Armenian Genocide Review
What happens to Turks who discuss the Armenian Genocide?
Among a series of actions enacted to counter Armenian genocide recognition and education, the government even passed a law in 2004 known as Article 301 which makes it a criminal offense, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, to discuss the Armenian genocide. In 2003 the Minister of Education in Turkey made up a national essay contest to have students write on the denial of the Armenian Genocide.
How was the Ottoman Empire Organized?
Armenians were one national group within the vast Ottoman Empire. The empire was organized into Millets which basically divided society amongst religious lines. While the sultan oversaw the Muslim millet—including Turks, Arabs, and Kurds. Christian patriarchs ran the Greek and Armenian millets, and the grand rabbi headed the Jewish millet.
Who overthrew the Sultan in 1908?
Armenians, Arabs, Greeks, Jews, and Kurds had begun working with a group of Turks to challenge the authority of the Sultan. This group was known as the Ottoman Liberals and the Turkish coalition of the group adopted the name "Young Turks." They wanted to create a modern state that represented all inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire more equally with a constitution and render the Sultan politically powerless. In 1908, one of the Young Turk groups, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), marched on Constantinople, and overthrew Sultan Abdul-Hamid.
What happened on the Night of April 23rd and April 24th 1915?
Beginning on April 23, 1915 and continuing to April 24th (now commemorated as the beginning of the Armenian genocide), Armenian civil leaders, intellectuals. Doctors, businessmen, and artists were rounded up and killed. Once these leaders of the Armenian communities were killed, the genocide plan was put into motion throughout the empire. Many Armenian men were quickly executed. Armenians throughout the empire began to be deported.
How many Armenians died as a result of the Genocide?
Between 1 and 1.5 Million
The Near East Relief
Between 1915 and 1930, when it ended operations, NER administered $117,000,000 of assistance. It delivered food, clothing, and materials for shelter by the shipload from America. It set up refugee camps, clinics, hospitals, orphanages, and centers for vocational training. NER is credited with having cared for 132,000 Armenian orphans
How many Armenians were killed in the Hamidian massacres?
During the Hamidian Massacres, 100,000 to 300,000 Armenians were killed in towns and villages throughout areas of the Ottoman Empire. Thousands of Armenians fled and found refuge in Europe and the United States. Some who stayed converted to order to save their own lives.
Hasan Mazhar Bey Mayor of Ankara
Hasan Mazhar Bey vehemently refused obeying orders from the central government.He has been reported to say; "I am a mayor, not a thug. I cannot do this job. Let someone else come, take my seat and do it." His refusal resulted him losing his seat in August 1915 and being fired from the civil service. Eventually, Hasan Mazhar Bey would be a part of the official commission tasked by the new Turkish state to look into the crimes committed against Armenians.
Celal Bey
He was the governor of Konya, a hub for the Armenian deportation routes from north and west Anatolia to the Syrian desert. He was previously the governor of Aleppo and had witnessed the atrocities there.Celal Bey had attempted to reason with the Ittihat ve Terakki leaders that there was no justification for the mass deportations. He was removed from his governor's post in Aleppo and transferred to Konya. Once there, he refused to arrange for the deportation of the Konya Armenians. By the time he was removed from his post, in October 1915, he had saved thousands of Armenian lives.
How did the Committee for Union and Progress gain ultimate power over the Empire
In 1913, Mehmed Talaat, Ahmed Djemal, and Ismail Enver (three men that were part of a group called the Committee for Union and Progress and became the leaders of the Ottoman Empire during the Genocide) launched a military coup against the Young Turk government and basically took over as the main leaders because they had the military behind them. The CUP was a coalition of ultra nationalists who believed that the only way to hold on to the empire was embrace a radical idea of ethnic cleansing.
What helped fuel public hate towards the Armenians after 1912?
In addition, the Ottoman Empire, now known as the "sick man of Europe," was weakened by the loss of its lands in south-eastern Europe in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13. One of the Ottoman Empire's greatest enemies was Russia, as Russia was constantly threatening the security of the Ottoman borders and controlled parts of the eastern edge of the Ottoman Empire that was populated by Armenians. Since the Russians had advocated for Armenian reforms in the past and because the Russian army did have Armenians serving as soldiers, the Ottoman government was concerned that Ottoman Armenians might commit traitorous acts. This fear helped to fuel Turkish public sentiment against Armenians.
When did the Massacres of the Armenians begin under Sultan Abdul Hamid II?
Massacres of the Armenians began in the late nineteenth century under Abdul-Hamid II, the last of the Ottoman Sultans actually to rule the empire. The worst massacres during this time occurred from 1894-1896 after a tax protest by Armenians. They are now known as the Hamidian Massacres.
Who are the three Pashas (i.e the leaders of the Committee for Union and Progress)?
Mehmed Talaat, Ahmed Djemal, and Ismail Enver
What happened to the Armenians when they were on the journey into the desert?
On these journeys, Turkish gendarmes and the Special Organization regularly subjected Armenian women to sexual violence. The "Special Organization" was created by the government to carry out the deportations and murders; and Turkish and Kurdish convicts who had been set free from jails brutalized and plundered the deportation caravans winding through the severe terrain. Some women and children were abducted and sold, or children were raised as Turks by Turkish families. Some Armenians were rescued by Bedouins and other Arabs who sympathized with the Armenian situation. Sympathetic Turkish families also risked their own lives to help their Armenian neighbors escape and sometimes adopted children to save them. Within months, the Euphrates Tigris rivers became clotted with the bodies of Armenian women and children, polluting the water supply for those who had not yet perished. Dysentery and other diseases were rampant and those who managed to survive the march found themselves in concentration camps.
Who was Soghoman Tehlirian?
Soghomon Tehlirian was a 24-year-old Armenian survivor of the genocide. He has witnessed his whole family murdered during the Genocide. After the Genocide was over he joined Operation Nemesis, a secret society of Armenian survivors that wanted to take revenge on the leaders of this Genocide. On March 15 1921, Soghomon Telerian shot and killed Talaat Pasha who had escaped to Berlin after the Genocide. He told police: "It is not I who am the murderer. It is he [Talaat]. To support their case, Soghomon Tehlirian's lawyers were able to get support from two prominent Germans, Johannes Lepsius, who had recently published a book about the atrocities perpetrated against the Armenians by the Turks, and General Liman von Sanders, the former leader of the German military mission in the Ottoman Empire. During the trial, five messages with Talaat's signature were entered into evidence including one in which Talaat ordered that Armenian children who were living in orphanages after the murder of their parents be killed "in order to eliminate further danger from antagonistic elements. After one hour of deliberations Soghomon Tehlirian was acquitted for the murder of Talaat Pasha.
Why were these early massacres, nearly 25 years before the Genocide, are important?
Some historians believe represented a foreshadowing of the genocide to come. Also the Leaders of the Committee for Union and Progress looked at it as an example that you could kill Armenians and the world would not really do anything about it.
How were the Armenians treated within the Ottoman Empire
The Armenians were second-class citizens of the Ottoman Empire and while they were granted some freedoms, including the ability to practice Christianity, they were faced with extra taxes and discriminatory laws extending to their participation in the justice system, government, and their civil and property rights (i.e their houses could not overlook a Muslim's, they were not allowed to own weapons, they could not testify against a Muslim in court)
What is the difference between the Young Turks and the Committee for Union and Progress?
The Committee for Union of Progress was one of the small groups within the Young Turks organization. They were right wing, conservative and nationalistic. They wanted to promote Turkish Nationalism.
Why was the Armenian community made a scapegoat after 1915?
The Ottoman Empire entered World War I in 1914, fighting against Russia in campaigns that straddled territory inhabited by Armenians on both sides of the border. The Ottoman Empire was badly defeated by Russia in a campaign in the winter of 1914-15, and the government then made the Armenian community a scapegoat for the military losses that had occurred at the hands of the Russians.
What is the Ottoman Empire?
The Ottoman Empire was a Turkish multinational state that lasted from 1299 to 1923 that incorporated several ethnic groups including the Armenians.
What happened to the Leaders of the Genocide?
The leadership of the Committee of Union and Progress and selected former officials were charged with several charges including subversion of the constitution, wartime profiteering, and the massacres of both Armenians and Greeks by a War Crimes Tribunal in Turkey, put together by the new Turkish government. The Military Tribunal took from 1919 to 1922 to complete. The court reached a verdict which sentenced the organizers of the massacres, Talaat, Enver, Djemal to death but they were not in Turkey to receive this punishment. They left the country, Talaat fled to Germany, Djemal lived in Georgia, but was also killed by Armenians, Enver was killed in Tajikistan.
What did the CUP believe was the only way to save the crumbling Ottoman Empire?
They believed the only way to save the Ottoman Empire was to ethnically cleanse the land that remained, Turkey, of anyone who wasn't Turkish.
Henry Morgenthau
US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the Genocide. After hearing reports of the Genocide he asked for the US President to intervene militarily to stop the Genocide. President Woodrow Wilson did not want to become involved militarily, so Morgenthau used his connection with the New York Times to publish front page News stories about the Armenian Genocide. This prompted wealthy businessmen, some of Morgenthau's friends to start the American Committee for Armenian Relief which later became to Near East Relief Charity. He also published a memoir documenting all of the letters he received about the Genocide, and his experiences dealing with the leaders of the genocide, so that historical evidence could be preserved.
What did the CUP leaders do to Armenian women and children?
Using new technologies, such as the telegraph and the railroads, CUP leaders sent orders to province leaders to gather women and children and either load them onto trains headed for the Syrian Desert or lead them on forced marches into the desert. Embarking with little food and few supplies, women and children had little hope of survival.
Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion, in 301 C.E. This early Christian identity has greatly influenced Armenian culture, setting it apart from most of its neighboring peoples. The majority of Armenians belong to the Eastern or Western dioceses of the Armenian Apostolic Church, an orthodox form of Christianity.
Why is Christianity such an important part of the Armenians identity?
The Armenian Relief Association of Canada (ARAC)
composed largely of Canadian businessmen and clergy worked with the Canadian government to allow the admission of 109 Armenian refugee boys to Canada at a time when Canadian immigration authorities generally rejected Armenian refugees.
