The mass murder and deportation of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I is known as the Armenian Genocide. The Turkish government refuses to classify it as genocide, causing controversy. The events were masterminded by the Young Turks and resulted in the death of an estimated 500,000 Armenians. The international community condemned the event and staged trials. Today, the Armenian community is pushing for official Turkish recognition of the genocide.
Some people use the term “Armenian genocide” to describe the mass murder of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, along with the deportations that forced hundreds of thousands of Armenian Turks from their homes. Others call this period the “Great Calamity” or the “Armenian Massacre”. The use of the term “Armenian genocide” is not appreciated by the Turkish government, which refuses to classify the events of this period as genocide. This resulted in some controversy, with many nations and the international Armenian community pushing the Turkish government to acknowledge that these events were, in fact, genocide.
The events of the Armenian Genocide were masterminded by the Young Turks, a group of government leaders of the Ottoman Empire who staged a coup to take over the Turkish government and draw the Ottoman Empire into World War I on Germany’s side. Prior to this period, Armenians lived side by side with Muslim neighbors, and many had strong family networks and friendships in Turkey, both with fellow Christian Armenians and others. However, Armenians had a history of second-class citizenship that had been the subject of comment from outsiders, and were sometimes referred to as the “faithful mile” by Muslim Turks, in reference to their loyalty and unwillingness to fight for greater rights.
The events of the Armenian Genocide are generally believed to have begun in 1915, when the Young Turks staged a mass arrest and deportation of Armenian intellectuals and prominent citizens, also conscripting Armenians throughout Turkey into labor battalions, as they were not authorized to serve in the military as combatants. In May 1915, the Young Turks declared that Armenians would be “resettled” outside the Ottoman Empire and mass deportation of Armenians began.
Rather than being a simple deportation, however, the Armenian deportation was designed to kill most of the deportees during the war. Armenians were forced marched and subjected to looting, rape and murder along the way. Numerous witnesses, from international organizations to traveling foreigners, have commented on the situation, with several nations attempting to intercede on behalf of the Armenians, sending food, aid money and other assistance. An estimated 500,000 Armenians died during this period, while those who survived formed communities in a wide variety of places, sometimes as far away as the United States.
During the Armenian Genocide process, most of Turkey’s Armenian population was expelled or killed. People who support classifying these events as genocide point to the fact that the Armenian Genocide was systematically staged and was designed to completely wipe a cultural group off the face of the Earth. Some historians have suggested that Adolf Hitler may have been inspired by the Armenian Genocide, setting up the version of him, which became known as the Holocaust, on a much larger scale in the 1940s.
After World War I, the Turkish government tried and convicted the Young Turks of murder in absentia. The Young Turks were sentenced to death, but as they had already fled Turkey, this sentence was not carried out. The international community also condemned the event and staged its own trials in an effort to bring more people to justice. Today, the Armenian community is pushing for official Turkish recognition of the Armenian Genocide, along with numerous nations including Greece, Italy, the United States, Sweden, Uruguay, Lebanon, and Argentina, among many others.
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