The Ancient Armenians: For three thousand years, a thriving Armenian community
had existed inside the vast region of the Middle East bordered by the Black,
Mediterranean and Caspian Seas. The area, known today as Anatolia, stands at
the crossroads of three continents; Europe, Asia and Africa. Great powers rose
and fell over the many centuries and the Armenian homeland, when not
independent, was at various times ruled by Persians, Greeks, Romans,
Byzantines, Arabs and Mongols.
Despite the repeated invasions and occupations, Armenian
pride and cultural identity never wavered. The snow-capped peak of Mount Ararat
became the focal point of this proud people and by 600 BC Armenia as a kingdom
sprang into being.
The First Christian Nation
Following the advent of Christianity, Armenia became the
very first nation to accept it as the state religion. A golden era of peace and
prosperity followed which saw the invention of a distinct alphabet, the flourishing
of literature, art, commerce, and a unique style of architecture. By the 10th
century, Armenians had established a new capital at Ani, affectionately called
the ‘city of a thousand and one churches.’
Under Muslim Rule
In the eleventh century, the first Turkish invasion of
the Armenian homeland occurred. Thus began several hundred years of rule by
Muslim Turks. By the sixteenth century, Armenia had been absorbed into the vast
and mighty Ottoman Empire. At its peak, this Turkish empire included much of
Southeast Europe, North Africa, and almost all of the Middle East.
But by the 1800s the once powerful Ottoman Empire was in serious decline. For centuries, it had spurned technological and economic progress, while the nations of Europe had embraced innovation and became industrial giants. Turkish armies had once been virtually invincible. Now, they lost battle after battle to modern European armies.
As the empire gradually disintegrated, formerly subject
peoples including the Greeks, Serbs and Romanians achieved their long-awaited
independence. Only the Armenians and the Arabs of the Middle East remained
stuck in the backward and nearly bankrupt empire, now under the autocratic rule
of Sultan Abdul Hamid.
An Ottoman Civil Rights Movement
Turkey's Armenian Genocide (1915-1918). |
But the Sultan’s days were numbered. In July 1908,
reform-minded Turkish nationalists known as ‘Young Turks’ forced the Sultan to
allow a constitutional government and guarantee basic rights. The Young Turks
were ambitious junior officers in the Turkish Army who hoped to halt their
country’s steady decline.
Armenians in Turkey were delighted with this sudden turn
of events and its prospects for a brighter future. Both Turks and Armenians
held jubilant public rallies attended with banners held high calling for
freedom, equality and justice.
The Rise of Turkish Nationalism
Armenian mother and two children died of starvation. |
But this new empire would have to come at the expense of
the Armenian people, whose traditional historic homeland lay right in the path
of the Young Turks’ plans to expand eastward. And on that land was a large
population of Christian Armenians totalling some two million persons, making up
about 10 percent of the Empire’s overall population.
Along with the Young Turk’s newfound ‘Turanism’ there was
a dramatic rise in Islamic fundamentalist agitation throughout Turkey.
Christian Armenians were once again branded as infidels (non-believers in
Islam). Young Islamic extremists, sometimes leading to violence, staged
anti-Armenian demonstrations. During one such outbreak in 1909, two hundred
villages were plundered and over 30,000 persons massacred in the Cilicia
district on the Mediterranean coast. Throughout Turkey, sporadic local attacks
against Armenians continued unchecked over the next several years.
Fuelling hatred toward Armenians within the Empire were
the significant cultural differences between Armenians and Turks. Though a
majority of the Armenian population in Turkey lived in poverty and despair, a
small minority had excelled as best they could within their second class
status, with many serving as professionals, businessmen, lawyers, doctors,
artists, architects and skilled craftsmen.
Armenians had also, by and large, been well educated
compared to their Turkish counterparts, who were largely illiterate peasant
farmers and small shopkeepers. The leaders of the Ottoman Empire had
traditionally placed little value on education and not a single institute of
higher learning could be found within their old empire. The various autocratic
and despotic rulers throughout the empire’s history had valued loyalty and
blind obedience above all.
The Young Turks decided to glorify the virtues of simple Turkish peasantry at the expense of the Armenians in order to capture peasant loyalty. They exploited the religious, cultural, economic and political differences between Turks and Armenians so that the average Turk came to regard Armenians as strangers among them.
The Outbreak of War
Mass hanging of Armenians by Turkish. |
As a prelude to the coming action, Turks disarmed the
entire Armenian population under the pretext that the people were naturally
sympathetic toward Christian Russia. Every last rifle and pistol was forcibly
seized, with severe penalties for anyone who failed to turn in a weapon. Quite
a few Armenian men actually purchased a weapon from local Turks or Kurds
(nomadic Muslim tribesmen) at very high prices so they would have something to
turn in.
The Genocide Begins
At this time, about forty thousand Armenian men were
serving in the Turkish Army. In the fall and winter of 1914, all of their
weapons were confiscated and they were put into slave labor battalions building
roads or were used as human pack animals. Under the brutal work conditions they
suffered a very high death rate. Those who survived would soon be shot
outright. For the time had come to move against the Armenians.
The decision to annihilate the entire population came
directly from the ruling triumvirate of ultra-nationalist Young Turks. The
actual extermination orders were transmitted in coded telegrams to all
provincial governors throughout Turkey. Armed roundups began on the evening of
April 24, 1915, as 300 Armenian political leaders, educators, writers, clergy
and dignitaries in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) were taken from their
homes, briefly jailed and tortured, then hanged or shot.
Next, there were mass arrests of Armenian men throughout
the country by Turkish soldiers, police agents and bands of Turkish volunteers.
The men were tied together with ropes in small groups then taken to the
outskirts of their town and shot dead or bayoneted by death squads. Local Turks
and Kurds armed with knives and sticks often joined in on the killing.
Then it was the turn of Armenian women, children, and the
elderly. On very short notice, they were ordered to pack a few belongings and
be ready to leave home, under the pretext that they were being relocated to a
non-military zone for their own safety. They were actually being taken on death
marches heading south toward the Syrian Desert.
Muslim Turks who assumed instant ownership of everything
quickly occupied most of the homes and villages left behind by the rousted
Armenians. In many cases, local Turks who took them from their families spared
young Armenian children from deportation. The children were coerced into
denouncing Christianity and becoming Muslims, and were then given new Turkish
names. For Armenian boys the forced conversion meant they each had to endure
painful circumcision as required by Islamic custom.
Turkish gendarmes escorted individual caravans consisting
of thousands of deported Armenians. These guards allowed roving government
units of hardened criminals known as the ‘Special Organization’ to attack the
defenseless people, killing anyone they pleased. They also encouraged Kurdish
bandits to raid the caravans and steal anything they wanted. In addition, an
extraordinary amount of sexual abuse and rape of girls and young women occurred
at the hands of the Special Organization and Kurdish bandits. Most of the
attractive young females were kidnapped for a life of involuntary servitude.
The death marches during the Armenian Genocide, involving
over a million Armenians, covered hundreds of miles and lasted months. Indirect
routes through mountains and wilderness areas were deliberately chosen in order
to prolong the ordeal and to keep the caravans away from Turkish villages.
Food supplies being carried by the people quickly ran out
and they were usually denied further food or water. Anyone stopping to rest or
lagging behind the caravan was mercilessly beaten until they rejoined the
march. If they couldn’t continue they were shot. A common practice was to force
all of the people in the caravan to remove every stitch of clothing and have
them resume the march in the nude under the scorching sun until they dropped
dead by the roadside from exhaustion and dehydration.
An estimated 75 percent of the Armenians on these marches
perished, especially children and the elderly. Those who survived the ordeal
were herded into the desert without a drop of water. Being thrown off cliffs,
burned alive, or drowned in rivers.
Piles of decapitated heads of Armenian Christians. |
But his instructions were generally ignored. Those
involved in the mass murder showed little interest in stopping to dig graves.
The roadside corpses and emaciated deportees were a shocking sight to
foreigners working in Turkey. Eyewitnesses included German government liaisons,
American missionaries, and U.S. diplomats stationed in the country.
Western Response
During the Armenian Genocide, the Christian missionaries
serving in the Empire were often threatened with death and were unable to help
the people. Diplomats from the still neutral United States communicated their
blunt assessments of the ongoing government actions. U.S. ambassador to Turkey,
Henry Morgenthau, reported to Washington: ‘When the Turkish authorities gave
the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to
a whole race”
The Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, Russia)
responded to news of the massacres by issuing a warning to Turkey: ”the Allied
governments announce publicly’that they will hold all the members of the
Ottoman Government, as well as such of their agents as are implicated,
personally responsible for such matters.’
The warning had no effect. Newspapers in the West
including the New York Times published reports of the continuing deportations
with the headlines: Armenians Are Sent to Perish in the Desert ‘ Turks Accused
of Plan to Exterminate Whole Population (August 18, 1915) ‘ Million Armenians
Killed or in Exile ‘ American Committee on Relief Says Victims of Turks Are
Steadily Increasing ‘ Policy of Extermination (December 15, 1915).
Armenian
Self-Defense
Temporary relief for some Armenians came as Russian
troops attacked along the Eastern Front and made their way into central Turkey.
But the troops withdrew in 1917 upon the Russian Revolution. Armenian survivors
withdrew along with them and settled in among fellow Armenians already living
in provinces of the former Russian Empire. There were in total about 500,000
Armenians gathered in this region.
In May 1918, Turkish armies attacked the area to achieve
the goal of expanding Turkey eastward into the Caucasus and also to resume the
annihilation of the Armenians. As many as 100,000 Armenians may have fallen
victim to the advancing Turkish troops.
However, the Armenians managed to acquire weapons and
they fought back, finally repelling the Turkish invasion at the battle of
Sardarabad, thus saving the remaining population from total extermination with
no help from the outside world. Following that victory, Armenian leaders
declared the establishment of the independent Republic of Armenia in a small
portion of their historic homeland in the Caucasus.
War Trials
Mass graves of Armenian Christians of Turkey. |
In the months that followed, repeated requests by
Turkey’s new moderate government and the Allies were made asking Germany to
send the Young Turks back home to stand trial. However all such requests were
turned down. As a result, Armenian activists took matters into their own hands,
located the Young Turks and assassinated them along with two other instigators
of the mass murder.
Meanwhile, representatives from the fledgling Republic of
Armenia attended the Paris Peace Conference in the hope that the victorious
Allies would give them back their historic lands seized by Turkey. The European
Allies responded to their request by asked the United States to assume
guardianship of the new Republic. However, President Woodrow Wilson’s attempt to
make Armenia an official U.S. protectorate was rejected by the U.S. Congress in
May 1920.
But Wilson did not give up on Armenia. As a result of his
efforts, the Treaty of Sevres was signed on August 10, 1920 by the Allied
Powers, the Republic of Armenia, and the new moderate leaders of Turkey. The
treaty recognized an independent Armenian state in an area comprising much of
the former historic homeland.
Justice Denied
However, Turkish nationalism once again reared its head.
The moderate Turkish leaders who signed the treaty were ousted in favor of a
new nationalist leader, Mustafa Kemal, who simply refused to accept the treaty
and even re-occupied the very lands in question then expelled any surviving
Armenians, including thousands of orphans.
No Allied power came to the aid of the Armenian Republic
and it collapsed. Only a tiny portion of the easternmost area of historic
Armenia survived by being becoming part of the Soviet Union.
After the successful obliteration of the people of
historic Armenia during the Armenian Genocide, the Turks demolished any
remnants of Armenian cultural heritage including priceless masterpieces of
ancient architecture, old libraries and archives. The Turks even leveled entire
cities such as the once thriving Kharpert, Van and the ancient capital at Ani,
to remove all traces of the three thousand year old civilization.
Referring to the Armenian Genocide, the young German
politician Adolf Hitler duly noted the half-hearted reaction of the world’s
great powers to the plight of the Armenians. After achieving total power in
Germany, Hitler decided to conquer Poland in 1939 and told his generals:
‘Thus for the
time being I have sent to the East only my ‘Death’s Head Units’ with the orders
to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or
language. Only in such a way will we win the vital space that we need. Who still talks nowadays about the
Armenians?’
(The followings are the photos from Bill Milhomme's blog of 1915 mass deportation caravans or death marches of Armenian Christians in Turkey. More than one million died mainly from starvation during the deportation and the survivors were executed by the Muslim Turks at the end of their months-long marches.)
(The followings are the photos from Bill Milhomme's blog of 1915 mass deportation caravans or death marches of Armenian Christians in Turkey. More than one million died mainly from starvation during the deportation and the survivors were executed by the Muslim Turks at the end of their months-long marches.)