The extermination of Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire and the surrounding regions during 1915-1923 is called the Armenian
Genocide.
Those massacres were masterminded and
perpetrated by the government of Young Turks and were later finalized by the
Kemalist government.
The First World War gave the Young Turks the
opportunity to settle accounts with Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire,
thus implementing the decision of the secret meeting of 1911 in Thessaloniki.
The plan was to tukify the Muslims and to exterminate the Armenians living in
the Ottoman Empire. Talaat Pasha (Interior Minister), Enver Pasha (Minister of
Military Affairs), Djemal Pasha (commander of the Palestinian Front), Behaeddin
Shakir Bey (Young Turk Central Committee member) and others were among the
orchestrators of the project.
Intending to annihilate Armenians, they wanted
to eliminate the Armenian Question. Armenia and Armenians were an obstacle on
the way of the project of the Yong Turks. Their dream of “Great Turan” was to
stretch from the Bosphorus to Altai. During the First World War the Young Turks
perpetrated massacres against Assyrians, Greeks and Arabs living in the Ottoman
Empire.
In February 1915 the military minister Enver
Pasha ordered to eliminate the Armenian soldiers serving in the Army. On April
24 and the following days 800 Armenians were arrested in Constantinople and
exiled to the depths of Anatolia. Armenian writers, journalists, doctors,
scientists, clergymen, intellectuals including Armenian members of the parliament
were among them. A part of them died on the way of the exile, while others died
after reaching there. The first international response to the violence resulted
in a joint statement by France, Russia and the Great Britain in May 1915, where
the Turkish atrocities against the Armenians were defined as “a crime against
humanity and civilization”. According to them, Turkish government was
responsible for the implementation of the crime.
Why
was the Armenian Genocide perpetrated?
When WWI erupted, the government of the Young
Turks adopted the policy of Pan-Turkism, hoping to save the remains of the
weakened Ottoman Empire. The plan was to create an enormous Ottoman Empire that
would spread to China, include all the Turkish speaking nations of the Caucasus
and Middle Asia, intending also to turkify all the ethnic minorities of the
empire. The Armenian population became the main obstacle standing in the way of
the realization of this policy. Besides, the constitution restored after the
Revolution of 1908 promised equal rights to all citizens of the Ottoman Empire.
Armenians enthusiastically embraced this opportunity, however the change of
status of previously deprived Armenians increased the hostility of the Turks
towards Christians. This hostility was formed long ago, as even in the
conditions of deprivation Armenians of the Ottoman empire provided
unprecedented social, cultural and economic development. The genocide was a
means to suppress this ascent, as well as to seize the Armenian wealth created
during decades.
The Young Turks used WWI as a suitable
opportunity for the implementation of the Armenian genocide, although it was
planned in 1911-1912.
How
many people died in the Armenian Genocide?
There were an estimated two million Armenians
living in the Ottoman Empire before the First World War. Approximately one and
a half million Armenians were killed from 1915-1923. The remaining part was
either islamized or exiled.
The
mechanism of implementation
A genocide is the organized extermination of a
nation aiming to put an end to their collective existence. Thus, the
implementation of the genocide requires oriented programming and an internal
mechanism, which makes genocide a state crime, as only a state possesses all
the resources that can be used to carry out this policy.
The first phase of the Armenian Genocide was
the conscription of about 60,000 Armenian men into the Ottoman army, their
disarmament and murder by their Turkish fellow soldiers.
The second phase of the extermination of the Armenian
population started on April 24, 1915 with the arrest of several hundred
Armenian intellectuals and representatives of national elite (mainly in the
capital of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople) and their subsequent
elimination. Hereinafter, Armenians worldwide started to commemorate the
Armenian genocide on April 24.
The third phase of the genocide is
characterized with the exile of the massacres of women, children, elderly
people to the desert of Syria. Hundreds of thousands of people were murdered by
Turkish soldiers, police officers, Kurdish bandits during the deportation. The
others died of epidemic diseases. Thousands of women and children were
subjected to violence. Tens of thousands were forcibly islamized.
The fifth phase is the universal and absolute
denial of the Turkish government of the mass deportations and genocide carried
out against Armenians in their homeland. Despite the ongoing process of
international condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, Turkey fights against
recognition by all means, including distortion of history, means of propaganda,
lobbying activities and other measures.
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