The Armenian Genocide: Murder of a Nation 1

The Armenian Genocide: Murder of a Nation

Aramik Allahverdian

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Introduction The Armenian Genocide, otherwise known as the Armenian Holocaust or the Armenian Massacre, refers to the forced mass evacuation and related deaths of hundreds of thousands Armenians during the government of the Young Turks from 1915 to 1917 in the Ottoman Empire. There is, without any room for doubt, overwhelming and unequivocal evidence of an organized, systematic and state-sponsored attempt to eradicate an ethnic group, and that the official Turkish position of denial is in fact the final step in the same genocide process. Despite this unquestionable historical reality, some main aspects of the episode are still being disputed among the academic community and between parts of the international community , especially within the Turkish sphere of power (Fuller, 1993.) Even if the world view point out that the Armenian genocide did occur, denial from the Turkish government and other social scientist who have extensively examined historical records continue to persist. They maintain that the deaths among the Armenians during that period were not to be blamed entirely on the Turkish guards who escorted them in their relocation. Those deaths may also have resulted from diseases, inter-ethnic strife, and famine prevalent during the First World War. Still, there are more people worldwide who believe that the Armenian genocide took place. One needs only to check on the number of death among Armenians during that period and it would be easy to conclude that there, indeed, was a massacre. Through the years, the Armenian genocides controversy has been second only to the Holocaust (Astourian 1991).

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Objective Historic Position According to the historiographical deduction and the material evidence, the presence of Armenia on the Armenian plateau was a major preventing to the union of all Turkish-speaking peoples in a Turkish state. This imperialist ideology is known as Pan-Turkism, a plan that extends even to Central Asia and in its most ambitious and absurd manifestations, the easternmost reaches of Siberia. The occurrence of the First World War provided the Ottoman Empire of Turkey with an opportunity to fulfill this dream (Jernazian, 1984). However, this can only be realized by destroying all Armenians and any trace of their autochtaneous presence. Unbiased historians also agree that the Ottoman Empire carefully plotted the mass evacuation of Armenians from Western Turkey and Eastern Armenia that eventually led to their slaughter. The Ottoman Empire executed these plans without thinking of its repercussions in the world stage. Early in the First World War, it was apparent that the Young Turk government was not comfortable with the presence of its Armenian citizens. Because of this, it formed a paramilitary organization called the Special Organization units on August 1914. Initially, nobody knew the purpose of these units. As months passed by, it eventually clear that the purpose of these units was to destroy the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. It was said that because of its defeat during the War, Turkish army officials were anxious to find somebody to blame for by turning to the Armenians and charging them as being untrustworthy to the Ottoman government. One day on April 1915 hundreds of Armenian scholars and community leaders were instantaneously detained in the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The massive round-up resulted in the arrest of most Armenian politicians, priests lawyers, doctors, and other Armenian professionals of the Ottoman Empire to make the move official. Notices of deportation were posted in public places. It was also publicly announced in the streets of the Armenian towns and villages of the Armenian plateau.

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Consequently, Armenian citizens women and children included were given only a few days to abandon their homes. To accelerate the move relocation, families were told to take only a minimum of baggage. The Turkish excuse for the Armenia relocation was that it was also for their own safety from the war a reason that was quite thin nobody would dare to believe it now. Another reason given for the location was that the Ottoman Empire needed more people to assist them in fighting the war. Of course, many Armenians believed this line and consequently gave the soldiers all they had to offer. It was this way when the mass deportations began. According to history, the Armenians were organized into convoys, after which they were all made to walk to the Syrian Desert to the south (wikipedia.org). Proponents of the genocide argued that this alone proves that the relocation was a well-organized plan. Historical records also show that the men were taken to remote locations where they were eventually executed. Some victims claimed that their escorts had their eyes taped open, and forced them to stare at the sun until they were blinded. Others told stories about Armenian men who were to line up in front of camps where they were beheaded one by one. Still, more atrocities were recorded, giving credence that the alleged genocide actually took place. Even the women, children and straggling elderly were subjected to die a much slower, although more painful, death. They were dragged from one province to another without being given any food or water. Some survivors recalled that some of these women and children were even to strip off their clothes. Then they were forced to walk barefooted and naked through the desert. To add insult to the injury Girls and women were heartlessly raped, after which their bodies were defaced. There were those who were sold to Turkish families for slavery but the treatment they experienced was no better than the hardships they experienced from authorities. In fact, because of hopelessness and despair, many women courageously committed suicide by throwing themselves into a river.

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According to a survivor named Nvard Mkrtich Mouradian, an Armenian born in 1912 in Bitlis, At the end I want to say that the Turks not only massacred us, but they occupied our land, captured our property from our family, which had one hundred members, only I and my sister have survived (ermini.org). From May 1915 until the spring 1916, almost all Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were wiped out from the Armenian plateau. Accordingly Armenian historical data claims that around 1,500,000 Armenians were murdered (genocide1915.info). They maintained that more than half of the Armenian population was destroyed. The most painful of it all is that they were forcibly driven from their ancestral land, the only place they could veritably call home. Consequently, many Armenians escaped massacres by running away to Europe and America, a phenomenon that was later referred to as the Armenian Diaspora. To this day, in spite of the overwhelming evidence pertaining to this shocking event, the Turkish government is still officially denying that the genocide happened Turkish Position While there is a general agreement among historians that the Armenian genocide did happen, there are also those who want to prove that it did not. Many of these scholars want to establish that the Armenian genocide was just made up by Armenians who wish to justify their intermittent revolt against the Ottoman Empire. However, the International Association of Genocide formally recognized the event and considered it to be undeniable (Ternon, 1981). Some regard accuse Turkish authorities hate speech or historical revisionism because they would not accept that the genocide happened. Unfortunately for Turkey, some its own scholars also support the genocide thesis despite opposition from Turkish nationalists. Their reasons for believing that the genocide

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happened revolve around three points (genocide1915.info). First, they allude to the fact that the members of these special units made to escort the Armenian citizens during the relocation were actually criminals. In other words, those criminals were specifically sent to escort the Armenians. They said that this is enough proof of the government malicious intent as far as the Armenians were concerned. Second, since Armenians who were living outside the war zone were also removed, the thesis of military necessity put forward by the Ottoman government becomes nonsense. Thirdly, it has been argued that had the intent of the Ottoman Empire centered on relocation, authorities should have prepared a relocation area, something that was non-existent when this event took place. This only strengthened the belief that the Turkish government really intended to eliminate the displaced Armenians when the right time comes on the other hand, those who do not believe that the genocide did not happen accused Armenian propagandists to have claimed that the Turks mistreated non-Muslims, Armenians in particular, throughout history in to provide support for their claims of genocide against the Ottoman Empire. Otherwise, it would be difficult for the Armenians to explain how the Turks, who had lived side by side with them in peace for some 600 years, suddenly massacred them all (Armenian-genocide.org). Another reason given for the alleged genocide was that Turks did not really want to co-exist with non-Muslims, which the Armenians were however; Turkish authorities that argued that through the years they have shown great tolerance towards non-Muslims disputed this line of reasoning. In fact, they said, the empire of the sultans became a major place of refuge for those fleeing from religious and political persecution. Indeed, many political refugees in Europe fled for protection to the Ottoman Empire (wikipedia.org). The claims that the Ottomans misruled non-Muslims are in this way disproved by Turkish history. This was even witnessed by major historians and other scholars, some of whom could certainly not be categorized as pro-

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Turkish. In fact, Turkish authorities argued that had the Ottoman State intended to make genocide on Armenian, could not they realize such an act at the places where the Armenians live (genocide1915.info)? More specifically was there a need for relocation if there was really an intention to wipe the Armenians off the face of the Earth. In fact, if there really were an intention to massacre the Armenians, the government would never have shelled out significant amount of money for their security, safety health and food. Conclusion Despite the continuous denial from the Turkish government that the Armenian genocide took place, evidence in history points out that indeed it took place and that many Armenians perished from that massacre. Needless to say, it is also unfair to judge what happened then without enough evidence. This is probably the reason why despite the many studies conducted in the area, the United Nations has yet to hand down its verdict on the case. The only sure thing is that thousands, or even millions, of Armenian died during the relocation, which was caused by the Turkish authorities during that particular period of time. Whether these Armenians were intentionally massacred or died of natural causes has yet to be established. In the meantime, the debate continues and the world watches. In an era where war can be started with a push of a single button, it is important to learn lessons from historical events. The Armenian genocide is only one of the many, although important, lessons authorities and scholars worldwide have to study.

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References Astourian, Stephan H . Why Genocide? The Armenian and Jewish Experiences in Perspective, Slavic Review v50, n4 :Winter, 1991 Fuller, Elizabeth. The thorny path to an Armenian-Turkish rapprochement RFE-RL Research Report v2, n12 :1993 Hartunian, H . Abraham. Neither to Laugh nor to Weep: a Memoir of the Armenian Genocide. Translated by Vartan Hartunian. Boston: Beacon Press 1968 Jernazian, Ephraim K , Alice Haig (Translator . Judgment Unto Truth Witnessing the Armenian Genocide . New Jersey: Rutgers University Transaction Press , 1984 Ternon, Yves . The Armenians: History of a Genocide Translated from the French by Rouben C . Cholakian, Delmar. New York : Caravan Books , 1981