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THE
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
The Genocide of the Armenians by the Turkish government
during World War I represents a major tragedy of the
modern age. In this first Genocide of the 20th
century, almost an entire nation was destroyed. The
Armenian people were effectively eliminated from the
homeland they occupied for nearly three thousand years.
The annihilation was premeditated and planned to be
carried out under the cover of war. The evil perpetrators
of the Genocide included Sultan Abdul-Hamid II, and the
Young Turks; Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Djemal Pasha.
THE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Between 1915 and 1918, the Ottoman Empire, ruled by
Muslim Turks, carried out a policy to eliminate its
Christian Armenian minority. This Genocide was preceded
by a series of massacres in 1894-96 and in 1909, and was
followed by another series of massacres beginning in
1920. By 1922, Armenians had been eradicated from their
historic homeland. Like all empires, the Ottoman Empire
was a multinational state.
At one time it stretched from the gates of Vienna in
the north to Mecca in the south. From the sixteenth
century to its collapse following World War I, the
Ottoman Empire included areas of historic Armenia. The
rulers of the empire governed over a heterogeneous
society and maintained institutions that favored the
Muslims, particularly those of Turkish background, and
subordinated Christians and Jews as second-class citizens
subject to a range of discriminatory laws and regulations
imposed both by the state and its official religion,
Islam. In 1908, a group of reformists known as the Young
Turks overthrew the declining Ottoman government. Formally
organized as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP),
the Young Turks decided to Turkify the multiethnic
Ottoman society in order to preserve the Ottoman State
from further disintegration and to obstruct the national
aspirations of the various minorities. Resistance to this
measure convinced them that the Christians, and
especially the Armenians, could not be assimilated. When
World War I broke out in 1914, the Young Turks saw it as
an opportunity to rid the country of its Armenian
population.
THE
PERPETRATORS
From 1894 to 1896, Sultan ABDUL-HAMID II known in history
as the "Red Sultan" carried out a series of
massacres of the Armenian population of the Ottoman
Empire. The worst of the massacres occurred in 1895,
resulting in the death of thousands of civilians
(estimates run from 100,000 to 300,000), and leaving tens
of thousands destitute. Most of those killed were men. In
many towns, the central marketplace and other
Armenian-owned businesses were destroyed, usually by
conflagration. The killings were done during the day and
were witnessed by the general public. This kind of
organized and systematic brutalization of the Armenian
population pointed to the coordinating hand of the
central authorities.
The massacres were meant to undermine the growth of
Armenian nationalism by frightening the Armenians with
the terrible consequence of dissent. The furor of the
state was directed at the behavior and the aspirations of
the Armenians. The sultan was alarmed by the increasing
activity of Armenian political groups and wanted to curb
their growth before they gained any more influence by
spreading ideas about civil rights and autonomy. It was
his state policy to solve the Armenian problem by
murdering the entire race.
ENVER PASHA, Minister of War, who at 26, was a leader
in the revolution which deposed Abdul Hamid and
established the new regime of the "Young
Turks". The Young Turks ruled the Turkish Empire for
their own selfish purposes, and developed a government
which was much more wicked and murderous than that of
Abdul Hamid.
TALAAT PASHA, Ex-Grand Vizier of Turkey: In 1914,
Talaat was Minister of the Interior, and was the most influential leader in the
Committee of Union and Progress, the secret organization
which controlled the Turkish Empire.
DJEMAL PASHA, Minister of Marine: In 1914 Djemal
headed the Police Department. It was his duty to run down
citizens who were opposing the political gang then
controlling Turkey.
THE
GENOCIDE- 1915
The measures implemented in 1915, by the Young Turks,
affected the entire Armenian population, men, women, and
children. On the night of April 23/24, 1915, scores of
Armenian political, religious, educational, and
intellectual leaders in Constantinople, many of them
friends and acquaintances of the Young Turk rulers, were
arrested, deported to Anatolia, and put to death. Then in
May, Minister of Internal Affairs, Talaat Pasha, claiming
that the Armenians were untrustworthy, ordered their
deportation to relocation centers in the deserts of Syria
and Mesopotamia. Armenians serving in the Ottoman armies,
who had already been segregated into unarmed labor
battalions, were taken out in batches and murdered. Of
the remaining population, the adult and teenage males
were swiftly separated from the deportation caravans and
killed outright under the direction of Young Turk
officials and agents. The greatest torment was reserved
for the women and children, who were driven for weeks
over mountains and deserts, often dehumanized by being
stripped naked and repeatedly preyed upon, raped,
tortured and abused. Many took their own and their
children’s lives by flinging themselves from cliffs
and into rivers rather than prolonging their humiliation
and suffering. In this manner, an entire nation melted
away, and the Armenian people were effectively eliminated
from their homeland of nearly three Thousand years.
Countless survivors and refugees scattered throughout the
Arab provinces and Transcaucasia were to die of
starvation, epidemic, and exposure. Even the memory of
the Armenian nation was intended for obliteration;
churches, and monuments were desecrated, and small
children snatched from their parents, were renamed and
farmed out to be raised by Turks. Many girls and younger
women were seized from their families and taken as
slave-brides.
It is
believed that One and a Half Million (1,500,000) Armenian
people were killed
in the 1915 Genocide.
The
Case of the Armenian Genocide & The Armenian Genocide
in Perspective - by Richard G. Hovannisian
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