Between the years of 1915 and 1918 the Ottoman Empire, under the Young Turks began a deliberate program of removing and exterminating the Armenian population; a population already dismantled through previous massacres. The Armenians were a minority in both population and religion. Because most Armenians were Christians, they were made an easy scapegoat in an empire that was mostly Islamic. With the world’s eyes on the First World War, the Armenian Genocide went mostly unnoticed and there were no punishments such as ones received by Germany after the Holocaust. The United States has deliberately avoided the recognition of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in order to maintain an ally in the Middle East and to avoid American genocidal policies, …show more content…
An American missionary S. Ralph Harlow stated, “From 1915-1918 came that series of atrocities such as the world of our day had hardly the emotions and conscience to comprehend even amid the horror of the cruelties of those years. Those of us who were in the land at the time, who saw these things with our own eyes, have never told half the truth of the terror of those dark hours.” American missionaries were in complete and utter shock over the horrendous scenes on display by Turkish authorities. However, as news reports and accounts by missionaries began “trickling” back to American newsstands, the American people, in 1915, raised almost $177,000. In 1916, the people of the United States donated $2,404,000. Until 1918 donations doubled every year, until reaching seven
Till this day, Turkey refuses to call this occurrence a genocide, speaking of the Armenian genocide is an offense punishable by imprisonment. In 2010, Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to deport 170,000 Armenians when a bill was proposed to recognize the Armenian genocide in Turkey.
The year 1918 brought the simultaneous culmination of both World War One and the Armenian Genocide. With Ottoman defeat and the collapse of the CUP dictatorship, the Allied Powers saw an opportunity to execute punishment and assist the rehabilitation of Armenian survivors. Despite the trial and death sentencing of several organizers of the genocide, no stable attempt was made to properly take the Turkish Government to court and press charges against this crime against humanity. Thousands of culprits were left free to remain in office and within a few months the judicial proceedings were adjourned and prisoners of war were free to be sent home. After WWI, finding the path to world peace distracted the Allies. Organizations were formed, treaties
The actions made by the Ottoman Empire during the World War one were a contribution and establishment of a genocide. The Armenian genocide resulted in 1.5 million deaths of Armenians that were caused by starvation, exhaustion, dehydration, and mainly from being slaughtered. " The decision to carry out a genocide against the Armenian people was made by the political party in power in the Ottoman Empire" (Full of Facts: Armenian Genocide). Since the Committee of Union and Progress came to a conclusion to organize this event, it proves that the decrease in the Armenian population was intentional.
The Armenian massacres of the 1890 's are an important marker in the history of humanitarian aid by the United States. Before this point, American humanitarian aid had been up to small committee efforts thrown together for an individual international crisis. During the 1890 's humanitarian reformers became more organized and elected officials began to look at the role the United States federal government could play in international humanitarian aid. (Wilson 27) At this time Protestant missionaries and Armenian nationals joined forces with former abolitionists, woman suffragists, and newspapermen to bring the condition of the Armenians to the attention of the citizens of the United States.
I have selected to look at the Armenian genocide as the central topic for my Senior Project. The Armenian Genocide is the term given to the systematic killings of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire during the first World War. This event is important because it is argued to be the first modem genocide and was one of the events studied in the attempt to define what a genocide is. The Armenian genocide is so important for study because of it's close relation to the creation of the nation of Turkey and the national identity to Armenian diaspora found around the world. The hundred years sense the start of the killings in 1915 have been a rocky road. The Turkish government refuses to recognize the event as a genocide and this has had
The Armenian Genocide, also sometimes called the first genocide, happen in April 1915. The Ottoman government had a plan to decimate the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire. There was approximately 1.5 Christian Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire at that time. The Armenian Genocide physically annihilated approximately 664,000 to 1.2 Christian Armenian from the Spring of 1915 to the Fall of 1916. They went through starvation, illness due to exposure and massacres.
Elie Wiesel is quoted saying “Denial is the final phase of genocide, a second killing.” This can be seen when on April 24th, 1915, a group of Armenians were forcibly removed from their homes, and unknown to them, marched to their death. This would begin the period known to many as the Armenian Genocide. However, many still refuse to acknowledge the killings that took place. The mass genocide of Armenians is still a taboo subject in Turkey, almost 100 years after two million citizens lost their lives.
The war between the Young Turks and the Armenians did not solve any problems, but rather just further deepened tensions between countries. It started off as a war for power because the Armenians demanded equal rights with the Turks in the government of the Ottoman Empire. However, due to the differing religions between the two groups, the Armenians were denied of their request as they were the minority. This lead the Turks to form a committee, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), to reach a compromise with the Armenians so they could all live together in peace. However, out of fear that they would take over, the Young Turks completely disregarded this plan and decided to slaughter them by the thousands because they posed a slight threat. This increased tensions between opposing races and opposing countries since their Allies, such as Germany, would also be expected to take the side of the Turks and deny the brutality of the events that took place.
In 1915, the leaders of the Ottoman government set in motion a scheme to deport and massacre Armenians, with the hopes of obtaining an ethnic cleansing. By the early 1920s, through the intervention of outside nations, the massacres had finally ended, but between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians had already been killed, while many more had been forcibly removed from the country. Most historians today refer to this event as genocide; a premeditated and systematic campaign to exterminate an entire people. However, to this day, the Turkish government fails to acknowledge the atrocities that took place or the scope of these
The Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire against its minority Armenian population from 1915-1917 left an estimated 1.5 million dead and to date, not one individual has been tried for these egregious crimes. The mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in World War I and Jews by the Nazis in World War II shocked the conscience of the international community and led to the creation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), in order to hold the perpetrators of crimes of this magnitude accountable. In its preamble, the UN charter sets the objective to "establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained". The genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire and Nazis made it clear that an international standard must be set in order to protect the rights of individuals. The UN has attempted to establish international law with the creation of the CPPCG and other resolutions, however, these resolutions are simply words on paper unless they are properly enforced. In this essay I will be examining whether the United Nations have been successful in its enforcement international law, specifically the CPPCG.
Since a hundred years ago, the discussion over the barbarous actions of the Ottoman Empire murdering and deporting of its Armenian community has come down to one question. Was the viscous acts of the Ottoman Empire considered Genocide or not? This is the real global issue that has been debated for so long throughout the world. While the vast American-Armenian community truly believes the word Genocide should be openly used to describe the massacre that took place a hundred years ago, the United States has not let the word out of their mouth. Many Armenians wonder why the United States choose not to express the G-Word when they know more than a million Armenians were massacred during the final days of the Ottoman Empire.
There are more than one ways that the holocaust is very similar to the Genocide in Armenia. Like Hitler, The Turkish government had devised and set into motion a plan to exterminate more than one million of turkeys Armenians. Like the holocaust in Germany, the genocide in Armenia had a lot to do with religion and in almost a super similar situation to the holocaust, it all started to go bad when a group called the "young Turks" decided they wanted all the power and wanted any religion but theirs out of turkey. By April of 1915 hundreds were arrested and thousands were taken from their homes and put on death marches without food and water through the desert and just like in the holocaust, people were also tortured and killed in very cruel manors.
The Armenian Genocide is the name given to the events of 1915-1923 in the Ottoman Empire, which was renamed Turkey after its founding father, Mustafa Ataturk. The Muslim majority destroyed the Armenians' homes, churches, and livelihoods in a continuous murderous event that took its course over 8 years. An estimated 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians died in this Genocide, and other ethnicities died as well including Greeks and Azerbaijanis who happened to be living in Armenian neighborhoods. (University of Michigan) The victims were sometimes forced to walk on endless marches that were intended to move the entire population out of the country and east to the mountains. Any Armenians who died on the march were left on the road to rot. The Armenian Genocide was first recognized by the Russian Empire in 1915, who saw what was happening before Europe did. The leaders of the Ottoman Empire, including Ataturk, were creating a modern Turkey for Turks, at the expense of all the minorities of the Ottoman Empire, and without mercy for any who would resist.
What is the Armenian genocide? The Armenian genocide was the Ottoman government's systematic killing of Armenians, which took place during World War I, beginning in 1915. A genocide, which has occurred since ancient times, is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. During World War I, the Turkish nationalist government killed an estimate of 1.1 to 1.8 million Armenians in Eastern Turkey. The Ottoman’s took power in the Armenian genocide through classification, preparation, extermination, and denial.
I turned to twenty-three. Nobody talks about Armenian genocide to me. I didn’t know anything about my ancestral pain.