The Turks are guilty of the genocides of Greeks, Assyrians, Armenians and others. The Turks, of course, did not exterminate entire populations only in the first decades of the 20th century.
As for the Armenians one of their biggest massacres is the one that happened in 1895-96 and became known as "the massacre of Hamid" , named after the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid who promised reforms in favor of the non-Muslims of his state, but instead offered them sword and fire.
In October 1895 the sultan was forced to sign a firman promising reforms. On October 1, 1895, approximately 2,000 Armenians of Constantinople demonstrated to demand the implementation of the Sultan's decree.
The demonstration was violently dispersed and was the occasion for the start of savage massacres throughout the Ottoman state, where Armenians lived. The massacres started in the City but soon spread. The American journalist William Sachtleben who was in Erzurum in 1895 wrote about it in the Times:
"What I saw on the evening of Friday, the 1st of November, was recorded in the mind as the most terrible thing a man can see. I went with a soldier, a translator, an Armenian photographer to the Armenian cemetery. There were 321 bodies on the wall. Many were wildly abused.
"One dead man had his face completely disfigured. I saw others with their necks hanging from being struck by a sword. One of their dead bodies had been scratched, while his hands were missing from the wrists down. I asked if he was eaten by dogs. No, they answered me, the Turks did it with knives. Dozens of dead people were burned. For a brave man to die in battle is something else than to be cut down, unarmed, by armed soldiers," he wrote.
The French vice-consul in Diyarbakır Gustave Merier recorded similar incidents stressing that the Turks were cowards who only hit the defenseless. In the city of Ufra they burned alive 3,000 Armenians who had taken refuge in their church. Anyone who tried to get out of the burning church and escape was killed immediately.
That this policy was officially directed is revealed by the memoirs of the sultan's first secretary who writes:"The sultan decided to implement a policy of terror against the Armenians...". The massacres continued in 1896 and 1897.
It is extremely difficult to estimate the number of dead Armenians. The sources report 80-30,000 dead. The German preacher Johannes Lepsius estimated the dead Armenians at around 89,000 and spoke of the destruction of nearly 2,500 Armenian villages and violent, mass conversions to Islam. At the same time recorded the destruction of hundreds of churches and the conversion of 328 into mosques . He estimates the dead Armenians from hunger and hardship at more than 100,000 souls.
On the contrary, the British embassy in Istanbul estimated the dead Armenians at 100,000 in 1895 alone. Other sources, French and German, speak of at least 250,000 dead Armenians, but also 100,000 Greeks and 25,000 Assyrians.
Armenian mass grave.
Innocent children, victims of Turkish brutality.