy of Nazi Germany, Aliyev demands the construction of an extraterritorial transport corridor through the Armenian city of Syunik, just as Hitler demanded that Poland allow Germany to build extraterritorial railways and highways through its territory. And he openly threatens to solve it by force!

The history of the Armenian Genocide clearly shows what such "pacifism" can lead to!