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This remains one of history's more obscure events. I'm not sure why so little is known about it, I do know that our own government has usually failed to recognize it publicly for fear of angering Turkey and our delicate relations with this country.
What exactly was the root cause of this genocide, which I've recently seen (on the History Channel, a dubious source) led to the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians. Was there an independence movement by Armenians? Was it a religious based genocide based on competing religious beliefs? And what were the means of Turkish genocide?
Mass starvation? And industrial scale style of execution? Turkey continues to deny this even occurred.
Genocide is just "ethnic cleansing" writ large. As such, the motivation usually comes down to, "We need their land and assets, because they are blocking our manifest destiny." Writ small, it is the typical traffic tangle (it is always the other guy who is blocking our way)...
That the Armenians were Christians and the Turks were Muslims was just an added incentive. That the rest of the world, and other Christian nations, in particular, turned their heads and looked away had a lot to do with the Armenian Apostolic Church being the wrong kind of Christians, that is monophysite heretics, abjured by both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
Here's a starting point from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Rather than a movement by Armenians, it represented more an ethnic cleansing brought on by the nationalism that arose with the emergence of the Young Turks. The war provided convenient cover.
Genocide is just "ethnic cleansing" writ large. As such, the motivation usually comes down to, "We need their land and assets, because they are blocking our manifest destiny." Writ small, it is the typical traffic tangle (it is always the other guy who is blocking our way)...
That the Armenians were Christians and the Turks were Muslims was just an added incentive. That the rest of the world, and other Christian nations, in particular, turned their heads and looked away had a lot to do with the Armenian Apostolic Church being the wrong kind of Christians, that is monophysite heretics, abjured by both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
Well it happened during WW1 and even before then and it was due to Ottomans loosing wars against the Russians. The Ottomans believed the Armenians collaborated with the Russians. Due to this the Ottomans saw the Armenians as enemies and a great threat, and this treat needs to be taken care of.
If things are not doing well for a nation, the nation can blame the ethnic minorities there as they are an easy target, just like the programs in Russia against the Jews, due to the perception of of the Russians who believed the Jews sided with Russian enemies in Wars, and periods of economic downturn in Russia are the Jews fault.
In WW1 the main European powers had major problems such as loosing millions of fighting men in the war and they attempted to defeat the Ottoman empire, but it was a slow and painful process to defeat them.
They tried to attack across the tallest mountains in Europe in the middle of the Winter, this causes 80% casualties in the Army in the Caucuses. The Turkish Government then blamed the Armenians for their failure, and said they failed because the Armenians were collaborating with the Russians. So the Armenian "threat" had to be neutralized. So they killed over 1,000,000 and moved the rest to Syria, far from Russia
This remains one of history's more obscure events. I'm not sure why so little is known about it, I do know that our own government has usually failed to recognize it publicly for fear of angering Turkey and our delicate relations with this country.
What exactly was the root cause of this genocide, which I've recently seen (on the History Channel, a dubious source) led to the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians. Was there an independence movement by Armenians? Was it a religious based genocide based on competing religious beliefs? And what were the means of Turkish genocide?
Mass starvation? And industrial scale style of execution? Turkey continues to deny this even occurred.
A couple of people mentioned interesting theories but there is something else that might have set off the Turkish nationalists against the Armenians.
That was Nationalism and Independence movements against the Ottoman Empire. The Turks had seen independence movements from the Ottoman Empire in the 1800s like the Greeks in the 1820s and the Bulgarians in the 1870s. These were movements based not only on nationalism but also on religion, the Ottomans had a long history of mistreating their Christian subjects in the Balkans.
Then right before WW1, from autumn 1912 to spring 1913, the Christian Balkan states joined up in the Balkan League to liberate their countrymen from the Ottomans. This was the First Balkan War and a disaster for the Ottomans. Almost all of the Ottoman Empire in Europe, except for a small area around Istanbul (which is part of Turkey to this day) was lost to the League.
So when WW1 came in and the Turks found themselves at war with the Russians, a traditional Christian protector (including the Armenians), it was perhaps not surprising that the Turks were concerned about the loyalty of their Armenian subjects. However, while I understand that the Turks had a right to be concerned, the way they actually treated the Armenians was extreme and cruel beyond anything that was remotely necessary.
Major European powers strategized, at least since the 1870s, the manipulation of ethnic groups like the Ottoman Armenians, radicalization and militarization of nationalistic Armenian groups, some of whom joined forces with the invading Russian army in the hope of creating an ethnically homogenous Armenian homeland. An Armenian leader of that time, Katchaznouni, who became the first Prime Minister of the short lived independent Armenian Democratic Republic stated the following in 1923: “In the fall of 1914 Armenian volunteer units organized themselves and fought against the Turks…We had no doubt that the war would end with the complete victory of the Allies; Turkey would be defeated and dismembered”
Armenian rebellions broke out all over the empire, and Russian arms and even Russian uniforms appeared from hidden caches. Tens of thousands of Armenians formed themselves into guerrilla bands. The largest city of southeastern Anatolia, Van, was captured by the Armenian rebels in April 1915, and many Muslims in the city and surrounding villages were killed. The city was held until it could be turned over to the invading Russian army. Throughout eastern Anatolia, Armenian bands attacked villagers wherever they found them. In turn, Turks and especially Kurdish tribesmen attacked Armenian villages. It was the beginning of a bloody war.
My own relative had left her village for a reason in eastern anatolia and when she returned she found that the whole village had been slaughtered by an Armenian gang.
In the words of U.S. Ambassador Mark Bristol, "While the Dashnaks [Armenian revolutionaries] were in power they did everything in the world to keep the pot boiling by attacking Kurds, Turks and Tartars; [and] by committing outrages against the Moslems …."
In response, the Ottoman Government ordered in 1915 the Armenian population residing in or near the war zone to be relocated to the southern Ottoman provinces away from the supply routes and army transport lines on the way of the advancing Russian army. Some Armenians living away from the front, yet were reported or suspected to be involved in collaboration, were also included in mandatory transfer.
Ottoman Government took a number of measures for safe transfer during the relocation. However, under war-time conditions exacerbated by internal strife, local groups seeking revenge, banditry, famine, epidemics, and a failing state apparatus (including unruly officials who were court-martialed and sentenced to capital punishment by the Ottoman Government in 1916, much before the end of the War) all combined to produce what became a tragedy. Nevertheless, no authentic evidence exists to support the claim that there was a premeditated plan by the Ottoman Government to kill off Armenians. Moreover, the Ottoman socio-cultural fabric did not harbor racist attitudes that would facilitate such a horrific crime. Loss of life, regardless of numbers and regardless of possible guilt on the part of the victims, is tragic and must be remembered. However, it is factually problematic, morally unsound and legally unfounded to call this episode a “genocide.”
Where Ottoman control was strong, Armenians went unharmed. In Istanbul and other major western Anatolian cities, large populations of Armenians remained throughout the war. In these areas Ottoman power was greatest and genocide would have been easiest to carry out. The Armenians of Istanbul lived through World War I, their churches open.
Looks like somebody is relying on Turkish textbooks.
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What was the root cause of the Armenian Genocide?
