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Genocide Dbq

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During World War I, the government of Turkey sought to rid their country of the Armenians. The Turks and other ethnic groups hated the Armenians for their ability to prosper, even as a minority group with limited rights. This hatred led to the desire to cleanse the Ottoman Empire of Armenian influence. The Turkish people say that the Ottoman empire went through a civil war during this time, which explains the deaths of so many Armenians. Although the Turks claim otherwise, the treatment of the Armenian people during World War I qualifies as a genocide through scale, government involvement, and the usage of the genocide process. The extermination of the Armenians was on a large scale and was executed by the government of Turkey, suggesting …show more content…

As provided by the first document, the Armenians were specifically targeted by the Turkish government, meaning that they were singled out as a ethnicity (Document 1). The document provides historical context as to what had happened inside the Ottoman Empire during World War I, and it shows that there was identification of the Armenians as people that should be exterminated. Similarly, the Turkish Minister restated the fact that the government had called for the end of all Armenians (Document 2). The minister’s point of view as a government official shows that the government was involved in the plan and was supportive of it. The photo in document 5 shows the large pile of dead bodies of Armenian people, presumably massacred by the government as shown by the neatness of the stacking (Document 5). Armin T. Wegner, the photographer, took this photo to prove that Armenians were being targeted, and to show what he has been seeing during his time in the Ottoman Empire. Because the Armenian people had been classified as a group that needed to be eradicated, the government had identified them, and completed the first part of the genocide process. The dehumanization of the Armenian people by stripping them of their belongings is reminiscent of the second step in the genocide process, expropriation. Before the war had taken place, there were 2200 …show more content…

Most of the Armenian population was forced into Syria from Armenia and Anatolia, where they would either be sent off to starve, or be massacred later on (Document 1). This document provides context to their concentration by showing that they had been moved to another state in order to bring them closer together. The German soldier and medic, Armin T. Wegner, took a photo of dead Armenians stacked together (Document 5). Wegner’s purpose was to show that the bodies had been stacked together neatly, rather than strewn about as they would have been in a war. There would have been no time to stack the bodies in this manner during a war, and, due to the large number of bodies, it can be concluded that they were concentrated together before being killed. The final step of the genocide process is the extermination of the targeted group in an effective and cost effective manner. The photo taken by Wegner in Document 5 shows the dead bodies of a large group of Armenians. The methodical stacking of the bodies in order to save space suggests that the government was trying to kill the Armenians in the most efficient way possible. In Document 3, the American Ambassador to Turkey reports what he had heard about the massacres against the Armenians. As an American, he has an unbiased point of view and opinion at this point in World War I. Morgenthau discusses the

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