The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan will hold an international conference on April 20-21 dedicated to the centennial anniversary of the 1909 massacres in the Adana district of the Ottoman Empire.
Historians from Armenia, Italy, Hungary, Austria, France, the United States, and Sweden will have the opportunity to present their papers and share their knowledge about the massacre, the motives of the massacre, and the international response.
In 1908, the Young Turkish revolution brought with it hope greater rights and change among the empire’s Christian minorities. The initial euphoria, however, was quashed with the brutal slaughter of the Armenian population in Adana. The massacre revived the Armenians’ fear of the Ottomans and their policies.
The Adana massacre of April 1909 is now seen as a symbolic prelude for the Armenian Genocide, which took place less than a decade later. Large-scale massacres and ethnic cleansing of Ottoman Armenians were carried out even earlier during the Hamidian massacres of 1894-96, when 300,000 Armenians were annihilated.
The study of the Adana massacre raises several issues, particularly in terms of investigating the crime, reparations, and involvement of the Turkish regular army in the massacre. These tragic events resonated with the events of the earlier attacks on the Armenians and brought back the feeling of the coming catastrophe.
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