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The Armenian Genocide (also known as the Armenian Holocaust or the Armenian Massacre or the Armenian Relocation) is a term which refer to the forced mass evacuation and related deaths of hundreds of thousands or over a million Armenians, during the government of Young Turks from 1915 to 1917. Several facts in connection with the genocide are a matter of ongoing dispute between parts of the international community and Turkey. Although it is generally agreed that events said to comprise the Armenian Genocide did occur, the Turkish government rejects that it was genocide, on the alleged basis that the deaths among the Armenians, were not a result of a state-sponsored plan of mass extermination, but from the result of inter-ethnic strife, disease and famine during the turmoil of World War I.

Despite this thesis, most Armenian, Western, and some Turkish scholars believe that the massacres were a case of what is termed genocide. For example, most Western sources point to the sheer scale of the death toll. The events is also said to be the second-most studied case of genocide, and often draws comparison with the Holocaust. A growing list of countries, as discussed below, have officially recognized and accepted the authenticy of the Armenian Genocide.

Armenians in Anatolia

In 1914, before World War I, there were an estimated two million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the vast majority of whom were of the Armenian Apostolic faith, with a small number of the Armenian Catholic and Protestant faiths. Until the late 19th century, the Armenians were referred to as millet-i sadika (loyal nation) by the Ottomans, as it is said they were living in harmony with other ethnic groups across the Empire without any major conflict with the central authority — this despite religious and ethnic differences and the Christian Armenians being subject to Islamic dhimmi laws, which gave them fewer legal rights than Muslims. While the Armenian population in Eastern Anatolia was large and clustered, there was also a considerable community of Armenians in the West, from which, many, in the capital city of Istanbul, where a substantial community remains to this day. The communities in Eastern Anatolia suffered the heaviest human losses. As a result of the events, thousands of Armenians fled to independent and semi-independent Muslim countries such as Egypt, Lebanon and Iran in what is known as the "Armenian Exodus". There are still large Armenian communities living as minorities in these countries today.

Before the genocide

During the second half of the 19th century, along with the other minority groups of Anatolia such as Greeks and Bulgarians, Armenians started embracing nationalism. Despite pressure on the sultan Abdul Hamid by Western European countries about the Armenian Question, massacres only increased: according to Western accounts, 100,000 to 300,000 Armenians were killed within the Empire between 1894 and 1897.

Before World War I, the Ottoman Empire came under the government of the Young Turks. At first some Armenian political organizations supported the Young Turks, in hopes that there would be a significant change due to a variety of Abdul Hamid's policies towards the general and the Armenian population. In this respect, many Armenians were elected to the Ottoman Parliament, where some remained throughout World War I.

In 1914, the Ottoman government passed a new law to support the war effort that required all enabled adult males up to the age of forty-five to either be recruited in the Ottoman army or to pay special fees in order to be excluded from service which would still be used in the war effort. By this law, most able-bodied men were removed from their homes, leaving only the women, children, and elderly by themselves. Most of the Armenian recruits were later turned into road laborers, and many were executed.

Following the Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I, Imperial Russia invaded Eastern Anatolia, where the Armenian and Muslim communities were interleaved. Taking advantage of common religion and the recent discomfort of the Armenian community in the Ottoman Empire, Russia promoted Armenian nationalism, and there were many Russian-Armenians in the Russian army. At the same time, some Armenians had begun advocating an independent state.

The Armenian Genocide

On April 24 1915, the Young Turk government arrested several hundred - or, according to Turkish records, over two thousand - Armenian intellectuals. It is believed that most of these were soon executed. This was quickly followed by orders for the forced evacuation of hundreds of thousands - possibly over a million - Armenians from across all of Anatolia (except parts of the western coast) to Mesopotamia and what is today Syria. Many went to the Der El Zor Desert. It is also claimed that the government did not provide any facilities to care for the Armenians during their evacuation, nor when they arrived. Some records suggest that the Ottoman troops escorting the Armenians as a matter of course not only allowed others to rob, kill, and rape the Armenians, but often participated in this activity themselves. The forseeable consequence was a significant number of human losses.

After the recruitment of most men and the arrests of certain intellectuals, widespread massacres have been reported taking place throughout the Ottoman Empire. In Van, it is said that the governor Jevdet ordered irregulars to commit crimes and force the Armenians to rebel to justify the encircling of the town by the Ottoman army, the Venezuelan mercenary, Nogales, who served in the Ottoman army, also reports an order by Jevdet to kill every Armenian male in Van. Turkish authors on the other hand, report an Armenian revolution in Van during the same period.

The Ottoman government ordered the evacuation or deportation of many Armenians living in Anatolia to Syria and Mesopotamia. It is believed that over a million were deported, though this figure has not been conclusively established. The word "deportation" could be considered as misleading (and some would prefer the word "relocation", as the former means banishment outside a country's borders; it is said that Japanese-Americans, for example, were not "deported" during World War II). Some historians believe that the evacuations were, in practice, a method of mass execution which led to the deaths of many of the Armenian population by forcing them to march endlessly through desert, without food or water or enough protection from local Kurdish or Turkish bandits, and that the members of the special organization were charged to escort the convoys (which meant their destruction).

The camps

It is believed that twenty-five or twenty-six major "concentration camps" (Deir-Zor, Ras Ul-Ain, Bonzanti, Mamoura, Intili, Islahiye, Radjo, Katma, Karlik, Azaz, Akhterim, Mounboudji, Bab, Tefridje, Lale, Meskene, Sebil, Dipsi, Abouharar, Hamam, Sebka, Marat, Souvar, Hama, Homs and Kahdem) existed, under the command of Şükrü Kaya, one of the right hands of Talat Pasha. The majority of the camps were situated near the Iraqi and Syrian frontiers, and some were only temporary transit camps. Others are said to have been used only as temporary mass burial zones—such as Radjo, Katma, and Azaz—that were closed in Fall 1915. Some authors also maintain that the camps Lale, Tefridje, Dipsi, Del-El, and Ras Ul-Ain were built specifically for those who had a life expectancy of a few days. Like in the cases of the Jewish KAPOs in the concentration camps, the majority of the guards inside the camps were Armenians.

Even though nearly all the camps, including all the major ones, are said to have been open air, according to Ottoman records, some were not. Dr. Ragib and Dr. Vehib, both, the colleagues of Dr. Said (Health inspector) testified during the Military court, that Red Crescent camps were used to kill by morphine injection and from which bodies were thrown into the Black Sea. In other instances, according to witnesses, there were some small-scale killing and burning camps where the Armenian population was told to present itself in a given area, and was subsequently burned en masse. Eitan Belkind, an ethnic Jew, who served in the Ottoman army as an official, and who also was assigned to the headquarter of Jamal Pasha, has witnessed the burning of 5000 Armenians in such a camp. Other records from the military tribunal suggest that gassing installations existed as well. Testimonies during the persecutions put forth that Dr. Saib and Nail, an Ittihadist deputy, were heading two school buildings used as extermination camps for children. Both Saib and Nail were allegedly in charge of providing the list of infants who were to be distributed among the Muslim populace; the rest were to be sent to the mezzanine floor to be killed by a mass gassing installation. The children were sent allegedly there under the pretext of taking baths but were poisoned instead.

While the total number of victims that perished in the camps is hard to establish, it is estimated by some sources at close to a million. This excludes Armenians who may have died in other ways, but may include the special organizations' participation in the events; the majority of the excluded losses are recorded in Bitlis and Sivas.

The special organization (Teshkilati Mahsusa)

While there was an official special organization founded in December 1911 by the Ottoman government, the second organization that participated in what led to the destruction of the Ottoman Armenian community was founded by the lttihad ve Terraki. It technically appeared in July 1914 and was supposed to differ from the one already existing in one important point; mostly according to the military court, it was meant to be a "government in a government" (without needing any orders to act). Later in 1914, the Ottoman government decided to influence the direction the special organization was to take by releasing criminals from central prisons to be the central elements of this newly formed special organization. According to the Mazhar commissions attached to the tribunal as soon as November 1914, 124 criminals were released from Pimian prison. Many other releases followed; in Ankara a few months later, 49 criminals were released from its central prison. Little by little from the end of 1914 to the beginning of 1915, hundreds, then thousands of prisoners were freed to form the members of this organization. Later they were charged to escort the convoys of Armenian deportees. Vehib, commander of the Ottoman third army, called those members of the special organization, the “butchers of the human specy.” This organization was led by the Central Committee Members Doctor Nazim, Behaeddin Sakir, Atif Riza, and former Director of Public Security Aziz Bey. The headquarters of Behaeddin Sakir were in Erzurum, from where he directed the forces of the Eastern vilayets. Aziz, Atif and Nazim Beys operated in Istanbul, and their decisions were approved and implemented by Cevat Bey, the Military Governor of Istanbul.

According to the same commissions and other records, the criminals were chosen by a process of selection. They had to be ruthless butchers to be selected as a member of the special organization. The Mazhar commission, during the military court, has provided some lists of those criminals. In one instance, of 65 criminals released, 50 were in prison for murder. Such a disproportionate ratio between those condemned for murder; and others imprisoned for minor crimes is reported to have been generalized. This selection process of criminals was, according to some researchers in the field of comparative genocide studies, who specialize in the Armenian cases, clearly indicative of the government's intention to commit mass murder of its Armenian population. Also, according to records, physicians participated in the process of selection; health professionals were appointed by the war ministry to determine whether the selected convicts would be fit to apply the degree of savagery of killing that was required.

It is estimated that the members of the special organization have killed hundreds of thousands of Armenians.

Military trials, Constantinople, 1919

Many of those responsible for the genocide were sentenced to death in absentia, after having escaped their trials in 1918. The accused succeeded in destroying the majority of the documents, that could be used as evidence against them, before they escaped. Admiral Calthorpe, the British High Commissionar, report about the destroying of documents: “Just before the Armistice, officials had been going to the archives department at night and making clean sweep of most of the documents.” Aydemir, S.S., on the other hand, writes in his "Makedonyadan Ortaasyaya Enver Pasa.": “Before the flight of the top Ittihadist leaders, Talat Pasa stopped by at the waterfront residence of one of his friends on the shore of Arnavudköy, depositing there suitcase of documents. It is said that the documents were burned in the basement's furnace. Indeed ... the documents and other papers of Ittihad's Central Committee are nowhere to be found.” The martial court established the will of the Ittheadists to eliminate the Armenians physically, via its special organization. The Court Martial, Istanbul, 1919: "The Court Martial taking into consideration the above-named crimes declares, unanimously, the culpability as principle factors of these crimes the fugitives Talat Pasha, former Grand Vizir, Enver Efendi, former War Minister, struck off the register of the Imperial Army, Cemal Efendi, former Navy Minister, struck off too from the Imperial Army, and Dr. Nazim Efendi, former Minister of Education, members of the General Council of the Union & Progress, representing the moral person of that party;... the Court Martial pronounces, in accordance with said stipulations of the Law the death penalty against Talat, Enver, Cemal, and Dr. Nazim."

Turkish governments position

Turkey does not accept that the deaths of 1915 were the result of a state intention to eliminate the Armenian people. Turkey holds the position that the deaths were the result of the turmoils of World War I and that the Ottoman Empire fought against Russian backed Armenian militia. There is also disagreement over the number of casualties, Turkey states that according to demographic studies there were fewer than 1.5 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire, suggesting figures of over a million Armenian deaths to be over inflated. Turkey believes the number of deaths to be ranging from 200,000 to 600,000 which it considers to be lower than the number of Muslims who perished between 1912-22. More recently, lower figures of Armenian casualties were presented by Yusuf Halacoglu, the director of the Turkish history foundation. In his said calculations, he estimates that a total of 56 thousand Armenians perished during the period due to war conditions, and less than 10 thousand were actually killed. In his other research, he maintains that over 500,000 Turks were killed by Armenians. While the Turkish government now publicize those figures of Turks allegedly being killed by Armenians, still the other research of Halacoglu, which claims that lesser than 10 thousand Armenians were killed is still absent from the Turkish foreign affairs publications. Turkey also criticizes similarities with the Holocaust, stating that unlike the Armenians, the Jewish population of Germany and Europe did not agitate for separation. Genocide scholars on the other hand answers to those claims, that Holocaust revisionists also claim that the Jews agitated to destroy Germany by allying with the Soviet Union to bring Bolshevism into Germany, which according to them would mean the annihilation of the German people.

Those who support the genocide theses state that Turkey is denying its past and accuse it of suppressing international attempts to recognize a genocide. To support their positions, they point to the fact that mention of an Armenian genocide almost anywhere in the world was met with rebukes from Turkish Ambassadors, while mention of it in Turkey itself led to the possibility of prosecution.

There was a recent offer by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in March 2005 inviting Turkish, Armenian and International historians to form a Commission to establish the events of 1915. The offer was accepted by Armenia but with a condition of having first good relations with the Turkish state.

Relations between Turkey and Armenia remain frozen. Turkeys land borders with Armenia remain closed in response to Armenias occupation of Azeri land. Armenia has declared repeatedly it is ready for relations and an open border without preconditions but denied to withdraw its own troops from occupied Azerbaijan. Turkey claims that opening its borders would show support for the occupation of Nagorno-Karabagh.

Turkish intellectuals who support the theses of genocide

There are a number of Turkish intellectuals who support theses of genocide, including Ragip Zarakolu and Ali Ertem, as well as Taner Akçam and Halil Berktay, despite being protested strongly by some Turkish nationalists. Orhan Pamuk, a famous Turkish novelist, has also recently told the Swiss press that he believes that one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey.

The reason why some Turkish intellectuals accept theses of genocide seems to lie behind three important factors. First, the fact that the organization members were criminals, and that those criminals were specifically sent to escort the Armenians, for them is enough evidence of a government criminal intention. Second, the fact that not only the Armenians living in the war zone were removed, according to them this plays against the theses of military necessity vehiculed by the Ottoman government. Thirdly, according to them, the thesis of simple relocation does not make sense, because there were no dispositions taken suggesting a “resettlement,” which could mean that the government did not expect that Armenians would survive. Dr. Taner Akçam, a Turkish specialist, writes about this point: “The fact that neither at the start of the deportations, nor en route, and nor at the locations, which were declared to be their initial halting places, were there any single arrangement, required for the organization of a people's migration, is sufficient proof of the existence of this plan of annihilation.”

Those Turkish intellectuals believe that 800,000 or more Armenians lost their lives during the events.

Official recognition

There is a general agreement among Western historians, that the Armenian genocide did happen. The Association of Genocide Scholars (represent the major body of scholars who study genocide in North America and Europe), for instance, do formerly recognize the event, and even consider it as undeniable. On the other hand, the academic recognition is not representative of government and media recognition. Many governments, including the United States, United Kingdom , and ironically Israel do not officially use the word genocide to describe these events, due in part to their strong commercial and political ties to Turkey, though some government officials have used it personally. Many newspapers for a long time would not use the word genocide without disclaimers such as "alleged" and many continue to do so. A number of those policies have now been reversed so that even casting doubt on the term is against editorial policy, as is the case with the New York Times. In recent years the number of countries recognizing the event as genocide officially, despite threats of economic retaliation by Turkey have grown. Two recent examples are France and Switzerland. In Switzerland, Turkish historian Yusuf Halacoglu has faced charges of violation of Swiss laws against holocaust denial as a result of a speech he held in Winterthur in 2004. Turkish entry talks with the European Union were met with a number of calls to consider the event as genocide, though it was eventually not a specific stipulation.

Countries recognising an Armenian genocide, include: Argentina, Armenia, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Lebanon, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, Vatican City and Venezuela.

• European Parliament
• Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly
• United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities
• The majority of US states also recognize the Armenian Genocide, however there is no federal (country-wide) recognition.
• The Canadian House of Commons voted to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide. The federal government, in opposing the motion, did not express a position on whether the genocide took place.
• International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) Report Prepared for TARC
• The Association of Genocide Scholars
• Union of American Hebrew Congregations
• World Council of Churches
• The Turkish Human Right Organization
• The League for Human Rights
• "Parliament of Kurdistan in Exile" (an unnoficial organisation with no parliamentary powers)
• Permanent Peoples' Tribunal

See also: Post Armenian Genocide timeline

Total Armenian casualties, 1914 to 1923

While there is no clear consensus as to how many Armenians lost their lives during what is called the Armenian genocide and what followed, there seem to be a consensus among Western scholars, with the exception of few dissident and Turkish national historians, as to when covering all the period between 1914 to 1923, over a million Armenian might have perished, and the tendency seem recently to be, either presenting 1.2 million as figure or even 1.5 million, while more moderately, "over a million" is presented, as the Turkish historian Fikret Adanir provides as estimation, but excludes what followed 1917.

Armenian Genocide memorial

The idea of the memorial arose in 1965, at the commemorating of the 50th anniversary of the genocide. Two years later the memorial (by architects Kalashian and Mkrtchyan) was completed at the Tsitsernakaberd hill above the Hrazdan gorge in Yerevan. The 44 metre stele symbolizes the national rebirth of Armenians. 12 slabs are positioned in a circle, representing 12 lost provinces in present day Turkey. In the centre of the circle, in depth of 1.5 metres, there is an eternal flame. Along the park at the memorial there is a 100 metre wall with names of towns and villages where massacres are known to have taken place. In 1995 a small circular museum was opened at the other end of the park where one learn about basic information about the events in 1915. Some photos taken by German photographers (Turkish allies during World War I) and some publications about the genocide are also displayed. Near the museum is a spot where foreign statesmen plant trees in memory of the genocide. Each April 24th (Armenian Genocide Commemoration Holiday) hundreds of thousands of people walk to the genocide monument and lay flowers (usually red carnations or tulips) around the eternal flame. Armenians around the world mark the genocide in different ways, and many memorials have been built in Armenian Diaspora communities.

See also

• Post Armenian Genocide timeline
• The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, a novel by Franz Werfel
• Ararat, a film by Atom Egoyan
• Armenian Diaspora
• Assyrian Genocide
• Adana holocaust
• Hamidian massacres
• Aftermath of World War I
• Treaty of Kars
• Treaty of Sevres
• Kemal Ataturk
• Criticism of Atatürk
• Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline
• Foreign relations of Turkey
• Accession of Turkey to the European Union

Resources

Due to the length of this article, External links, Bibliography and other resources are recorded in a separate article.

Resources are listed in Armenian Genocide resources.

• Genocides
• History of Armenia
• History of Turkey
• History of the Middle East
• World War I
• Caucasus