That day, the Turkish government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals. After that, ordinary Armenians were turned out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. Frequently, the marchers were stripped naked and forced to walk under the scorching sun until they dropped dead.
People who stopped to rest were shot. These killing squads were often made up of murderers and other ex-convicts. They drowned people in rivers, threw them off cliffs, crucified them and burned them alive. In short order, the Turkish countryside was littered with Armenian corpses. Muslim families moved into the homes of deported Armenians and seized their property.
Though reports vary, most sources agree that there were about 2 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the massacre. In , when the genocide was over, there were just , Armenians remaining in the Ottoman Empire.
After the Ottomans surrendered in , the leaders of the Young Turks fled to Germany, which promised not to prosecute them for the genocide. However, a group of Armenian nationalists devised a plan, known as Operation Nemesis, to track down and assassinate the leaders of the genocide. Ever since then, the Turkish government has denied that a genocide took place.
The Armenians were an enemy force, they argue, and their slaughter was a necessary war measure. Turkey is an important ally of the United States and other Western nations, and so their governments had been slow to condemn the long-ago killings. In March , a U. Congressional panel voted to recognize the genocide.
On October 29, , the U. This recognition goes beyond simply the importance of historical and conceptual accuracy, but also points to a future of truth-based prevention in which all would-be perpetrators recognize that denial of genocide will not stand as a protective buffer for their atrocities. Taking Stock: Living Land Acknowledgement. As Dr. The majority of the Armenians in Constantinople, the capital city, were spared deportation.
In , however, the Young Turk regime took the war into the Caucasus, where approximately 1,, Armenians lived under Russian dominion. Ottoman forces advancing through East Armenia and Azerbaijan here too engaged in systematic massacres. The expulsions and massacres carried by the Nationalist Turks between and added tens of thousands of more victims. By the entire landmass of Asia Minor and historic West Armenia had been expunged of its Armenian population.
The destruction of the Armenian communities in this part of the world was total. Were there witnesses to the Armenian Genocide? There were many witnesses to the Armenian Genocide. Although the Young Turk government took precautions and imposed restrictions on reporting and photographing, there were lots of foreigners in the Ottoman Empire who witnessed the deportations. Foremost among them were U.
They were first to send news to the outside world about the unfolding genocide. Some of their reports made headline news in the American and Western media. Also reporting on the atrocities committed against the Armenians were many German eyewitnesses.
The Germans were allies of the Turks in W. Numerous German officers held important military assignments in the Ottoman Empire. Some among them condoned the Young Turk policy. Others confidentially reported to their superiors in Germany about the slaughter of the Armenian civilian population.
Many Russians saw for themselves the devastation wreaked upon the Armenian communities when the Russian Army occupied parts of Anatolia. Many Arabs in Syria where most of the deportees were sent saw for themselves the appalling condition to which the Armenian survivors had been reduced. Lastly, many Turkish officials were witnesses as participants in the Armenian Genocide. A number of them gave testimony under oath during the post-war tribunals convened to try the Young Turk conspirators who organized the Armenian Genocide.
What was the response of the international community to the Armenian Genocide? The origin of the term genocide and its codification in international law have their roots in the mass murder of Armenians in — Lawyer Raphael Lemkin , the coiner of the word and later its champion at the United Nations, repeatedly stated that early exposure to newspaper stories about Ottoman crimes against Armenians was key to his beliefs about the need for legal protection of groups a core element in the UN Genocide Convention of Ottoman authorities, supported by auxiliary troops and at times by civilians, perpetrated most of the persecution and mass killing.
The Ottoman government, controlled by the Committee of Union and Progress CUP; also called the Young Turks , aimed to solidify Muslim Turkish dominance in the regions of central and eastern Anatolia by eliminating the sizeable Armenian presence there. Mass atrocities and genocide are often perpetrated within the context of war. The destruction of the Armenians was closely linked to the events of World War I.
Fearing that invading enemy troops would induce Armenians to join them, in spring the Ottoman government began the deportation of the Armenian population from its northeastern border regions. In the months that followed, the Ottomans expanded deportations from almost all provinces regardless of distance from combat zones.
The victims of the Armenian genocide include people killed in local massacres that began in spring ; others who died during deportations, under conditions of starvation, dehydration, exposure, and disease; and Armenians who died in or en route to the desert regions of the southern Empire [today: northern and eastern Syria, northern Saudi Arabia, and Iraq].
In addition, tens of thousands of Armenian children were forcibly removed from their families and converted to Islam. The Armenian genocide cast a long shadow into the Holocaust era. Ambassador Morgenthau's son, Henry Morgenthau Jr. In part due to his memories of the Armenian genocide, Morgenthau Jr.
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