Armenian Genocide

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“	The destruction of the Armenians was undertaken on a massive scale...this policy of extermination will for a long time stain the name of Turkey.	„
	~ Richard Kuhlmann

The Armenian Genocide, also known as the Armenian Holocaust, was the systematic genocide and ethnic cleansing of Armenian individuals by the Ottoman government under the direction of the Young Turks during World War I. It was launched in 1915, and although it is officially listed as ending in 1917, systematic starvation and massacres of Armenians sporadically continued until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922.

The genocide resulted in the destruction of more than two millennia of Armenian civilization in eastern Anatolia. With the destruction and expulsion of Syriac and Greek Orthodox Christians, it enabled the creation of an ethnonational Turkish state. As of 2022, 31 countries have recognized the events as genocide. Against the academic consensus, Turkey denies that the deportation of Armenians was genocide or a wrongful act , some even justify the genocide as "Necessary to get rid of Armenians who betrayed Turkey for Russia " while critics compare the genocide to other mass exterminations such as the Holocaust.

Genocide

Following the Ottoman Empire's entry into World War I on the side of the Central Powers, Ottoman war minister Enver Pasha announced his plan to destroy the Russian forces at Sarikamish. After his plan completely failed and the Ottoman forces were almost entirely destroyed, Enver Pasha publicly blamed the Armenians for his defeat as he claimed they had sided with the Russians. As a result, he issued Directive 8682, which forced all ethnic Armenians serving in the Ottoman armed forces to resign and join unarmed "labour battalions". As many historians have noted, this was a precursor to a premeditated genocide, as they were deliberately transferred to unarmed battalions so that Turkish gangs were then able to liquidate them with minimal resistance under the orders of the Ottoman government.

On April 19^th, 1915, the governor of the city of Van requested 4000 soldiers under the pretext of conscription for the Ottoman war effort. However, it was clear to the Armenians that the purpose was to eliminate the Armenian population of Van. The following day, two Armenian men were killed by the Ottoman troops, starting the siege of Van, in which the Armenians viscously defended themselves, resulting in the deaths of 55,000 Armenians until the Russian military arrived to relieve them.

On April 23^rd, 1915, Ottoman Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha ordered the arrests of 250 Armenian intellectuals and leaders as a threat to national security. The Armenian leaders were detained until 29th May, when they were deported and assassinated by government agents.

On May 29^th, Talaat Pasha implemented the deportation and mass murder of Armenian civilians. He also orchestrated the murder of Armenians through death marches, where they were forced to march trough the desert deprived of food, resulting in many deaths from starvation and from murder by the authorities. Rape and looting also played an integral part in the Armenian death marches. Several Armenian women were sold into sexual slavery in the Middle East, and those who survived the death marches were later murdered in concentration camps. The Ottoman government also mass murdered Armenians by burning them alive, forcibly loading them into boats and throwing them into the sea, inoculating them with typhus or overdoses of morphine and exposing them to toxic gas.

Thousands of Armenian children were sold to childless Turks, Arabs, and Jews, who would come to the camps to buy them from their parents. In the territory of the Ottoman Fourth Army, commanded by Djemal Pasha, there were no concentration camps or large-scale massacres, rather Armenians were resettled and recruited to work for the war effort. They had to convert to Islam or face deportation to another area.

Armenian ability to adapt and survive was greater than the perpetrators expected. loosely organized, Armenian-led resistance network based in Aleppo succeeded in helping many deportees, saving Armenian lives. At the beginning of 1916 some 500,000 deportees were alive in Syria and Mesopotamia. 

Afraid that surviving Armenians might return home after the war, Talaat Pasha ordered a second wave of massacres in February 1916. An additional wave of deportations targeted Armenians remaining in Anatolia. More than 200,000 Armenians were killed between March and October 1916, often in remote areas near Deir ez-Zor and on parts of the Khabur valley, where their bodies would not create a public health hazard. The massacres killed most of the Armenians who had survived the camp system. Intentional, state-sponsored killing of Armenians mostly ceased by the end of January 1917, although sporadic massacres and starvation continued until the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1922.