Armenian genocide

The term Armenian Genocide (also known as the Armenian Holocaust or Armenian Massacre) refers to the deportation and murder of Armenians by the Young Turks government in 1915-1916. The claim is currently a dispute between the international community and Turkey.
Most Armenian and Western and some Turkish scholars believe that a state-sponsored extermination plan, while most Turkish and some Western scholars that a clashes between the two-sides, and causes such as famine and disease claiming the lives of all Ottomans. The statistics regarding how many Armenians perished varies and there are no official numbers, but most Western sources advance a million and over. Armenians claim 1.5 million, Turkey claims that the death toll was from 200,000 to 300,000.

France is among the countries which have officially recognized the Armenian Genocide.

Armenians in Anatolia

In 1914, before World War I, there were an estimated 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, of whom the vast majority were of the Armenian Orthodox or Roman Catholic faith. Until the late 19th century, the Armenians were referred as "millet-i sadika" (fidel nation) by the Ottomans, as they were living in harmony with other ethnic groups in Eastern Anatolia, without any major conflict with the central authority despite religious and ethnic differences, and despite second class citizen status on the law books and in practice as "infidels". While the Armenian population in Eastern Anatolia was large and clustered, there was also a considerably large community of Armenians on the west, mostly living in the capital city of Istanbul, of which a substantial community remains to this day, as it was the communities in Eastern Anatolia that suffered heavy fatalities.

The Armenian Genocide

Before World War I the Ottoman Empire came under the Young Turks government. At first some Armenian political organizations supported the Young Turks in hopes that there would be a real change from Abdul Hamid's policies towards the Armenian population. There were Armenians elected to the Ottoman Parliament, where some remained throughout world war 1.

Many experts believe that Ottoman government viewed the Armenians as the major obstacle to the realisation of their new projects. The nationalization of the economy which was the Ittihadists cherished project was viewed as being impossible to implement with the presence of the Armenians who were running the economy. Other experts proposes that the dense presence of Armenians in the East was an obstacle for the Empires expensionist policies.

In 1914 Ottoman government passed a new law that required all enabled adult males up to age 45, to either be recruited in the Ottoman army or pay special fees in order to be excluded from service. Most of the Armenian recruits were later turned into road laborers and many were executed. German records suggest that at late 1914, the Armenians were aroused by irregulars to force them to react and justify the implementation of preventive measures that were nothing more than their destruction.

On April 24, 1915, the Young Turk government executed hundreds Armenian intellectuals, it is said that the aim was to disorganize the Ottoman Armenian population by alienating it from its elites. After the recruitment of most men and the arrests of certain intellectuals, widespread massacres were taking place throughout Ottoman Empire. Some records and memoirs suggest that in Van, the governor Djevdet ordered irregulars to commit crimes and force the Armenians to rebel to justify the encircling of the town by the Ottoman army. The Ottoman government ordered the deportation of over 1 million Armenians living in Anatolia to Syria and Mesopotamia though this figure has not been conclusively established. Although the word deportation seems pretty innocent (some would prefer the word "relocation," as the former means banishment outside a country's borders; Japanese-Americans, for example, were not "deported" during WWII), things were not, because the deportations themselves were a silent method of mass execution that led to the death of many of the Armenian population, by forcing them to march endlessly through desert, without food or water or enough protection from local Kurdish or Turkish bandits, and members of the special organization that were charged to escort(which meant their destruction) the convoys.

In the process several hundred thousand died in the resulting death marches from starvation, dehydration, disease or exhaustion.

Several hundred thousands more had perished, in massacres and other causes. The exact number of Armenians killed by the Ittihadist regime is still subject to further research. German and Austrian documents record the the total may be over a million. The official Ottoman records 800,000 killed, suggesting over a million death. Most Western scholars accept those figures. The Turkish government, Turkish scholars and some Western scholars dispute those figures. ...

Concentration or extermination camps

Also called the camps of death, there was about a recorded 25/26 major concentration camps, the majority of which in the vicinity of the Euphrates river, and some transit camps, situated mostly near the Iraqi and Syrian frontiers.

Lists of concentration camps

Deir-Zor, Ras Ul-Ain, Bonzanti, Mamoura, Intili, Islahiye, Radjo, Katma, Karlik, Azaz, Akhterim, Mounboudji, Bab, Tefridje, Lale, Meskene, Sebil, Dipsi, Abouharar, Hamam, Sebka, Marat, Souvar, Hama, Homs, Kahdem

These concentration camps were not like those set up by the German Reich, nor like the ones of the Soviets or the Chinese. They were not large buildings or prisons; they were more similar to what the Jewish ghettos were during World War II in Poland, or those of Ukraine and Belorussia, known as vast death “antechambers.”

Some of the concentration camps were only used as temporary mass burial zones, like those of Radjo, Katma and Azaz that were closed very soon during the extermination process (in those cases, Fall 1915).

The killing factories that were the camps

The concentration camps were under the control of Chukru Kaya, one of the right hands of Talaat Pasha, who supervised the extermination process. The idea behind the concentration and transition camps was to send the Armenian population from one location to the other until none were left alive. Camps like those of Lale, Tefridje and Dipsi were built specifically for those who, after the marches, had a life expectancy of a few days. While Del-El Zor was the worst of the camps followed by Ras Ul-Ain.

The majority of the guards inside the camps were Armenians, serving in the same way as the special Jewish police in the ghettos during World war II, or the Jewish KAPOs in the concentration camps.

Other concentration camps

Even though nearly all the concentration camps (all major ones were) were open air, according to records, some were not. Other camps existed, where irregular Red Crescent camps were used to kill by morphine injection,(two of Saib(Health inspector) colleagues, Drs. Ragib and Vehib testified) and where the bodies were thrown into the Black sea. In other instances, there were some small-scale killing and burning camps, where the Armenian population was told to present itself in a given area, and burned en mass. Other records from the Military tribunal, suggest gasing installations existed as well. For instance, Dr. Saib and Nail, an Ittihadist deputy, were heading two school buildings used as child extermination camps. Both Saib and Nail were in charge of providing the list of children who were to be distributed among the Muslim populace; the rest of the children were to be sent to the mezzanine floor to be killed by a mass gassing installation. Children were sent there under the pretext to take baths, but were poisoned instead.

While the total number of victims that perished in all camps is hard to establish, it is estimated that close to a million would be a reasonable figure. This figure excludes Armenians who died in other ways, but may include the Special organizations participation in the murders; the majority of the excluded losses are recorded in Bitlis and Sivas.

The Special organization (Teshkilati Mahsusa)

While there was an official special organization founded December 1911 by the Ottoman government, the second organization that participated in the eradication of the Ottoman Armenians was founded by the lttihad ve Terraki technically appeared in July 1914 and was supposed to be different than the already existing organization in one important point, it was meant to be a government in a government(without needing any orders to act). Later in 1914, the Ottoman government decided to draw the direction the special organization was supposed to take by releasing criminals from central prisons to be the central elements of this newly formed special organization. For example, in Sivas, as soon as November 1914, 124 criminals were released from Pimian prison, in Ankara following 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 of prisoners were freed to form the members of this organization that later were charged to destroy the convoys of Armenian deportees, the number then grew to thousands. The commander of the Ottoman third army, Vehib called those members of the special organization, the “butchers of the human specy.” This organization was led by the Central Committee Members Doctor Nazim, Behaeddin Sakir, Atif Riza, and former Director of Public Security Aziz Bey. The headquarters of Behaeddin Sakir were in Erzurum, from where he directed the forces of the Eastern vilayets. Aziz, Atif and Nazim Beys operated in Istanbul, and their decisions were approved and implemented by Cevat Bey, the Military Governor of Istanbul.

The criminals were chosen by a process of selection, they had to be ruthless butchers to be selected as a member of the special organization. The Mazhar commission during the military court, has provided some lists of those criminals, in one instance for example, from the 65 criminals released 50 were in prison for murder, the lists all gave such a disproportionate ratio between those condemned for murder and others for minor crimes which constituted a clear minority. This process of selection of the criminal was a clear indicative of the government intention to commit mass murder of its Armenian population. It must be noted as well, that physicians participated in the process of selection, where health professionals were appointed by the war ministry to determine whether the selected convicts would be fit to apply a degree of savagery of killing that was required.

It is estimated that the members of the special organization have killed hundreds of thousands of Armenians.

Ittihadist trials,(Military Tribunal) Constantinople, 1919

The responsible of the genocide were condemned to death… by contumacy, having run away in 1918, just after having destroyed the majority of the documents accusing them. The martial court established the will of the Ittihadists to eliminate the Armenians physically, via its special Organization. And sentenced them: "The Court Martial taking into consideration the above-named crimes declares, unanimously, the culpability as principle 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."

Revisionists version

The Turkish government reject the charge of genocide, some Turkish historians and foreign Ottoman history scholars sympathizing to Turkey and the majority of Turks deny that an event classifiable as state-organized genocide occurred, claiming a lack of evidence pointing Ottoman state involvement. Their claim is that the Armenian deaths resulted from armed conflict, civil war, disease and famine during the turmoil of World War I, when Armenian subjects of Ottoman Empire joined Russian armies to invade eastern provinces of Ottoman Empire and claiming that in the same period, 2.5 million other Ottoman citizens have perished as a result of civil-war and disease.

Later assessments

The Armenian Genocide is the subject of a 2002 film, Ararat, by Armenian-Canadian director Atom Egoyan.

The American rock band System of a Down, whose members are Armenian in ancestry, wrote the song P.L.U.C.K. (Political Lying Unholy Cowardly Killers), about the Armenian Genocide and its denial as genocide.

On April 21, 2004, the Canadian House of Commons voted to officially recognize and condemn the Armenian Genocide. The motion passed easily by 153 to 68, however, the Liberal-controlled Cabinet was instructed to vote against it. The federal government, in opposing the motion, did not express a position on whether the genocide took place, but rather cited a desire to avoid reopening old wounds and to maintain good relations with Turkey.

In the past, many prominent American politicians have made statements in support of formal recognition of the Armenian genocide. While president Ronald Reagan publicly referred to the events of 1915 as a 'genocide', a major feat in and of itself, nonetheless to this day no formal resolution recognizing the genocide has been passed by the US government. The Armenian side speculates that fear of retribution from Turkey, a US ally and NATO partner, is behind the lack of formal recognition, whereas the Turkish side speculates that the only reason for the possibility of such a recognition would be the strength of Armenian lobby efforts within US rather than the genuineness of the claims.

On April 24, 2004, in marking the 89th Anniversary of the genocide, John Kerry issued a statement calling for international recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

President Bill Clinton issued a news release on April 24, 1994, to commemorate the "tragedy" that befell the Armenians in 1915, yet he bowed to political pressure and refused to refer to it as "genocide," despite referring to the massacre as such before being elected president.

Also breaking a campaign promise, the subsequent President George W. Bush refused to use the word "genocide" to describe the killings, though promising Armenian-Americans during his election campaign to recognize the "genocidal campaign" to which Armenians were subjected.

Several countries officially recognize the Armenian Genocide, including Canada, France, Italy, Argentina, Greece, Russia, Slovakia [1], Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay and Vatican City. Many US states and cities also recognize the Armenian Genocide. Recently Sweden has changed its official position quoting the historical accuracy, and currently does not recognize Armenian genocide.

Certain countries, notable for their involvement in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire at this time and with substantial archival evidence of first rate importance, refuse to legislate recognitions of any deliberate, state-planned genocide. A major example is that of the UK.

The Turkish government, in their new 2004 Penal Code, added a penalty of ten years in prison for any person that confirms that the Armenian Genocide took place. [2] The U.K. Parliament suggests, however, that "There is no mention of ... the Armenian genocide" in this penal code.

A recent report on "The Applicability of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to Events which Occurred During the Early Twentieth Century" by the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) states that "...at least some of the perpetrators of the Events knew that the consequence of their action would be the destruction, in whole or in part, of the Armenians of Eastern Anatolia, as such, or acted purposively towards this goal, and, therefore, possessed the requisite genocidal intent." The report concludes that "...the Events, viewed collectively, can thus be said to include all of the elements of the crime of genocide as defined in the [UN] Convention, and legal scholars as well as historians, politicians, journalists and other people would be justified in continuing to so describe them" (p. 17).

Armenian Genocide memorial

Genocide memorial at the Tsitsernakaberd hill, Yerevan

The idea of the memorial arose in 1965, at the commemorating of the 50th anniversary of the genocide. Two years later the memorial (by architects Kalashian and Mkrtchyan) was completed at the Tsitsernakaberd hill above the Hrazdan gorge in Yerevan. The 44 metre stele symbolizes the national rebirth of Armenians. 12 slabs postioned into circle, represent 12 lost provinces in present day Turkey. In the centre of the circle, in depth of 1.5 metres, there is an eternal flame. Along the park at the memorial there is a 100 metre wall with names of towns and villages where masacres are known to have taken place. In 1995 a small circular museum was opened at the other end of the park where one learn about basic information about the events in 1915. Some photos taken by German photographers (Turkish allies during World War I) and some publications about the genocide are also displayed. Near the museum is a spot where foreign statesmen plant trees in memory of the genocide.

Each April 24th (Armenian Genocide Commemoration Holiday) hundreds of thousands of people walk to the genocide monument and lay flowers (usually red carnations or tulips) around the eternal flame. Armenians around the world mark the genocide in different ways, and many memorials have been built in Armenian Diaspora communities.

Resources

Holocaust Museum library books on the Armenian genocide
A SUPPLEMENTAL BIBLIOGRAPHY, 1993-1996
Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile - The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims 1821-1922, Princeton 1995, 5th Edition 2004, ISBN 0878500944
Peter Balakian The Burning Tigris: -The Armenian Genocide and America's Response , HarperCollins 2003, ISBN 0060198400

External links

Websites

Media:

BBC News article Turkey 'must admit Armenia dead'

Opposing to the genocide theses