Categories: History

German Kaiser Promised Ottoman Turkey To Turn A Blind Eye On Massacres In Exchange For Cooperation

The illustration below shows that Kaiser Wilhelm II promised to turn a blind eye on the massacres (including massacres of Armenians) in exchange for cooperation in the construction of the Berlin-Baghdad railway.

The railway was funded and built by the German Empire to connect the city of Baghdad with Berlin via a railway line running through what is now Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. The project was never fully completed – the railway has only reached Konya in Turkey.

Illustration from the Hulton Archive / Getty Images.

Grigor Narinyan

Illustration from the Hulton Archive / Getty Images.
Vigen Avetisyan

Recent Posts

Abandoned by an Ally: The French Armenian Legion in Cilicia and the Road to the Smyrna Catastrophe

How a promise made to genocide survivors was traded away for peace with Ankara —…

16 hours ago

The Vilgort Cup: A Silver Masterpiece of Cilician Armenia (c. 1150–1159 A.D.)

A Fragment That Traveled Across Continents The gilt-silver medallion shown above — two richly dressed…

3 days ago

Hannibal and Artaxias the Great: The Carthaginian General Who Helped Build the “Armenian Carthage”

Few episodes in ancient Armenian history capture the imagination quite like the tradition that Hannibal…

1 week ago

The Priestess of the Kingdom of Van: A 9th-Century BC Bronze Figurine in the British Museum

Five angles of one small bronze figure — and what emerges is not an abstract…

3 weeks ago

The Winged Sun and the Armenian Tiara: Royal Symbolism of the Orontid (Yervanduni) Kingdom of Commagene, 163 BC – 72 AD

Introduction Among the successor states that emerged from the fragmentation of the Achaemenid-derived Orontid (Armenian:…

3 weeks ago

A Bronze Age Vessel from Gardman: Solar Symbolism, the Sun-Cross, and the Sacred Landscape of Ancient Armenia

Article based on the explanations and interpretive observations of Angela Terian, with additional archaeological and…

3 weeks ago