Were The Young Turks Responsible For The Armenian Genocide

Ataturk and Reza Shah had a large influence on the governments of Turkey and Iran by secularizing and westernizing each. This secularization has had a distinct role in shaping the language, education, religion and government of both Turkey and Iran. Their end goals were to create a powerful and prevalent world powers that is distinct. Comparing the two countries, there were many similarities between each reformation, but each is distinct in certain aspects.

The Armenian Massacre happened in 1894-1896 and the Armenian Genocide happened in 1915-1920 which was caused by the Turkish Government. The Turkish Government’s aim was to remove all the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire because they were more educated and wealthier then the Turkish population . The Turkish Government was also worried that the Armenians would become allies with Russia, who were a threat to Turkey . They killed and deported the Armenians to prevent this happening. It has been estimated

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

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,

They leaders of the Young Turks consisted of Mehmet Talaat, Minister of Interior in 1915 and Prime Minister in 1917, Ismail Enver, Minister of War, and Ahmed Jemal, Minister of the Marine and Military Governor of Syria. This group of leaders sent out the commands to commit mass slaughter of Christian Armenians. This killing was done through “Special Organizations” or killing squads. Zia Gokalp was head of propaganda. He was in charge of promoting Pan-Turanism. Pan-Turanism is the creation of a new empire stretching from Anatolia into Central Asia whose population would be only Turkish. The article, "Questions about the Armenian Genocide," states, “The Young Turk conspirators, other leading figures of the wartime Ottoman government, members of the CUP (Committee of Union and Progress) Central Committee, and many provincial administrators responsible for atrocities against the Armenians were indicted for their crimes at the end of the war.” It is clear to see that the Young Turks were in charge of the Armenian Genocide ("Questions about the Armenian

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

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

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

Many contemporaries of that time said that they did not meet a single Armenian who would not know the Turkish language. It just shows how closely the Armenian people were tied to the Ottoman Empire.The Ottoman Empire never renounced the invention of the Great Turan - pan-Turkic state, which was to extend Turkish territories by occupying the Caucasus, North Caucasus, the Crimea, the Volga region, Central Asia up to the Altai and partly Mongolia. The Armenians had always prevented implementation of these plans; in addition, the Armenians had ties with the Russians. Therefore, it was one of the leading aspects to exterminate the Armenians. The plans for the extermination of the Armenian population were developed in October 1911 at a congress of the party "Union and Progress" ( "Ittihad ve Terakki") and took shape in the World War First. In September 1914, at a secret meeting chaired by the Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha was established the leaders of the Young Turks Nazim, Shakir Behaetdin and Sukru. Nazim claimed; “If we remain satisfied with the sort of local massacres which took place in Adana or elsewhere ...if this purge is not general and final, it will inevitably lead to problems. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to eliminate the Armenian people in its entirety, so there is no further Armenian on this earth and the very concept of Armenia is extinguished”.The same attitude had other participants in the

If they weren't sent on death marches the turks would tortured the innocent Armenians in any other way imaginable. According to an article written by CNN it is reported that the victims were killed by “mass burnings. drowning, torture, gas, poison, disease and starvation. Children were reported to have been loaded into boats, taken out to sea and thrown overboard. Rape, too, was frequently reported” (Melvin). But that wasn't the only way there are also pictures of Ottoman soldiers posing with severed heads and according to a website called armenian-genocide.org much of the armenian population was sent to the syrian desert to die of thirst and hunger (Melvin). The young turks wanted any trace of the armenians demolished.

The denial of the Armenian genocide and the use of the term “alleged” are insults to those who have agitated over the years in highlighting the genocide and the Armenian people themselves. The pictorial anger and anguish of this painful traumatic experience had left the survivors of this horrific event with deep scars beyond repairs. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were a dark world for the Armenians who were held helpless and bound at the treacherous hand of the Muslim Turks of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. The Armenian Genocide includes: the context of power of the Ottoman Empire, the phases of destruction and Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge the genocide and provide support to the Armenians.

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.

This means that Ataturk, had pushed aside the traditional organizations, and replaced the modern ones by applying Revolutions. For example, the law of the hats and clothes were announced, the surname law was set (he took the name ‘Ataturk’), the approval of the international calendar/clock measurements were approved, language revolution (new Turkish letters), and improvements in education and so on. By this, Ataturk had moved Turkey much further on, which still has its impacts today.

So when Mustafa Kamal (Ataturk) began to form a Turkish nation state, it was not clear what constituted a Turk but soon, Kurds were considered as Turks and a policy aiming at the detribalization and assimilation of the Kurds was adopted… The Turkish government's pursuit of full assimilation has led to the proscription of publications of any book, newspaper, or other material in the Kurdish language. Moreover, there has also been an instance of arrests of entertainers for singing songs or performing in Kurdish.