...THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE “Kill every Armenian, women, children and men without concern for anything”~ Talaat Pasha, Ottoman Turkish leader. The Armenian Genocide, also known as the Armenian Holocaust was the Ottoman government’s systematic extermination of its minority Armenian subjects from their historic homeland in the territory constituting the present-day Republic of Turkey. It took place from April of 1915 to 1923 (during and after WWI), and was implemented in two phases: The wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and forced labor, and the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches to the Syrian Desert. The total number of people killed as a result has been estimated at between 1 million to 1.5 million. But people may ask why? Armenia had come largely under Ottoman rule during the 15th and 16th centuries. The majority of Armenians were grouped together under the name Armenian Millet (community) and they were led by their spiritual head, the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople. This community was made up of three religious denominations: The Armenian Apostolic, The Armenian Catholic and The Armenian Protestant, meanwhile the Turkish were Muslim. Basically the Armenian community were persecuted and killed by the Turkish because a religion matter. The Armenian Genocide it is acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides. It have been pointed as an organized manner in which the killings were carried...
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...The Armenian Genocide Throughout history genocide has taken place on more than one occasion, causing mass destruction and casualties. The most commonly known genocide is the Nazi Holocaust, but the one less commonly known with an equivalent amount of brutality is the Armenian Genocide, also known as the Armenian Holocaust. The Armenian Genocide seems to have been ignored and this can be due to the fact that today, Turkey still rejects that the massacre was ”genocide”. Genocide is the murder of an entire people (Levack 800). The United Nations estimates that about 1 million Armenians were killed as a result (Bass). Since the early 1900’s Turkey has been trying to hide the massacres, but this organized genocide should not be ignored because it became a model for future genocides. The Armenians lived in Turkey peacefully for years. The Armenians official religion was Christianity. Islam was the major religion in Turkey. Prior to the Genocide, the Armenians and Turkish people lived together without conflict. In 1908, a movement led to a new group coming to power. The new socialist power, the Young Turks, was formed by young military officers who were concerned about the loss of power in the Ottoman Empire. They worked under the secret police to overthrow the Turkish Sultan, Abdul Hamid II. The Muslims thought the Christians were nonbelievers and treated them unequal. Christians did not have the same legal rights and had to pay higher taxes. The Armenians continued to live...
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...First, the Armenians in the army were disarmed and killed Second, the Armenian intellectual and political leaders were rounded up and killed on April 25, 1915 Finally, the remaining Armenians were rounded up from their homes, told they would be relocated, and then marched off to concentration camps in the desert where they would starve and thirst to death in the burning sun The Armenians lost 300 years of history in the Genocide Their churches, buildings, libraries, ect. were destroyed, and they were left with nothing but memories. The Armenians were mistreated in every way possible during the genocide. The Turks went to the extent of cutting off the hands of children and letting them bleed and yell themselves to death. They buried children in ditches in the desert They drove thousands of Armenians in death marches until they dropped dead or were shot They planned to eliminated the entire Armenian Christian population living in Turkey, they killed about half My name is Vartan Hartunian and I am the pastor of the First Armenian Church in Belmont, Massachusetts. I am one of a diminishing number of survivors of the Armenian genocide. I was born on February 11, 1915 and the genocide broke out on April 24, 1915. In 1909 there was a massacre in Adana, and 30,000 Armenians were slaughtered. When World War I broke out, this gave the Young Turks the opportunity to fulfill a Turkish desire that had continued for centuries: to rid Turkey of all Armenians. Even before...
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...permanent” (Mohandas Gandhi). If only our world leaders knew this sooner. Genocide is the act of killing a large mass of people for no valid reason. The Holocaust was a genocide where the Nazi Germans tried to eliminate the Jews from Germany from 1939-1945. The Nazi Germans believed that the Jews were the reason Germany lost World War 1 and wanted them to pay for what they did. The Armenian genocide was where the Turkish people in the Ottoman Empire desired a homogenous Turkish state and wanted to get rid of the Armenians from 1915-1918. Although the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide are similar in their horrible dehumanization and unjust polarization stages, each genocide exterminated its people differently....
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...Genocide means the killing of a specific race. What is now Turkey did use to be the Ottoman empire. The weakening or lack of own work from Armenians threatened the Ottomans terribly. People made hyperboles about how many people were killed during Armenian Genocide. The Turks said the Armenian people were just extra weight in the battle that was going on at the time, and were not a part of any type of Genocide. (St John). Armenia used to not need anybody, they used to depend on themselves. Christian like religion popped up in Armenia people’s lives first. Armenians did not use the term “Genocide” to indicate any type of crime of any sort. Until 2004 nothing about Genocide had popped up in the “New York Times”. Ottoman people were normally...
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...Between the years of 1915 and 1917, a fatal plan of ethnic cleansing was implemented against the minority Christian Armenian populations in the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian Genocide took the lives of upwards of a million people, many of which left behind numerous children and loved ones. Why is it that intellectuals and individuals so often refer to the Armenian Genocide as the forgotten genocide? The reason that this phrase has been attributed to the Armenian Genocide is because of the conditions that have existed in Turkey in the one hundred years following the atrocities. The experiences and memories belonging to the victims of the Armenian Genocide have been severely repressed, as a result of legal and social sanctions implemented by the...
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...Armenian Genocides Prashanth P. Samuel Professor Hicks History 116 The Ottoman Empire was a very powerful and influential force in the world during the early 19th century. As the empire was predominantly of Turkish decent, other minority groups started growing within the empire. Eventually it came to a period where the Ottoman Empire felt these minority groups such as the Armenians, Greeks, as well as the Assyrians were becoming to strong and felt they were threating the empire therefore they were persecuted and the mass killings of the Armenian people being. The purpose of this paper is to dive into the times of the Armenian genocides before during and after the April 24th 1915 genocide attacks on the Armenian people. The various sources and references used in this paper will explain the various situations the Armenian people faced and how this has correlated to other world events at the time and how this has affected Armenian people for generations to come. The first part which we will look at is determining if the mass killings of the Armenian people is considered genocide or not as the people of Turkey time and time again failed to recognize that it was genocide. The genocide convention in 1948 defined the word “genocide” as an incident which involves a significant number of dead, as similar to the number of dead during the 1915-1916 era. “On 12 March 2010, the Swedish Riksdag recognized the 1915 Genocide in Ottoman Turkey” (Avedian). As the Swedish have stated that...
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...For instance, during the war, the Ottoman Empire had many Armenian people be sent to their deaths, “In 1915, leaders of the Turkish government set in motion a plan to expel and massacre Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Though reports vary, most sources agree that there were about 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the massacre. The Ottoman rulers, like most of their subjects, were Muslim. They permitted religious minorities like the Armenians to maintain some autonomy, but they also subjected Armenians, who they viewed as “infidels,” to unequal and unjust treatment” The Armenians suffered the wrath of the war since all were battling for a larger more perfect nation. If a specific group of people, like the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, did not suit the plan, then they were simply the ones to be forced out or to be killed. Likewise, every other powerful nation was caught up in the war; thus, the Armenians had no salvation near. Also, within the Ottoman Empire, the Turks submitted the Armenian race to cruel actions before they would wind up at their deaths, “The victims of the Armenian genocide include people killed in local massacres that began in spring 1915; others who died during deportations, under conditions of starvation, dehydration, exposure, and disease; and Armenians who died in or en route to the desert regions of the southern Empire.” Armenian people died in may ways, all being inhuman forms to perish. Families would see...
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...The Atrocities committed against the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire during W.W.I. is called the Armenian Genocide. A genocide is an organized killing of a group of people to put an end to their existence. The Armenian Genocide was planned and administrated by the Turkish government against the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. The genocide was between the years 1915 and 1923 during W.W.I. The Armenians were deported, expropriated, abducted, tortured, killed and starved. A huge part of the Armenian population was forced to move from Armenia and Anatolia to Syria, where the majority was sent into the desert and to die of thirst and hunger. Large numbers of Armenians were massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire. W.W.I. gave the Young Turk government an excuse to carry out their plans of a genocide. The Armenian Genocide was masterminded by the Central Committee of the Young Turk Party which was dominated by Mehmed Talât , Ismail Enver , and Ahmed Djemal. They were a racist group whose ideology was articulated by Zia Gökalp, Dr. Mehmed Nazim, and Dr. Behaeddin Shakir. Armenians all over the world commemorate this great tragedy on April 24, because it was on that day in 1915 when 300 Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in Constantinople were rounded up, deported and killed. Also on that day in Constantinople, 5,000 of the poorest Armenians were butchered in the streets and in their homes. Across the Ottoman Empire the same events happened...
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...parachute into Europe. Szenes spent 3 months in Yugoslavia, on June 7,1944 she crossed the Hungarian border and was caught almost immediately, then tortured cruelly for several months. She refused to give up any information and was executed by a firing squad on November 7,1944 at only 23 years old. Hannah Szenes was just one of many who worked against the Nazis in order to save helpless Jewish prisoners from death in the crematorium. Nearly 18 years before the Holocaust during and after World War 1, Armenians were rounded up, deported, and executed on government orders. Indifference caused awful mass killings, forced deportation marches, and diseases in concentration camps approximately killed more than 1 million ethnic Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks between 1915 and 1923. Ever since the Armenian genocide, the Turkish government denies that a genocide took place. In March of 2010, a United States Congressional panel finally voted to recognize the genocide. What happened to the Armenians was similar to the Holocaust because there was “indifference” which led to “punishment” of innocent “victims.” Ultimately, Elie Wiesel believes that indifference is a “punishment” and therefore a “sin.” The world can learn the real meaning of indifference from Wiesel’s speech “The Perils of Indifference”, also how indifference affects the world and what awful atrocities it's caused. It is vital that we ask ourselves about the lessons we learn from the consequences of action and inaction during the...
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...Location: Armenian Youth Cultural Identities in Southern Russia. Europe-Asia Studies, 61(3), 409-433. doi:10.1080/09668130902753283 References Papazian, T. (2006). From Ter-Petrossian to Kocharian: Explaining Continuity in Armenian Foreign Policy, 1991-2003. Demokratizatsiya, 14(2), 235-251. References Tonoyan, A. (2010). Rising Armenian-Georgian Tensions and the Possibility of a New Ethnic Conflict in the South Caucasus. Demokratizatsiya, 18(4), 287-308. References I., A. (2014). The Armenian Genocide: From Recognition to Reparations. International Criminal Law Review, 14(2), 233-241. doi:10.1163/15718123-01401001 \ Abstract Workplace This speaks about the role of women are to be at home and how the men are supposed to be. The women are supposed to stay at home workers. As in cook, clean, wash basically just stay at home. As in the men are supposed to be out at work doing the laborer the heavy lifting work. Also speaks on when the war was happening the women were taken by soldiers to work. On how the women were facing so many problems. Location It speaks about how the young Armenians in Krasnador are constructing a sense of belonging of ethnicity and of multicultural location. How the Armenians are not ashamed to be called Armenians in a different area besides their hometown. Also speaks upon how much popularity it has in Krasnador. How the Armenians migrate and become a huge popularity. Also how people observe and interact with the Armenians. Characteristics...
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...A powerful way in which Turkey denies the genocide lies in their restricted access to archives. There is also controversy involving the degree to which the ones available can be trusted because of the possibility of them being tampered with. In his work The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, Taner Akçam evaluates powerful evidence proving that the Ottoman documents have been “cleansed” intentionally in order to shadow mistakes. Akçam’s book also introduces evidence from more than five hundred secret Ottoman documents. He demonstrates how the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of the Greeks from the Ottoman Empire was a result of an official effort to free the empire of its...
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...Vahan Kenderian is a twelve year old kid from a wealthy Armenian family in Turkey. His life changes for the worse when his older brothers start suspecting something when their dad and uncle are taken away by Turkish police. They knew that a few years ago there was an Armenian massacre and they worry it is about to happen again. People are taken from their homes, several men are killed and women beaten. Vahan then has to watch as his older brothers are shot right in front of him. Vahan is not killed and neither is one brother, two sisters, his mom and grandmother. They are taken to a place called Goryan’s Inn where they are held prisoner. While being prisoners one of Vahan’s sisters takes a poison to kill herself, so she doesn’t have to be raped...
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...killings to snatching out future kingdom and commonwealth” (Armin Hariri). The first two genocides of the twentieth century, the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, have many similarities. Although the Armenian Genocide was twenty-five years before the Holocaust, both leaders had a goal of diminishing the Christian and Jewish religions and both leaders decided to massacre and kill innocent victims through starvation since the two were vulnerable targets. The Armenian Genocide took place on April 24, 1915. “The Armenian people were subjected to deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre, and starvation” (Armenian National Institute). The Turkish government planned this Genocide, which took place in Armenia and Anatolia. The Ottoman Empire forced the Armenians to relocate to Syria. Armenians walked through the Syrian Desert where many starved to death and died of thirst. Both the Christians and Jews were terribly abused and massacred. Their wealth was taken from them and they were also stripped of their clothing. Many people were treated like animals and went through excruciating pain before their deaths. The Armenians, from the Armenian Genocide, and the Jews, from the Holocaust, had both been treated inhumanely. Both races had been starved to death and the Turks and Hitler had the ‘strong and intellectual’ killed before they killed the ‘weak and dumb.’ The Armenian Genocide is also similar to the Jewish Holocaust because both people “adhere to ancient religion...
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...demonstrate the relationship in narrative and substance, which both authors are discussing. Aysi Gul Altinay is focused on the Armenian Genocide of 1915 by the hands of their Turkish rulers and the following historical counter-memory provided by Turkish nationalist historiography, specifically on the implications on the ‘un-silencing’ of the ‘Armenian question.’ Turkish nationalist history has largely accepted the silence on the events of 1915 as the historical norm, not to be questioned. In a way it is worse that this discussion, which has only surfaced recently in mainstream Turkish society, is not one of responsibility for the massacre of an estimated 2 million Armenians but rather one of the very existence of these atrocities. What few pieces of archived information that exist from 1915-1920 do not give specifics on the fate of so many Armenian women and children but do point to the survival of large numbers of women and children through Islamization. Ataturk’s own biographer gave reason and definition to the reason behind the organized historical silence of all things Armenian genocide by calling the period ‘a time best left forgotten’ thereby demonstrating the use of silence as an historical eraser. Until only as recently as the 1970’s the republican state defense narrative gained momentum and attributed events of 1915 as a response to Armenian terrorists attacking Turkish diplomats abroad, showing great similarity to the German defense of Kristallnacht and the beginning...
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