Forgotten Fire

For our latest paper, we had to read a book called Forgotten Fire. This book has been my favorite book that we have read so far. From the moment I started reading it, I could not put it down. I think it was a good book as an introduction to the Armenian massacre because I had never heard about this massacre before in any other class I have taken even before college. I was even more shocked when I read that it was based on a true story. The things that humans are capable of doing to each other are unreal. This book was also a good portrayal of defensive developmentalism, which is what the bulk of my paper was about. The Ottomans wanted to strengthen their empire in order to keep the Europeans out. Since there were many laws in Turkey banning Armenians from basic rights such as the right to bear arms, Russians were becoming sympathetic with the Armenians in Turkey. Because of this, the Ottomans were afraid that the Russians would conspire with the Armenians and intervene in the empire. The Turks thought that the best solution to their fears was to wipe out the entire Armenian population.

Although I consider what happened to the Armenians to be a genocide, we learned in a DVD that we watched today that the Turks only consider it a Civil War and that the number of murdered Armenians is exaggerated. I cannot understand how they can say that those numbers are exaggerated when there are tons of pictures and videos that show countless bodies stacked on top of each other. This book makes it seem completely unfathomable that people would deny that such a massacre was as bad as it was. I think that this book was an excellent source in understanding the Armenian massacre.