Armenian Genocide.
The 'Armenian Genocide' ( ("Hayoc' c'ejaspanut'iwn"), ) — also known as the 'Armenian Holocaust', 'Great Calamity' (Մեծ Եղեռն "Mec Ejer'n" ) or the 'Armenian Massacre' — was the forcible deportation and massacring
[1] 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.
[2]
It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern, systematic
genocides,
[3][4] as many Western sources point to the sheer scale of the
death toll as evidence for a systematic, organized plan to eliminate the Armenians.
[5] The event is also said to be the second-most studied case of genocide.
[6] 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.
[7]
The status of the Ottoman Armenians
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.
[8] 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,
[9] although they were one of the largest minorities in the Ottoman Empire.
[10]
In
1914, there were an estimated two million Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire.
[11] While the
Armenian population in Eastern Anatolia was large and clustered, there were many Armenians in the western part of the Ottoman Empire,
[12] 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.
[1][2] 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.
[13] 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".
[3]
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 Young Turks – Children of the Borderlands? ] 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.
[4]
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,
Implementation of the Genocide
Planning
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.
[14] 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:
The Ottoman government, moving swiftly,
arrested an estimated 250 Armenian intellectuals on the night of
24 April 1915.
[15]
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.
[16]
Legislation, May 29
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.
[17] 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:
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."
[18]
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''.
[19] Some of the disarmed Armenian recruits were utilized as road laborers (''hamals'') or construction mules, though they too would ultimately be executed.
[20]
The Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa)
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.
[21] This organization adopted its name in
1913 and functioned like a special forces outfit.
[22]
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.
[23] 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
[24] Vehib, commander of the Ottoman Third Army, called those members of the special organization, the “butchers of the human species.”
[22]
Process and camps of deportation
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.
[5] 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."
[6]
Ottoman troops escorting the Armenians not only allowed others to rob, kill and rape the Armenians, but often participated in these activities themselves.
[7] Deprived of all possessions and marched into the desert by a hostile and desperate foe, hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished.
It is believed that 25 major concentration camps existed, under the command of
Şükrü Kaya, one of the right hands of
Talat Pasha.
[26] The majority of the camps were situated near modern Iraqi and Syrian frontiers, and some were only temporary transit camps.
[27] 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.
[27] 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.
[27]
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,
[30] poisoning
[31] and drowning.
[32]
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."
[33] 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."
[34]
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.
[35] 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".
[36]
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..."
[37]
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.
[38]
The state-enforced genocide was reported daily in newspapers and literary journals around the world.
[39] 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.
[40] In the United States and Great Britain, children were regularly reminded to clean their plates while eating and to "remember the starving Armenians".
[41]
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:
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."
[42] Other professors, including
Herbert Fisher
of
Sheffield University and former
American Bar Association president
Moorfield Storey, affirmed the same conclusion.
[43]
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."
[44]
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.
[45]
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."
[46]
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.
[47] 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.'"
[48] 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."
[49]
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."
[50]
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".
[51] 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:
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."
[52] 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 ().
[53] 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;
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.
[54]
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.
[55]
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 articles: 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
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.
[56]
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".
6
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:
Operation Nemesis
Main articles: 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 articles: Ottoman Armenian casualties
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.
[57]
Influence of the Armenian Genocide on Adolf Hitler
Main articles: Armenian quote
The Armenian Genocide is often speculated to have influenced
Adolf Hitler, owing to his various references to the Ottoman killings of Armenians.
[58] The extent of Hitler's knowledge of the Armenian Genocide is unclear, though he did refer to their destruction several times.
[59] The most notable quote attributed to Hitler on the Armenians is excerpted from an August 1939 military conference, prior to the
invasion of Poland:
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."
[60] 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."
[61]
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."
[62] 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."
[ Turkey Recalls Envoys Over Armenian Genocide ]
Among the organizations affirming this conclusion are the
International Center for Transitional Justice, the
International Association of Genocide Scholars,
[63] and the United Nations'
Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.
[http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=International_Center_for_Transitional_Justice][64] 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.
[65][66]
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.
[67][68][69] 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.
[70]
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",
[71] he later came to believe that the term "genocide" was distinctly inaccurate, because the "tremendous massacres"
[72] were not "a deliberate preconceived decision of the Turkish government."
[73]
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".
[74] According to Pamuk,
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.
[75]
Popular and government opinion in the Republic of Turkey
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:
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.
[76] 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."
[77]
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.
[78]
Recognition of the Armenian Genocide
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 articles: 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
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.
[79]
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 ''
The Spring to Come''. 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''. At the
Berlin Film Festival of 2007 Italian directors Vittorio and Paolo
Taviani presented another film about the events, based on Antonia Arslan's book, ''La Masseria Delle Allodole'' (''The Farm of the Larks'')
[80]. Richard Kalinoski's play, ''Beast on the Moon'', is about two Armenian Genocide survivors.
In
1975 famous French-Armenian singer
Charles Aznavour recorded the song "
Ils sont tombes" (They Fell) dedicated to the memory of Armenian Genocide victims
[81].
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.
[82]
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.
[83] 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
References
1. New York Times Dispatch. Lord Bryce's report on Armenian atrocities an appalling catalogue of outrage and massacre.. The New York Times, October 8, 1916.
2. "Cultural Cleansing: Who Remembers The Armenians," in Robert Bevan. The Destruction of Memory, Reaction Books, London. 2006, pages 25-60
3. Ferguson, Niall. ''The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West''. New York: Penguin Press, 2006 p. 177 ISBN 1-5942-0100-5
4. A Letter from The International Association of Genocide Scholars
5. Senate Resolution 106 - - Calling on the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to Human Rights, Ethnic Cleansing, and Genocide Documented in the United States Record relating to the Armenian Genocide
6. R. J. Rummel, ''The Holocaust in Comparative and Historical Perspective'', A Journal Social Issues, April 1, 1998 — Vol.3, no.2
7. Q&A: Armenian 'genocide'
8. Dadrian, Vahakn N. ''The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus''. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995 p. 192 ISBN 1-5718-1666-6
9. Melson, Robert. ''Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust.'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. pp. 54-56 ISBN 0-2265-1991-0
10. Ultimate Crime, Ultimate Challenge An International Conference on the 90th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide CLOSING ADDRESS Vartan Oskanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Republic of Armenia
11. Paradigms of Genocide: The Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and Contemporary Mass Destructions, Robert Melson, , , Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
12. Armenian people from ancient to modern times, Volume II, , Richard, Hovannisian, Palgrave Macmillan, , ISBN 0312101686
13. State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples, , Heather, Rae, Cambridge University
Press, ,
14. Balakian. ''The Burning Tigris'', p. 200
15. Balakian. ''The Burning Tigris'', pp. 211-212
16. "A Peace to End All Peace", by David Fromkin, p211.
17. Balakian. ''The Burning Tigris'', pp. 186-188
18. The hidden holocaust - by Ruth Rosen
19. Balakian. ''The Burning Tigris'', p. 178
20. Toynbee, Arnold. ''Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation''. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915. pp. 181–182
21. FACT SHEET: ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
22. Revisiting the Armenian Genocide, Guenter Lewy, , , Middle East Quarterly,
23. The Documentation of the World War I Armenian Massacres in the Proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal, Vahakn N. Dadrian, , , International Journal of Middle East Studies,
24. Genocide never again (book 5) R. J. Rummel
25. Revisiting the Armenian Genocide, Guenter Lewy, , , Middle East Quarterly,
26. Kotek, Joël and Pierre Rigoulot. ''Le Siècle des camps: Détention, concentration, extermination: cent ans de mal radica''. JC Lattes, 2000 ISBN 2-7096-1884-2
27.
28.
29.
30. Eitan Belkind was a Nili member, who infiltrated the Ottoman army as an official. He was assigned to the headquarters of Camal Pasha. He claims to have witnessed the burning of 5000 Armenians, quoted in Yair Auron, ''The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide''. New Brunswick, N.J., 2000, pp. 181, 183. Lt. Hasan Maruf, of the Ottoman army, describes how a population of a village were taken all together, and then burned. See, British Foreign Office 371/2781/264888, Appendices B., p. 6). Also, the Commander of the Third Army, Vehib's 12 pages affidavit, which was dated December 5, 1918, presented in the Trabzon trial series (March 29, 1919) included in the Key Indictment(published in ''Takvimi Vekayi'', No. 3540, May 5, 1919), report such a mass burning of the population of an entire village near Mus. S. S. McClure write in his work, ''Obstacles to Peace,'' Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917. pp. 400-401, that in Bitlis, Mus and Sassoun, ''The shortest method for disposing of the women and children concentrated in tile various camps was to burn them.'' And also that, ''Turkish prisoners who had apparently witnessed some of these scenes were horrified and maddened at the remembering the sight. They told the Russians that the stench of the burning human flesh permeated the air for many days after.'' The Germans, Ottoman allies, also witnessed the way Armenians were burned according to the Israeli historian, Bat Ye’or, who writes: ''The Germans, allies of the Turks in the First World War, … saw how civil populations were shut up in churches and burned, or gathered en masse in camps, tortured to death, and reduced to ashes,…'' (See: B. Ye'or, ''The Dhimmi. The Jews and Christians under Islam,'' Trans. from the French by D. Maisel P. Fenton and D. Liftman, Cranbury, N.J.: Frairleigh Dickinson University, 1985. p. 95)
31. During the Trabzon trial series, of the Martial court (from the sittings between March 26 and Mat 17, 1919), the Trabzons Health Services Inspector Dr. Ziya Fuad wrote in a report that Dr. Saib, caused the death of children with the injection of morphine, the information was allegedly provided by two physicians (Drs. Ragib and Vehib), both Dr. Saib colleagues at Trabzons Red Crescent hospital, where those atrocities were said to have been committed. (See: Vahakn N. Dadrian, ''The Turkish Military Tribunal’s Prosecution of the Authors of the Armenian Genocide: Four Major Court-Martial Series,'' Genocide Study Project, H. F. Guggenheim Foundation, published in ''The Holocaust and Genocide Studies,'' Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 1997). Dr. Ziya Fuad, and Dr. Adnan, public health services director of Trabzon, submitted affidavits, reporting a cases, in which, two school buildings were used to organize children and then sent them on the mezzanine, to kill them with a toxic gas equipment. This case was presented during the Session 3, p.m., 1 April 1919, also published in the Constantinople newspaper Renaissance, 27 April 1919 (for more information, see: Vahakn N. Dadrian, ''The Role of Turkish Physicians in the World War I Genocide of Ottoman Armenians,'' in ''The Holocaust and Genocide Studies'' 1, no. 2 (1986): 169–192). The Ottoman surgeon, Dr. Haydar Cemal wrote in ''Türkce Istanbul,'' No. 45, 23 December 1918, also published in ''Renaissance,'' 26 December 1918, that ''on the order of the Chief Sanitation Office of the IIIrd Army in January 1916, when the spread of typhus was an acute problem, innocent Armenians slated for deportation at Erzican were inoculated with the blood of typhoid fever patients without rendering that blood ‘inactive’.'' Jeremy Hugh Baron writes : ''Individual doctors were directly involved in the massacres, having poisoned infants, killed children and issued false certificates of death from natural causes. Nazim's brother-in-law Dr. Tevfik Rushdu, Inspector-General of Health Services, organized the disposal of Armenian corpses with thousands of kilos of lime over six months; he became foreign secretary from 1925 to 1938.'' (See: Jeremy Hugh Baron, ''Genocidal Doctors,'' publish in ''Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine,'' November, 1999, 92, pp.590-593). The psychiatrist, Robert Jay Lifton, writes in a parenthesis when introducing the crimes of NAZI doctors in his book ''Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide,'' Basic Books, (1986) p. xii: ''(Perhaps Turkish doctors, in their participation in the genocide against the Armenians, come closest, as I shall later suggest).'' and drowning.
32. Oscar S. Heizer, the American consul at Trabzon, reports: ''This plan did not suit Nail Bey .... Many of the children were loaded into boats and taken out to sea and thrown overboard.'' (See: U.S. National Archives. R.G. 59. 867. 4016/411. April 11, 1919 report.) The Italian consul of Trabzon in 1915, Giacomo Gorrini, writes: ''I saw thousands of innocent women and children placed on boats which were capsized in the Black Sea.'' (See: ''Toronto Globe'', August 26, 1915) Hoffman Philip, the American Charge at Constantinople chargé d'affairs, writes: ''Boat loads sent from Zor down the river arrived at Ana, one thirty miles away, with three fifths of passengers missing.'' (Cipher telegram, July 12, 1916. U.S. National Archives, R.G. 59.867.48/356.) The Trabzon trials reported Armenians having been drown in the Black Sea. (''Takvimi Vekdyi'', No. 3616, August 6, 1919, p. 2.)
33. Ferguson. ''War of the World'' p. 177
34. 1915 declaration
★ Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution 106th Congress,,2nd Session, House of Representatives
★ Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution (Introduced in House of Representatives) 109th Congress, 1st Session, H.RES.316, June 14, 2005. 15 September 2005 House Committee/Subcommittee:International Relations actions. Status: Ordered to be Reported by the Yeas and Nays: 40 - 7.
★ "Crimes Against Humanity", 23 British Yearbook of International Law (1946) p. 181
★ William A. Schabas, ''Genocide in International Law: The Crimes of Crimes'', Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 16-17
★ Original source of the telegram sent by the Department of State, Washington containing the French, British and Russian joint declaration
35. SIXTY-SIXTH CONGRESS. SESS. I. CH. 32. 1919 August 6, 1919. [S. 180.] [Public No. 25] District of Columbia, Near East Relief incorporated.
36. Balakian. ''Burning Tigris'', pp. 244–245, 314
37. In his memoirs, Morgenthau noted'' "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....I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915."''
38. See, for example, James L. Barton, ''Turkish Atrocities: Statements of American Missionaries on the Destruction of Christian Communities in Ottoman Turkey, 1915-1917''. Gomidas Insttitute, 1998 ISBN 1-8846-3004-9
39. Balakian. ''The Burning Tigris'', pp. 282-285
40. ''The Armenian Genocide''. Prod. by Goldberg, Andrew. Two Cats Productions. DVD, 2006
41. Macmillan, Margaret and Richard Holbrooke. ''Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World''. New York: Random House, 2001 p. 378 ISBN 0-3757-6052-0
42. Dadrian. ''History of the Armenian Genocide'', p. 228
43. Dadrian. ''History of the Armenian Genocide'', pp. 228-229
44. Churchill, Winston. ''The World Crisis, 1911-1918''. London: Free Press, 2005. p. 157
45. Fisk. ''Great War for Civilisation'', p. 326
46. Fromkin, David. ''A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East''. New York: Owl, 1989 p. 212 ISBN 0-8050-6884-8
47. Balakian. ''Burning Tigris'', p. 186
48. Fromkin. ''A Peace to End All Peace'', p. 213
49. Ibid. p. 213
50. ''Auswärtiges Amt'', West German Foreign Office Archives, K170, no. 4674, folio 63, op. cit. in ''Burning Tigris'', p. 186
51. Ibid, p. 326
52. Dadrian. History of the Armenian Genocide'', p. 350
53. Fisk. ''Great War for Civilisation'', pp. 329-330
54. Fisk. ''Great War for Civilisation'', p. 331
55. New York Times Dispatch. Russians Slaughter Turkish IIIrd Army: Give No Quarter to Men Held Responsible for the Massacre of Armenians. The New York Times, March 6, 1916.
56. Türkei By Klaus-Detlev. Grothusen
57. Encyclopædia Britannica: Death toll of the Armenian Massacres
58. The Blackwell Companion to Criminology, , Colin, Sumner, Blackwell Publishing, 2003, ISBN 0631220925
59. Fisk. ''Great War for Civilisation'', p. 330
60. Fisk. ''Great War for Civilisation'', p. 330.
61. Gilbert, Martin. ''The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War''. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1985 p. 556 ISBN 0-8050-0348-7.
62. A PBS Documentary Makes Its Case for the Armenian Genocide, With or Without a Debate
63. Letter to Prime Minister Erdogan
64. "ictj"
65. Nobel Laureates Call For Armenian-Turkish Reconciliation
66. Nobel Laureates Call For Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation
67. Gilles Veinstein, "Trois questions sur un massacre", L’Histoire, no. 187 (April 1995), pp. 40–41.
68. Jeremy Salt, "The Narrative Gap in Ottoman Armenian History, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol 39, No 1, January 2003 pp 19-36
69. Erickons, E.J., 2006. Armenian Massacres: New Records Undercut Old Blame. ''The Middle East Quarterly''. Summer 2006, Vol.13, No.3.
70. Speaker disputes Armenian genocide
71. Bostom, Andrew. "Dhimmitude and The Doyen", New English Review, November 10, 2006. Retrieved April 26, 2007.
72. Statement of Professor Bernard Lewis, Princeton University, "Distinguishing Armenian Case from Holocaust", Assembly of Turkish American Associations, April 14, 2002 (PDF)
73. Getler, Michael. "Documenting and Debating a 'Genocide'", ''The Ombudsman Column'', PBS, April 21, 2006. Retrieved October 9, 2006.
74. They say 'incident'. To me it's genocide
75. IPI Deplores Callous Murder of Journalist in Istanbul
76. ''Obituary: Ayse Nur Zarakolu'' by Felix Corley, ''Independent'', February 14 2002.
77.
78. Abe Foxman’s Fear Spencer, Robert
79. Works of the State History History Museum of Armenia, Vol. IV:Armenian Theme in Russian Medallic Art., , Henry, Sarkisyan, Hayastan, ,
80. Armenian Genocide at the Berlin Film Festival: "The Lark Farm" Wakens Turkish Ghosts Wolfgang Höbel and Alexander Smoltczyk
81. The status of Armenian communities living in the United States Mari Terzian
82. Gospel Artist Given Standing Ovation By Armenian Government Officials
83. Talking With Turks and Armenians About the Genocide Line Abrahamian
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
★
Armenian Genocide by Turkish Muslims against Christians
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, '' 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
★
The Armenian Genocide: A Supplemental Bibliography, 1993-1996
★ 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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