A few weeks ago a slight incident happened at an NHL game. It was Armenian Genocide Heritage night at a Los Angeles Kings game. Keep in mind that there is a huge population of Armenians living in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Kings made a big mistake. The Armenian scarves that they had in their store were made in Turkey. This made people very upset because of the two countries’ dark history. The Armenian Genocide was a Turkish attempt of ethnic cleansing to rid the world of Armenians. There was a pile of horrific events that occurred during the genocide. Some include rape, starving, and forced marches. Sources are conflicted on the exact date but are clear that the torture lasted from 1915 to sometime between 1918-1923. Even if that doesn’t sound like a long time, many innocent lives were taken during that period of time. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, out of the 1.5 million Armenians living in Armenia at the time, between 664,000 to 1.2 million got killed. The “forced marches” are also known as death marches and were most likely the biggest cause of death. Armenians of all ages were forced to march barefoot, half naked, with no breaks, clothes, or water across the harsh deserts of the Middle East. Most died of dehydration, starvation, or were beaten to death along the way. If anyone did manage to somehow survive that, they would get tortured in holding camps. In addition to that, if any people witnessing the marches wanted to intervene, most of the time they were not stopped since a good amount of the Turkish people supported this. There are also a handful that tried to help Armenians escape and, though rare, there are stories of people succeeding in that. Besides all the death marches and massacres, Turkey is wealthier than Armenia. Since they are wealthier they have more money to buy weapons and equipment for their army. Also they are a bigger country, wealthier, and they are definitely more well known. That made a big impact in them overtaking Armenia since they couldn’t fight back because they didn’t have enough money to have a well equipped army. That comes back to the reason why the Armenians were so mad which was the fact that they did not have a good relationship with the Turks to say the least and they felt really disrespected. The Los Angeles Kings did apologize saying that they did not realize where the scarves were made and that anyone that bought a scarf could get a refund.
