On The Brink Of Catastrophe: Haunting Color Photos Capture Armenians In Ottoman Turkey
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Ethnic Armenian prisoners of war guarded by Serbian soldiers in Belgrade’s Kalemagdan Fortress in 1913. The Armenians had probably been fighting for the Ottoman Army during the first Balkan War in which Ottoman Turkey lost most of its European territory to an alliance of the Christian kingdoms of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro.
Ethnic Armenian prisoners of war guarded by Serbian soldiers in Belgrade’s Kalemagdan Fortress in 1913. The Armenians had probably been fighting for the Ottoman Army during the first Balkan War in which Ottoman Turkey lost most of its European territory to an alliance of the Christian kingdoms of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro.
Two years after this Archives of the Planet image was taken, the systemic destruction of the Armenian people and their heritage convulsed Ottoman Turkey. From 1915-17 some 1.5 million Armenians were killed in what many countries, including the United States, call the Armenian genocide. Turkey objects to the use of the word “genocide” and says hundreds of thousands of Muslims also died in the region amid the chaos of World War I.
