Armenian Genocide

Background

The Armenians are a people who have long inhabited eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus. According to tradition, they adopted Christianity as their state religion in the early fourth century, and most Armenians belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church. Within the Ottoman Empire, Armenians formed a Christian minority community, and tensions deepened in the late nineteenth century as demands for reform and guarantees of rights grew louder. Large-scale massacres took place in 1894–1896 under Sultan Abdülhamid II, and another massacre occurred in Adana in 1909. After 1908, the Committee of Union and Progress (commonly known as the Young Turks) came to power. The Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of Germany in 1914, and on the eastern front against Russia, Armenians were suspected of collaborating with the enemy.

Course of Events

• April 24, 1915: In the capital, Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), several hundred Armenian intellectuals, clergy, and politicians were arrested, and many of them were killed. Armenians observe this date as a day of remembrance.
• Late May 1915: The Ottoman government enacted the Deportation Law (Tehcir Law). Under this law, Armenians from across Anatolia were driven toward the Syrian desert. Adult men were often separated from the others and killed first. Women, children, and the elderly were forced to march without water or food, and many died of starvation, disease, and attacks. The area around Deir ez-Zor in Syria is known as one of the principal killing sites.
• Through about 1916: Mass deportations and killings continued. Forced conversions and the transfer of children to Muslim households are also reported to have occurred.

Estimates of the number of victims vary among researchers, ranging from about 600,000 to more than 1.5 million. Armenians put the figure at about 1.5 million. During the same period, Assyrians and Greek Christians also suffered heavy losses.

Consequences and Impact

The Armenian community of Anatolia all but disappeared. Survivors scattered to Syria, Lebanon, France, the United States, and elsewhere, forming a diaspora. Henry Morgenthau, then the U.S. ambassador, and missionaries in the region reported the atrocities back home, and large-scale relief fundraising took place in the United States. After the war, Ottoman courts-martial convicted some of those responsible, and Talaat Pasha, a principal leader, was sentenced to death in absentia. Talaat was assassinated in Berlin in 1921 by a young Armenian man. When the legal scholar Raphael Lemkin coined the term "genocide" in 1944, he cited this event as a major example. In April 2015, marking the centennial, the Armenian Apostolic Church canonized the victims as saints, regarding them as martyrs who died for their faith.

Assessment

Armenia and most historians regard the event as a genocide intended by the Ottoman government. Beginning with Uruguay in 1965, a number of countries, including France (2001) and Germany (2016), have recognized it as genocide through parliamentary or governmental action. The United States recognized it in 2021 through a presidential statement. In 2015, when Pope Francis of the Catholic Church called the event "the first genocide of the twentieth century," Türkiye recalled its ambassador to the Vatican.

The government of Türkiye acknowledges that many Armenians died but does not accept the designation of genocide. According to the Turkish government, the deportations were a wartime security measure; the deaths occurred amid war, disease, famine, and intercommunal conflict; and many Muslims also perished during the same period. Türkiye has maintained that the matter should be left to a joint investigation by historians from both countries.