On 24 April 2015, we commemorate the day on which the Armenian Genocide began. The Ottoman Empire (the Young Turks at te time) was allied with Germany and at war with the Allied and Associated Powers. In the process between 1-1.5 million Armenian citizens were systematically and intentionally killed. The Polish lawyer Lemkin (1900-1959) had the massacre of the Armenians in mind, when he proposed what became the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Convention was concluded on 9 December 1948 and entered into force on 12 January 1951.
British historian Arnold Toynbee - in 1916 - wrote a report on "The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. The historical summary is attached. It leaves no doubt on the fact that the treatment of the Armenians was, what later has been called Genocide. Readers can consult Chapter 1, pages 44-47 of my book "Western Cooperation" to find out why the Allies acquiesced in the Turkish refusal to recognize the term for the intentional and systematic massacre of its Armenian population. As even Pope Francis emphasiszed recently, it is high time for Turkey to begin to deal with its own past and recognize the Armenian genocide. Whoever refuses to learn from history, is bound to repeat its crimes.