The Armenian Genocide

The forgotten genocide

Introduction The Armenian genocide was the intentional dissipation committed against the Armenian people by the

Ottoman Empire. For years the Young Turk government had seen their Armenian population as opposition to rebuilding the empire, which had been declining for some time. War after war the Ottoman Empire lost to the countries in the Balkans, Russia and European colonial powers such as Britain, France and Italy, and after the wars lost vast amounts of land. At the height of it’s power The Ottoman Empire stretched from the gates of Vienna, to the Caucasusan and Crimean peninsulars, down through the Middle East down to modern day Eritrea across to Algiers. Talaat Pasha, the leader of the Minister of the interior upon the Ottoman Empire’s entry into World War I, decided that then would be the perfect time and if they didn’t act now, it would be too late, after numerous other smaller massacres in previous years, to begin a full scale genocide upon the Armenians, with the eyes of London and Paris focused on the war.

The genocide On the 24th April 1915; the Ottoman Empire, fighting against the Russians on the Caucasus

front where many Armenians lived, announced they would move their Armenian population to safety and began deporting them to mainly to areas in Syria where apparently they would be looked after until the war was over, in reality though, they were being forced to march until they died of starvation and/or exhaustion. Men were either rounded up and shot, or sent to work in labour battalions where they would be worked to death, women and young girls were raped, kidnapped and murdered, young children were stabbed with Bayonets, even the people actually committing the acts referred to it as genocide. 1.5 million Armenians were killed from 1915-1923, doesn’t seem like many but the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire was not much higher, most Armenians living in Constantinople were spared.

Deportation routes

Post War period In 1920 the western powers partitioned the Ottoman Empire at the treaty of Sevres, giving

parts of the Ottoman to Greece, Armenia, Italy, Britain, France and international control. In response to this, general Mustafa Kemal, who had been the general for the Turkish army at the invasion of Gallipoli, assembled a nationalist army to remove foreign invaders from his homeland, he saw the Sultan as nothing more than a puppet of the allies, his actions forced the allies to draw up another peace treaty, known as the treaty of Lausanne, he proclaimed a new government in Ankara and continued the Armenian genocide during then. In 1923 this government was recognised as the Republic of Turkey and the genocide ended. Mustafa Kemal was president of Turkey from it’s formation until 1938, and began to censor the Armenian genocide from Turkish history, as a means to encourage nationalism.

Turkish Response The Turkish government refuses to accept the word genocide as a valid description of the

event, and article 301 in the Turkish penal code forbids discussing the event. Turkey uses certain excuses to justify it, the most common ones being:

1) It was a result of famine, war and disease. 2) The Armenians killed small villages. 3) The United Nations does not recognise the event as a genocide. 4) The Armenians are using the event as an excuse to reclaim Eastern Anatolia. 5) The Armenians were disloyal. 6) They could have easily killed the Armenians a lot faster in a lot greater quantities.

The reality 1) Armenians were marched straight into the Syrian desert and were left to rot and starve to

death without any attempt to provide them with adequate sustenance. 2) A few Armenians sided with the invading Russians, but these Armenians did not represent

popular Armenian opinion. 3) The UN does not recognise the atrocities in Darfur as a genocide, does that make it not a

genocide? 4) Some Armenians may be doing that, but most will only care for an apology and recognition. 5) During WWI, where The Ottoman Empire was fighting against Russia, a small group of

Armenians in the Turkish army disobeyed direct orders in order to save Enver Pasha from becoming a Russian prisoner of war, and most Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire had no objections to being under Turkish rule.

6) Unlike the Nazis, the Turks only had guns and knives, they did not have gas chambers and medical testing labs and huge concentration camps, the Ottoman Empire was technologically behind the rest of the world, they had only just gotten the railway at this time.

Aftermath Because the villains responsible for the Armenian Genocide were never punished,

this gave occasion for other people to believe that genocide was a legitimate recourse. Here is a list of major genocides since the Armenian Genocide:

* The Holocaust (1938-1945) 10,000,000 * The Ukrainian Famine (1931-1932) 7,000,000 * The Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979) 1,700,000 * The Rwandan Genocide (1994) 800,000 * The Bosnian Genocide (1992-1995) 200,000 * The Darfur Genocide (2003-present) 400,000+

Conclusion It is crucial that Turkey recognise the genocide, as pretending the event never

happened is already sowing the seed ready for a future genocide, whereas knowing the truth will build compassion and awareness, and decrease the chances of this ever happening again. It has been 94 years since the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, and yet it still has yet to be internationally recognised as it was.

Decision

Will YOU recognise the Armenian genocide?

“Who, after all, speaks today of the inhalation of the Armenians?”

Adolf Hitler

“I am confident that the whole history of the Human race contains no such horrible episode as this”

Henry Morgenthau