On 24 April 1915 the Turkish authorities arrested around a thousand leading members of the Armenian community in the capital city of Constantinople (now Istanbul) and murdered them. They went on to disarm and kill around 300,000 Armenian men who had been conscripted into the Turkish Army.
The next stage in the attempt to eliminate the Armenian people included, in the words of the Campaign for Recognition of the Armenian Genocide, "mass killings, deportations and death marches of women, children and elderly men into the Syrian Desert. During those marches, many of the weak or exhausted were killed or died. Women were raped. The deportees were deprived of food and water. Starvation and dehydration became commonplace."
Roughly 70% of the Armenian population - about 1.5 million were killed, mostly in 1915, although the massacres and deportations continued in 1916 and on a smaller scale until 1923.
The Armenians were in the way of the Turkish policy of creating a single homogeneous Turkish nation, having a strong national identity with their Christian heritage at its centre. The Turks, angered by the Armenian desire for independence, decided that the only solution was to get rid of them from the Turkish empire. The Turkish government still refuse to accept that their country had a policy of genocide, explaining the deaths as the result of a civil war. But the Armenians had no weapons or organisation to carry out any war.
When the UN was set up after the Second World War, one of its early resolutions was one on 'The Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide' and it was proposed by Raphael Lemkin who had coined the term genocide, describing it as "The sort of thing Hitler did to the Jews and the Turks did to the Armenians."
Although the UN Commission on Human Rights has described it as genocide and many countries around the world have recognised it in their parliaments, the UK has still to make such a declaration, and the main aim of this annual march is to persuade our government to officially recognise the Armenian genocide.
Armenians state that the "request for recognition is a moral issue that would restore truth and justice and lead toward reconciliation."
The marchers formed up on Oxford Street for the march to Downing St, led by male and female members of the Armenian scouts carrying an Armenian flag and a Union Jack and then a group of them carrying wreaths. Behind them were leaders of the Armenian community followed by a thousand or more people, some wearing or carrying Armenian flags, along with placards and banners.
The Armenians insist that Turkish recognition of the genocide should be a pre-condition for Turkey to join the EU. Other placards called for the Armenian genocide to be taught in the National Curriculum, and some had a picture of Hrant Dink(1954-2007) 'The 1,500,001st Victim of The Armenian Genocide', former editor of the Istanbul Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, who was prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code which makes it a crime to publicly denigrate the Turkish government, republic or nation. After having received many death threats he was assassinated by a 17 year old Turkish Nationalist in January 2007.
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