The anti-Armenian policies led by Sultan Abdul Hamid II in the Ottoman Empire reached their peak in the 1890s, when hundreds of thousands of Armenians were massacred, forcibly converted to the religion and deported. These unprecedented cases could not escape the attention of contemporaries.

The persecution of Armenians had a global response, many progressives condemned the regime of Abdul Hamid II, numerous articles of condemnation, caricatures, pamphlets describing Turkish atrocities were published in the European press. In the Ottoman Empire, an unprecedented beneficial activity was launched, the aim of which was to alleviate the consequences of the catastrophe of Abdul Hamid II.

Naturally, the fate of the Armenian people could not be discussed and covered in the Armenian press of that period. The Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian press devoted much space to presenting the suffering of the Armenian people, thereby covering and documenting the Hamidian horrors.

As the beginning of these massacres, the events of 1894 which took place in Sassoun are important. 1894 coverage of self-defense and the massacre in Sassoun. For this purpose, Western Armenia Television studied the publications of “Mshaki”, “Murchi”, “Nor Dar” and “Ardsagank”. These newspapers were active in the Eastern Armenian reality in the 1890s. All of the above-mentioned periodicals had sections representing the life of Armenians in Western Armenia, on the pages of which there are numerous materials devoted to the issue of Western Armenia, as well as the Hamidian massacres. Particularly noteworthy are the perceptions of Armenian newspapers in Eastern Armenia regarding a number of important issues related to the Hamidian massacres.

To learn more about the studies, you can visit the WesternArmenia Tv website.