The Armenian Genocide: 1915–16

The Kingdom of Armenia adopted Christianity as its national religion in the C4th, loyal to the Armenian Apostolic Church. Armenian Christ­ians were just one of many ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire. But in the late 1880s, some polit­ical organisations seeking greater autonomy for Armenians, reinforcing Ot­to­man doubts about the loyalty of the wider Armenian comm­unity inside its borders. By 1914, c2 mill Armenians lived in Anatolia, in a total population of 16 mill.

armenie-historique

 
The Armenian minority in Ottoman Turkey had been subject to episodic torment over the centuries. In 1894-96, these were stepped up with more violent pers­ecutions. The massacres began in the SE and E pro­v­inces of Anatolia and the Caucasus as early as Aug 1914, several months before the Otto­mans entered WW1, on the side of the Central Powers. But the worst of the Armen­ian cat­astrophe in the Ottoman Empire started in early 1915 when Otto­man authorities, sup­ported by aux­il­iary troops and some civ­ilians, per­pet­rated mass killing. The Otto­man govern­ment, cont­rolled by the Committee of Union and Progress-CUP/aka Young Tur­ks, aimed to solid­ify Muslim Turk­ish dom­in­ance in the cent­ral and eastern regions of Anatolia, by elim­in­ating the sizeable Armenian presence.

From 1915, inspired by rabid nationalism, secret gov­ernment ord­ers and WW1 fever, the Young Turk government drove Armenians from their hom­es and massac­red them in greater num­bers. The Young Turk Regime rounded up thousands of Armen­ians and hanged many in the streets of Is­tanbul. Then they began a genocidal deportat­ion of most of the Ar­menian population to the southern desert. This meant they were murd­ered en route to the desert or died when they reached there. Alth­ough fig­ur­e­s on the death toll were uncertain, hist­or­ians believed 800,000-1 mil­lion people were killed, often in unsp­eakably cruel ways. Unknown num­bers of others survived by converting to Islam, lost to Armenian cult­ure.

Called the First C20th Genocide, the Armen­ian genocide referred to the annihilation of Armenian Christian people living in the Ottoman Empire from 1915-16. There were c1.5 million Armenians living in the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire in 1915. c1 million died in the gen­ocide, either in mass­ac­res, from ill treatment, exposure or starvation.

Mass atrocities were often perpetrated within the con­text of war, so the timing of the Armenians genocide was inevitably linked to WW1. Fear­ing that invading enemy troops would induce Armen­ians to join them, the Ottoman government began the deport­at­ion of the Armenian population from its N.E border regions in 1915. In the following months, the Otto­mans expanded deport­ations from almost all pro­v­inces, regardless of distance from combat zones.

Victims of the Armenian genocide included people killed in local mass­acres that began in 1915; others who died in deportations, from starvation, dehydration, exposure and disease; and Ar­m­enians who died in the desert regions of the southern Empire [today: Nth and E Syria, Nth Saudi Arabia and Iraq]. Plus tens of thousands of Armenian children were forcibly removed from their families and conv­ert­ed to Islam.

Were there any locally written reports and photos? In 1917 John Elder, a divinity student from Pennsylvania, joined the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief Team that was aid­ing refugees. For 2 years, Elder did volunteer work with Armenian orphans when he photog­raphed re­fugees and conditions at camps. Arm­in Wegner ser­ved as a nurse with the German Sanitary Corps. In 1915 and 1916, Weg­ner travelled throughout the Ottoman Emp­ire and documented at­rocit­ies carried out against the Armenians, including children lying dead in the street.

And some influential foreigners spoke out against these atrocit­ies eg British Prof of International History Arnold Toynbee. But how is it that other Christian countries didn’t intervene? Or at least take those Armenians who survived as refugees? US Ambassador to Cons­tantinople Henry Morgen­thau Sr (1856-1946) was deeply tr­oubled by the atrocities com­mitted against the Armenians and was one who sought to stir the U.S’s conscience in resp­on­se. The plight of the Armenians triggered a gen­er­ous public re­s­ponse, involving President Woodrow Wilson and thousands of or­d­inary Am­erican citizens who volunteered both at home and abroad, and raised $110+ million to assist Armenian orphans.

This genocide almost ended 2,000+ years of Armenian civilis­ation in east­ern Anatolia. The First Republic of Armenia (1918–20) was the first modern establishment of an Armenian nation. And it enabled an eth­no­-nationalist Turkish state, Republic of Turkey in 1923, as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire. Note that the Turkish gov­ernment always maintained that the deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action, and therefore was never genocide.

The word genocide wasn’t formally coined until 1944, although the or­igin of the term and its codification in intern­at­ional law had their roots in the 1915–16 Armenian massacre. Lawyer Raph­ael Lemkin, himself a Polish Jewish refugee, was the man behind the first UN human rights treaty, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. He repeat­edly stated that early exposure to the Otto­man Armen­ian genocide in newspaper was key to the need for legal protec­t­ion of groups, the core element in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. In any case, it has only been since the 1970s that scholars have offered close at­t­­ention to this human catastrophe.

 

Refugee camp

Bodies in a field, a common in Armenian provinces in 1915 .

Britannica

Ottoman military forces march Armenians to an execution site

Holocaust Encyclopaedia

Armenian-Syrian refugees Red Cross camp, 

Jerusalem, 1917-19

Wall St Journal

The modern Republic of Armenia became independent in 1991 with the dis­s­olution of the Soviet Union. Most Armenians today are Christians (97%) and are members of the Armenian Apostolic Church.