“Today, April 24, the Templar Nation celebrates the day of remembrance of the Armenian genocide.
In the years 1915 and 1916, the Armenians were subject to a systematic massacre by the Ottoman Empire.
One and a half million dead, one of the greatest genocides in history.
The Templar Nation has respect for the Armenian people since ever, to whom it is bound by sincere friendship.
Today I sent an official letter to Armenian President Armen Sarkissian in which I expressed the solidarity of the Templar Nation with the Republic of Armenia.
I also wrote to our Ambassador to Armenia, Vardan Balaian, to show our closeness to the Armenian people“.

These are the words of the President of the Templar Nation Riccardo Bonsi.

In the night between 23 and 24 April 1915 the first arrests were made between the Armenian elite of Constantinople.

The operation continued the next day and the following days.

In just one month, more than a thousand Armenian intellectuals, including journalists, writers, poets and even delegates to parliament, were deported to the interior of Anatolia and massacred along the way.

The arrests and deportations were mostly carried out by the “Young Turks”.

On the death marches, which involved 1,200,000 people, hundreds of thousands died of hunger, disease or exhaustion.

Hundreds of thousands more were massacred by the Kurdish militia and the Turkish army.

The Armenian genocide caused around 1,500,000 deaths.