One and a Half Million (1,500,000) Armenian people were killed
in the 1915 Genocide.
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The Genocide of the Armenians by the Turkish government during World War I represents a major tragedy of the modern age. In this first Genocide of the 20th century, almost an entire nation was destroyed. The Armenian people were effectively eliminated from the homeland they occupied for nearly three thousand years. The annihilation was premeditated and planned to be carried out under the cover of war. The evil perpetrators of the Genocide included Sultan Abdul-Hamid II, and the Young Turks; Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Djemal Pasha.
THE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Between 1915 and 1918, the Ottoman Empire, ruled by Muslim Turks, carried
out a policy to eliminate its Christian Armenian minority. This Genocide
was preceded by a series of massacres in 1894-96 and in 1909, and was
followed by another series of massacres beginning in 1920. By 1922,
Armenians had been eradicated from their historic homeland. Like all
empires, the Ottoman Empire was a multinational state.
At one time it stretched from the gates of Vienna in the north to Mecca in the south. From the sixteenth century to its collapse following World War I, the Ottoman Empire included areas of historic Armenia. The rulers of the empire governed over a heterogeneous society and maintained institutions that favored the Muslims, particularly those of Turkish background, and subordinated Christians and Jews as second-class citizens subject to a range of discriminatory laws and regulations imposed both by the state and its official religion, Islam. In 1908, a group of reformists known as the Young Turks overthrew the declining Ottoman government. Formally organized as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the Young Turks decided to Turkify the multiethnic Ottoman society in order to preserve the Ottoman State from further disintegration and to obstruct the national aspirations of the various minorities. Resistance to this measure convinced them that the Christians, and especially the Armenians, could not be assimilated. When World War I broke out in 1914, the Young Turks saw it as an opportunity to rid the country of its Armenian population.
THE PERPETRATORS
From 1894 to 1896, Sultan ABDUL-HAMID II known in history as the "Red
Sultan" carried out a series of massacres of the Armenian population of
the Ottoman Empire. The worst of the massacres occurred in 1895, resulting
in the death of thousands of civilians (estimates run from 100,000 to
300,000), and leaving tens of thousands destitute. Most of those killed
were men. In many towns, the central marketplace and other Armenian-owned
businesses were destroyed, usually by conflagration. The killings were
done during the day and were witnessed by the general public. This kind of
organized and systematic brutalization of the Armenian population pointed
to the coordinating hand of the central authorities.
The massacres were meant to undermine the growth of Armenian nationalism by frightening the Armenians with the terrible consequence of dissent. The furor of the state was directed at the behavior and the aspirations of the Armenians. The sultan was alarmed by the increasing activity of Armenian political groups and wanted to curb their growth before they gained any more influence by spreading ideas about civil rights and autonomy. It was his state policy to solve the Armenian problem by murdering the entire race.
ENVER PASHA, Minister of War, who at 26, was a leader in the revolution which deposed Abdul Hamid and established the new regime of the "Young Turks". The Young Turks ruled the Turkish Empire for their own selfish purposes, and developed a government which was much more wicked and murderous than that of Abdul Hamid.
TALAAT PASHA, Ex-Grand Vizier of Turkey: In 1914, Talaat was Minister of the Interior, and was the most influential leader in the Committee of Union and Progress, the secret organization which controlled the Turkish Empire.
DJEMAL PASHA, Minister of Marine: In 1914 Djemal headed the Police Department. It was his duty to run down citizens who were opposing the political gang then controlling Turkey.
THE GENOCIDE- 1915
The measures implemented in 1915, by the Young Turks, affected the entire
Armenian population, men, women, and children. On the night of April
23/24, 1915, scores of Armenian political, religious, educational, and
intellectual leaders in Constantinople, many of them friends and
acquaintances of the Young Turk rulers, were arrested, deported to
Anatolia, and put to death. Then in May, Minister of Internal Affairs,
Talaat Pasha, claiming that the Armenians were untrustworthy, ordered
their deportation to relocation centers in the deserts of Syria and
Mesopotamia. Armenians serving in the Ottoman armies, who had already been
segregated into unarmed labor battalions, were taken out in batches and
murdered. Of the remaining population, the adult and teenage males were
swiftly separated from the deportation caravans and killed outright under
the direction of Young Turk officials and agents. The greatest torment was
reserved for the women and children, who were driven for weeks over
mountains and deserts, often dehumanized by being stripped naked and
repeatedly preyed upon, raped, tortured and abused. Many took their own
and their children’s lives by flinging themselves from cliffs and into
rivers rather than prolonging their humiliation and suffering. In this
manner, an entire nation melted away, and the Armenian people were
effectively eliminated from their homeland of nearly three Thousand years.
Countless survivors and refugees scattered throughout the Arab provinces
and Transcaucasia were to die of starvation, epidemic, and exposure. Even
the memory of the Armenian nation was intended for obliteration; churches,
and monuments were desecrated, and small children snatched from their
parents, were renamed and farmed out to be raised by Turks. Many girls and
younger women were seized from their families and taken as slave-brides.
The Case of the Armenian Genocide & The Armenian Genocide in Perspective - by Richard G. Hovannisian
