The 100 year genocide

https://www.american.edu/sis/news/20210426-5-reasons-why-bidens-recognition-of-the-armenian-genocide-is-significant.cfm

Armenian woman kneeling beside dead child in a field near Aleppo (American Committee for Relief in the Near East / Wikimedia Commons)

I am not an American and I am not a Christian but I feel a pressing need to publicly thank President Biden for having the guts to be the first American president, in over 100 years, to recognize the reality of the horror of the 100 year genocide resulting in the extinction of of the Christian population of Turkey. In 1892 the Christian population of Turkey, the residue of the original Byzantine population, was a lively community made up of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks, numbered around 4 million, c20% of the population of Turkey. By 1922 the non-Muslim population of Turkey was reduced to a few thousand. Now there are 15 million Muslims in Constantinople (Istanbul) and around 2000 Christians. St Sophia’s cathedral one of the most ancient churches in Christendom (built in the 4th century AD) is now a mosque by the diktat of Sultan Erdogan. The Pontic Greeks, one of the most ancient Christian communities exterminated, had been constantly present on the Black sea coast for around 3000 years.

Members of the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units arrive on the front lines in the eastern outskirts of Raqqa on July 18, 2017. BULENT KILIC/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

And the continuing attack on the Orthodox Christians in the middle east is not…