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Over A Century Without Acknowledgement: The Armenian Genocide

Writer's picture: Ryan markelovRyan markelov

Updated: Jun 30, 2024


By Henry Morgenthau - Ambassador Morgenthau's Story Doubleday, Page p314, (http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/comment/morgenthau/images/Morgen50.jpg), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3822803

 

The tragedy of the Armenian Genocide happened over one-hundred years ago, yet it still seems to be an area of contention in geo-political debates. The perpetrator of this event, Turkey, still continues to deny and reject any statements or ideas that would involve them or the Ottoman empire’s direct action in the murdering of a reported 600,000 - 1.5 million Armenians. In fact, on Turkey's official ministry of foreign affairs website they state that “Ottoman officials [were ordered] to protect relocated Armenians,” implying that they were trying to help, rather than the reality of the situation. Officially, 32 countries recognize the genocide; including the United States, Russia, and the European Union. So, what was the reality of the situation? 


Armenians and other ethnic/religious groups have always had a very contentious relationship with the Turkish majority Ottoman Empire, as they had been subjugated to unfair treatment economically, judicially, and politically throughout the empire's history. However, the exploitative and violent nature of this relationship came to a level of bloodshed unprecedented in the empire's history in 1915. After the start of World War l, the Ottoman Empire joined the Germans and was vastly disorganized and faced an onslaught of defeats against the Russian army in eastern regions. This looked horrendous for an empire already in decline, and the government needed someone to blame.


The Armenians have historically lived in north-eastern Anatolia for centuries and the population was split on the border with the Ottoman Empire and Russia. This was used as a justification for the mass murder, deportation, and enslavement of the Armenian population, as the government unofficially blamed them for the defeats at the front lines. It all started on one night in April of 1915, when Ottoman officers rounded up and arrested all Armenian political, financial, and intellectual leaders in the capital of Constantinople and moved them to the inner-country to be executed. Then, like dominos, more and more arrests and executions of Armenians became common. Starting in the north-eastern region, mass deportations were used in order to kill as many people as they could.


These deportations were fundamentally death marches through the Syrian desert. Before each deportation started, all the young men in the group were separated and executed. Once the march began, the people were purposely given no food or water as guards watched and directed them through the desert for weeks on end. Throughout the march, the overwhelming majority of the deportees died a slow death from starvation or thirst on the road. In the early months of the deportations the bodies were left on the sides of roads or dumped in the river by thousands. It even got so bad that there were major health issues to local populations as the corpses rotted. Especially in the Syrian city of Aleppo, decaying bodies would wash up on the banks of the river that became very contagious with typhus. These caused local epidemics and proved to be quite detrimental to city and regional governments.


Once the survivors of the march reached Aleppo, local slave traders came in and bought off the girls and boys from the parents. Parents were left with no other option to provide safety to their children, as they knew there was only death ahead of them. The survivors were placed in so-called "concentration camps" (a guarded makeshift series of tents in the desert), where they would trek across the desert again to the next camp. Each transfer killed more and more people, with the goal of these deportations to completely eradicate the convoy.


The violance doesn't end there, throughout the march women and girls were regularly subjected to rape. There were countless instances of mass rape, and sometimes just blatent torture to women. Torture ranged from beatings to cutting off appendages, and there were times were dead mutilated husbands, sons, and brothers where flaunted in front of their female counterparts.


The question of why Turkey doesn't take responsibility for their actions to acknowledge and apologie for the genocide is obvious. Such horrendous acts are embarrassing for a modern state to have and it damages the national pride of the country. Acknowledging it would destroy the prideful image of the Ottoman empire and the young builders of the later Turkish Republic that they hold so close to them. However this mindset continues to damage the relationship with their neighbors, and repeats the cycle of violence. Turkey is involved with the Azerbaijan government and their conflict with Armenia, which leads to further outbreaks of violence and war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. 


 

Sources Used:


Astourian, Stephan. “The Armenian Genocide: An Interpretation.” The History Teacher, vol. 23, no. 2, 1990, pp. 111–60. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/494919. Accessed 25 June 2024.



Jeremiah Harrelson, Note,Genocide and the Rape of Armenia, 4 U. St. Thomas J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 163 (2010).


Kévorkian, Raymond H. “Earth, Fire, Water: Or How to Make the Armenian Corpses Disappear.” Destruction and Human Remains: Disposal and Concealment in Genocide and Mass Violence, edited by Élisabeth Anstett and Jean-Marc


Dreyfus, Manchester University Press, 2014, pp. 89–116. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1wn0s3n.9. Accessed 26 June 2024.


“The Armenian Allegation of Genocide: The Issue and the Facts.” Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Foreign Affairs, www.mfa.gov.tr/the-armenian-allegation-of-genocide-the-issue-and-the-facts.en.mfa. Accessed 26 June 2024.



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