ottoman empire : facts

Turks- nomads from Central Asia (flee Mongols)

Turks arrive in Middle East region 1250s / converted to Islam

1453- Turks defeated Roman Empire at Constantinople

Christians in Europe mounted CRUSADES against the Ottomans in 1366, 1396, and 1444, but to no avail.

European Christians vs Islamic Ottomans HOLYLAND

.

The Ottomans continued to conquer new territories

Europe Romania BulgariaBalkans Greece Albania

Montenegro Serbia

Africa

Middle East

“Sick Man of Europe”

1894-1920

PROBLEM #1

The worst genocides of the 20th Century

DEATH TOLL

Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,000

Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) 25,000,000 (the purges plus Ukraine's famine)

Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) 11,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII)

Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44) 20 Million

Sultan Hamid / Enver Pasha (Turkey, 1915-20)

1,500,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians (1915-20)

The worst genocides of the 20th Century

Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000

Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94) 1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)

Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78) 1,500,000

Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982) 900,000

Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994) 800,000

Suharto (East Timor, West Papua, Communists, 1966-98) 800,000

Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88) 600,000

Tito (Yugoslavia, 1945-1987) 570,000

Approximately 2 million Armenians lived in Ottoman Empire at turn of century

Christian Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Jewish

Armenians: treated as second class citizens, no business rights, pay high taxes, no vote

Sultan Hamid IIKilled approx

300,000WHY?

•Armenians began to call for independence

• Turks wanted to get rid of Christians in empire as almost everyone was Muslim

• The Armenians were accused of betraying their nation and helping the Russians

• Ottomans believed that the Christians were helping Balkans break away from Empire

Sultan Mehmed V and VI and Enver Pasha overthrow Sultan Hamid II

“Committee for Union and Progress” 1908

Young Turks were reform minded:

•Establish parliament•Establish civil rights •Establish religious rights•Establish constitution•Supported by Armenians

PROBLEM #2

Promised reforms never came!

COMPLETE DICTATOR-- He masterminded the plan to completely destroy the Armenian race in a step towards fulfilling his Turkic- Islamic dream.

murder, rape, village burnings, mass barge drowning, death

march

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

1.5 Million

STEP 1: The Armenians in the army were disarmed, placed into labor battalions, and then killed.

Armenian men massacred in the forest.

STEP 2: Armenian political and intellectual leaders were rounded up on April 24, 1915, and then killed.

STEP 3: The remaining Armenians were called from their homes, told they would be relocated, and then marched off to concentration camps.

25 concentration camps

Turkish executioners pose in front of their victims.

• They were denied food and water

• Many were brutalized and killed by their "guards"

• Loaded Armenians on barges and sank them out at sea

The extermination begun April 24th, 1915

• Women and children were killed, sexually harassed, and sold or abducted to be raised as Turks by Turks

• Mass burnings and poisoning

• Many died of exhaustion, starvation, malnutrition, and overwork. Many more were simply slaughtered.

Armenian clergymen forming the sign of the cross with the bones of their martyrs.

The Turkish government today denies that there was an Armenian genocide and claims that Armenians were only removed from the eastern "war zone."

The Armenian Genocide was condemned at the time by representatives of the British, French, Russian, German, and Austrian governments—namely all the major Powers. The United States also condemned the Armenian Genocide and was the chief spokesman in behalf of the Armenians.

PROBLEM #3

Cultural differences

Boundary disputes

Serbia issue

PROBLEM #4

BALKAN WAR 1912Balkan countries join league to

fight for independence from Ottoman Empire

PROBLEM #5

Warm Water Port

Dar

dene

lles

“Sick Man of Europe”