Kill every Armenian man, woman, and child without concern.
— Mehmed Talat Pasha, Minister of the Interior, Otoman Empire (24 April 1915)
Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention.
—Dr. Mordtmann, June 1915
"The partisans of Ittihad are unabashedly conceding that their ultimate aim [Endziel] is the total annihilation [ganzliche Ausrottung] of the Armenians of Turkey, adding, "After the war we no longer will have any Armenians in Turkey.""
—Dr. Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, German Vice Consul, Erzerum, 28 July 1915
The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation.
—Enver Pasha (May 19th, 1916)
The indications are that the Turks plan to eliminate the Greek element as enemies of the state, as they did earlier with the Armenians. The strategy implemented by the Turks is of displacing people to the interior without taking measures for their survival by exposing them to death, hunger, and illness. The abandoned homes are then looted and burnt or destroyed. Whatever was done to the Armenians is being repeated with the Greeks.
—Chancellor of Germany Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (January 31, 1917)
What on earth do you want? The question is settled. There are no more Armenians.
—Talat Pasha to the German Ambassador asking about the Armenian Question in 1918
"In Turkey, more than 1,200,000 Armenians were put to death for no other reason than they were Christians … After the end of the war, some 150 Turkish war criminals were arrested and interned by the British Government on the island of Malta. The Armenians sent a delegation to the peace conference in Versailles. They were demanding justice. Then one day, the delegation read in the newspapers that all Turkish war criminals were released. I was shocked. A nation was killed and the guilty persons were set free. Why is a man punished when he kills another man? Why is the killing of a million a lesser crime than the killing of a single individual?"
—Raphael Lemkin, the creator of the word genocide, inspired from the crimes against the Armenians.
