Turkish Armenian Genocide

History is a phenomenon that has the propensity to repeat itself. Genocides have been committed throughout history, even before the term was assembled in 1944 and accepted by the United Nations in 1946 as a crime under international law. According to the United Nations, genocide is defined as “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” A minimum of twenty-seven genocides have been documented across the world. During the 20th century, the Armenian Genocide and the Ukrainian genocide (Holodomor) transpired. Currently, in the 21st century, the world is witnessing another brutal genocide occurring in Myanmar. A kindred pattern of events is perceived throughout the duration of genocides along with

Before the Armenian genocide, the world didn’t really know about genocides and what happens during them. The definition of a genocide is an organized way of killing people, trying to get rid of an entire race, and that’s exactly what the Ottoman Turks started to do to the Armenians.

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 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 events that happened during the Armenian genocide was very disturbing as to why and how it happened. For the Armenians it was mainly the women and kids who were forced to be converted to islam. Another measure of the genocidal process is deleting all traces of the population who have been massacred or driven away by such deportations. Women were raped and sold in slave

The Turkish massacre of the Armenians during World War I is very similar to the Holocaust but on a much

The Armenian genocide is one of the most brutal genocides to occur in modern history and was set against the backdrop of World War I and the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Armenians populated the eastern provinces of the Ottoman domain for centuries, all while being treated with contention by the ruling Muslims due to their adherence to Christianity (Whittaker & Moreno-Riano, 2013). The gradual decline of the Ottoman Empire increased this contention, as the Turkish majority grew anxious over the precarious future of the Muslim dominated empire. When the Ottoman Empire entered World War I, it only exacerbated the fear that Armenians were disloyal, and it became widely believed that they would assist the Russians in their fight against the Turkish. It is possible some Armenians perceived the Entente Powers as a lesser evil than the Turks, but unlikely that it was a

People have studied the Armenian Genocide and have discovered its history and origins. The genocide started with the Ottoman Empire taking control of Armenia in the 16th century. The Ottoman Empire governed using Islamic law, making the Armenians second class citizens. They were also forced to pay more/higher taxes and faced discrimination. Even with these challenges, the Armenians were successful under Ottoman rule. The success of the Armenians also caused resentment and suspicion of where their obedience would lay, either

Even though there are several documents found including plans for the act, military journals, and documents of payments that were made by the government to the local mobs, which all clearly state the government involvement with attacks on Armenians that were either fleeing their own houses in fear of their lives or in the safety of their own homes, Turkish government representatives deny any government involvement. They state that it was done by radical subject Turkish people which were executed once they were found guilty. While there are records of executions of Turkish radicals during the time period, the Turkish government denies any access to those records which in turn damages their credibility. Another counter argument made by the Turkish government is that the Armenians that were slain by military officers or mobs hired by the government were Armenians that sympathized with Russia, and carried on espionage and plans to hinder the Ottoman Empire. While that argument stays true through the beginning of this genocide act, the records show the displacement of nearly a hundred thousand Armenians and the death of eighty thousand more (UTEG). Clearly the numbers just do not add up and even if they did, both of the statements made by Turkish government officials, can not be true at the same time. One statement accepts the involvement of the government, while another strictly states there was no government involvement. This denial of violence and ignorance from Turkish representatives goes on to help prove the existence of the terrible act since the lack of credibility and consistency of official statements is clear as

At the beginning of the twentieth century from 1915 to 1923 conflicts arose between a group called the Young Turks and Armenians in the Ottoman empire. Many Armenians were driven from their homes and forced to march from the land they once called home to the deserts of Syria. Others were killed in massacres that took place across the Ottoman empire and those who remained were forced to convert. During the eight year genocide about one and a half million Armenians perished and another million were deported. Tragedies like these lead many to wonder how humans could commit such awful crimes towards each other. Religious differences, political suspicions, and treating Armenians as social inferiors were issues between Turks and Armenians that led up to, and exploded during the Armenian Genocide.

One of the reasons why the Armenian genocide was forgotten was that Turkey wanted it to be forgotten. Regardless of the vast amount of evidence that points to the fact the there was an Armenian genocide such as, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide has gone on from 1915 to the

These murders included aids of Armenian villages and cities and the ruthless killings included women and children. At the time of April 24, 1915 the Armenian genocide begun. On that day, the Turkish government would arrest and murder hundreds of Armenian intellectuals. After that they would go after random houses and send those people on death marches. These people would be stripped naked and they would be forced to walk in the tremendous heat through the Mesopotamian desert and they would eventually die from a lack of food or water. The people who would stop for a break were immediately shot dead. The Young Turks would then turn their ‘Special Organization’ to organized killing squads. These people were usually ex-convicts and murderers. These people would drown the Armenians, throw them off cliffs, burn them alive, and crucify them (“Armenian Genocide”). Since there was a surge of brand new technology, communication was an easier and more tactical way of organizing these mass murders. There were orders being sent to every police station and it was to be carried out at the same time on the same day. By the time it begun the perpetrators kept in touch by telegraph. They also created something called Istanbul- Baghdad railway and this railway was used to transport tens of thousands of Armenians in the middle of the Syrian desert where they

    This horrific event started in 1915 taking place in the country of  Turkey (Krajeski).The Caucasus region of Eurasia is where most of the Armenians existence made their stay (“Genocide”).Over the years the Ottoman Empire took over and permitted any religion except for their own Muslim worshipings (“Genocide”).Throughout the years the Armenians thrived and had plenty of success under the Ottoman rule that soon the Turkish citizens started to envy the victims (“Genocide”).The Turkish citizens are to blame for this catastrophic event.They seized the Armenians because they believed they were the cause of their collapsing empire (Krajeski). “Armenian civil leaders, intellectuals, doctors, businessmen, and artists were rounded up and killed” (Cohan). “Armenian villages were raided frequently by bands of Turks and Kurds ,other ethnic groups in the region. Sultan Hamid the ruler of the Ottomans ordered a series of massacres from 1894 to 1896 killing between 100000 - 300000” (Friedman 13).Sadly the amount of deaths recorded was over 1.5 million Armenians (Krajeski).

The Armenian Genocide is commonly recognized as the persecution and death of Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1918, during the First World War. The Ottoman Empire, headed by the Committee of Union and Progress, was responsible for the deaths of the Armenian population and their migration to other countries. Many countries have been guilty of atrocities throughout the history. Most were chastised by the world within a short period of time. This is also true of Turkey as the new country after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It was warned and reprehended by the UN, the US Government and 42 American States individually (including California) as well as many other countries of the world within 25 years of that event ().

In some countries, it is highly forbidden to mention the Armenian Genocide, which took place during the First World War with an approximate number of one and a half million Armenians exterminated. Currently around the world, there are still arguments whether genocide took place in the Ottoman Empire, targeting the Armenians. However, Turkey continues to firmly deny the fact that there was genocide, conceding that only deaths occurred on both Turkish and Armenian sides during the World War I and that the Armenians mainly died to the poor condition during the War. Even though Turkey reject that there were no such thing as genocide, many sources point to the sheer scale that genocide occurred, such as the relationship between the Ottoman Turks and the Armenians before the First World War, the death march, and the fact that only one specific race had been purposely destructed. These points give an evident conclusion that the Ottoman Turks had a systematic and organized plan in order to eliminate the Armenians. Thus, genocide was committed against the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.