Armenian Genocide: Causes, Atrocities, and Turkish Denial

Introduction

Children dead or dying in the street. Trenches filled with corpses. Thousands of villages destroyed. The countryside cleared of its inhabitants. A people herded into concentration camps. Organized terror. Foreign diplomats looking on and doing nothing. A government at war claiming to protect itself from the enemy within. These are not scenes from Iraq or Darfur, nor are they images of the Jewish Holocaust carried out by the Nazis during the Second World War. Man's inhumanity to man has a long history, and this particular nightmare dates to an earlier "war to end all wars" — the first war to be so called.

In 1914, an Austrian archduke was assassinated at Sarajevo, and Austria, Germany, and their ally, the Ottoman Empire, went to war against Britain, France, and Russia. The Ottoman Empire also quickly began its own war — against the Armenian people. At the start of the First World War, the Ottoman state remained an empire in name only: a backward, multi-ethnic shell that straddled two continents. Founded and controlled by the Turks, the Ottoman realm was mostly Muslim but contained substantial Christian and Jewish minorities. With a population of somewhere between 1.5 million and three million, the Armenians were one of the most significant of these minority groups. [1] But in a country desperately trying to modernize by becoming a nation-state of Turks only, simply being a minority would prove a deadly liability — the Armenian people were marked for annihilation.

The holocaust that began in 1915 was seen by contemporaries as an event without precedent. In the words of the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau:

"I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared with the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915." [2]

Beginning on April 24th of that year, the leaders of the Armenian community — doctors, lawyers, businessmen, intellectuals — were rounded up and killed. The leaders of the Empire's ruling party, the CUP, made use of modern technology — telegraphs and railroads — to order the collection of Armenian men, women, and children and their transportation to the desolate reaches of the Syrian desert. [3] Like the later slaughter of the Jews, this would be an industrial operation. Though made to appear as a reaction to the exigencies of war, the destruction of the Armenian people — again like that of the Jews and Gypsies during the Second World War — was carefully arranged and had been long planned.

In 1915, it was a rebellion that was cited as the rationale for deporting and then killing the Armenian population. In the period 1894 to 1897, it was the activities of Armenian political parties that caused Sultan Abdul Hamid to order murder. [4] And even before that, Armenians had been subject to occasional massacres — attacks that went hand-in-hand with discriminatory laws and a status as second-class citizens. [5] The history of the Armenian people, and in particular their history in the Ottoman Empire, was often filled with dark episodes. But until 1915, the fate of Armenia had never been so bleak. What had happened during the First World War and the years preceding it to transform traditional enmities into a bloodthirstiness so terrible that the world had no name for it yet? What was the origin of this "genocide"?

A people with a long and proud history — "perhaps the last surviving relic of the ancient Anatolian civilizations" [6] — the Armenians had lived in eastern Asia Minor for millennia. They had an independent kingdom that was contemporary with the Greeks, Persians, and other civilizations of Antiquity.

"Armenian tradition expresses identity mainly in terms of conflict, enshrining at its core a struggle, ostensibly extending over millennia, to maintain and protect the nation's distinct character. The struggle is expressed in mythical, religious, and historical terms — very different sets of metaphors and events, through all of which, however, a continuity is perceived." [7]

A core feature of that identity is the Armenians' Christian faith. In the third century, Armenia became the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion. After Constantine moved his capital to Constantinople and made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, the Armenian Church remained close to the tenets of Greek orthodoxy. By the sixth century, however, the Armenians had chosen not to adhere to the Council of Chalcedon, and their church moved off in its own direction — another aspect of Armenian uniqueness. [8]

The Armenian People and the Coming of the Ottomans

"For 1,700 years the Armenian church has remained a central institution in the life of the Armenian nation. The determining role of the church in the cultural, social, national, and political domains clearly indicates its full engagement, as a major institutional power, in the nation-building process. The centrality of the church's role in the life of the nation has made it an important point of reference in crucial moments and critical situations." [9]

In later, more troubled years, the Church would still provide a focus for the hopes and aspirations of the Armenian people. Along with their language — a unique branch of the Indo-European family — and their unique alphabet, religion set the Armenians apart from their neighbors.

During the more than one thousand years that the Eastern Roman Empire existed, Armenia was frequently under the rule of the Byzantine emperors. It was in this period that Armenians first settled in other parts of Asia Minor, and also in Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire, though Roman in origin, became increasingly Greek in culture, language, and outlook, until Byzantium became synonymous with medieval Christian Greek civilization. Armenians who settled in Byzantium's cosmopolitan capital had little to fear from discrimination or persecution. "In a generation or two, the Armenians… and others who migrated to Greek-speaking areas forgot their own languages, intermarried with Greeks, and became indistinguishable from them." [10]

Yet Byzantine power would not remain unchallenged. With the rise of Islam in the seventh century, Arab conquerors swept across Byzantium's eastern provinces. Syria and the lands beyond were lost, and for the first time the Armenians in their homeland found themselves with Muslim neighbors. The eruption of the Islamized Seljuk Turks into Asia Minor in the eleventh century meant not only the loss of further territory for the Eastern Roman Empire, but also new pressures and challenges for the Armenian people. The Seljuks pushed great numbers of Armenians out of their ancient lands in the Caucasus, on the northeastern edge of Asia Minor, south into Cilicia. There, in the Taurus Mountains, they founded a new Armenian kingdom and established an additional center of Armenian population and civilization. [11]

A new group of Muslim Turks, the Ottomans, overran the territories of their brethren, the Seljuks. By the fifteenth century these Ottomans had subjugated almost all of Asia Minor, both Seljuk and Byzantine, and had made territorial inroads into Europe. The Armenians, too, fell under their sway. The patterns of later centuries were beginning to be established. Armenians quickly became important as a mercantile class in the new and rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire.

"The commerce of the Armenian middlemen originated in Persia, found in silk an eminently marketable commodity, and by the early seventeenth century had expanded to the farthest reaches of northern Europe and eastern Asia. In the Ottoman Empire, the Armenians constituted a Christian community to whom the government granted autonomy in religion, economic life, and even internal politics. Their religion also gave them access to the lands of Christian Europe. Thus, they moved easily in both societies." [12]

Armenians had thus established themselves in an important position in the Ottoman Empire's economic and social life even before the Turks swept into Constantinople in 1453. The capture of the Byzantine capital spelled the end of the Eastern Roman Empire. The city became the seat of what was now the Western world's most powerful state. For the next four and a half centuries, Ottoman sultans would hold sway over a multi-ethnic empire that spanned Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa. Muslims, Christians, and Jews would live side by side, but not necessarily as equals.

The Ottoman policy toward other ethnic groups was precisely the opposite of that pursued by the Byzantines. While Muslims were treated as full subjects of the Sultan and were subject to Muslim religious Sharia law, the Turkish conquerors quickly pursued a regime of "divide and conquer" that offered both benefits and challenges to its Christian and Jewish populations. Armenians, like Greeks and others, were organized into millets. Though the term originally referred to a religious community — specifically, the Muslim religious community of the Ottoman Empire as opposed to its Christian or Jewish communities — it was early extended to foreign Christians and eventually to all non-Muslims living within the Sultan's possessions. [13] In the nineteenth century, Mahmud II and Abdulmecid promulgated reforms that gave to "millet" the sense it has always had to nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western scholars, diplomats, and politicians. [14] The millet system furnished:

"A degree of religious, cultural, and ethnic continuity within these communities, while on the other it permitted their incorporation into the Ottoman administrative, economic and political system. An ethnic-religious group preserved its culture and religion while being subject to continuous 'Ottomanization' in other spheres of life." [15]

Non-Muslim minority groups like the Armenians were kept distinct from mainstream society while at the same time performing functions that contributed to the well-being of Ottoman society as a whole. The effect was one in which the Armenians and others became components in a kind of organic machine, each associated with a specialized function within the Empire. To a considerable extent, they controlled their own affairs and maintained their separate customs and legal and religious traditions.

Armenian Life and Politics under Ottoman Rule

The leadership of the community at the grass-roots level — that is, in the villages and in the town quarters (mahalle) — consisted of the representative of the religion, the priest, and the actual administrative head of the community, usually a prominent local layman. The communal leaders at the town level formed the second layer of leadership and enjoyed greater authority and influence, not only because of their connection with the higher Ottoman authorities and their own ecclesiastical heads, but also because of their wealth and their responsibility in collecting taxes and supervising the distribution of state lands to cultivators. They represented the community in its day-to-day dealings with the Ottoman administration and were responsible for order, security, and the collection of taxes in the community. [16]

The community-based organization of the millet meant also that no two millets were organized in exactly the same way. Rules and customs differed from group to group, and the millets existed much as miniature nations within the larger Ottoman polity. After his conquest of Constantinople, Mehmet II appointed a patriarch for the Armenian Church. The existence of the Catholicos in Echmiadzin notwithstanding, the new Patriarch was given authority over Armenians throughout the Ottoman realms — Patriarchate and Sultanate were joined from the beginning. [17]

Members of the Armenian millet spoke a common language, followed a common religion, and considered themselves to belong to a single coherent ethnic group. They were, in effect, members of one great Armenian family, all sharing a common ancestry and history. [18] Wherever they lived in the Empire, they shared common interests and possessed a sense of solidarity that set them apart from members of other millets and from the majority Muslim population. However, not all Armenians were treated equally by the sultans. The Armenian millet displayed a feature that set it apart from other Christian millets: within it there existed a distinct class of secular community leaders — the amira. [19] These amiras played a major role in the economy and government of the Ottoman Empire. Especially significant was the role of sarraf — a banker or moneylender whose primary responsibility involved the Ottoman iltizam system of taxation. [20] Sarrafs were overwhelmingly Armenians of the amira class. [21]

Iltizam was essentially a form of tax farming in which the right to collect taxes from imperial or state-owned lands was sold at auction to the highest bidder. The successful bidder had to have the guarantee of an Armenian sarraf, for the sum that was bid had to be deposited in the state treasury, either immediately as a lump sum or in installments. The sarraf, as banker, would provide the Ottoman officials with the necessary capital and the guarantee for payment. In addition to the interest on the money loaned, the sarraf was entitled to a commission on the sale of commodities given in lieu of cash by taxpaying villagers, thus acting as both banker and merchant. [22]

The system was a recipe for stirring up public animosity against the Armenian population. The vast majority of Turkish peasants would view the Armenians as grasping tyrants, stealing their hard-earned pittances. Armenians were seen as Christian parasites in a Muslim empire — a perception further exacerbated by the fact that most Armenians who lived outside of the Armenian homeland resided within the Muslim territories of the Ottomans.

The Empire was only becoming more Muslim as the nineteenth century wore on. The drive for popular rule that had begun with the French Revolution had spurred nationalist and democratic movements throughout Europe. The first part of the Ottoman Empire to become seized with the new passions had been Greece. After a long and bloody war, during which it won the support of many European intellectuals, Greece officially won its independence in 1832. Nationalist fever was soon infecting all of the Ottoman's European Christian possessions. At the same time, with Europe rapidly industrializing and advancing technologically, the Turks were falling behind. Their lands remained medieval, their economy, military, and political systems archaic. The once mighty Ottoman Empire was now the "sick man of Europe." The sultans attempted to stave off the inevitable by instituting reforms. This comprehensive program, which began following the death of Sultan Mahmud in 1839, was known as the Tanzimat.

"Although difficult to define, the reforms involved greater westernization, from the adoption of European clothing to newspapers, schooling, and, above all, military change…. A group inspired by changes in the justice system, or adalet, called themselves 'New Ottomans' and they promoted the idea of fatherland (vatan), and constitutional freedom (hurriyet)." [23]

From the idea of the fatherland, it was not a great leap to nationalism. As pressures began to mount from within and without the Empire, the push to reform became even greater, although the sultans, in order to achieve that reform, became ever more dependent on the threatening nations of the West for financial backing. [24] Efforts to reform the system only exacerbated already existing tensions. Divisions widened between the sultan, foreigners, and internal minorities like the Armenians. [25] In 1861, riots broke out in the capital over the food supply; shops were shut down and the Sultan attempted to re-impose order by having a proclamation read out in the mosques. As one historian notes, "It is noteworthy to see how the mosque, restricted to the Muslims, remained the center of imperial communication, thereby effectively cutting the minorities off from access to this significant source of information." [26]

The traditional order was collapsing. While attempts were being made to move the state into the modern era, groups such as the Armenians were increasingly being shut out of the public discourse and marginalized more than ever before. As Europe pressed closer, the Armenians were being forced to choose sides — to take an active role in determining the fate of themselves and of the dying Empire. The Russo-Turkish War was a turning point. As the Russians invaded the Caucasus in the east, residents of the Empire took sides according to religious affiliation. Peoples like the Circassians remained loyal to the Turks, while the Armenians rose in rebellion. The fact that Armenians sided with the invading Russians while the Circassians — themselves not necessarily desirous of Turkish rule — sided with the Ottomans revealed the inner incoherence of the Empire and its division along strict religious lines. [27] Furthermore, the years 1877 and 1878 had seen Armenians attacked by Kurdish tribes in reaction to the hostilities with Russia. Though all of the settled peoples of the region had suffered at the hands of the Kurds, the incursion had aggravated Armenian distrust of tribal Muslims and of the Ottoman government that had been unable to protect them. [28]

The Armenians and other non-Muslim minorities naturally moved closer to Europe, as it was with the European peoples that they believed their interests lay. Merchants increased their trade with Europe, enriching the community and enabling their children to study in the West. They learned European languages, studied European texts, and imbibed European ideas, including those of nationalism. [29] Nationalism was one of the most powerful creeds of the nineteenth-century West, and:

"The West fed the fires of nationalism in many ways. Missionary schools, primarily operated by American Protestants, offered a fine education to tens of thousands of Christians, not to Muslims. The schools also became a gathering place of revolutionary nationalists — students who learned nationalist doctrines and a sense of Christian superiority in the schools and translated them into action, first in student groups, then in armed revolt." [30]

This was discrimination working in reverse. Armenians and other Christians — minorities within the Ottoman Empire — were being raised above the level of their fellow citizens through the efforts of foreign religious personnel. Additionally, the economic success afforded by contact with Western nations and businessmen bred a sense of superiority linked to material success. The materialism of the West was making many Armenians look down on their Ottoman masters. [31]

For the first time, Armenians began to organize their own political parties and to agitate for more rights and greater autonomy within the Ottoman Empire. This homegrown attempt at achieving reform was also a reaction to the outcome of the Russo-Turkish War. In the war's aftermath, the European powers had taken it upon themselves to supervise the imposition of much-needed reforms, but the Ottoman Empire delayed, and Armenians quickly realized they would achieve little without organizing themselves. [32] The Ottoman authorities increased their oppression of the Armenian people, imposed press censorship, and prevented the establishment of anything resembling democratic institutions in the Armenian provinces. Strangely, these twin developments of opposition and repression both owed much of their strength to European influence. The same Europeans who had enriched and educated Armenians, opening their eyes to nationalist possibilities, had also brought the railroad and the telegraph to the sultan, extending the reach of his authority into the remotest corners of his realm and enabling him to keep abreast of sudden changes even in frontier areas like the Armenian heartland. [33]

Armenian intellectuals turned their thoughts more and more to revolution — to achieve by force what had been promised to them. They looked to Europe for their models, some arguing for a liberal revolution like the French that had formed the basis for contemporary arrangements in western Europe, while others hoped for a socialist revolution. [34] The Ottoman government became alarmed at the quickening pace of Armenian revolutionary activity.

"While the Armenian revolutionaries were correct in assessing European prejudice in favor of the Christians of the Ottoman Empire, they overestimated European willingness to give practical assistance to their revolution. Throughout the 1890s, Armenian rebellions broke out on a small scale and resulted in the deaths of many Muslims and more Armenians. Europeans never forcibly intervened, but the revolutions did convince Muslims that all they feared was true." [35]

A situation was developing that would have dire consequences. Armenians were isolated from the larger Muslim population and were increasingly viewed by that population as troublesome and dangerous. In addition to their traditional roles as merchants and tax-collectors — as a community perceived as taking advantage of Muslims [36] — they were now also seen as agitators and killers. In the eyes of the Sultan and his minions, the Armenians were not only stirring up trouble from within but allying themselves with the very alien powers that favored the Empire's minorities over its majority. This state of affairs was all the more critical as nationalist feelings were beginning to spread among the Turkish population. [37]