100 Years Of Armenian Genocide
By Sazzad Hussain
08 May, 2015
Countercurrents.org
The world marked the one hundredth anniversary of Armenian massacre on 24th April this year. Considered to be one of the worst instances of atrocities against humanity of the twentieth century, the acts were committed by Ottoman Turkey on minority Armenian population of their empire during the waning years of the Sultanate in 1915 which continued for two more years. The genocide took lives of eight lakh Armenians which included women, children and the elderly and displaced one million—thus making Armenians the second largest diaspora in the world after the Jews. For hundred years, Armenian community living in different countries of the world has been fighting hard before the world to recognize that tragedy as genocide and a formal apology from Turkey. Though their success has not been so grand, yet the incident has caught the attention of the world cutting religious and ideological divide. This tragic incident of the human history and its much needed reconciliation bears the ingredients of an ideal set of tools and measures necessary for present day conflict management and peace.
Armenia, the first nation to embrace Christianity in 301AD with the baptism of King Trdat III by St. Gregory, the Illuminator, came under Ottoman occupation in the fifteenth century and their population were grouped together as millet under the leadership of the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople and were given some autonomy. However the Ottoman authorities never gave them equal status and treated them as second class citizens depriving them from all rights. Their atrocities inside Ottoman Empire attracted major European powers like Russia, France and Britain to intervene and resulted in the Russo-Turkish wars of 1877–78. The Congress of Berlin in June 1878 made the Ottomans to negotiate with European powers where Armenians also allowed negotiating for autonomy leading to the creation of an Armenian nationalist movement by some intellectuals. But the clauses of the Berlin Conference was never implemented by the Sultan Abdul Hamid II and his formation of a Kurdish paramilitary force called Hamidiye to take on Armenian dissent was the genesis of the genocide.
The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 brought some hope for the Armenians as they removed the Sultan and formed a constitutional monarchy to modernize Turkey into European standards with inclusive principle. The Young Turks included Armenians and other minorities into their wings. However euphoria proved to be a short-lived one as counter-revolutionary elements emerged in 1909 and with the help of royalists and Islamists started pogroms against Armenians. It was the three Pashas of the Young Turk Movement--Grand Vizier Mehmed Talaat Pasha, the Minister of War, Ismail Enver Pasha and the Minister of the Navy, Ahmed Djemal Pasha who masterminded the Armenian massacre.
The Balkan War of 1912, which saw the defeat of the Ottomans, generated the mass expulsion of Muslims (known as Muhajirs) including Turks, Circassians, and Chechens from the Balkans which had already started during the mid-nineteenth century following Russo-Turkish Wars. As many as 850,000 of these refugees were settled in areas where the Armenians were resident from the period of 1878–1904. The Muhajirs resented the status of their relatively well-off neighbours and they came to play a pivotal role in the killings of the Armenians and the confiscation of their properties during the genocide.
Known as Medz Yeghern (Great Crime) in Armenian, the genocide was carried out during and after World War I and implemented in two phases. It began with the rounding up and arrested and subsequent execution of some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople on 24th April, 1915 followed by the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labour. On the second phase it began with the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian Desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre.
In 1919, following the Armistice, Ottoman Grand Vizier Damat Ferid Pasha officially confessed to massacres against the Armenians in Paris. Abdülmejid II, the last Caliph of the Ottomans, said the Armenian massacre “are the greatest stain that has ever disgraced our nation and race” and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first President and founder of the Republic of Turkey, consistently used the term "fazahat "(shameful act) when referring to that massacres. But modern Turkey vehemently opposes the term genocide to describe the Armenian suffering during its Ottoman era. According to Hrant Dink, the assassinated editor-in-chief of the Istanbul-based Armenian weekly Agos, “Turkey's bureaucratic elite have never really shed themselves of the Ottoman tradition—in the perpetrators, they see their fathers, whose honour they seek to defend. This tradition instils a sense of identity in Turkish nationalists—both from the left and the right, and it is passed on from generation to generation through the school system. This tradition also requires an anti-pole against which it could define itself. Since the times of the Ottoman Empire, religious minorities have been pushed into this role.” Some see the beginning of Pan-Islamism or Jihadi campaign in that genocide. Arnold Toynbee writes that "the Young Turks made Pan-Islamism and Turkish Nationalism work together for their ends, but the development of their policy shows the Islamic element receding and the Nationalist gaining ground". As the world remembered the Armenian massacre on 24th April, Turkey, led by its Islamist President organized a ceremony to mark the Battle of Gallipoli.
Armenians diaspora has been campaigning for international recognition of the 1915 genocide in the last one hundred years. Paraguay became the first country to recognize this in 1965 and presently sixteen nations including Russia, France, EU, the Vatican have recognized the Armenian genocide. The US, Britain and China is yet to recognize it and Israel dropped the Armenian genocide from the list of other such incidents while it hosted the International Conference on Genocide in 1982. India, which has Armenian connection since the reign of Akbar is yet to recognize it. Notably, it is Lebanon, the only Arab and Muslim majority state that has recognized the Armenian genocide in 1997.
Sazzad Hussain is a freelancer based in Assam , e-mail:[email protected]
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