The Armenian Genocide of 1915 was one of the first mass exterminations of a race or people group which occurred in the 20th century, and was also one of the largest instances of ethnic cleansing in world history. For during World War I the Muslim Ottoman Empire carried out a series of unthinkable atrocities against it's Christian Armenian minority populations living within the empire. Armenian intellectuals were the first to be rounded up and executed, while the rest of ordinary Armenians were deported in death marches across Anatolia into the Syrian desert of Deir Zor. As a result of these horrors, it has been estimated that at least 1.5 million Armenians perished in the genocide of 1915. But to better understand the origin of this evil, we must first peer into the history of Armenia prior to the events that would culminate into the First World War, that most dark era in human history and in human suffering.
Armenia is a relatively small landlocked country located in the Caucasus region in what is known as West Asia. The Republic of Armenia is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran to the south. Armenia's largest city Yerevan has been the capital of Armenia since 1918, and it is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Located near the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the industrial, administrative, and cultural hub for the entire country and also serves as the throne of the Araratian Pontifical Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the national Church of Armenia. The majority of Armenians are a Christian people who practice an ancient form of Christianity which is known as Oriental Orthodoxy. With the Kingdom of Armenia officially adopting Christianity as the state religion in 301 AD, Armenia is arguably the world's oldest Christian country. In more ancient times before the birth of Christianity, the geographical territories which make up what we know today as the Armenian Highlands were part of a large settlement known as Urartu. The Kingdom of Urartu came to power in the 9th century BC, but fell into decline after being conquered by the Medes in the 6th century BC. In the 15th century AD the Armenian homeland would be taken over again, this time by the Ottoman Turks. Under Turkish rule Armenians would suffer an existence of second class status along with other ethic and religious minorities who had to pay higher taxes. Unfortunately many non-Muslims would suffer under the rule of the Turks for nearly 500 years until the end of World War I. Now that we have briefly covered the history of Armenia, let us examine the events which led up to the Armenian Genocide in greater detail.
The holocaust of Armenian Christians which took place during World War I, was not the first time the Armenians as a people had experienced death on a massive scale by the hands of their Turkish oppressors. For example, in the mid 1890's the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II ordered the killings of Christian Armenians, beginning in Constantinople and then spread his campaign eastward throughout the various Armenian provinces of Asia Minor. For prior to and during Hamid's rule, the Ottoman Empire found itself in a significant state of economic decline. So much so that it was even dubbed as “The Sick Man of Europe” by the Russian Czar Nicholas I. In an effort to revive and maintain power in his dying dynasty, Hamid began to promote a pan-Islamic ideology. For at this time in the Muslim empire a wave of nationalism began to move among the Christian Armenians of Anatolia. The Sultan feared that the Islamic culture of the empire as well as its very existence as a nation and regional power were at stake. So, in an act of fear and desperation, Hamid began the massacres of the Armenians in an effort to solve the Armenian Question. A question first asked following the 1878 Congress of Berlin which quite simply stated, how should the Armenians living within the Ottoman Empire be treated? Hamid's killings of Armenians in response to the Armenian Question would last until 1897. The total number of Armenians killed in the Hamidian Massacres has been estimated by historians to range from between 100,000 to 300,000 Armenian lives lost. And in addition to the Armenians that died, around 25,000 Assyrians also perished in the massacres.
As a result of this Ottoman oppression, Armenian intellectuals in the late 19th century began to unite and organize in their struggle for freedom. It was also at this time that young Turkish intellectuals came together in the aspirations of forging new social and political reforms across the empire. These young politically charged Turkish revolutionaries would be known as The Young Turks. Originating as an underground sect at first, or better yet as a secret society, the Young Turks would eventually rise to the surface openly as an established political force. For in July 1908 the Young Turks started a revolution and staged a coup that successfully removed Sultan Abdul Hamid II from power. Amazingly, some Armenian revolutionaries cooperated with the Young Turks to bring down the Sultan, a man who was responsible for the deaths of their ancestors. With the dismissal of Hamid II the Armenians supported the new Turkish government, which promised them equal rights. Now within the broader Young Turk movement there were several off-shoots, but the most dominate faction in the movement was called the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). In response to the Armenians who helped depose the sultan in 1908, an Ottoman counter-coup erupted in 1909 as a military revolt aimed against the Committee of Union and Progress. The usurpers managed to seize Constantinople for just ten days, but it was enough to ignite a massacre against Armenians living in Adana Province. For after word traveled to Adana of a mutiny in Constantinople, the local Muslims were fearful of an Armenian uprising. Over the course of about a month around 20,000 to 25,000 Armenians were killed in Adana, along with 1,300 Assyrians. So here we see that even before the genocide of 1915, tens of thousands of Armenians had already been murdered by the Turks. But as devastating as both the Hamidian and Adana massacres were for the Armenians, unfortunately the worst was yet to come.
World War I officially commenced just five weeks after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand took place in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the 28th of June in 1914, by a Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip. And this singular historical event would go on to produce the largest and most extensive war the world had ever seen up until that time. For soon most of Europe, Russia, the Ottoman Turks, and even Japan would begin a four year frenzy of fighting which would end in the transformation of the world into a more modern and secular global society. In the war Russia was the foremost enemy of the Turks. For the Ottoman goal was to push Russia out of the Caucasus region and out of the steppes of Central Asia, in the hopes of forging an alliance with the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and ultimately creating one great unified Turkish empire. However, the Russians defeated the Turks in the Battle of Sarikamish as part of Turkey's Caucasus campaign. Thus the Young Turks' plan for a united Turkish state was destroyed. The Ottoman minister of defense Enver Pasha publicly blamed the Turkish defeat on the Armenians, due to four battalions of Armenian soldiers who voluntarily fought alongside Russian forces in the Caucasus against the Turks. And this Armenian action would go on to serve as a pretext for the Turks to carry out the Armenian Genocide.
The Armenian Genocide, also known traditionally among modern day Armenians as Medz Yeghern (Great Crime) is officially held to have begun on the 24th of April in 1915. For it was on this date that the Ottoman government apprehended and arrested about 250 Armenian intellectuals and cultural leaders living in Constantinople. They were then imprisoned, tortured, and some were even publicly executed. The reason behind this Turkish targeting of Armenian intellectuals was that by crushing the Armenian leadership the Turks could more easily control the Armenian masses who, without proper representation, would be severely weakened. For after the alliance between the Armenians and the Russians, the Turks now believed that the Armenians were a threat to the stability of the empire and even classified the Armenians as enemies of the state. Thus the Young Turk government began to arrest and disarm the Armenians and subsequently began the mass deportation of Armenians into the Syrian desert, whereby being deprived of both food and water, many would die from exhaustion in the blistering heat of the sun.
At the time of the Genocide in 1915, ethnic Armenian populations were scattered all throughout Turkey - the geographical area known from centuries past as Asia Minor. When the deportations began, Armenians in the eastern provinces were rounded up into caravans and marched into the desert on foot. Whereas Armenians living in the western provinces were herded into boxcars and shipped eastward aboard the Berlin-Baghdad Railway. This railway was built by the Germans in the hopes of boosting their economy by securing a direct line from Germany to the oil rich lands of Mesopotamia, and to also compete with the British Empire in what they had accomplished in India. For Germany greatly desired to become a world power and thus sided with the Ottoman Empire as a means to gain power and influence in the Middle East. The Turks in turn became allies of the Germans in the aspiration of expanding the Ottoman Empire westwards into Europe. However, by the time the Great War began the Berlin-Baghdad Railway was still largely incomplete. But the Germans, by observing the diligent work ethic of the Armenians, had the idea to relocate the Armenians from Asia Minor and bring them to Mesopotamia in order to aide the Germans in their industry. The Ottomans on the other hand were more brutal with their investment of Armenian labor. For the Turks would go on to enslave and force many Armenians to build parts of the railroad: the same railroad which would be used to ship those same Armenian workers off to their deaths.
It has also been speculated that the Germans were instrumental in the exterminations of Armenians, due to Germany being an ally of the Turks at the time of the First World War. The Germans may not have been direct aggressors towards the Armenians, but could have at least been complicit to the Turkish atrocities committed against the Armenians by turning a blind eye. Going further, some schools of thought have even suggested that the measures taken by the Turks to execute the Armenian Genocide during World War I would go on to serve as the blueprint for what the Germans undertook in the Jewish Holocaust during World War II. And just as the Jews have experienced certain criticism over the years, which casts doubt and questions if the Jewish Holocaust ever happened, so too do Armenians living today suffer from their own version of Holocaust deniers; especially the adamant voices coming forth from the Republic of Turkey. For to this day the Turkish government blatantly denies that the Armenian Genocide ever took place, and takes absolutely no responsibility for their involvement in the deaths of the 1.5 million Armenians who perished in 1915.
Now when the first arrests and deportations of Armenians occurred, the Turks decided that they must do something in order to address the Armenian problem. The Turks would then implement what they called, “Shiddetli” a Turkish code word meaning, “Severe Measures to be Applied” against the Armenians. And these severe measures included not only death marches, but also death camps. For the Armenians who survived the marches through the desert were then rounded up into concentration camps in Deir Zor. But on their way to the camps many Armenians would die at the hands of Kurdish bandits, who robbed and murdered them even before they reached the desert death camps. It took several weeks and maybe even months of traveling on foot before the Armenians finally reached Deir Zor. However, some Armenians did manage to fight back against the Turks in the city of Urfa. The Armenians resisted the Turks and defended their families courageously, but the Turks managed to get the upper-hand over these brave souls by assaulting them with weapons they obtained from Germany. Thus we see more indirect responsibility for Armenian casualties perpetrated by the German government and military.
The majority of the Armenians who survived the death marches ended up dying of starvation in the death camps. In other areas, such as Trabzon for example, the Turks forced many Armenians of all ages into boats where they were then dumped into the Black Sea and drowned. Several were shot dead as they traveled, and there were even some reports of beheadings. In addition to all the killings, human trafficking also became the sad fate of many. For Turkish soldiers were known to take young Armenian girls by force and enslave them into the various Turkish harems throughout the Ottoman Empire. Thus, the sufferings that the Armenians endured was indeed a genocide: a word first coined by Dr. Raphael Lemkin in 1943. From the Greek genos meaning race, combined with the Latin cidery meaning to kill, this word genuinely describes what the Armenians went through during World War I. By the time the War ended in 1918 it has been estimated by scholars that around 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated by the Turks. But if we include the 300,000 Armenians who perished in the Hamidian Massacres in the 1890's, and add to that amount the 25,000 Armenians who were killed at Adana in 1909, and then combine the 1.5 million who died in 1915, we come to a figure of nearly two million Armenians annihilated.
Now although the Armenian Genocide is an extremely important and critical event which occurred in modern history, it has also been disrespectfully neglected, forgotten, and even denied. It is revealed however, that during World War I American newspapers thoroughly and extensively published articles describing the horrible atrocities carried out upon the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. American religious leaders and politicians both stood up for the cause of the suffering Armenians. One such American politician who pleaded for the lives of the Armenians, was the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau. Though Morgenthau sincerely spoke up for the Armenian cause, and stood up to the Ottoman Empire's crimes against humanity, he was unfortunately unable to hinder the Turkish government from their severe measures aimed at and against the Armenian race. However, for the remaining period of the war, Morgenthau was able to raise funds in order to help and assist with the plight of the Armenians who survived the Genocide of 1915.
The War ended in 1918, and in 1919 the British Empire pressured the Turkish government to begin war crimes tribunals for all those responsible for the Armenian Genocide. Soon a series of trials were held in Constantinople, and the Turkish military tribunals concluded in their findings that the Young Turks were indeed guilty and responsible for the preparation and execution of the Armenian Genocide. The main three Young Turk leaders who carried out the genocide were Enver, Talat, and Jemal Pasha. These three were tried in absentia, found guilty, and sentenced to death. Enver, would flee to Germany and then to Russia, where in 1922 he was shot while fighting with a local army in Modern day Tajikistan. Talat also fled to Germany, where in 1921 he was shot point blank in the head by an Armenian student. Jamal escaped to Georgia, but in 1922 he was shot and killed by two Armenians.
In the aftermath of World War I the Ottoman Empire dissolved and lost its control over the various provinces and peoples scattered throughout what we know today as the modern Middle East. But even though the Turks lost the war, this did not stop the newly formed Republic of Turkey from modernizing and thriving economically. For under the leadership of the first president of Turkey (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) did the once religiously ruled Ottoman Empire transform itself into a more modern and secular state. Initially, not all Turks were in favor of the abolition of the caliphate, which ended up producing a split political system: the new republic of Turkey on one side and an Islamic form of government on the other. But beginning on the 29th of October in 1923, the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed, and on the 3rd of March in 1924, the caliphate was officially abolished. Also, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, all non-Russian countries proclaimed their independence. Once the Russian Empire was toppled, the First Republic of Armenia was established. In 1922, Armenia became a founding member of the Soviet Union. Seven decades later on the 21st of September in 1991, Armenia declared its statehood, and on the 26th of December in 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and Armenia's independence was officially recognized.
In recent times, the 46th president of the United States of America (Joe Biden) has formally and officially recognized the Armenian Genocide. This makes Biden the first U.S. president to publicly announce America's stance concerning the genocide before a global audience. However, in the 1980's president Reagan made a passing reference to the “genocide of the Armenians” when commenting on the Jewish Holocaust. Other than these two exceptions, all past American administrations have dodged the question regarding the Armenian Genocide. A possible reason for this American denial may be the fear of weakening relations with Turkey, the very government which perpetrated the genocide and which also is the main Armenian Genocide denier. The Turkish government has admitted that killings of Armenians did take place during World War I, but has additionally stated that a large number of Turks were also killed by Armenians in the fighting and that the figures attributed to the amount of Armenians killed in the war have been grossly inflated. In addition to the Republic of Turkey many other countries have also denied that the Armenian Genocide ever took place, but according to the Armenian National Institute at least 30 countries from all across the world have now publicly acknowledged that what happened to the Armenians in World War I was in fact a genocide. So, with a continual fight for recognition and the push for the acceptance of the Armenian Genocide from more and more nations, hopefully one day all Armenians living today will finally be able to completely morn for their ancestors and be at peace knowing that their memory is eternal.
References:
Captivating History. The Armenian Genocide: A Captivating Guide to the Massacre of the Armenians by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. (Captivating History, 2019).
Balakian, P. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response. (New York, NY: Parennial, 2004).
Butler, D.A. Shadow of the Sultan's Realm: The Destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. (Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, Inc., 2011).
McMeekin, S. The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2010).
