The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924 Hardcover – April 24, 2019

This is a superb book and a major feat of scholarship based on exhaustive research, including original materials from the national archives of Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Turkey and the United States. The authors’ main thesis is not unprecedented. They are not the first, as they acknowledge, to argue that a succession of Turkish governments between 1894 and 1924 systematically and single-mindedly pursued the ethnic cleansing of minority Christian populations in Anatolia in a sadistic fashion. However, it is true that most modern scholars tend to look at the major periods of persecution separately. In any case, what makes the book more remarkable in this reader's estimation is the willingness of the authors to reach well-reasoned and unflinching conclusions on the basis of best evidence. The book is a powerful indictment of decades of Turkish crimes against humanity and their continued denials to the contrary. This reader only has 2 very minor quibbles with the authors’ scholarship, and they only serve to underscore how painstakingly careful and balanced they have been with their material. The first quibble is that they identify E. C. Hole as a U.S. vice consul (page 435) when he was actually British I believe. The second quibble is that the authors place Rahmi Bey in Smyrna as the Ottoman Governor-General (p. 429) when it was occupied by the Greek army in May 1919. However, I believe he had already left for Constantinople by then and been replaced by Izzet Bey. Otherwise, everything I read in this book is extremely accurate, well-documented, and well-reasoned. Kudos to the authors for their impeccable scholarship, clear writing, and courageous examination of the historical record. Having read much of the literature on this subject, I would say this is the one indispensable academic source on the Turkish genocide of Anatolian Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and other Christian minorities.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk once said: "What pride to be a Turk!" After reading this excellent narrative about the repeated massacres of Turkey's Christian minorities--Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians, one wonders how present-day Turks can ignore, or even cherish, such bestiality ordered by their leaders and carried on by their ancestors during the 30 years between1894 and 1924.The authors have classified the anti-Christian massacres in three parts; Part 1. Those performed during Sultan Abdulhamid II's reign, (called the "Red Sultan" because of his many Christian killings) Part 2. Those performed during the Young Turks' triumvirate,--Talat Pasha, Enver Pasha and Jemal Pasha. Part 3. Those performed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's orders to mop-up the remaining Christians from Turkey.On August 26, 1071, the Battle of Manzikert (Malazgirt in Turkish,) was fought near Lake Van in eastern Anatolia between the Byzantine army and the newly arrived Seljuk Turks. Alp Arslan, the Turkish commander was able to defeat the Greeks and open Anatolia for many other Turkish tribes to enter. Up to that time, 90 percent of Anatolia's population was comprised of the three Christian groups with only ten percent occupied by Kurds in the tiny southwestern corner.Several centuries prior to this battle, Turks, distant cousins of Huns and Mongols, used to live in the harsh Central Asian lands. They were Shamanists but during the 8th century AD, they were defeated by the invading Arab forces and accepted Islam. They became devout [Sunni] Muslims--a devotion and fanaticism that has lasted until present days. With the inbred religious fanaticism and an inflated sense of tribal [Turkish] superiority, they became committed anti-Christians. Prior to the historic battle, the Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes, had asked the Armenians living in Ani, north of Van, to join him but they had refused. That did not matter--soon after the battle, Alp Arslan ordered his troops to slaughter the Armenians, being the first to start the annihilation of Christians in Anatolia., The anti-Christian practice continued up to present with Christians being called Gavurs (the derogatory name synonymous with "swines.")This book's two Israeli authors have meticulously reviewed the atrocities committed against Christians in Turkey. It is hard to read. It is as if Marquis de Sade had written it. The brutality, the gang rapes, including girls between ages of seven and ten, slitting of pregnant women's bellies, crucifying priests on church doors, burning churches (and often turning them into lavatories or stables,) at times torching entire villages with their inhabitants inside, looting, forced conversions into Islam, and death marches are only some of the inhuman acts practiced by Turks. Sadism and brutality were certainly traits carried with them from their Hun and Mongolian ancestors. It was no surprise when William Gladstone, the British Prime Minster called Turks, "The one great anti-human specimen of humanity!"After so many rapes and forced conversions to Islam, it is not surprising to state there are at least one million Turks and Kurds with Armenian parentage. Children of these "hidden Armenians" are now coming out of closets and declaring themselves as Armenians. There is no doubt that Hitler held the Turkish leaders as his role models when planning and implementing the Holocaust.It is also strange that Turks, the still avid anti-Gavurs with over two millions of them in Germany alone, are shamelessly hoping to join the European Union and its millions of other Gavurs!

Such a fantastic book, packed with history but still super-easy to read. This much information could easily get overwhelming, but not here. It almost reads like a novel!

First of all, I noticed 4 people left one star in their review; however, only one out of those four was "Verified Purchase", the other three most likely they did not even touch the book.It is very well researched and documented book, as an example that The German and the Austrian administrations who were allies with the Ottomans during the Genocide period acknowledge the killing of the Armenian and Christian's minorities and by the thousands.Per the researched book, Armenian and Christian people were raped and/or burned alive by the Ottomans' soldiers for the hope of finding golden pieces that some people might swallowed to smuggle from the Ottoman's soldiers.In other tragic events in the book some of the Ottomans soldiers used to bid between each other on the gender of the unborn child inside his/her mother's womb, they slaughtered the pregnant woman to find the unborn baby's gender to determine the winning bid.I am sorry for sharing these graphic and tragic events. it is heart breaking.This book is very well researched, the author covers as much as much information that are available and not destroyed by the Ottoman's administration throughout the years, then the Turkish administration destroyed the minimal trace that might left during updating their data storage from Hard Copy to Electronic copy.I highly recommend this book, but do not spend longer than one hours per one read, you will be mentally crushed, take some break distract yourself with other activities, recharge then restart reading this book. I am not even reading the book now, just thinking about it, I started not feeling well.

Despite their stupid attempts at denial the Turks decided to murder the millions of Christians who lived in the Ottoman Empire and later Turkey - and Europe and the USA decided to let them. This is very harrowing, and is yet another nail in the coffin of the truly ignorant and ludicrous project of denial by the Turks.

The authors provide an excellent account with exhaustive references. My only question to the authors would be why they stopped at 1924? The mindset responsible for the genocide remained alive after that year, to perpetrate subsequent events and is still very much alive today. I do understand the authors had to stop somewhere though.

Terrible brutal history of Middle Eastern politics

Man muss die Vergangenheit kennen, damit man die Gegenwart versteht. Nur dann kann man die Zukunft gestalten.Wenn man dieses Buch gelesen hat, so wird man dem zustimmen. Die gegenwärtige Haltung der Türkei, Armeniens, der Bewohner von beiden Teilen Zyperns und nicht zuletzt der Griechen wird immer noch geprägt, von den Ereignissen, die hier beschrieben werden. Leider fehlt dieses Kapitel der Geschichte fast völlig in unserem Schulunterricht und in der Öffentlichkeit wird es tot geschwiegen. Ich kann nur empfehlen, dieses Buch zu lesen und zu besprechen.

The two Israeli authors provide a detailed work on the Armenian Genocide and that of the almost entire Christian population of Anatolia, providing a journey for the reader of the 30 years of barbaric mass killings by the Ottomans & the Republic of Turkey which till today they deny.