NB: This may not be a word-for-word transcript.
Ugly History: The Armenian Genocide
Ümit Kurt
In the 19th century, Christian Armenians in the Ottoman Empire lived as second-class citizens. They were taxed disproportionately, forbidden from giving testimony in Ottoman courts, and frequently attacked by local Kurdish tribes. In 1878, Armenian activists negotiated a treaty to enact reforms, but Sultan Abdul Hamid II refused to make good on these promises. And when an Armenian resistance movement began to form, the sultan took decisive action. From 1894 to 1896, he led the Hamidian Massacres – a relentless campaign of violence that took the lives of over 150,000 Armenians. These massacres were the culmination of centuries of Armenian oppression. Yet they were only the beginning of an even greater tragedy – a genocide hidden under the guise of World War I that would include the deportation, forced Islamization, and mass murder of nearly 1 million Armenians.
As some of the most ancient inhabitants of this region, the Armenian people were originally a collective of tribes living in the mountains of Western Asia. By the 6th century BCE, these tribes were living in one nation called Armenia, which, over the following 2,000 years, was controlled by various local and invading leaders. But whoever ruled their homeland, a devotion to Christianity became a vital part of their ethnic identity, even as their neighbors increasingly adopted Islam. In what’s currently eastern Turkey, Christian Armenians shared the area with Muslim Kurds for centuries, until Turkic-speaking peoples invaded the region. Four centuries later, Ottoman Turks claimed these communities as part of the vast Ottoman Empire.
While the empire’s systematic preference towards Muslims made life difficult for Armenians, Greeks, and Jews, by the late 19th century, well-educated Armenian elites were able to attain prominent positions in banking, commerce, and government. However, this rise in influence became a source of resentment, and many Muslim Ottomans believed Armenians would eventually betray the empire to form their own independent state. This belief is partly what led Abdul Hamid to begin the Hamidian Massacres. Thankfully, the Ottoman Armenians fighting the sultan’s forces weren’t alone. Armenians from neighboring Russia had recently founded two resistance organizations which offered a haven for refugees and supplied arms to villages under siege. Finally, in April 1909, the sultan was deposed following the Young Turk Revolution. But despite initial promises, this new government also failed to pass meaningful reforms. A second wave of massacres ravaged the Armenian population, and the era of international warfare to come would only make things worse.
During the First Balkan War, thousands of Muslim refugees were sent to the Armenian stronghold of Anatolia, further increasing tensions between Christian and Muslim Ottomans. And in the first winter of World War I, Ottoman general Enver Pasha attempted to flank opposing Russian forces by sending his troops through the frigid Sarıkamış mountains. When their unit froze to death. Enver Pasha blamed the disaster on “Armenian treachery,” and ordered the immediate disarming of all non-Muslims – a decision which moved many Armenians from the front lines of an external war to the trenches of an internal one.
By 1915, the Ottomans were enacting more violence on their own Armenian citizens than any foreign enemy. At this time, Turkish nationalist Talaat Pasha had become the de facto leader of the Ottoman Empire, and he ordered the deportation of all Armenians in eastern Anatolia on the grounds of national security. Talaat’s new legislation allowed Armenian property and businesses to be seized as wartime necessities, and able-bodied Armenian men were routinely killed to lower the likelihood of resistance. Most Armenians were marched to concentration camps in the Syrian desert, where they regularly suffered robbery, abduction, and rape. The few women and children who escaped deportation were forcibly converted to Islam. The ruling Turks saw Muslim identity as the cornerstone of their vision for the empire, so escaped Armenian youths were placed in orphanages to indoctrinate them with Muslim culture and traditions. Children who resisted were subjected to violence and torture.
When the majority of these killings ended in 1916, it was estimated that the population of Ottoman Armenians had dropped from 1.5 million to roughly 500,000. In the decades that followed, many of the remaining Armenians dispersed across the globe. Families who immigrated to eastern Russia may have eventually been incorporated into the modern nation of Armenia, which received its independence in 1991. But to this day the Turkish government denies this genocide occurred. Official government language acknowledges the violence but defines the Ottoman’s actions as “necessary measures,” and Armenian deaths as unfortunate consequences of war. In recent years, some Turkish historians have refuted this stance and begun writing about this period with less fear of retribution. In the pursuit of justice, many Armenians and Armenian-led non-profit organizations work tirelessly to advocate for the recognition of this genocide, and accountability for those responsible.
