Story of the Armenian Genocide |
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 1894-1896 and in 1909, and was followed by another series of massacres beginning in 1920. By 1922 Armenians had been eradicated from their historic homeland.
There are at least two ways of looking at the Armenian experience in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. Some scholars regard the series of wholesale killings from the 1890s to the 1920s as evidence of a continuity in the deteriorating status of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. They maintain that, once initiated, the policy of exposing the Armenians to physical harm acquired its own momentum. Victimization escalated because it was not the countermanded by prevailing outside pressure or attenuated by internal improvement and reconciliation. They argue that the process of alienation was embedded in the inequalities of the Ottoman system of government and that the massacres prepared the Ottoman society for genocide.
Other scholars point out that the brutalization of disaffected elements by despotic regimes is a practice seen across the world. The repressive measures these governments use have the limited function of controlling social change and maintaining the system. In this frame of reference, genocide is viewed as a radical policy because it reaches for a profound alteration of the very nature of the state and society. These scholars emphasize the decisive character of the Armenian genocide and differentiate between the periodic exploitation and occasional terrorization of the Armenians and the finality of the deliberate policy to exterminate them and eliminate them from their 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. By the early part of the twentieth century, it was a much shrunken state confined mostly to the Middle East. Yet its rulers still 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.
The failure of the Ottoman system to prevent the further decline of the empire led to the overthrow of the government in 1908 by a group of reformists known as the Young Turks. Formally organized as the Committee of Union and Progress, 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. They also envisioned the simultaneous conquest of an empire in the east, incorporating Turkish-speaking peoples in Iran, Russia, and Central Asia.
The defeat of the Ottomans in World War I and the discrediting of the Committee of Union and Progress led to the rise of the Turkish Nationalists. Their objective was to found a new and independent Turkish state. The Nationalists distanced themselves from the Ottoman government and rejected virtually all its policies, with the exception of the policy toward the Armenians.
This essay focuses on three aspects of the Armenian genocide that have broader applicability to any study of genocide: (1) distinction between massacres and genocide; (2) use of technology in facilitating mass murder; and (3) the legacy of genocide.
(1) Distinguishing between the Massacres and the GenocideFrom 1894 to 1896, Sultan Abdul-Hamid II 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 (Bliss1982, 476-481).
This kind of organized and systematic brutalization of the Armenian population pointed to the coordinating hand of the central authorities. Widespread violence erupted in towns and cities hundreds of miles apart over a matter of weeks in a country devoid of mass media. At a time when the sultan ruled absolutely, the evidence strongly implicated the head of state.
Intent of Massacres
The massacres were meant to undermine the growth of Armenian nationalism by frightening the Armenians with the terrible consequences 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 an autonomy. Abdul-Hamid took no account, however of the real variation in Armenian political outlook, which ranged from reformism and constitutionalism to separatism. He hoped to wipe away the Armenians' increasing sense of national awareness. He also continued to exclude the Armenians, as he did most of his other subjects, from having a role in their own government, whether individually or communally. The sultan, however did not contemplate depriving the Armenians of their existence as a people. Although there are similarities between Abdul-Hamid's policies and the measures taken by the Young Turks against the Armenians, there are also major distinctions.
The 1915 Measures
The measures implemented in 1915 affected the entire Armenian population, men, women, and children. They included massacres and deportations. As under the sultan, they targeted the able-bodied men for annihilation. The thousands of Armenian men conscripted into the Ottoman army were eliminated first. The rest of the adult population was then placed under arrest, taken out of town, and killed in remote locations
There are at least two ways of looking at the Armenian experience in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. Some scholars regard the series of wholesale killings from the 1890s to the 1920s as evidence of a continuity in the deteriorating status of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. They maintain that, once initiated, the policy of exposing the Armenians to physical harm acquired its own momentum. Victimization escalated because it was not the countermanded by prevailing outside pressure or attenuated by internal improvement and reconciliation. They argue that the process of alienation was embedded in the inequalities of the Ottoman system of government and that the massacres prepared the Ottoman society for genocide.
Other scholars point out that the brutalization of disaffected elements by despotic regimes is a practice seen across the world. The repressive measures these governments use have the limited function of controlling social change and maintaining the system. In this frame of reference, genocide is viewed as a radical policy because it reaches for a profound alteration of the very nature of the state and society. These scholars emphasize the decisive character of the Armenian genocide and differentiate between the periodic exploitation and occasional terrorization of the Armenians and the finality of the deliberate policy to exterminate them and eliminate them from their 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. By the early part of the twentieth century, it was a much shrunken state confined mostly to the Middle East. Yet its rulers still 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.
The failure of the Ottoman system to prevent the further decline of the empire led to the overthrow of the government in 1908 by a group of reformists known as the Young Turks. Formally organized as the Committee of Union and Progress, 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. They also envisioned the simultaneous conquest of an empire in the east, incorporating Turkish-speaking peoples in Iran, Russia, and Central Asia.
The defeat of the Ottomans in World War I and the discrediting of the Committee of Union and Progress led to the rise of the Turkish Nationalists. Their objective was to found a new and independent Turkish state. The Nationalists distanced themselves from the Ottoman government and rejected virtually all its policies, with the exception of the policy toward the Armenians.
This essay focuses on three aspects of the Armenian genocide that have broader applicability to any study of genocide: (1) distinction between massacres and genocide; (2) use of technology in facilitating mass murder; and (3) the legacy of genocide.
(1) Distinguishing between the Massacres and the GenocideFrom 1894 to 1896, Sultan Abdul-Hamid II 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 (Bliss1982, 476-481).
This kind of organized and systematic brutalization of the Armenian population pointed to the coordinating hand of the central authorities. Widespread violence erupted in towns and cities hundreds of miles apart over a matter of weeks in a country devoid of mass media. At a time when the sultan ruled absolutely, the evidence strongly implicated the head of state.
Intent of Massacres
The massacres were meant to undermine the growth of Armenian nationalism by frightening the Armenians with the terrible consequences 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 an autonomy. Abdul-Hamid took no account, however of the real variation in Armenian political outlook, which ranged from reformism and constitutionalism to separatism. He hoped to wipe away the Armenians' increasing sense of national awareness. He also continued to exclude the Armenians, as he did most of his other subjects, from having a role in their own government, whether individually or communally. The sultan, however did not contemplate depriving the Armenians of their existence as a people. Although there are similarities between Abdul-Hamid's policies and the measures taken by the Young Turks against the Armenians, there are also major distinctions.
The 1915 Measures
The measures implemented in 1915 affected the entire Armenian population, men, women, and children. They included massacres and deportations. As under the sultan, they targeted the able-bodied men for annihilation. The thousands of Armenian men conscripted into the Ottoman army were eliminated first. The rest of the adult population was then placed under arrest, taken out of town, and killed in remote locations
Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex
1.Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in Yerevan is dedicated to the memory of the 1.5 million Armenians who perished in the first genocide of the 20th century, at the hands of the Turkish government. Completed in 1967, the Genocide Monument has since become a pilgrimage site and an integral part of Yerevan’s architecture. Set high on a hill, dominating the landscape, it is in perfect harmony with its surroundings. The austere outlines convey the spirit of the nation that survived a ruthless campaign of extermination.
The complex occupies 4500 square meters of territory and consists of three main buildings: the Memorial Wall, the Sanctuary of Eternity (Memorial Hall & Eternal Flame) and the Memorial Column “The Reborn Armenia.”
Before reaching the central part of the monument, visitors first observe a 100-meter long basalt Memorial Wall with the names of cities engraved in stone. The names also include the Armenian populations that were massacred by Turks during the Genocide campaign. Since 1996, the last portion of the Memorial Wall houses glass casings that contain soil taken from the tombs of political, and intellectual figures who raised their protest against the Genocide committed against the Armenians by the Turks. Among them are Armin Wegner, Hedvig Bull, Henry Morgenthau, Franz Werfel, Yohannes Lepsius, James Bryce, Anatol France, Jakomo Gorini, Benedict XV, Fritioff Nansen, Fayez El Husseyn.
As part of the monument, an arrow-shaped stele of granite, 44 meters high, reaches to the sky, symbolizing the survival and spiritual rebirth of the Armenian people. Partly split vertically by a deep crevice, this tower symbolizes the tragic and violent dispersion of the Armenian people, and at the same time, expresses the unity of the Armenian people.
At the center of the Monument stands the circular Memorial Sanctuary. Its unroofed walls consist of twelve, tall, inward-leaning basalt slabs forming a circle. The shape of these walls simulates traditional Armenian khatchkars, which are stone slabs with large carved crosses at the center. These slabs also suggest figures in mourning. The level of the floor of the Genocide Monument is set at one and a half meters lower than the walkway. At its center, there is an eternal flame which memorializes all the victims of the Genocide. The steps leading down to the eternal flame are steep, thus requiring visitors to bow their heads reverently as they descend.
From 1988-1990 the Khatchkars (Cross-Stones) were mounted in the vicinity of the Genocide Monument to commemorate Armenians massacred in the 1980s by the Azeri government, in the Azerbaijani cities of Sumgait, Kirovabad (Ganzak) and Baku.
In 1995, the Museum and Institute (architects S. Kalashyan, L. Mkrtchyan, A. Tarkhanyan, sculptor F. Arakelyan) was built near Tsisernakaberd to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Today, the Museum & Institute functions as a research center within the Armenian National Academy of Sciences.
History of Tsisernakaberd Memorial Complex
Under the Soviet rule, when it was prohibited and unacceptable to practice a national ideology, the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide and the inspiration of the victims’ memory were compelled to silence.
In 1965, the Soviet Armenian population demanded that a memorial monument be constructed, because Armenians in other countries had already commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the Genocide. On April 24th, massive demonstrations were organized in the central squares of the Soviet Armenian cities as well as in Yerevan. Encouraged by public demand, on March 16, 1965 the Soviet-Armenian Government decided to build a monument eternalizing the memory of the victims of the Genocide. The efforts of people like Yakov Zaroubyan (First Secretary), who made every attempt possible to sway Moscow’s resistance, was made evident by the approval of the project.
Before the construction of the memorial, the Armenian nation had been honoring the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide by visiting the Pantheon in the Komitas Garden. However, thousands of people have marched in the direction of Tsitsernakaberd memorial since 1967.
In April 1965, a nation-wide competition was announced in Armenia to create the best and most representative memorial design. The announcement read as follows: The obelisk must embody the creative Armenian nation’s life that has been full of struggle, its inexhaustible vitality to survive, the progress it has made as well as representing its present and the bright future while eternalizing the memory of millions of victims of the Genocide of 1915.
69 participants (both diasporan and local architects) took part in the competition. They each submitted their projects under code names like “Jayr”,”Pyunik”,” Moush”,” Ghoghandj”, ”Krak”, “Karmir Tsaghik.” The winning project’s codename was “Armenia SSR droshak” and architects were Arthur Tarkhanyan and Sashur Kalashyan were chosen as the successful bidders. Each of the architects were awarded 100 Soviet rubles. The winning architects were able to choose the location of the monument and during the excavation process to set up the foundation for the memorial, many relics from the bronze era were uncovered in the bassalt. Chief builder, Artavazd Ordukhanyan, was also the head of “Erchemshintrest” and had his budget set at 400,000 Rubles.
The ceremonial opening of the obelisk, which took place on November 29, 1967, on the 47th anniversary of Soviet Armenia, became a significant socio-political event. The heads of the Government, A. Kochinyan, N. Haroutunyan, G. Ter-Ghazaryan, R. Khachatryan, L. Gharibjanyan alongside thousands of locals gathered at the top the hill at Tsitsernakaberd to commemorate the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide.
The ceremonial walk to the memorial continued late into the night.
Since 1967, every year on April 24 thousands of people have visited Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex, with numbers increasing every year.
Source See more_
1.Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in Yerevan is dedicated to the memory of the 1.5 million Armenians who perished in the first genocide of the 20th century, at the hands of the Turkish government. Completed in 1967, the Genocide Monument has since become a pilgrimage site and an integral part of Yerevan’s architecture. Set high on a hill, dominating the landscape, it is in perfect harmony with its surroundings. The austere outlines convey the spirit of the nation that survived a ruthless campaign of extermination.
The complex occupies 4500 square meters of territory and consists of three main buildings: the Memorial Wall, the Sanctuary of Eternity (Memorial Hall & Eternal Flame) and the Memorial Column “The Reborn Armenia.”
Before reaching the central part of the monument, visitors first observe a 100-meter long basalt Memorial Wall with the names of cities engraved in stone. The names also include the Armenian populations that were massacred by Turks during the Genocide campaign. Since 1996, the last portion of the Memorial Wall houses glass casings that contain soil taken from the tombs of political, and intellectual figures who raised their protest against the Genocide committed against the Armenians by the Turks. Among them are Armin Wegner, Hedvig Bull, Henry Morgenthau, Franz Werfel, Yohannes Lepsius, James Bryce, Anatol France, Jakomo Gorini, Benedict XV, Fritioff Nansen, Fayez El Husseyn.
As part of the monument, an arrow-shaped stele of granite, 44 meters high, reaches to the sky, symbolizing the survival and spiritual rebirth of the Armenian people. Partly split vertically by a deep crevice, this tower symbolizes the tragic and violent dispersion of the Armenian people, and at the same time, expresses the unity of the Armenian people.
At the center of the Monument stands the circular Memorial Sanctuary. Its unroofed walls consist of twelve, tall, inward-leaning basalt slabs forming a circle. The shape of these walls simulates traditional Armenian khatchkars, which are stone slabs with large carved crosses at the center. These slabs also suggest figures in mourning. The level of the floor of the Genocide Monument is set at one and a half meters lower than the walkway. At its center, there is an eternal flame which memorializes all the victims of the Genocide. The steps leading down to the eternal flame are steep, thus requiring visitors to bow their heads reverently as they descend.
From 1988-1990 the Khatchkars (Cross-Stones) were mounted in the vicinity of the Genocide Monument to commemorate Armenians massacred in the 1980s by the Azeri government, in the Azerbaijani cities of Sumgait, Kirovabad (Ganzak) and Baku.
In 1995, the Museum and Institute (architects S. Kalashyan, L. Mkrtchyan, A. Tarkhanyan, sculptor F. Arakelyan) was built near Tsisernakaberd to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Today, the Museum & Institute functions as a research center within the Armenian National Academy of Sciences.
History of Tsisernakaberd Memorial Complex
Under the Soviet rule, when it was prohibited and unacceptable to practice a national ideology, the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide and the inspiration of the victims’ memory were compelled to silence.
In 1965, the Soviet Armenian population demanded that a memorial monument be constructed, because Armenians in other countries had already commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the Genocide. On April 24th, massive demonstrations were organized in the central squares of the Soviet Armenian cities as well as in Yerevan. Encouraged by public demand, on March 16, 1965 the Soviet-Armenian Government decided to build a monument eternalizing the memory of the victims of the Genocide. The efforts of people like Yakov Zaroubyan (First Secretary), who made every attempt possible to sway Moscow’s resistance, was made evident by the approval of the project.
Before the construction of the memorial, the Armenian nation had been honoring the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide by visiting the Pantheon in the Komitas Garden. However, thousands of people have marched in the direction of Tsitsernakaberd memorial since 1967.
In April 1965, a nation-wide competition was announced in Armenia to create the best and most representative memorial design. The announcement read as follows: The obelisk must embody the creative Armenian nation’s life that has been full of struggle, its inexhaustible vitality to survive, the progress it has made as well as representing its present and the bright future while eternalizing the memory of millions of victims of the Genocide of 1915.
69 participants (both diasporan and local architects) took part in the competition. They each submitted their projects under code names like “Jayr”,”Pyunik”,” Moush”,” Ghoghandj”, ”Krak”, “Karmir Tsaghik.” The winning project’s codename was “Armenia SSR droshak” and architects were Arthur Tarkhanyan and Sashur Kalashyan were chosen as the successful bidders. Each of the architects were awarded 100 Soviet rubles. The winning architects were able to choose the location of the monument and during the excavation process to set up the foundation for the memorial, many relics from the bronze era were uncovered in the bassalt. Chief builder, Artavazd Ordukhanyan, was also the head of “Erchemshintrest” and had his budget set at 400,000 Rubles.
The ceremonial opening of the obelisk, which took place on November 29, 1967, on the 47th anniversary of Soviet Armenia, became a significant socio-political event. The heads of the Government, A. Kochinyan, N. Haroutunyan, G. Ter-Ghazaryan, R. Khachatryan, L. Gharibjanyan alongside thousands of locals gathered at the top the hill at Tsitsernakaberd to commemorate the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide.
The ceremonial walk to the memorial continued late into the night.
Since 1967, every year on April 24 thousands of people have visited Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex, with numbers increasing every year.
Source See more_
On the eve of World War I, there were two million Armenians in the declining Ottoman Empire. By 1922, there were fewer than 400,000. The others — some 1.5 million — were killed in what historians consider a genocide.
As David Fromkin put it in his widely praised history of World War I and its aftermath, “A Peace to End All Peace”: “Rape and beating were commonplace. Those who were not killed at once were driven through mountains and deserts without food, drink or shelter. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians eventually succumbed or were killed .”
The man who invented the word “genocide”— Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish origin — was moved to investigate the attempt to eliminate an entire people by accounts of the massacres of Armenians. He did not, however, coin the word until 1943, applying it to Nazi Germany and the Jews in a book published a year later, “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.”
But to Turks, what happened in 1915 was, at most, just one more messy piece of a very messy war that spelled the end of a once-powerful empire. They reject the conclusions of historians and the term genocide, saying there was no premeditation in the deaths, no systematic attempt to destroy a people. Indeed, in Turkey today it remains a crime — “insulting Turkishness” — to even raise the issue of what happened to the Armenians.
In the United States, a powerful Armenian community centered in Los Angeles has been pressing for years for Congress to condemn the Armenian genocide. Turkey, which cut military ties to France over a similar action, has reacted with angry threats. A bill to that effect nearly passed in the fall of 2007, gaining a majority of co-sponsors and passing a committee vote. But the Bush administration, noting that Turkey is a critical ally — more than 70 per cent of the military air supplies for Iraq go through the Incirlik airbase there — pressed for the bill to be withdrawn, and it was.
The roots of the genocide lie in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
The empire’s ruler was also the caliph, or leader of the Islamic community. Minority religious communities, like the Christian Armenians, were allowed to maintain their religious, social and legal structures, but were often subject to extra taxes or other measures.
Concentrated largely in eastern Anatolia, many of them merchants and industrialists, Armenians, historians say, appeared markedly better off in many ways than their Turkish neighbors, largely small peasants or ill-paid government functionaries and soldiers.
At the turn of the 20th Century, the once far-flung Ottoman empire was crumbling at the edges, beset by revolts among Christian subjects to the north — vast swaths of territory were lost in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 — and the subject of coffee house grumbling among Arab nationalist intellectuals in Damascus and elsewhere.
The Young Turk movement of ambitious, discontented junior army officers seized power in 1908, determined to modernize, strengthen and “Turkify” the empire. They were led by what became an all-powerful triumvirate sometimes referred to as the Three Pashas.
In March of 1914, the Young Turks entered World War I on the side of Germany. They attacked to the east, hoping to capture the city of Baku in what would be a disastrous campaign against Russian forces in the Caucuses. They were soundly defeated at the battle of Sarikemish.
Armenians in the area were blamed for siding with the Russians and the Young Turks began a campaign to portray the Armenians as a kind of fifth column, a threat to the state. Indeed, there were Armenian nationalists who acted as guerrillas and cooperated with the Russians. They briefly seized the city of Van in the spring of 1915.
Armenians mark the date April 24, 1915, when several hundred Armenian intellectuals were rounded up, arrested and later executed as the start of the Armenian genocide and it is generally said to have extended to 1917. However, there were also massacres of Armenians in 1894, 1895, 1896, 1909, and a reprise between 1920 and 1923.
The University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies has compiled figures by province and district that show there were 2,133,190 Armenians in the empire in 1914 and only about 387,800 by 1922.
Writing at the time of the early series of massacres, The New York Times suggested there was already a “policy of extermination directed against the Christians of Asia Minor.”
The Young Turks, who called themselves the Committee of Unity and Progress, launched a set of measures against the Armenians, including a law authorizing the military and government to deport anyone they “sensed” was a security threat.
A later law allowed the confiscation of abandoned Armenian property. Armenians were ordered to turn in any weapons that they owned to the authorities. Those in the army were disarmed and transferred into labor battalions where they were either killed or worked to death.
There were executions into mass graves, and death marches of men, women and children across the Syrian desert to concentration camps with many dying along the way of exhaustion, exposure and starvation.
Much of this was quite well documented at the time by Western diplomats, missionaries and others, creating widespread wartime outrage against the Turks in the West. Although its ally, Germany, was silent at the time, in later years documents have surfaced from ranking German diplomats and military officers expressing horror at what was going on.
Some historians, however, while acknowledging the widespread deaths, say what happened does not technically fit the definition of genocide largely because they do not feel there is evidence that it was well-planned in advance.
The New York Times covered the issue extensively — 145 articles in 1915 alone by one count — with headlines like “Appeal to Turkey to Stop Massacres.” The Times described the actions against the Armenians as “systematic,” “authorized, and “organized by the government.”
The American ambassador, Henry Morganthau Sr., was also outspoken. In his memoirs, the ambassador would write: “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.”
Following the surrender of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Three Pashas fled to Germany, where they were given protection. But the Armenian underground formed a group called Operation Nemesis to hunt them down. On March 15, 1921, one of the pashas was shot dead on a street in Berlin in broad daylight in front of witnesses. The gunman pled temporary insanity brought on by the mass killings and a jury took only a little over an hour to acquit him. It was the defense evidence at this trial that drew the interest of Mr. Lemkin, the coiner of “genocide.”
For most people April 24th is just another day, not very different from any other, but for various Armenian communities around the world, including the large community of Armenians living in the greater Los Angeles area, it is a day of remembrance of their 1.5 million countrymen who were victims of brutal mass murders during World War I. Armenia is a nation that has had its hills painted with the blood of its people for thousands of years. Yet, though its song and dance have helped it overcome its horrific past, the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Turkish Ottoman Empire is a page of its past that just simply cannot be turned with ease.
First, the Ottoman government demanded the peaceful resignation of weapons from the Armenians, including all types of knives. Armenian notables were called to a meeting at which they were arrested. The mass arrest of Armenian political leaders is carried out. Armenian intellectuals and community leaders are arrested in Constantinople, sent to nearby cities and later slain. Deportations slowly began and soon there were multiple reports of starvation and spread of disease. Shortly after the Ottoman empire proclaimed jihad against England, France and Russia, unfounded accusations were made against Armenians that they were planning to join the Russian forces. From the Central Prison of city of Sivas where many Armenian intellectuals, political leaders, and the leading men of the villages surrounding Sivas were imprisoned, 15,000 Armenians were taken out and slain in the 36 extermination centers of the region.
Some of the inhabitants were sent to the Konia Desert in central Anatolia. The rest were sent to Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) in the Syrian Desert. To further cut off the flow of information Azadamart, the leading Armenian newspaper in Constantinople, was closed by an order the government issued through the office of the police commissioner of Constantinople. Mass executions of Armenian soldiers in the Turkish army took place in various public squares for the purpose of terrorizing the Armenians, while with voluntary contributions, Armenians were building several hospitals for the use of the Turkish army through the Red Crescent Society.
The Armenians working in labor corps in Sivas were instructed to convert to Islam. At least 95% refused and were murdered. In order to further the Islamization and Turkification of the Armenian remnants in the Hawran District, all the Armenian clerics found there were murdered by the Turks.
On September 14, 1915 The New York Times reported that there were already at least 350,000 Armenians who were murdered. By August 19th of that same year British Ambassador to the United States, Lord Bryce, reported the number murdered to be 500,000. Shortly after, interim ChargÈ d'affaires for Germany, Wilhelm Radowitz, reported to the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethman Hollweg that of the 2,000,000 Armenians in Turkey, 1.5 million had been deported. Of these 1,175,000 were dead; 325,000 were still living.
Toward the end of WWI the Ottoman leaders were held responsible for the atrocities, court martialed and sentenced to death, but not before leaving an indelible mark of blood and gory resulting in the death of up to an estimated 1.5 million people. The irony of it all is that today the Armenian genocide is still not recognized by Turkey and not formally recognized by most nations who have more interest vested in political gains than humanity and justice.
Many today would deny that the Armenian Genocide ever took place, attributing the massive loss of life to wartime casualties that inflicted all nations during the time. But various reports from foreigners in the area at the time paint a different picture that verify the intentional atrocities. Another such person, a Christian missionary named Rose Lambert, documented the horrible mass murders. In her autobiographical work titled Hadjin and the Armenian Massacres, Ms. Lambert details the conditions of an earlier siege of Adana.
Through her written narrative we meet an elderly man named Vartevar Agha who had witnessed the long days of dust and ashes. Despite his old age and frailty, when a Turkish captain’s son was injured by a stray bullet, he was seen carrying the boy of his enemy to safety, evading the bullets that were ironically by shot at him from the same enemy. He feverishly paced his way to get medical attention for the boy who had been wounded amidst the flying bullets. And though his own people were being hunted down for annihilation during this one episode, attacks on the city of Adana during the Armenian Genocide, the old man found that miraculous grace inside of himself to do good and save the boy, putting his own life at risk, being shot upon by the boy’s own countrymen, who were themselves too scared to get the young lad the medical attention that he needed.
In the end the siege of Adana in 1909 took the lives of between 20,000 and 30,000 men, women and children. The years that proceeded would usher in even greater levels of aggression carried out by the Ottoman Empire, a systematic concerted attempt to wipe away the entirety of the Armenian population. Under the guise of World War I and the supposed fear of Armenians, the Turks would launch a stealthy scheme that would result in the first genocide of the 20th century. Through forced deportations into unsurvivable conditions in the deserts, to outright rapes, beheading, tortures and murders, the attempt of systematic annihilation of Armenians in and around Turkey would be carried out without any tension to the Ottoman conscience.
And while the scars of the sorrow should entail a massive hatred for those who took part in such heinous acts, we flash back to the elderly man, whose Christian grace surpasses all rational and natural inclinations of retribution. As the world grows colder with our insipid autonomy, so grows the contrast between the darkness that appears to envelop the light, but not before that little shimmer of humanity that changed everything. With the encouragement of Ms. Lambert, the old man’s unthinkable act stands atop all of the darkness - in the face of animosity to return the hatred and evil with grace and goodness. Now that is the eternal virtue that will eventually bewilder the lost into submission! That is the power of God!
As David Fromkin put it in his widely praised history of World War I and its aftermath, “A Peace to End All Peace”: “Rape and beating were commonplace. Those who were not killed at once were driven through mountains and deserts without food, drink or shelter. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians eventually succumbed or were killed .”
The man who invented the word “genocide”— Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish origin — was moved to investigate the attempt to eliminate an entire people by accounts of the massacres of Armenians. He did not, however, coin the word until 1943, applying it to Nazi Germany and the Jews in a book published a year later, “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.”
But to Turks, what happened in 1915 was, at most, just one more messy piece of a very messy war that spelled the end of a once-powerful empire. They reject the conclusions of historians and the term genocide, saying there was no premeditation in the deaths, no systematic attempt to destroy a people. Indeed, in Turkey today it remains a crime — “insulting Turkishness” — to even raise the issue of what happened to the Armenians.
In the United States, a powerful Armenian community centered in Los Angeles has been pressing for years for Congress to condemn the Armenian genocide. Turkey, which cut military ties to France over a similar action, has reacted with angry threats. A bill to that effect nearly passed in the fall of 2007, gaining a majority of co-sponsors and passing a committee vote. But the Bush administration, noting that Turkey is a critical ally — more than 70 per cent of the military air supplies for Iraq go through the Incirlik airbase there — pressed for the bill to be withdrawn, and it was.
The roots of the genocide lie in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
The empire’s ruler was also the caliph, or leader of the Islamic community. Minority religious communities, like the Christian Armenians, were allowed to maintain their religious, social and legal structures, but were often subject to extra taxes or other measures.
Concentrated largely in eastern Anatolia, many of them merchants and industrialists, Armenians, historians say, appeared markedly better off in many ways than their Turkish neighbors, largely small peasants or ill-paid government functionaries and soldiers.
At the turn of the 20th Century, the once far-flung Ottoman empire was crumbling at the edges, beset by revolts among Christian subjects to the north — vast swaths of territory were lost in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 — and the subject of coffee house grumbling among Arab nationalist intellectuals in Damascus and elsewhere.
The Young Turk movement of ambitious, discontented junior army officers seized power in 1908, determined to modernize, strengthen and “Turkify” the empire. They were led by what became an all-powerful triumvirate sometimes referred to as the Three Pashas.
In March of 1914, the Young Turks entered World War I on the side of Germany. They attacked to the east, hoping to capture the city of Baku in what would be a disastrous campaign against Russian forces in the Caucuses. They were soundly defeated at the battle of Sarikemish.
Armenians in the area were blamed for siding with the Russians and the Young Turks began a campaign to portray the Armenians as a kind of fifth column, a threat to the state. Indeed, there were Armenian nationalists who acted as guerrillas and cooperated with the Russians. They briefly seized the city of Van in the spring of 1915.
Armenians mark the date April 24, 1915, when several hundred Armenian intellectuals were rounded up, arrested and later executed as the start of the Armenian genocide and it is generally said to have extended to 1917. However, there were also massacres of Armenians in 1894, 1895, 1896, 1909, and a reprise between 1920 and 1923.
The University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies has compiled figures by province and district that show there were 2,133,190 Armenians in the empire in 1914 and only about 387,800 by 1922.
Writing at the time of the early series of massacres, The New York Times suggested there was already a “policy of extermination directed against the Christians of Asia Minor.”
The Young Turks, who called themselves the Committee of Unity and Progress, launched a set of measures against the Armenians, including a law authorizing the military and government to deport anyone they “sensed” was a security threat.
A later law allowed the confiscation of abandoned Armenian property. Armenians were ordered to turn in any weapons that they owned to the authorities. Those in the army were disarmed and transferred into labor battalions where they were either killed or worked to death.
There were executions into mass graves, and death marches of men, women and children across the Syrian desert to concentration camps with many dying along the way of exhaustion, exposure and starvation.
Much of this was quite well documented at the time by Western diplomats, missionaries and others, creating widespread wartime outrage against the Turks in the West. Although its ally, Germany, was silent at the time, in later years documents have surfaced from ranking German diplomats and military officers expressing horror at what was going on.
Some historians, however, while acknowledging the widespread deaths, say what happened does not technically fit the definition of genocide largely because they do not feel there is evidence that it was well-planned in advance.
The New York Times covered the issue extensively — 145 articles in 1915 alone by one count — with headlines like “Appeal to Turkey to Stop Massacres.” The Times described the actions against the Armenians as “systematic,” “authorized, and “organized by the government.”
The American ambassador, Henry Morganthau Sr., was also outspoken. In his memoirs, the ambassador would write: “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.”
Following the surrender of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Three Pashas fled to Germany, where they were given protection. But the Armenian underground formed a group called Operation Nemesis to hunt them down. On March 15, 1921, one of the pashas was shot dead on a street in Berlin in broad daylight in front of witnesses. The gunman pled temporary insanity brought on by the mass killings and a jury took only a little over an hour to acquit him. It was the defense evidence at this trial that drew the interest of Mr. Lemkin, the coiner of “genocide.”
For most people April 24th is just another day, not very different from any other, but for various Armenian communities around the world, including the large community of Armenians living in the greater Los Angeles area, it is a day of remembrance of their 1.5 million countrymen who were victims of brutal mass murders during World War I. Armenia is a nation that has had its hills painted with the blood of its people for thousands of years. Yet, though its song and dance have helped it overcome its horrific past, the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Turkish Ottoman Empire is a page of its past that just simply cannot be turned with ease.
First, the Ottoman government demanded the peaceful resignation of weapons from the Armenians, including all types of knives. Armenian notables were called to a meeting at which they were arrested. The mass arrest of Armenian political leaders is carried out. Armenian intellectuals and community leaders are arrested in Constantinople, sent to nearby cities and later slain. Deportations slowly began and soon there were multiple reports of starvation and spread of disease. Shortly after the Ottoman empire proclaimed jihad against England, France and Russia, unfounded accusations were made against Armenians that they were planning to join the Russian forces. From the Central Prison of city of Sivas where many Armenian intellectuals, political leaders, and the leading men of the villages surrounding Sivas were imprisoned, 15,000 Armenians were taken out and slain in the 36 extermination centers of the region.
Some of the inhabitants were sent to the Konia Desert in central Anatolia. The rest were sent to Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) in the Syrian Desert. To further cut off the flow of information Azadamart, the leading Armenian newspaper in Constantinople, was closed by an order the government issued through the office of the police commissioner of Constantinople. Mass executions of Armenian soldiers in the Turkish army took place in various public squares for the purpose of terrorizing the Armenians, while with voluntary contributions, Armenians were building several hospitals for the use of the Turkish army through the Red Crescent Society.
The Armenians working in labor corps in Sivas were instructed to convert to Islam. At least 95% refused and were murdered. In order to further the Islamization and Turkification of the Armenian remnants in the Hawran District, all the Armenian clerics found there were murdered by the Turks.
On September 14, 1915 The New York Times reported that there were already at least 350,000 Armenians who were murdered. By August 19th of that same year British Ambassador to the United States, Lord Bryce, reported the number murdered to be 500,000. Shortly after, interim ChargÈ d'affaires for Germany, Wilhelm Radowitz, reported to the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethman Hollweg that of the 2,000,000 Armenians in Turkey, 1.5 million had been deported. Of these 1,175,000 were dead; 325,000 were still living.
Toward the end of WWI the Ottoman leaders were held responsible for the atrocities, court martialed and sentenced to death, but not before leaving an indelible mark of blood and gory resulting in the death of up to an estimated 1.5 million people. The irony of it all is that today the Armenian genocide is still not recognized by Turkey and not formally recognized by most nations who have more interest vested in political gains than humanity and justice.
Many today would deny that the Armenian Genocide ever took place, attributing the massive loss of life to wartime casualties that inflicted all nations during the time. But various reports from foreigners in the area at the time paint a different picture that verify the intentional atrocities. Another such person, a Christian missionary named Rose Lambert, documented the horrible mass murders. In her autobiographical work titled Hadjin and the Armenian Massacres, Ms. Lambert details the conditions of an earlier siege of Adana.
Through her written narrative we meet an elderly man named Vartevar Agha who had witnessed the long days of dust and ashes. Despite his old age and frailty, when a Turkish captain’s son was injured by a stray bullet, he was seen carrying the boy of his enemy to safety, evading the bullets that were ironically by shot at him from the same enemy. He feverishly paced his way to get medical attention for the boy who had been wounded amidst the flying bullets. And though his own people were being hunted down for annihilation during this one episode, attacks on the city of Adana during the Armenian Genocide, the old man found that miraculous grace inside of himself to do good and save the boy, putting his own life at risk, being shot upon by the boy’s own countrymen, who were themselves too scared to get the young lad the medical attention that he needed.
In the end the siege of Adana in 1909 took the lives of between 20,000 and 30,000 men, women and children. The years that proceeded would usher in even greater levels of aggression carried out by the Ottoman Empire, a systematic concerted attempt to wipe away the entirety of the Armenian population. Under the guise of World War I and the supposed fear of Armenians, the Turks would launch a stealthy scheme that would result in the first genocide of the 20th century. Through forced deportations into unsurvivable conditions in the deserts, to outright rapes, beheading, tortures and murders, the attempt of systematic annihilation of Armenians in and around Turkey would be carried out without any tension to the Ottoman conscience.
And while the scars of the sorrow should entail a massive hatred for those who took part in such heinous acts, we flash back to the elderly man, whose Christian grace surpasses all rational and natural inclinations of retribution. As the world grows colder with our insipid autonomy, so grows the contrast between the darkness that appears to envelop the light, but not before that little shimmer of humanity that changed everything. With the encouragement of Ms. Lambert, the old man’s unthinkable act stands atop all of the darkness - in the face of animosity to return the hatred and evil with grace and goodness. Now that is the eternal virtue that will eventually bewilder the lost into submission! That is the power of God!