The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian genocide.

The Armenian genocide is perhaps one of the greatest atrocities of the twentieth century that remains unrecognized by its perpetrators. Turkey, the successor state of the ottoman empire (perhaps the most ethnically and religiously diverse empire in the medieval age) staunchly denies its roles in this annihilation and maintains the victims were ‘casualties of the great war.’ Prevailing postulations proffer several reasons (Geographic, political, religious, puritanical, economic) why the young Turks exterminated the Armenians. Nonetheless, this paper shall argue, using Lord Viscount Bryce’s report as primary source document and other secondary sources to ask an extraordinarily important question: why did the young turks inflict ‘the most terrible blow which the Armenian nation has ever been subject to throughout the course of its long history?’(The Bryce report p. 1).

Genocide

April 24 1915 is generally accepted as the day the Armenian genocide began, when approximately two hundred Armenian intellectuals, leaders, government officials etc. were rounded up and deported to Ankara from Constantinople. Historians generally refer to this act as ‘decapitation strike,’ because you deprieve the citizenry of their leaders and thus a chance to resist. At this point in history, there was no word to define the collective or systematic extermination of a targeted group of people for the sole purpose of ending their existence in part or in whole. Mass killings were described as massacres or crimes against humanity. In 1944, Raphael Lemkin in his research attempting to coin a word to describe the carnage of holocaust and greatly influenced by his findings in the Armenia region devised the word ‘genocide.’ Lemkin defined genocide as follows:

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Lemkin 2008, p 79 *

For a genocide to occur, the government inevitably must be involved wholly or partially. This systematic elimination of a targeted group is often planned in a sophisticated manner that requires a combination of factors: 1) ethnic cleansing, racial prejudice and other forms of hatred 2) extreme forms or manifestation of nationalism or patriotism, 3) radical or absurd ideologies of social change or sociological restructuring. 4) the state’s willingness to engage in extreme propagandist movements that motivates large number of people to destroy the targeted group. And 5) War. The victims are systematically dehumanized and reduced to creatures that disgust the populace. For instance, the Tutsis in Rwanda became cockroaches and snakes, the Ukrainians in Holodomor became cannibals, the Jews became vermin or lice, and were depicted as rats in comics, in Cambodia, pol pot described the western-educated intellectuals as microbes and in the ottoman empire, the Christian, Assyrian and Greek minorities were depicted as pests that have taken all the wealth of the ottoman empire and now pose a threat the general populace. This removal of humanity provides the necessary override of moral code of conduct for people to act with impunity-flesh and blood is no longer associated with the victims, but their extermination becomes the ultimate target. In April of 1915, the government opened its prison gates and released the worst criminals onto the streets and also solicited help from the kurds tribesmen and essentially issued death warrants that’ll be a final solution to the ‘Armenian question.’

Religious Reasons?

Like earlier stated, there is no single factor that by itself resulted in the massive deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians. So, investigating the complicity of religion in this massacre becomes imperative. Bryce in his account sees it as a purely political purgery, void of reliogois sentiment. He states:

There was no Moslem passion against the Armenian Christians. All was done by the will of the Government, and done not from any religious fanaticism, but simply be cause they wished, for reasons purely political, to get rid of a non-Moslem element which impaired the homogeneity

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