Does Anyone Remember the Destruction of Armenians?

You have a few days or perhaps just a few hours to leave your home, land, and workplace. You must walk hundreds of kilometers on foot without water, food, or adequate clothing. It doesn't matter if you are a child, woman, elderly, or sick. If you are lucky enough to survive hunger, thirst, illness, rape, and various attacks, you will reach your new 'residence' in the desert, a place where there is neither medicine nor food. Gradual death is your host. You will never have the opportunity to return to your home and land because they are no longer yours; they have been confiscated and given to others. Such 'forced migration' led to the destruction of many Armenians under Ottoman rule in 1915. Armenians symbolically mark April 24 as the beginning of the 'genocide' of 1915, the day when more than 200 Armenian elites were arrested in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) and subsequently killed. The arrest of Armenian leaders and figures in other provinces of the empire began on April 19. Between May and August 1915, Armenians in the eastern Anatolian provinces were forced into migration, and ultimately many of them were massacred. Two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire before 1915, with over seventy percent of them disappearing and their properties confiscated. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, repeatedly referred to the massacre of Armenians as a 'shameful act.' He also called for accountability from the leaders of the 'Committee of Union and Progress,' the ruling party during World War I in the Ottoman Empire, who 'ruthlessly drove millions of Christians from their homes and killed them.' This 'shameful act' is recognized as the first genocide of the twentieth century by over twenty countries, 43 U.S. states, the Vatican, and international organizations including the European Parliament, the Association of Researchers on Genocide, and the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Genocide and Protection of Minorities. When the Armenian massacre occurred, the term genocide had not yet been invented, but the events of 1915 inspired Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin to introduce this term into international charters decades later. Barack Obama, when he was a senator, explicitly referred to the Armenian massacre as genocide. However, Turkey claims that genocide did not occur and attributes Armenian casualties to disease, wartime conditions, and the arbitrary actions of some individuals and groups, rather than a deliberate plan by the Ottoman leaders. In recent years, a group of Turkish intellectuals, including Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize-winning author, have referred to the Armenian massacre as genocide, a term that remains taboo in Turkey. Ahmet Davutoğlu, Turkey's Prime Minister, called forced migration 'inhumane' and 'a mistake.' Recently, one of his advisors used the term 'genocide' regarding the Armenian massacre, which caused controversy, and a month after these remarks, the Armenian advisor to the Prime Minister was retired. The Armenian massacre, which the New York Times referred to in 1895 as the 'Armenian Holocaust,' began decades before 1915 in the Ottoman Empire and peaked in that year. Being Armenian became a 'crime.' What similarity exists between a conservative priest and a secular leftist parliament member who were both arrested and killed at the same time in the Ottoman Empire? 'Their Armenian identity.' This is the response of Ugur Ungor, a Dutch researcher of Turkish descent who teaches at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Talat Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of the Interior, even ordered that the fate of converted Armenians should not differ from that of other Armenians. Ungor, who has studied the Ottoman archives and written two books about the events of 1915, states that 'the genocide of Armenians occurred in several stages and was very rapid and systematic.' The first stage began in early winter 1914, when all Armenians were expelled from Ottoman government offices (bureaucracy), from teachers to firefighters. In the next stage, on April 24, 1915, Armenian elites, from merchants to intellectuals and religious and political figures, were arrested and killed. This is the essence of genocide, targeting individuals solely because of their ethnicity—regardless of their ideas and activities. The third stage was Talat Pasha's order for the forced migration of civilians to the desert, which itself constitutes genocide. The confiscation of Armenian properties, separating men from women and children from women, and placing them in Muslim families to erase their cultural ties, creating artificial famine in Armenian residences in 'Deir ez-Zor' while non-Armenians had access to bread, are subsequent stages of this genocide. What this researcher explains can be seen in the photographs of Armin Wegner, a German soldier and photographer who made the world aware of the suffering and death of Armenians. Children who died of hunger on the roads and parents digging graves are among the photographs of this eyewitness. Despite the orders of Ottoman and German officials prohibiting photography of Armenians, he took hundreds of photos of them and sent them abroad. Two decades later, he challenged Hitler's Nazi repression policy against Jews by writing a letter. The Ottoman archives also 'speak of genocide.' 'The truth must be found in the archives. ... Our documents are here; you—Armenians—bring your documents.' These words were spoken by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the President of Turkey, in March this year, a day after more than 40 members of the U.S. House of Representatives presented a proposal to recognize the Armenian genocide to Congress. The answer to Erdoğan's question was provided not by Armenians but by Taner Akçam, a Turkish-speaking sociologist and historian at the University of Minnesota, about eight years ago in his famous book 'A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility.' He believes that even from what remains in the Ottoman Empire archives and in documents published to confirm the prevailing theory that genocide did not occur, we can conclude that the central committee of the ruling party, the 'Committee of Union and Progress,' and Talat Pasha, the Minister of the Interior, intended to destroy the Armenians. One of these telegrams is Talat Pasha's message to the governor of Diyarbakır on July 12, 1915: 'Since the implementation of the political and security measures taken regarding Armenians is absolutely prohibited for other Christian groups, such an event must be prevented as soon as possible—which could negatively affect public opinion and put the lives of Christians in extreme danger.' Therefore, the policies deliberately applied against Armenians clearly excluded other Christian groups. This university professor states that the German archives, which were allies of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, are among the most important documents and evidence showing that Ottoman officials intended genocide. German officers were not only aware of the events and remained silent, but they even signed orders for some of the forced migrations. The U.S. archives, which remained neutral until 1917 and whose diplomats could travel in the empire, are also important. He adds that the memoirs of survivors of the massacres, reports from foreign witnesses, reports from parliamentary commissions, and the memoirs of leaders of the 'Committee of Union and Progress' leave no doubt that this operation could not have happened without planning at the political center of the empire. Wolfgang Gust, a historian and former editor of Der Spiegel, has published a 700-page book titled 'The Armenian Genocide, Evidence from the Foreign Ministry Archive: 1915-1916,' documenting his two-decade effort to collect and analyze the German archives during World War I. He writes that these documents and evidence, which include telegrams and notes from German officials and diplomats, show that German officials were aware of the 'Armenian genocide' and even issued orders for forced migrations in some cases. One of the hundreds of documents published in this book is a note from August 15, 1915, by Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, commander of the Ottoman-Turkish fleet: 'Turkey is acting with great care and secrecy regarding Armenians. Three-quarters of them have perished.' Four days later, he adds: 'The day they finish off the last Armenian will be the day of Turkey's salvation.' This book shows that the efforts of Paul von Wolff Metternich, the German ambassador, to urge his country, the Ottoman Empire's greatest ally, to save the lives of Armenians were in vain. In one of his notes, the German ambassador writes that the head of the Ottoman capital police informed him of a multi-stage plan to kill thousands of remaining Armenians in Constantinople. 'We had warned the Armenians about what would happen to them if they joined the enemies... My warning had no effect on the Armenians, and they tried to revolt and helped the Russians.' These words were spoken by Enver Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of War, to Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador, who worked tirelessly to save Armenian lives and assist them. When Morgenthau asks why only the criminals are not punished, he is told: this statement is correct in peacetime, but during wartime, we do not have time for that. The Ottoman Empire entered the war in late 1914 alongside Germany against Russia, France, and Britain. Two accusations were directed at Armenians, most of whom lived in six eastern Anatolian provinces: aiding the enemy, especially the Russians, and attempting revolution and independence. Some researchers argue that the goal of forced migration was to remove Armenians from military areas and does not constitute genocide. Justin McCarthy, a history professor in the U.S. and author of several books on the Ottoman Empire, believes that genocide did not occur, arguing that the Ottoman government's decision was due to the actions of Armenian revolutionaries against the Ottoman army and their assistance to Russian forces. When the Ottoman Empire joined the war, the Dashnaktsutyun party had rejected the Young Turks' (Committee of Union and Progress) request to incite Russian Armenians to revolt in that country. Armenian Russians and Ottomans fought in their respective armies, although some Armenians joined Russian units. The German Foreign Ministry archives indicate that forced migration expanded to areas not threatened by enemy attack, and Armenians were also driven to other military areas. Ronald Suny, an American-Armenian professor of political and social history in the U.S., who recently published a book titled 'They Can Only Live in the Desert and Nowhere Else; A History of the Armenian Genocide,' tells Radio Farda about the objectives of the 'Committee of Union and Progress' regarding Armenians: 'Their goal was to change the demographic structure of the country in three directions: dispersing Armenians so that they would no longer be a determining population against the Ottomans, assimilating and Islamizing Armenians, especially women and children, and ultimately physically destroying them through massacres.' Talat Pasha, in a conversation with the American ambassador, states, 'No Armenian can be our friend. After what we have done to them.' In another conversation, he says, 'The hatred between Turks and Armenians has become so intense that if we do not finish their work, they will plot revenge.'... 'They can only live in the desert.' Contrary to Talat Pasha's words, many Muslims did not consider Armenians enemies and harbored no such hatred. There were government officials during the Ottoman period who refused to carry out the order for forced migration that led to the deaths of Armenians. Some resigned, and some were killed. Many Turks and Kurds risked their lives and rushed to help them during the 'cleansing' of Armenians. Many children of displaced families were sheltered. This has led to a new phenomenon in recent years in Turkey: many have realized that they have Armenian ancestors. Of course, Armenians were not always considered enemies of the government. In the nineteenth century, they were referred to as a 'loyal nation' to the Ottoman Empire, and in 1908, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) revolted alongside the 'Committee of Union and Progress' against Sultan Abdul Hamid II to restore the constitution and then campaigned alongside them in parliamentary elections. From the failure of reforms to the Holocaust, the Ottoman Empire, in the fifteenth century, had a relatively high tolerance for minorities compared to many European countries, and Jews fleeing from Spain and Portugal sought refuge in that land. However, the system of governing this empire in the nineteenth century and after the emergence of ideas of freedom and equality, inspired by the French Revolution, did not meet the demands and requests of many of its inhabitants, including Armenians. Young, educated Armenians returning from Russia and other European countries demanded equality and more rights, even equality with Muslims, as their...