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History should acknowledge tragedy of genocide
ARMENIANS: Cover-up of systematic elimination of Christians comes to light
In July of 1915, dispatch was sent to the American Embassy in Istanbul (Turkey). The American Consul in Harput, Leslie A. Davis, wrote, "I do not believe that there has ever been a massacre in the history of the world so general and thorough as that which is now being perpetrated in this region."
Consul Davis was talking about what became known as the Armenian Genocide, one of history's most violent and tragic chapters that eliminated a people from their homeland of 3,000 years and wiped out nearly all physical evidence of their ancient presence on those very lands.
The Armenian Genocide can be viewed within two contexts. First, it can be seen as the culmination of a continuous Armenian struggle for survival in an increasingly oppressive Muslim empire where they were subject to organized pogroms and massacres beginning in the mid-1890s.
Second, it can be placed in a greater context of immense changes that brought an end to the multiethnic Ottoman Empire and led to the emergence of the Turkish Republic based on monoethnic and nationalist ideologies.
As the 20th century began, the Ottoman Turkish Empire, known at this time as the "Sick Man of Europe," was collapsing. Most of its European and African colonies were already lost, and there was fear of further loss of whatever was left of the empire Anatolia, western Armenia, and parts of Europe and the Arab Middle East.
With the rise of Turkish nationalism and the development of the racist ideology of Pan-Turkism, combined with the fear of territorial losses, the new "Young Turk" government of the Ottoman Empire arrived at a decision to get rid of its Christian Armenian population, which was mostly concentrated in the six Armenian provinces in the east and in Cilicia.
This action followed decades of Turkish persecution punctuated by the 1894-96 empire-wide massacres and the ensuing 1909 Adana massacre, claiming 200,000 Armenian victims.
The plan to destroy the Armenians was initiated under the guise of "deportations." First, beginning on April 24, 1915, the empire's Armenian intellectuals were arrested, taken to the interior of the country and executed. This was followed by the systematic extermination of the Armenian male population under the age of 50, including those in the Ottoman army.
In provinces such as Bitlis and Harput, thousands of Armenian civilians were burned alive. Others were killed through mutilation, torture, rape and plunder or were drowned in the Black Sea and the Euphrates river. The main instrument used in these large-scale atrocities were the thousands of convicts, "bloodthirsty criminals," released from the Empire's prisons to perform this lethal task.
In his memoirs, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau wrote: "Whatever crimes the most perverted instincts of the human mind can devise, and whatever refinements of persecution and injustice the most debased imagination can conceive, became the daily misfortunes of this devoted people (Armenians)."
These methodical killings were followed by the "deportation" of the remainder of the Armenian population, mostly women, children and the elderly, to the Syrian desert. Leslie Davis said "the killing of people a few hours after their departure is barbarous and shows that the real intention of the (Turkish) Government is not to exile them but to kill them."
The American Consul arrived at the above conclusion after he himself secretly visited several massacre grounds as "the only foreign official to witness it, powerless to prevent it." He labeled Turkey "one vast slaughterhouse."
By the end of 1923, the entire Armenian population of western Armenia and Asia Minor was either destroyed or deported. Well over one million Armenians were known to have died out of a population of approximately two million. In the meantime, the Christian Greek and Assyrian populations of Anatolia also suffered immensely as a result of racist Ottoman policies, eventually culminating in their elimination from their historical homelands as well.
The survivors of the Armenian Genocide, mainly those of the less affected southern districts, scattered all over the world to form the Armenian Diaspora.
Despite overwhelming evidence and indisputable facts, the Turkish government to this day denies that a genocide ever took place. While they may agree that as many as a few hundred thousand Armenians might have died, they dismiss the deaths as either World War I casualties, a result of an alleged "civil war" or explained the deaths as a necessary result of security measures taken due to a Russian threat from the Caucasus.
Over the past 86 years, Turkey has vigorously embarked on a campaign of denial through various means by buying off professors and professorships at American universities with the intention to rewrite history; by spending millions of dollars lobbying U.S. Congress against a Genocide Resolution; and, most serious of all, by depriving its own citizens of the truth about the tragedy.
Dr. Taner Akcam, one of the few Turkish scholars who acknowledges the
genocide, puts it well when he says, "We must reflect on our history if we
want Turkey to become a democracy." This is especially true now that
Turkey is aspiring for democratic standards and desperately seeking
membership into the European Union.
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