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The Armenian Genocide is often cited as the first genocide of the twentieth century, carried out against the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during World War I (1914–1918). Many in Turkey, however, dispute that the event should be considered genocide, and it remains a controversial topic both within Turkey and internationally.

Armenians Under The Ottoman Empire

Armenians, a Christian people, had long lived in the territory of the Ottoman Empire in eastern Anatolia and in cities such as Istanbul. Until the late nineteenth century, Armenians were referred to as millet-Isadıka (loyal nation) by the Ottomans. Like other minorities, they were free to practice their religion and had their own courts, although they were also subject to heavy taxes and denied rights granted to Muslims. In the late 1800s, increasingly despotic rule by the Ottoman sultan combined with Russian claims to act as a protector of Christian peoples in the Ottoman Empire led some Armenians to clamor for independence. Armenian unrest was forcefully put down by the government, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths from 1894 to 1897.

In 1909, the Ottoman Empire came under the control of the Young Turks, a movement within the bureaucracy and military that advocated reform within the Ottoman Empire. However, by 1913 the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), a more militant and nationalistic faction among the Young Turks, gained control over the government. The CUP was led by Ismail Enver Pasha, Mehmed Talat Pasha, and Ahmed Djemal Pasha, all individuals who have been accused of being behind the Armenian genocide.

World War I And Genocide

In 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined World War I and attacked Russian forces. The Russians defeated the Ottomans. Some Armenians who lived in the area—there were Armenians on both sides of the Ottoman-Russian border—assisted Russian forces. The Ottoman government, however, accused the Armenians en masse of being in league with the Russians, making them an enemy of the state. This would provide the pretext for the genocide.

The genocide began in 1915. First, Armenians in the army were disarmed, placed into labor battalions, and then killed. On April 24, 1915, Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul were arrested and deported by the government. They were eventually executed. (April 24 thus serves as the day of commemoration by those who acknowledge the genocide.) This was followed in May 1915 by a Temporary Law on Deportation, which gave the government the right to deport anyone it deemed a threat to national security. Several months later, a Temporary Law of Expropriation and Confiscation was passed, giving the government the right to seize Armenian property. Throughout 1915, the Ottoman authorities expelled the Armenians in eastern Anatolia from their homes, told them they would be relocated, and then marched them off to concentration camps in the desert between Jerablus and Deir ez-Zor, where many would perish due to lack of food and water. In other cases, Armenians were drowned, raped, or simply shot on sight by local Turks and Kurds, who acted with impunity.

According to many sources, the CUP created an administrative unit (Teshkilai Mahusuna) and special “butcher battalions,” manned by violent criminals released from prison, to ensure that actions against the Armenians were carried out. Estimates are that between one and one and a half-million (of the roughly two and a half million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire) perished. Official Turkish records, published in 2008, indicate that nearly a million Armenians disappeared between 1914 and 1918.

Hundreds of eyewitnesses, including American missionaries and German military advisers (who were on the Ottoman side during the war) documented various massacres. For example, the German ambassador wrote to Berlin in 1916 that the Ottoman government sought “to resolve its Armenian question by the destruction of the Armenian race” (Hovannisian, 1992, xii). U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau wrote in 1915 that “deportation of and excesses against peaceful Armenians is increasing and from harrowing reports of eyewitnesses it appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against rebellion” (Winter, 2003, 150). The New York Times ran more than one hundred articles on the plight of the Armenians in 1915, and many prominent Americans, including former President Theodore Roosevelt and orator and politician William Jennings Bryan, spoke out against it.

The Ottoman government, when not denying the massacres, claimed that they were driven by the needs of the war. Some Ottoman officials who refused to comply with orders were dismissed, and Turks who protected Armenians risked death themselves. Survivors of the genocide would find refuge in Russia, the Middle East, and, eventually, in Europe, North America, Africa, and Australia, making Armenians one of the world’s largest diaspora groups.

After the war, the Ottoman Empire was defeated, and its wartime leaders were put on trial, often in absentia. In 1919, a Turkish court convicted many Ottoman officials for war crimes, claiming that “the disaster visiting the Armenians was not a local or isolated event. It was the result of a premeditated decision taken by a central body . . . and the immolations and excesses which took place were based on oral or written orders issued by that central body” (Balakian, 2003, 339). This court functioned while Turkey was still occupied by Western powers. Later, Turkish army officer Mustapha Kemal (later Ataturk) organized Turkish resistance to foreign occupation, creating the Republic of Turkey in 1923 and securing the release of war criminals held by the British.

Contemporary Controversies

The Armenian genocide remains a very sensitive issue. While Armenians have lobbied for international recognition of the crime committed against them, the Turkish government refuses to acknowledge that the actions taken against the Armenians consist tea genocide. In its view, the Armenian claims of more than a million dead are wildly inflated, and those deaths that did occur among Armenians, Kurds, and Turks were the result of localized activity carried out during the war due to civil conflict. In this interpretation, there was no systematic, centralized campaign to eliminate Armenians. Others, however, would seek to justify actions taken against Armenians as necessary for the Turkish war effort, as Armenians were deemed to be unreliable. Many individuals, such as the Nobel-prize winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, who have spoken of the Armenian genocide, have been brought before Turkish courts for “insulting Turkishness.” Efforts within Turkey to examine the issue have been subjected to harassment by the government, although some Turkish scholars, such as Turkish historian Taner Akcam, are willing to acknowledge that a genocide against Armenians did occur. Internationally, Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide is held up by some as a reason not to admit Turkey to the European Union.

Bibliography:

Akcam,Taner. A Shameful Act:The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006.
Balakian, Peter. The Burning Tigris:The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response. New York: Harper Collins, 2003.
Bloxham, Donald. The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Hovannisian, Richard, ed. The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics. New York: St. Martin’s, 1992.
Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999.
Suny, Ronald G. Looking toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Winter, Jay, ed. America and the Armenian Genocide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.