Many of the weapons used by the Ottoman Empire to carry out the Armenian genocide were from Germany, according to a new report. Germany and Turkey were allies during World War I, on the opposite side to Russia, Britain and France.
The report's author, Wolfgang Landgraeber, said Prussian military advisers to the Ottoman army also provided the “ideological foundations” for the massacre.
“German officers who served in Turkish-Ottoman military staff actively helped carry out individual murders. The majority of the aggressors were armed with Mauser rifles or carbines, the officers with Mauser pistols,” according to the report by Global Net — Stop the Arms Trade (GN-STAT).
In 2016 the German parliament, the Bundestag, formally recognized the Armenian genocide, sparking an angry reaction from Turkey, whose Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus called it a “historic mistake.”
Turkey Has Always Played Down Genocide
Around 1.5 million ethnic Armenians were killed between 1915 and 1917 but Turkey has always denied it was genocide and said those who perished were simply collateral damage and not part of any deliberate effort to annihilate them.
When the war broke out the Ottoman Empire decided to side with Germany, largely for strategic reasons because Tsarist Russia was expanding Moscow's influence in the Caucasus region.
The Ottoman Empire was Muslim while Russia was a Christian power and the Armenians, as one of the empire's few non-Muslim minorities,…
