Perhaps it’s not so strange that the Turkish Government is so reluctant to describe what happened on its territory 100 years ago as genocide.

After all, there remain plenty of people who to this day deny the Jewish Holocaust during World War Two, despite the overwhelming evidence that it happened.

And it’s no surprise that Hitler himself said weeks before the outbreak of war in 1939: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

In his new book – the second he has written about Armenia – Canon Patrick Thomas, the Vicar of Carmarthen, clearly sets out the facts of what happened to the Armenian community in Turkey in 1915.

Earlier this month Pope Francis acknowledged the killing of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide, but despite promising to do so during his presidency, Barack Obama will not do so for fear up upsetting Turkey at a time of continuing tension in the Middle East.

Using a huge amount of source material, Dr Thomas tells the often gruesome story of how a whole community was targeted for extermination by those who took control of Turkey as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

What had been a multicultural society where people of different faiths lived harmoniously together was turned within a short space of time into one where a significant ethnic minority was seen as fair game for slaughter.

Brutal torture

In his book, Dr Thomas writes: “April 24, 1915 is remembered as the date on which the genocide began to be implemented.

The Armenian community in Constantinople was effectively “beheaded” by the sudden arrest of its cultural, political and intellectual leaders, who were deported into the interior.

Only a tiny handful of them survived.

In many other centres leading Armenians were rounded up, brutally tortured and killed.

“A ‘special organisation’ of criminals (including many convicted murderers) had been recruited from the prisons.

"They were sent to the provinces to enforce the deportation of Armenians, with the assistance of Kurdish irregulars.

"In the Armenian heartland these deportations usually followed a set pattern.

"The remaining men would be rounded up, taken away and massacred.

Ashes sifted

"The women and children were sent on death marches towards the Syrian desert. Many were gang-raped, some were abducted or trafficked, while others were left to die of exhaustion or starvation at the side of the road.

“Pregnant women had the babies ripped from their wombs.

"Those suspected of swallowing gold coins were sometimes set on fire.

"Their ashes were later sifted by those looking for loot.

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"In Trebizond boatloads of Armenians were taken out and drowned in the Black Sea. Few survived the death marches.

"A later phase was of deportation by rail of Armenians from western Turkey, crammed into cattle trucks. Insanitary transit camps were set up, where many perished from disease.

"Those who reached the concentration camps in northern Syria were later brutally eliminated.

'Overwhelming' evidence

"In a few places Armenians refused to hand in their arms and attempted resistance, only to be overwhelmed and slaughtered.

“At Musa Dagh on the Mediterranean coast, however, a courageous band of Armenian villagers held off a Turkish attack during a lengthy siege, and were eventually rescued by French naval vessels.

"The penalty for a Turk found sheltering an Armenian was death by hanging. Nevertheless some Turks and Kurds did take the risk of helping their Armenian neighbours.

"Those brave officials who refused to implement their government’s genocidal plans were almost all either removed or assassinated.”

Dr Thomas asserts that evidence for the Armenian genocide is overwhelming.

It comes from eye-witness accounts by survivors, accounts of the trials of some of the perpetrators that took place immediately after the end of the war, reports by missionaries, diplomats and foreign soldiers and railway officials working alongside the Turks.

Parallels with Jews of Germany

Although attempts were made to ensure that no photographic evidence would survive, horrified observers like the German medical orderly Armin Wegner managed to smuggle out pictures of some of the atrocities.

Perhaps the most damning evidence of all is the fact that those areas of western Turkey which were the homeland of Armenians for thousands of years now form an Armenia without Armenians.

Seeking to explain why Armenians became the object of such hatred, Dr Thomas explains how resentment had developed against their material and professional success.

By the late 18th century a group of wealthy Armenian magnates were regarded as valuable servants of the Sultan. In the century that followed they often fulfilled state functions as financiers, large-scale manufacturers and administrators.

A middle class of Armenian merchants and entrepreneurs developed, not only in the capital, but also in many other urban centres. Armenians became teachers, doctors, dentists and pharmacists.

Armenian artisans played a crucial role in the life of virtually every community. Their increasing prosperity made Armenians the subject of suspicion and envy from some other sections of Ottoman society. The parallels with the Jews of Germany are obvious.

Today 100 candles will be lit in Cardiff in memory of the Armenians who died in their genocide.

Remembering The Armenian Genocide by Patrick Thomas is published by Carreg Gwalch at £8.50

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                                                                                                           By Martin Shipton