Introduction
The Armenian Genocide, which is otherwise known as Armenian Holocaust was the methodical annihilation of members of the Armenian minority within the borders of their native land which is now the Republic of Turkey. Historically, the Armenians are descendants of the ancient people even before the first century of the current era, and were the first nation to deeply adopt Christian culture, which makes them different from other people in the neighboring regions. Most of the genocide committed against the Armenians was carried out in 1915, and the rounding up and killing about 600,000 to 800,000 people were interpreted to mean as a noticeable effort to eradicate the Armenian culture. There are some people, such as the UK government who believed that a genocide did not occur among the Armenians, while many scholars and historians described the fate of these people as genocide. This paper aims to examine the account of the Armenian genocide according to the interpretations and writings of past historians.
On Gocek’s Denial of Violence, she based her interpretations of the causes and events involving the Armenian genocide. These are the narratives and historical evidences from the start of the systematic modernization of the Ottoman empire in 1789 to 2009. The author used these evidences to make an analysis of how the society viewed the genocide, according to evidences gathered from printed memoirs. Gocek pointed out that she used these accounts, to make a comparative structure from which to examine the “individual recollections and interpretations to capture patterns of meaning which exist within society at large”. She implied that the cause of violence against the Armenians has a deep-rooted foundation that had both triggered and legitimized the violent practices against this group. Further, Gocek argued that the failure of the Turkish state to “confront the past and the violence contained therein, denial remains normalized, reproducing itself throughout Turkish state and society”. This means that the violence, specifically the genocide committed against the Armenians that coincided with the First World War, was a result of a long and continued denial of oppression. For example, there was the legitimization of the order that the non-Muslims in the Ottoman empire were made to conform to the Muslim practice. It was generally assumed that the non-Muslims who were mostly the merchants, artisans and the peasants were content with the taxes imposed upon them and the justice they received under the Ottoman regime.
Gocek’s argument was validated by the historical account of Cohan in her A Brief History of the Armenian Genocide where she claimed that the Armenians have long suffered from injustices, despite having had the freedom to practice their own faith. They were referred to as second class citizens under the rule of the Ottoman government, burdened with excessive taxes and discriminatory laws that restricted the majority of their rights such as their civil and property rights. Sometime in 1908, the Armenians, together with the Arabs, Greeks, Jews and Kurds worked on creating a new state that was geared towards a government that equally represented the people. However, it was not long before an effort to restore Sultan Abdul-Hamid to power resulted in the massacre of Adana where about 30,000 Armenians were killed. It should be noted that the perpetrators of the Adana massacre were not punished, an indication of the denial of the violence against the Armenians. The failure of the Armenians to obtain justice and the continuous denial of the persecution committed against them would later repeat itself in the genocide that was effected in 1915. As Gocek emphasized on the Denial of Violence, the occurrence of violence was motivated with the intent of reproducing the existing power relations and this often stirred in the process of “layering of denial across time”.
The Armenian genocide started in 1915, when the Ottoman government ordered the rounding up of Armenians in April of that year. No argument can deny the fact that the Ottoman government caused the deportation many Armenians towards Syria, where hundreds of thousands died due to hunger, diseases and physical attacks. However, up to this day, the Turkish government and some scholars remain to deny that the massive killing that was initiated in 1915 was a genocide. In a compiled narrative of the survivors of the genocide entitled Witness to the Armenian Genocide, Khanum Palootzian, who was in her early twenties then, recalled how she and her family were uprooted in what she perceived as the Turk’s goal to annihilate them. Her narrative of what happened during 1915, together with other stories from survivors showed just how the Ottoman empire wanted the total eradication of the Armenians.
Our houses, farms, sheep, cows, fuel, horses, donkeys, chickens, our furniture,
Beds, foods, and all belongings were collected and forcefully confiscated. They
didn’t even give us one piastre as payment for all they took. My stepfather,
when they were going to kill him, pleaded that they let him pray before dying.
As he knelt and prayed, they took a sword and cut off his head. They marched
us into the mountains, fields and gorges to die of hunger. All the Armenian men
and boys were killed with axes and swords. And all the women and girls were
killed through thirst, hunger and an even worse fate that I don’t wish to say.
Pregnant women were eviscerated, their stomachs cut open with swords and
their babies ripped out, thrown against the rocks. These I saw with my own
eye.
The story of Palootzian indicated how the Young Turks manifested their hatred towards the Armenians. It showed how collective violence that spanned for many years, when acted upon can have an enormously devastating results. During WWI, the Turks felt marginalized and used this to legitimate their collective hatred against the minorities around them. Moreover, when some Armenians joined the Russian forces, it incited further hatred that prompted the Young Turks to direct their hatred towards all of the Armenians.
Gocek’s argument in her Denial of Violence about the 1915 genocide being an after effect of previous and continued violence against the Armenians was corroborated in Hovannisian’s The Armemian Genocide. Hovannisian cited the Hamidian massacre in 1890 was not different from the 1915 genocide, and he argued that the “absence of adverse consequences for the sultan in the 1890s encouraged the Young Turks to proceed without fear”. According to how Hovannisian narrated in the first chapter of The Armenian Genocide, the Ottomans had the advantage and the upper hand to control the less able Armenians. The historians pointed out how the Turks were not content to treat the Armenians as second class citizens, but went so far as to conceptualize the total eradication of their race. Hovannisian assumed that the genocide was already abstracted for a considerable time taking from the systematic capture of a hundreds of thousands of Armenians with ensured coordination and genocidal operations. Hovannissian argued his point by citing that the rounding of a large number of people in a short span of time was an indication that the “government had to have been ready at the drop of a hat and had to have prepared a list of names in advance”. Accordingly, much as nothing can be done about the massacre, people will remain to be reminded by history that such shameful act was even planned and executed. This is in addition to the fact that the Turkish Republic, for some reason, remained in denial in executing the genocide.
As pointed out by Hovannisian in his Looking Backward, Moving Forward, the genocide committed against the Armenians almost defies understanding, but that we should remain to understand to prevent the repeat of this kind of crime. Accordingly, this denial has several consequences in the current times. For example, the Turkish government has been spending a lot in defending itself from the insistence that it employed genocide to the Armenians. On the other hand, the Armenian government and other organizations have shelled out millions for the recognition of the genocide that was perpetrated towards its people. Currently, the relationship between the Armenian and the Turkish government remain cold, such that their borders remained closed up to this time.
The Ottoman government is largely impacted by the Islamic doctrine. For example, the Sultan, who occupies an important position, thus can exercise supreme political authority, is also regarded as the successor of Mohammed. Therefore, his duty extends beyond the political sphere as he also served as the defender of Islam, and included in his responsibility is the protection of the Islamic doctrine. Dadrian pointed out how the Islamic doctrine serves, not only within a religious context, “but a fixed and infallible doctrine of duties, including regulations of juridical and political nature”. Within this context, the non-Muslims within the jurisdiction of the Ottoman government are required to submit to the authority of the Sultan and are considered as second class citizens within that dominion. The Islamic foundation of the Ottoman Empire, resulted in the development of state policies where the non-Muslims within the territory are required to pay taxes, in exchange for their security, the protection of their properties and the freedom to observe their civil rights and practice their religion. Thus, the non-Muslims are regarded as tolerable infidels who occupy a lesser status than the Moslems. This is further explained by scholars who pointed out that this system is in parallel with the teaching of the Islamic doctrine where it specifically state the non-admission of equality among non-Moslems. Therefore, according to the legal implication of Islam in the Turk government, the Moslems were regarded as superior, in contrast to the Armenians who were considered as subordinate. This premise was substantiated by Dadrian’s argument that the Islamic Sacred Law was “held to be Allah’s law, not to be tampered with by human intelligence trying to probe it, but to be accepted without criticism.” Setting aside racial prejudice, Dadrian’s argument showed how the Islamic doctrine affected the religious, social, political and private lives of the faithful.
Some of the survivors of the Armenian genocide clamored for justice for the inhumane treatment they received from the massacre perpetrators. But as discussed previously, the Turkish government continues to deny that a genocide that coincided with WWI occurred. Hovannisian agreed that the massacre was a genocide, because almost all of the Armenians, regardless of sex, status, age and religious denomination were targeted, all with the apparent purpose of eliminating them, while in the course of robbing all they have. While there are many scholars who argued that the genocide would not have occurred had it not been for the escalation of WWI, still others suggest that the genocide was already planned even before the start of the war. The Young Turks’ objective in joining Germany was motivated by the purpose of resolving internal conflict, and eventually used the war to push through with the genocide.
In Melson Robert’s argument, he suggested that the genocide of the Armenians should not be taken as a response to provocative acts of the victims. Rather, it should be perceived as a “reaction to the continuing disintegration of the empire settled on a narrow nationalism and excluded Armenians from the moral state of the universe”. This analysis lends credibility to the argument that the Armenian genocide was a premeditated plan, that was motivated by the concept of eradicating a group of people. This tragic phenomena are referred to as the ethnic cleansing which encompasses forms of forced deportation and genocide, and is “associated with crimes against property as well as people”. However, in the book entitled The Criminal Law of Genocide, Behrens and Henham showed another side of the argument; that is, the genocide was triggered by the Armenian uprising that started in August 1914 in the Zeytun region. In addition to forming armed units, hundreds of Armenian men joined the Russian armed forces, which puts the Ottoman empire into risky situations. As a means to counter the insurgency, the Ottoman leadership ordered the mass relocation of the Armenians on the basis of the need to protect the state from conspiracies.
The Armenian Genocide was the atrocities perpetrated against the Armenian people sometime in WWI. Genocide is referred as the systematic destruction of a group of people, including their culture and practices with the intent of drastically putting an end to their existence. The killing of millions of Armenians is considered by many scholars as a genocide by the nature of its implementation that required adequate planning and implementation. Accordingly, this is a crime that can only be implemented by a strong authority, thus the killing of the Armenian people was thought of as conceptualized and supported by the Turkish government.
While the Turks vehemently denied the genocide allegation, many scholars suggested that the manner of the implementation constitute genocide which can only be perpetrated by the Turkish government. This crime against humanity was perpetrated under the cover of WWI, thus the massive starvation, expropriation, tortures and massacre were claimed to be a result of the War and not as an express effort of one government to annihilate a group of people. For one, the Turks, by the principle of their Islamic beliefs, have all the reason to hate the Armenians, who generally do not share their religion. By virtue of their Islamic beliefs, the Turks regarded the Armenians as second class citizens who, before the genocide, were subject to pay taxes and toll to the Ottoman government in order to receive protection and the freedom to practice their religion and exercise their civil rights. A century after the perpetration of the atrocities against the Armenians, the Turkish government remains in denial of the accusation, while the Armenians are still seeking an international recognition of the violence committed against their humanity.
The central issue of the Armenian genocide is the idea that people can cause the mass destruction of men, women, and innocent children. While ancient history has been a witness of several instances of a genocidal and extremely brutal killings of many people, these events occurred in the absence or lack of refinement among different societies. The occurrence of the First World War, and in its perceive use in shielding what turned out to be one of the tragic incidents of massacre in world history was not supposed to happen in a civilized society of the 20th century.
The Armenian genocide was reflective of an instance where a more powerful group of people within a society turns against the weaker subgroup who were perceived as threats or as internal enemies. For one, the Armenians were considered as second class citizens and were only protected by the Ottoman government in exchange for paying taxes and tolls. This was one among the less oppressive acts against the Armenians, which, according to many historians, gradually escalated into the most destructive acts. It was concluded that the Armenian genocide occurred as the perpetrators found it in their reasoning to destroy the Armenians. It was also likely that the violence occurred due to ethnic differences and the protests that leads to the breakdown of societal order.
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Bibliography
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