Ccommemorating the 97th anniversary of an epic Russo-Armenian military campaign that inflicted upwards of 100,000 casualties upon Ottoman army regulars at the battle of Sarikamish. Imperial Russian forces supported by a significant number of battle-hardened Armenian volunteers from the Caucasus preempted an Ottoman strike against the Russian Empire by advancing west towards Erzerum from the Russian held Armenian city of Kars. It was late December 1914, the initial stages of the First World War, when the two imperial armies met on the snow covered mountainous landscape at Sarikamish on the outskirts of Kars. When the historic battle was over some four weeks later, the entire Ottoman army under the leadership of Enver Pasha lay decimated. Thousands upon thousands of frozen Ottoman corpses lay strewn across the snow clad battlefield. According to some accounts, out of a force of nearly 100,000 Ottoman troops about 80,000 is said to have perished, the rest being either wounded or taken prisoner. The exact number of Ottoman casualties may be disputed by historians today. What's not in dispute, however, is the fact that an entire Ottoman army was decimated by imperial Russian forces.
The Russian force that defeated the Ottoman army at Sarikamish was essentially the same contingent that went on to liberate the ancient Armenian cities of Van, Erzrum, Artvin and Trapizon from the bloody clutches of Turkish and Kurdish tyrants. The Ottoman defeat at Sarikamish had finally opened the gates to historic Armenia. By late 1916, a significant portion of Ottoman occupied Western Armenia was liberated. Russian successes in Western Armenia enabled a significant portion of the region's native Armenian population to escape the genocidal campaign of Turks. After suffering several hundred years of Turkic oppression and periodic massacres, Armenians were finally beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Then, suddenly, fate struck. Alas, the sun was not to shine on the Armenian Highlands.
