Armenian genocide

Armenian Genocide.

The Armenian Genocide (Template:Lang-hy ("Hayoc' c'ejaspanut'iwn"), Template:Lang-tr) — also known as the Armenian Holocaust, Great Calamity (Մեծ Եղեռն "Mec Ejer'n" ) or the Armenian Massacre — was the forcible deportation and massacring of hundreds of thousands to over 1.5 million Armenians during the government of the Young Turks from 1915 to 1917 in the Ottoman Empire.

It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern, systematic genocides, as many Western sources point to the sheer scale of the death toll as evidence for a systematic, organized plan to eliminate the Armenians. The event is also said to be the second-most studied case of genocide. To date twenty-one countries have officially recognized it as genocide. The government of the Republic of Turkey rejects the characterization of the events as genocide.

The status of the Ottoman Armenians

See also: Ottoman Armenian population

Ethnic groups in the Balkans and Asia Minor as of early 20th Century (William R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas, 1911).

Until the late 19th century, Armenians were referred to as millet-i sadıka (loyal nation) by the Ottomans. Under the millet system of Ottoman law, Armenians (as dhimmis, along with Greeks, Jews and other ethnic and religious minorities) were subject to laws different from those applied to Muslims. They had separate legal courts, although disputes involving a Muslim fell under sharia-based law. Armenians were exempt from serving in the military and were instead made to pay an exemption tax, the jizya; their testimony in Islamic courts was inadmissible against Muslims; they were not allowed to bear arms, and they were heavily taxed, although they were one of the largest minorities in the Ottoman Empire.

In 1914, there were an estimated two million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. While the Armenian population in Eastern Anatolia was large and clustered, there were many Armenians in the western part of the Ottoman Empire, particularly in and around Constantinople.

Before the war

Abdul Hamid II's reign, 1876-1909

For more details on this topic, see Hamidian massacres, Adana massacre.

Sultan Abdul Hamid II suspended the constitution early in his reign, assuming dictatorial powers. As the Ottoman Empire declined, Armenian political resistance stiffened, resulting in several massacres of Armenians throughout Abdul Hamid's reign.[2][3] The persecution of Christians under Abdul Hamid II became a cause célèbre in the West, as Europe and the United States actively lobbied the Sultan to treat Christian minorities more humanely. By the last years of the 19th century, the New York Times noted an apparent "policy of extermination directed against the Christians of Asia Minor".[4]

In 1908, the Ottoman Empire came under the control of the so-called "Young Turks". A secular movement aiming to restore "constitutional and parliamentary rule", the movement was welcomed by religious minorities throughout the Empire. In 1909, as the authority of the nascent Young Turk government splintered, Abdul Hamid II briefly regained his sultanate with a populist appeal to Islamism. 30,000 Armenians perished in the subsequent Adana Massacre.[5]

Young Turk leadership

For more details on this topic, see Young Turk Revolution, Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire

The Young Turk leadership recovered from the Sultan's 1909 countercoup. By this time, however, the Young Turk revolutionaries were already hardened in their distrust and resentment of Ottoman Christians. According to Erik Jan Zürcher of the University of Leiden,

Living in the urban centers of the southern Balkans made this generation acutely aware of the increasing gap between the Christian bourgeoisie on the one hand and the Muslim middle class on the other. This gap was evident in education, with superior schools being established both by the non-Muslim communities themselves and by European missionary organizations... The gap was also increasingly evident in the economy... The sons of the Muslim middle class... increasingly found their place in the state bureaucracy (which grew thirtyfold in the Nineteenth Century) and the officer corps of the armed forces. As such, they were in a paradoxical situation: they represented the authority and prestige of the state, but at the same time they lived in relative poverty, wages often being in arrears for months if not years... Young Turk memoirs show us very clearly how aware they were of the growing gap between Muslims and non-Muslims. Born in the traditional Muslim quarters they gazed in awe at the villas the Greek and Armenian industrialists built along newly laid-out avenues with tramways and streetlights. The contrast defined their loyalties... The Young Turks developed a fierce Ottoman-Muslim nationalism, which defined the “other” very much in religious terms...[T]he Muslim – Non-Muslim divide would completely dominate politics and lead to the tragedies of the expulsion of Muslims from the Balkans and Greek-Orthodox from Anatolia, as well as to the wholesale slaughter of the Ottoman Armenians.

Implementation of the Genocide

Planning

File:Ruinsgenocide.jpg

Ethnic Armenian town in ruins.

In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers. İsmail Enver, now the Minister of War, launched a disastrous military campaign against Russian forces in the Caucasus in hopes of capturing the city of Baku. His forces were routed at the Battle of Sarikamis, and many more of his men froze to death in the retreat.

Returning to Istanbul, Enver largely blamed the Armenians living in the region for actively siding with the Russians. In 1914, the Ottoman Empire's War Office had already begun a propaganda drive to present Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire as a liability and threat to the country's security. An Ottoman naval officer in the War Office described the planning:

In order to justify this enormous crime the requisite propaganda material was thoroughly prepared in Istanbul. [It included such statements as] "the Armenians are in league with the enemy. They will launch an uprising in Istanbul, kill off the Ittihadist leaders and will succeed in opening the straits [of the Dardanelles]."

The Ottoman government, moving swiftly, arrested an estimated 250 Armenian intellectuals on the night of 24 April 1915.

Armenian intellectuals were arrested and later executed en masse by Ottoman authorities on the night of April 24 1915.

The Turkish massacres of Armenians in 1894, 1895, 1896, and 1909 were still fresh in their minds.

Legislation, May 29

Further information: [[:Tehcir Law]]

In May 1915, Mehmed Talat Pasha requested that the cabinet and grand vizier formally legalize the deportations of the Armenians of Anatolia. On 29 May 1915, the CUP Central Committee passed the Temporary Law of Deportation (Tehcir Law), giving the Ottoman government and military authorization to deport anyone it "sensed" as a threat to national security. Several months later, the Temporary Law of Expropriation and Confiscation was passed, stating that all property, including land, livestock, and homes belonging to Armenians, was to be confiscated by the authorities. Only one politician in the Ottoman parliament, Senator Ahmed Riza, a founder-member of the Liberal Union, protested against the legislation:

It is unlawful to designate the Armenian assets as “abandoned goods” for the Armenians, the proprietors, did not abandon their properties voluntarily; they were forcibly, compulsorily removed from their domiciles and exiled. Now the government through its efforts is selling their goods...If we are a constitutional regime functioning in accordance with constitutional law we can’t do this. This is atrocious. Grab my arm, eject me from my village, then sell my goods and properties, such a thing can never be permissible. Neither the conscience of the Ottomans nor the law can allow it.

During 1915, the New York Times published 145 articles about the mass murder of the Armenian people, describing the massacre as "systematic", "authorized" and "organized by the government." Theodore Roosevelt would later characterize this as "the greatest crime of the war."

Labour battalions

At the same time, Enver ordered that all Armenians in the Ottoman forces be disarmed, demobilized and assigned to labor battalions (Turkish: amele taburlari). Many of the Armenian recruits were executed by Ottoman squads known as chetes. Some of the disarmed Armenian recruits were utilized as road laborers (hamals) or construction mules, though they too would ultimately be executed.

The Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa)

Main articles: Teskilati Mahsusa and Special Organization (Ottoman Empire)

While there was an official 'special organization' founded in December 1911 by the Ottoman government, a second organization that participated in what led to the destruction of the Ottoman Armenian community was founded by the lttihad ve Terraki. This organization technically appeared in July 1914, and functioned with far more autonomy than the existing organization.

Later in 1914, the Ottoman government influenced the direction the special organization was to take by releasing criminals from central prisons to be the central elements of this newly formed special organization. According to the Mazhar commissions attached to the tribunal as soon as November 1914, 124 criminals were released from Pimian prison. Many other releases followed; in Ankara a few months later, 49 criminals were released from its central prison. Little by little from the end of 1914 to the beginning of 1915, hundreds, then thousands of prisoners were freed to form the members of this organization. Later, they were charged to escort the convoys of Armenian deportees. Vehib, commander of the Ottoman Third Army, called those members of the special organization, the “butchers of the human species.”

Process and camps of deportation

See also: Armenian casualties of deportations

The remaining bones of the Armenians of Erzinjan.

The Armenians were marched out to the Syrian town of Deir ez-Zor and the surrounding desert. A good deal of evidence suggests that the Ottoman government did not provide any facilities or supplies to sustain the Armenians during their deportation, nor when they arrived.[6] The Ottoman government also prevented the deportees from supplying themselves . By August 1915, the New York Times reported that "the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to certain death. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people."[7]

Ottoman troops escorting the Armenians not only allowed others to rob, kill and rape the Armenians, but often participated in these activities themselves.[8] Deprived of all possessions and marched into the desert by a hostile and desperate foe, hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished.

Naturally, the death rate from starvation and sickness is very high and is increased by the brutal treatment of the authorities, whose bearing toward the exiles as they are being driven back and forth over the desert is not unlike that of slave drivers. With few exceptions no shelter of any kind is provided and the people coming from a cold climate are left under the scorching desert sun without food and water. Temporary relief can only be obtained by the few able to pay officials.

Template:ImageStackRight It is believed that 25 major concentration camps existed, under the command of Şükrü Kaya, one of the right hands of Talat Pasha. The majority of the camps were situated near modern Iraqi and Syrian frontiers, and some were only temporary transit camps. Others, such as Radjo, Katma, and Azaz, are said to have been used only temporarily, for mass graves; these sites were vacated by Fall 1915. Some authors also maintain that the camps Lale, Tefridje, Dipsi, Del-El, and Ra's al-'Ain were built specifically for those who had a life expectancy of a few days.

Though nearly all the camps, including the primary sites, were open air, the remainder of the mass killing in minor camps was not limited to direct killings, but also to mass burning, poisoning and drowning.

Foreign corroboration and reaction

Hundreds of eyewitnesses, including the neutral United States and the Ottoman Empire's own allies, Germany and Austria-Hungary, recorded and documented numerous acts of state-sponsored massacres, though this evidence would later be disputed by the Republic of Turkey. Many foreign officials offered to intervene on behalf of the Armenians, including Pope Benedict XV, only to be turned away by Ottoman government officials who claimed they were "retaliating against a pro-Russian fifth column." On May 24, 1915, the Triple Entente warned the Ottoman Empire that "In view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres."

The American Committee for Relief in the Near East (ACRNE, or "Near East Relief") was a charitable organization established to relieve the suffering of the peoples of the Near East. The organization was championed by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Morgenthau's eyewitness accounts of the mass slaughter of Armenians galvanized much support for ACRNE.[9]

The U.S. mission in the Ottoman Empire

The United States had several consulates throughout the Ottoman Empire, including locations in Edirne, Elazığ, Samsun, İzmir, Trabzon, Van, Constantinople, and another in the Syrian town of Aleppo. The United States was officially a neutral party until it joined the Allies in 1917. As the orders for deportations and massacres were enacted, many consular officials reported back to the ambassador on what they were witnessing. One such report came in September 1915 from the American consul in Kharput, Leslie A. Davis, who described his discovery of the bodies of nearly 10,000 Armenians dumped into several ravines near Lake Göeljuk, later referring to it as the "slaughterhouse province".

Template:ImageStackRight Similar reports began to reach Morgenthau from Aleppo and Van, prompting him to raise the issue with Talaat and Enver in person. As he quoted to them the testimonies of the consulate officials, both justified the deportations as necessary to the conduct of the war, suggesting that the complicity of the Armenians of Van with the Russian forces that had overtaken the city justified the persecution of all ethnic Armenians. In his memoirs, Morgenthau later suggested that, "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..."

In addition to the consulates, there were also several Protestant missionary compounds established in Armenian-populated regions, including Van and Kharput. Many missionaries vividly described the brutal methods used by Ottoman forces and documented numerous instances of atrocities committed against the Christian minority.

The state-enforced genocide was reported daily in newspapers and literary journals around the world. Many Americans spoke out against the Genocide, including former president Theodore Roosevelt, rabbi Stephen Wise, William Jennings Bryan, and Alice Stone Blackwell. The American Near East Relief Committee helped donate over $110 million to the Armenians. In the United States and Great Britain, children were regularly reminded to clean their plates while eating and to "remember the starving Armenians".

Allied forces in the Middle East

On the Middle Eastern front, the British military engaged Ottoman forces in southern Syria and Mesopotamia. British diplomat Gertrude Bell filed the following report after hearing the account of a captured Ottoman soldier:

The battalion left Aleppo on 3 February and reached Ras al-Ain in twelve hours....some 12,000 Armenians were concentrated under the guardianship of some hundred Kurds...These Kurds were called gendarmes, but in reality mere butchers; bands of them were publicly ordered to take parties of Armenians, of both sexes, to various destinations, but had secret instructions to destroy the males, children and old women...One of these gendarmes confessed to killing 100 Armenian men himself...the empty desert cisterns and caves were also filled with corpses...

Reacting to numerous eyewitness accounts, British politician Viscount Bryce and historian Arnold J. Toynbee compiled statements from survivors and eyewitnesses from other countries including Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland, who similarly attested to the systematized massacring of innocent Armenians by Ottoman government forces. In 1916, they published The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916. Although the book has since been criticized as British wartime propaganda to build up sentiment against the Central Powers, Bryce had submitted the work to scholars for verification prior to its publication. University of Oxford Regius Professor Gilbert Murray stated of the tome, "...the evidence of these letters and reports will bear any scrutiny and overpower any skepticism. Their genuineness is established beyond question." Other professors, including Herbert Fisher of Sheffield University and former American Bar Association president Moorfield Storey, affirmed the same conclusion.

Winston Churchill, in his The World Crisis, 1911-1918, described the massacres as an "administrative holocaust" and noted that "the clearance of race from Asia Minor was about as complete as such an act could be...There is no reason to doubt that this crime was planned and executed for political reasons. The opportunity presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Christian race opposed to all Turkish ambitions."

The joint Austrian and German mission

As allies during the war, the Imperial German mission in the Ottoman Empire included both military and civilian components. Germany had brokered a deal with the Sublime Porte to commission the building of a railroad stretching from Berlin to the Middle East, called the Baghdad Railway.

Among the most famous persons to document the massacres was German military medic Armin T. Wegner. Wegner defied state censorship in taking hundreds of photographs of Armenians being deported and subsequently starving in northern Syrian camps.

German officers stationed in eastern Turkey disputed the government's assertion that Armenian revolts had broken out, suggesting that the areas were "quiet until the deportations began."

Germany's diplomatic mission was lead by Ambassador Baron Hans von Wagenheim (and later Count Paul von Wolff-Metternich). Like Morgenthau, von Wagenheim received many disturbing messages from consul officials around the Ottoman Empire. From the province of Adana, Consul Eugene Buge reported that the CUP chief had sworn to kill and massacre any Armenians who survived the deportation marches. In June 1915, von Wagenheim sent a cable to Berlin reporting that Talat had admitted the deportations were not "being carried out because of 'military considerations alone.'" One month later, he came to the conclusion that there "no longer was doubt that the Porte was trying to exterminate the Armenian race in the Turkish Empire."

When Wolff-Metternich succeeded von Wagenheim, he continued to dispatch similar cables: "The Committee [CUP] demands the extirpation of the last remnants of the Armenians and the government must yield....A Committee representative is assigned to each of the provincial administrations....Turkification means license to expel, to kill or destroy everything that is not Turkish."

German engineers and laborers involved in building the railway also witnessed Armenians being crammed into cattle cars and shipped along the railroad line. Franz Gunther, a representative for Deutsche Bank which was funding the construction of the Baghdad Railway, forwarded photographs to his directors and expressed his frustration at having to remain silent amid such "bestial cruelty". Major General Otto von Lossow, acting military attaché and head of the German Military Plenipotentiary in the Ottoman Empire, spoke to Ottoman intentions in a conference held in Batum in 1918:

The Turks have embarked upon the "total extermination of the Armenians in Transcaucasia...The aim of Turkish policy is, as I have reiterated, the taking of possession of Armenian districts and the extermination of the Armenians. Talaat's government wants to destroy all Armenians, not just in Turkey but also outside Turkey. On the basis of all the reports and news coming to me here in Tiflis there hardly can be any doubt that the Turks systematically are aiming at the extermination of the few hundred thousand Armenians whom they left alive until now.

Similarly, Major General Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein noted that "The Turkish policy of causing starvation is an all too obvious proof...for the Turkish resolve to destroy the Armenians." Another notable figure in the German military camp was Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, who documented various massacres of Armenians. He sent fifteen reports regarding "deportations and mass killings" to Germany's chancellor in Berlin. His final report noted that fewer than 100,000 Armenians were left alive in the Ottoman Empire; the rest had been exterminated (Template:Lang-de). Scheubner-Richter also detailed the methods of the Ottoman government, noting its use of the Special Organization and other bureaucratized instruments of genocide.

Some Germans openly supported the Ottoman policy against the Armenians, as the German naval attaché in Constantinople said to US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau;

"I have lived in Turkey the larger part of my life," he told me, "and I know the Armenians. I also know that both Armenians and Turks cannot live together in this country. One of these races has got to go. And I don't blame the Turks for what they are doing to the Armenians. I think that they are entirely justified. The weaker nation must succumb. The Armenians desire to dismember Turkey; they are against the Turks and the Germans in this war, and they therefore have no right to exist here."

In a genocide conference in 2001, professor Wolfgang Wipperman of the Free University of Berlin introduced documents evidencing that the German High Command was aware of the mass killings at the time but chose not to interfere or speak out.

Russian military

The Russian Empire's response to the bombardment of its Black Sea naval ports was primarily a land campaign through the Caucasus. Early victories against the Ottoman Empire from the winter of 1914 to the spring 1915 saw significant gains of territory, including relieving the Armenian bastion resisting in the city of Van in May 1915. The Russians also reported encountering the bodies of unarmed civilian Armenians in the areas they advanced through.[10] In March 1916, the scenes they saw in the city of Erzerum led the Russians to retaliate against the Ottoman III^rd Army whom they held responsible for the massacres, destroying it in its entirety.

Armenians are marched to a nearby prison in Mezireh by armed Turkish soldiers. Kharpert, Armenia, Ottoman Empire - April, 1915.

1919–1920 Military tribunals

Domestic courts-martial

Main article: Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919-20

Domestic courts-martial began on 23 November 1918. These courts were designed by Sultan Mehmed VI to punish the Committee of Union and Progress for the Empire's ill-conceived involvement in World War I. The Armenian issue was used as a tool to punish the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress. Most of the documents generated in these courts were later moved to international trials. By January 1919, a report to Sultan Mehmed VI accused over 130 suspects, most of whom were high officials. Mehmed Talat Pasha and Ismail Enver had fled prior to 1919, anticipating the Sultan's wrath. The term Three Pashas generally refers to this prominent triumvirate held accountable for Ottoman Empire involvement in World War I.

The courts-martial officially disbanded the Committee of Union and Progress, which had actively ruled the Ottoman Empire for ten years. All the assets of the organization were transferred to the treasury, and the assets of those found guilty were moved to "teceddüt firkasi". According to verdicts handed down by the court, all members except for the Three Pashas were transferred to jails in Bekiraga, then moved to Malta. The Three Pashas were found guilty in absentia. The courts-martial blamed the members of Ittihat Terakki for pursuing a war that did not fit into the notion of Millet.

International trials

Main articles: Malta exiles and Malta Tribunals

These Ottoman politicians, generals, and intellectuals were deported to Malta, where they were held for some three years, while searches were made of archives in Istanbul, London, Paris and Washington to investigate their actions.

Following the Armistice of Mudros in January 1919, the preliminary Peace Conference in Paris established "The Commission on Responsibilities and Sanctions" which was chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Lansing. Following the commission's work, several articles were added to the Treaty of Sèvres, and the acting government of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Mehmed VI and Damat Adil Ferit Pasha, were summoned to trial. The Treaty of Sèvres recognized the Democratic Republic of Armenia and planned a trial to determine those responsible for the "barbarous and illegitimate methods of warfare... [including] offenses against the laws and customs of war and the principles of humanity".

Article 230 of the Treaty of Sèvres required the Ottoman Empire "hand over to the Allied Powers the persons whose surrender may be required by the latter as being responsible for the massacres committed during the continuance of the state of war on territory which formed part of the Ottoman Empire on August 1, 1914."

At the trials in Istanbul in 1919 many of those responsible for the genocide were sentenced to death in absentia, after having escaped trial in 1918. The military court established the will of the Committee of Union and Progress to eliminate the Armenians physically, via its special organization. The 1919 pronouncement reads as follows:

The Court Martial taking into consideration the above-named crimes declares, unanimously, the culpability as principal factors of these crimes the fugitives Talat Pasha, former Grand Vizir, Enver Efendi, former War Minister, struck off the register of the Imperial Army, Cemal Efendi, former Navy Minister, struck off too from the Imperial Army, and Dr. Nazim Efendi, former Minister of Education, members of the General Council of the Union & Progress, representing the moral person of that party;... the Court Martial pronounces, in accordance with said stipulations of the Law the death penalty against Talat, Enver, Cemal, and Dr. Nazim.

Operation Nemesis

Main article: Operation Nemesis

"Operation Nemesis" was the Armenian Revolutionary Federation codename for the covert operation in the 1920s to assassinate the masterminds of the Armenian Genocide. It is named after the Greek goddess of divine retribution, Nemesis.

Armenian deaths, 1914 to 1918

Main article: Ottoman Armenian casualties

Targets of movements from Ottoman Archives

While there is no consensus as to how many Armenians lost their lives during the Armenian Genocide, there is general agreement among western scholars that over 500,000 Armenians perished between 1914 and 1918. Estimates vary between 300,000 (per the modern Turkish state) to 1,500,000 (per the modern Armenian state). Encyclopædia Britannica references the research of Arnold J. Toynbee, an intelligence officer of the British Foreign Office, who estimated that 600,000 Armenians "died or were massacred during deportation" in the years 1915-1916 alone.

Influence of the Armenian Genocide on Adolf Hitler

Main article: Armenian quote

The Armenian Genocide is often speculated to have influenced Adolf Hitler, owing to his various references to the Ottoman killings of Armenians. The extent of Hitler's knowledge of the Armenian Genocide is unclear, though he did refer to their destruction several times. The most notable quote attributed to Hitler on the Armenians is excerpted from an August 1939 military conference, prior to the invasion of Poland:

I have issued the command -- and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad -- that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness -- for the present only in the East -- with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space [Lebensraum] which we need. Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians?

There are numerous accounts of Hitler speaking in regards to the Armenians, with at least two similar versions of the 1939 speech coming from the German High Command archives. In 1931, for example, two years prior to his ascension as Germany's leader, Hitler noted in an interview that "everywhere people are awaiting a new world order. We intend to introduce a great resettlement policy...remember the extermination of the Armenians." In 1943, during the height of his attempts to exterminate the Jews in Europe, Hitler demanded of Hungarian regent Admiral Miklós Horthy that he deport the Jews from the country: "Nations which did not get rid of the Jews perished. One of the most famous examples of this was the downfall of a people who were so proud--the Persians, who now lead a pitiful existence as Armenians."

Academic views

Law professor Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide" in 1943, has stated that he did so "because it happened so many times... First to the Armenians, then after the Armenians, Hitler took action." Several international organizations have conducted studies of the events, each in turn determining that the term "genocide" aptly describes "the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916."

Among the organizations affirming this conclusion are the International Center for Transitional Justice, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and the United Nations' Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. In 2007, The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity produced a letter signed by 53 Nobel Laureates re-affirming the Genocide Scholars' conclusion that the 1915 killings of Armenians constituted genocide.

While some consider denial to be a form of hate speech or politically-minded historical revisionism,[11] a small minority of western academics in the field of Ottoman history have expressed doubts as to the genocidal character of the events. While these dissenting opinions are far more common among residents of modern Turkey, some academics have established reputations for having adopted the viewpoint of the Turkish state. Justin A. McCarthy of the University of Louisville, for instance, has regularly contended that the events do not constitute genocide; in 1998, the government of Turkey awarded him with the Order of Merit for his efforts.

The most important counterpoint may be that of British scholar Bernard Lewis. While he had once written of "the terrible holocaust of 1915, when a million and a half Armenians perished", he later came to believe that the term "genocide" was distinctly inaccurate, because the "tremendous massacres" were not "a deliberate preconceived decision of the Turkish government."

While academic opinions within the modern Republic of Turkey often seem to be at odds with international consensus, this may stem from the fact that it remains illegal to speak of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey. Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, for instance, faced harassment and criminal prosecution for stating that "a million Armenians were killed in these lands". According to Pamuk,

What happened to the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 was a major thing that was hidden from the Turkish nation; it was a taboo. But we have to be able to talk about the past.

Similarly, Hrant Dink, the ethnic Armenian chief editor of the Agos newspaper in Turkey, was prosecuted by the Turkish state three times for "denigrating Turkishness", for his having criticized the Turkish state's denial of the Armenian Genocide.[12] In 2007, he was gunned down by a Turkish nationalist.[13] Leaked photographs of the assassin apparently being revered as a national hero while in police custody caused a scandal in Turkey, giving the academic community still more pause in regards to engaging the Armenian issue.

Popular and government opinion in the Republic of Turkey

Main article: Denial of the Armenian Genocide

The Republic of Turkey's formal perspective is that the deaths of Armenians during the "relocation" or "deportation" cannot aptly be deemed "genocide". This point has been contended with a plethora of diverging justifications: that the killings were not deliberate or were not governmentally orchestrated, that the killings were justified because Armenians posed a Russian-sympathizing threat as an ethnic group, that Armenians merely starved, or any of various characterizations recalling marauding "Armenian gangs".[14][15][16] Some suggestions seek to invalidate the assertion of genocide based on semantic grounds, or on the grounds of its being an anachronism (the word "genocide" was not coined until 1943).

Oftentimes, Turkish WWI casualty figures are cited to mitigate the effect of the number of Armenian dead. The website of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey currently features a section entitled ARCHIVE DOCUMENTS ABOUT THE ATROCITIES AND GENOCIDE INFLICTED UPON TURKS BY ARMENIANS, suggesting that the ethnic Turks of Anatolia experienced a genocide at the hands of the Armenians. Turkish governmental sources will occasionally assert that the historically-demonstrated "tolerance of Turkish people"[17] itself renders the Armenian Genocide an impossibility. A theory propounded by the Turkish military reaches even further into history to disprove Turkish culpability in the 1915 Armenian Genocide: "It was the Seljuk Turks who saved the Armenians that came under the Turkish domination in 1071 from the Byzantine persecution and granted them the right to live as a man should."[18] A Der Spiegel article addressed this modern Turkish conception of history thus:

"Would you admit to the crimes of your grandfathers, if these crimes didn't really happen?" asked ambassador Öymen. But the problem lies precisely in this question, says Hrant Dink, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Istanbul-based Armenian weekly Agos. Turkey's bureaucratic elite have never really shed themselves of the Ottoman tradition -- in the perpetrators, they see their fathers, whose honor they seek to defend. This tradition instils a sense of identity in Turkish nationalists -- both from the left and the right, and it is passed on from generation to generation through the school system. This tradition also requires an antipole against which it could define itself. Since the times of the Ottoman Empire, religious minorities have been pushed into this role.[19]

Public prosecutors have utilized Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code prohibiting "insulting Turkishness" to silence some Turkish intellectuals who spoke of atrocities endured by Armenians in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. The modern Turkish government has frequently protested the formal recognition of the genocide by other countries.

In 2005 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan invited Turkish, Armenian and international historians to form a commission to reevaluate the events of 1915. Armenian president Robert Kocharian responded, "It is the responsibility of governments to develop bilateral relations and we do not have the right to delegate that responsibility to historians. That is why we have proposed and propose again that, without pre-conditions, we establish normal relations between our two countries."

Abraham Foxman of the ADL has been criticized by Robert Spencer for not acknowledging the Armenian genocide due to fear of worsening relations between Israel and the republic of Turkey.

Recognition of the Armenian Genocide

Main article: Recognition of the Armenian Genocide

See also: Post-Armenian Genocide timeline

File:GenocideMemorialLebanon.jpg

Genocide memorial in Bikfaya, Lebanon.

Responding to Turkish state denials of the Armenian Genocide, many activists among Armenian Diaspora communities have pushed for formal recognition from various governments around the world. 22 countries, the constituent UK country of Wales, and 40 of the US states, have adopted formal resolutions acknowledging the Armenian Genocide as a bona fide historical event.

Turkish-Armenian intellectual Hrant Dink (who recognized the Genocide) was often critical of these recognition campaigns as being unhelpful.[20]

Impact on culture

Memorial

Main article: Tsitsernakaberd

In 1965, the 50th anniversary of the genocide, a 24-hour mass protest was initiated in Yerevan demanding recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Soviet authorities. The memorial was completed two years later, at Tsitsernakaberd above the Hrazdan gorge in Yerevan. The 44 metre stele symbolizes the national rebirth of Armenians. 12 slabs are positioned in a circle, representing 12 lost provinces in present day Turkey. At the centre of the circle there is an eternal flame.

Each April 24th, hundreds of thousands of people walk to the genocide monument and lay flowers around the eternal flame.

Art

File:1915medal.jpg

Armenian-Russian "Hour of Trial" Medal, issued in 1915

The earliest example of the Armenian genocide on art was a medal issued in 1915 in St. Petersburg, signifying Russian sympathy for Armenian suffering. It was struck in 1915, as the massacres and deportations were still raging. Since then, dozens of medals in different countries have been commissioned to commemorate the event.

Several eyewitness accounts of the events were published, notably those of Swedish missionary Alma Johansson and U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr. Nonetheless, the most famous piece of literature concerning the Armenian Genocide is Franz Werfel's 1933 The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. The book became a bestseller, and there were early plans to convert the book into a screenplay for a movie, though these plans did not come to fruition.

Kurt Vonnegut's 1988 novel Bluebeard featured the Armenian Genocide as a central theme. Other novels incorporating the Armenian Genocide include Louis de Berniéres' Birds without Wings, Edgar Hilsenrath's German-language The Fairytale of the Last Thought, and Stefan Żeromski's 1925 Before the Spring. A story in Edward Saint-Ivan's 2006 anthology "The Black Knight's God" includes a fictional survivor of the Armenian Genocide.

The first film about the Armenian Genocide appeared in 1919, a Hollywood production entitled Ravished Armenia. It resonated with acclaimed director Atom Egoyan, influencing his 2002 Ararat. There are also references in Elia Kazan's America, America or Henri Verneuil's Mayrig. Italian directors Vittorio and Paolo Taviani are planning another film about the events, based on Antonia Arslan's book, La Masseria Delle Allodole (The Farm of the Larks). Richard Kalinoski's play, Beast on the Moon, is about two Armenian Genocide survivors.

American composer and singer Daniel Decker has achieved critical acclaim for his collaborations with Armenian composer Ara Gevorgian. The song "Adana", named for the province of a 1909 pogrom of the Armenian people, tells the story of the Armenian Genocide. Decker was invited by the Armenian government to sing "Adana" at a concert in Yerevan, Armenia on April 24 2005 to commemorate the 90th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. "Adana" has been translated into 17 languages and recorded by singers around the world.

The band System of a Down, comprised of four California musicians who are all descendants of Armenian Genocide survivors, frequently promotes awareness of the Armenian Genocide, through its lyrics and concerts. Hardcore punk band Integrity features a song about the Armenian Genocide on its 1995 album Systems Overload.

Keyboardist Derek Sherinian collaborated with duduk master Djivan Gasparyan on the song "Prelude To Battle", which Sherinian "dedicated to his great grandmother who fought the Turks in the Armenian genocide" as part of his 2006 album "Blood of the Snake".

Documentary films

• 1975 - The Forgotten Genocide (dir. J. Michael Hagopian)
• 1990 - General Andranik (director: Levon Mkrtchyan)
• 2003 - Germany and the Secret Genocide (dir. J. Michael Hagopian)
• 2003 - Voices From the Lake: A Film About the Secret Genocide (dir. J. Michael Hagopian)
• 2005 - Hovhannes Shiraz (dir. Levon Mkrtchyan )
• 2006 - The Armenian Genocide (dir. Andrew Goldberg)
• 2006 - Armenian Revolt (dir. Marty Callaghan)
• 2006 - Screamers (dir. Carla Garapedian)

Artwork

• Arshile Gorky and the Armenian genocide - traveling exhibition
• Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies - The Armenian Genocide
• The Legacy Project - Visual Arts Library

See also

• Armenian-Turkish relations
• Denial of the Armenian Genocide
• Recognition of the Armenian Genocide
• Anti-Armenianism
• Fall of the Ottoman Empire
• Armenian diaspora
• Armenians in the Ottoman Empire
• Ararat, a film by Atom Egoyan
• The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, a novel by Franz Werfel
• Assyrian Genocide
• Pontic Greek Genocide

External links

• Armenian Genocide on the Armeniapedia.org website
• Photos of Armenian Deportees: 1915-1916
• Learning from history: the Holocaust of the Armenian People omedia
• Genocide 1915.info
• Armenocide.de
• Armenian-genocide.org
• Genocide Education
• Genocide.ru
• Genocide Events
• NKR genocid.ru

Bibliography

• Akçam, Taner, From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide, Zed Books, 2004
• Akçam, Taner. A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. Metropolitan Books, 2006
• Balakian, Peter. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response. New York: Perennial, 2003
• Bartov, Omer, Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide and Modern Identity, Oxford Univ. Press, 2000
• Dadrian, Vahakn, N. The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus Berghahn Books, 1995
• Dündar, Fuat, Ittihat ve Terakki'nin Müslümanlari Iskan Politikasi (1913-18), Iletisim, 2001
• Fisk, Robert, The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East London: Alfred Knopf, 2005
• Gaunt, David. Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia During World War I Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006. ISBN 1-59333-301-3.
• Gust, Wolfgang, Der Völkermord an den Armeniern, Zu Klampen, 2005
• Lepsius, Johannes. Deutschland und Armenien 1914–1918, Sammlung diplomatischer Aktenstücke. Donat & Temmen Verlag, 1986
• Melson, Robert, Revolution and Genocide. On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, The University of Chicago Press, 1996
• Power, Samantha. "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide. Harper, 2003
• Wallimann, Isidor (ed.): Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death, Syracuse Univ. Press, 2000
• Graber, G.S. Caravans to Oblivion: The Armenian Genocide 1915. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1996
• "The Armenian Genocide: A Bibliography". University of Michigan, Dearborn: Armenian Research Center. Retrieved March 18. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)

• "The Armenian Genocide: A Supplemental Bibliography, 1993-1996". University of Michigan, Dearborn: Armenian Research Center. Retrieved March 18. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)

• Walker, Christopher J. Armenia: The Survival of a Nation, Revised Second Edition. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1990. 476 pp.

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