The Armenian Genocide

Between the years of 1915 and 1918 the Ottoman Empire, under the Young Turks began a deliberate program of removing and exterminating the Armenian population; a population already dismantled through previous massacres. The Armenians were a minority in both population and religion. Because most Armenians were Christians, they were made an easy scapegoat in an empire that was mostly Islamic. With the world’s eyes on the First World War, the Armenian Genocide went mostly unnoticed and there were no punishments such as ones received by Germany after the Holocaust. The United States has deliberately avoided the recognition of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in order to maintain an ally in the Middle East and to avoid American genocidal policies,

The extermination of the Armenians was on a large scale and was executed by the government of Turkey, suggesting

On the positive side, this brought about international attention to the crisis at hand. On the negative side, that attention did not amount to any actual reform in the Ottoman Empire on the behalf of the Armenian people. There is also the matter in which American activists worded the problem that has caused the Armenian people to struggle with self-identity in the United States; I will talk more about this later in this paper. To gather aid for the Armenian cause the ABCFM sat down and devised a plan on how to present the Armenian people in the United States. What came about was that the United States had a duty to intervene in order to save the Christian Armenians because of familiar religious ties. Somehow the Armenians were “unique in the world for their long-standing devotion

The Turks gave Christian Armenians the brand of Infidels. The Turks favored the Turkish peasants so much more than Armenians that Armenians were turned into pariahs or outcasts. According to Rachel Beecroft, “Although Armenians were allowed the freedom to practice their faith, mass persecution of Armenian citizens was a regular occurrence and Armenians were often scapegoated for the Ottoman Empire’s problems.” The Turks continually put on anti-Armenian demonstrations (Beecroft). Armenian Christians were not given as many rights as Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, but they still succeeded in the Ottoman Empire. The Young Turks also put together killing squads called “Special Organizations” These killing squads were put in place to carry out “the liquidation of Christian elements.” Christian Armenian children were also kidnapped and converted to Islam. After the children were converted to Islam, they were given to Turkish families. Muslim families moved into the homes of deported Armenians and seized their property (“Armenian Genocide”

It all started with Alexius Comnenus the Byzantine emperor, sending letters and an embassy to the West requesting military aid to combat the Turkish threat in Asia Minor. Alexius had inherited a weakened empire in 1081 Byzantium was under siege from all sides, primarily by the Seljuk Turks. Alexius tried everything including making peaceful negotiations with the Turks that involved giving up pieces of land in exchange for peace. However, despite his attempts the

Meticulous plans were laid so that the Armenian populace could be exterminated with as little resistance as possible. The first step was to kill or disband all Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman Empires army so that there would be little powerful resistance when the

In a time notorious for religious wars and acts of injustice, some empires chose to keep an open mind and benefited greatly. The Ottoman empire used other empires’ religious intolerance to their advantage. They had all religions, even their own, make a contribution to the empire. Muslims and people of conquered lands were forced to served in the military. On the other hand, Jews and Christians had to heavy taxes. By allowing Jews and Christians a safe place to practice their religion it made the empire desirable. With other empires forcing conversions, expelling, or even murdering paying tax was no problem. In exchange for paying these tax the

The Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire against its minority Armenian population from 1915-1917 left an estimated 1.5 million dead and to date, not one individual has been tried for these egregious crimes. The mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in World War I and Jews by the Nazis in World War II shocked the conscience of the international community and led to the creation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), in order to hold the perpetrators of crimes of this magnitude accountable. In its preamble, the UN charter sets the objective to "establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained". The genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire and Nazis made it clear that an international standard must be set in order to protect the rights of individuals. The UN has attempted to establish international law with the creation of the CPPCG and other resolutions, however, these resolutions are simply words on paper unless they are properly enforced. In this essay I will be examining whether the United Nations have been successful in its enforcement international law, specifically the CPPCG.

The Armenian Genocide also referred as the Armenian Holocaust was a horrific act done by the Turkish Ottoman government to exterminate and kill many Armenians. Millions of Armenians lost their lives due to this event and Turkey refutes that any event ever happened or occurred. The start of the genocide took place in April 24 1915 where the ottoman empire took many Armenian leaders to eventually murder them. The event was carried out during and after World War 1. The genocide was implemented in two phases which where the wholesale killing of the male population, then the death marches of the children and women leading to starvation because their food and water were deprived as well as their dignity since they raped and robbed them. There were

The Armenian Genocide of 1915 was the Ottoman Governments eradication of the Armenians within what is now known as Turkey. Ottoman authorities arrested deported and eventually murdered Armenian subjects, as well as targeting men, women and Christian ethnic groups (Kévorkian, 2011). World War I was a key factor when looking at the Armenian Genocide; in 1914 the Turks entered the war on the same side of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany. Government and military leadership feared the revolt of the Armenians; they

Christianity has become something more than a religion for the Armenian people. It was their soul and mentality. However, the Armenians had especially hard times when their ancestral lands were invaded from the Far East and Central Asian Turkic tribes. When a breakdown of Constantinople began it also affected an allied capital of the Byzantine – the Great Armenia, and so hard times began: Christian churches were turned into mosques, the minarets were set around, and the faces of the saints in the churches painted over. The Ottomans considered Armenians, Greeks and Slavs as an inferior class. Islamic fundamentalism was formed in the second half of the 19th century and flourished during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid. Armenians became especially hateful for the Turks when they hoped to get help from the Christian

The Armenian Genocide is the name given to the events of 1915-1923 in the Ottoman Empire, which was renamed Turkey after its founding father, Mustafa Ataturk. The Muslim majority destroyed the Armenians' homes, churches, and livelihoods in a continuous murderous event that took its course over 8 years. An estimated 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians died in this Genocide, and other ethnicities died as well including Greeks and Azerbaijanis who happened to be living in Armenian neighborhoods. (University of Michigan) The victims were sometimes forced to walk on endless marches that were intended to move the entire population out of the country and east to the mountains. Any Armenians who died on the march were left on the road to rot. The Armenian Genocide was first recognized by the Russian Empire in 1915, who saw what was happening before Europe did. The leaders of the Ottoman Empire, including Ataturk, were creating a modern Turkey for Turks, at the expense of all the minorities of the Ottoman Empire, and without mercy for any who would resist.

The Ottoman’s were a huge threat to Christianity and helped contributed to it’s downfall. With the Ottoman’s spreading their territories around Europe quickly leading to them becoming a major threat. “Their (Ottoman) conquests nurtured the development and diffusion of an imperial ideology which both justified what they had a acquired and proclaimed their aspirations to world dominance.” The conquering of the Turks by the Ottomans didn’t help the anxiety that Christendom rulers had. Rulers were always worried about the Turks because of their

The main goal of these reforms was to move the non-Muslims from an inferior national to a full subject of the Empire. The thought was that if the Sultan gave his minority subjects more rights, per say, than they would not form a separatist movement. Or worse the subjects separatist movement lobby international support; for example, in the Greek national movement in 1821. The Greeks were assisted by France, Romanov Russia, and The United Kingdom. In this way two causes for the Armenian genocide interweave. At the same time as nationalistic centrifugal forces are pulling the Empire apart, Europe is sticking their hands in Ottoman internal affairs. The Tanzimat Reforms were really a failure, and did not promote equal citizenship among citizens. Nor

The Armenian Genocide began in 1915 and ended in 1923 when the Ottoman Empire dismantled and became the Republic of Turkey. The Ottoman Empire consisted of regions in three different continents which caused their empire to be multilingual and multinational. The empire reached from Southeast Europe, parts of Central Europe, Western Asia, the Caucasus, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa. The Turks, who controlled the Ottoman Empire were Islamic and some people within their empire were not, but that was not an overt issue until the Armenians wanted representation within the government.