The Armenian Genocide of 1915: causes. The Armenian Genocide 1915: consequences. History of the Armenian Genocide of 1915

The Turkish genocide of Armenians of 1915, organized on the territory of the Ottoman Empire, became one of the most horrific events of its era. Representatives of the ethnic minority were subjected to deportations, during which hundreds of thousands or even millions of people died (depending on the estimates). This campaign for the extermination of Armenians today is recognized as genocide by most countries of the entire world community. In Turkey itself, with such a formulation, do not agree.

Prerequisites

The massacres and deportations in the Ottoman Empire had different prerequisites and reasons. The Armenian Genocide of 1915 was conditioned by the unequal position of the Armenians themselves and the ethnic Turkish majority of the country. The population was discredited not only on national, but also religious grounds. Armenians were Christians and had their own independent church. The Turks were Sunnis.

The non-Muslim population had status as a winter. People who fell under this definition did not have the right to carry arms and to stand in court as witnesses. They had to pay high taxes. Armenians, for the most part, lived poorly. They mainly engaged in agriculture on their native lands. However, among the Turkish majority, a stereotype of a successful and cunning Armenian merchant, etc., was distributed, etc. Such labels only aggravated the hatred of the townsfolk towards this ethnic minority. These complex relationships can be compared to widespread anti-Semitism in many countries of the time.

In the Caucasian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the situation worsened also because of the fact that these lands after the wars with Russia were flooded with Muslim refugees who, due to their everyday unsettledness, constantly came into conflict with local Armenians. One way or another, but the Turkish society was in an aggravated state. It was ready to accept the forthcoming Armenian genocide (1915). The reasons for this tragedy were a deep schism and hostility between the two peoples. It only needed a spark that would ignite a huge fire.

The Beginning of the First World War

As a result of the armed coup in 1908, the Ittihat party ("Unity and Progress") came to power in the Ottoman Empire. Its members called themselves the Young Turks. The new government began to hastily seek an ideology on which to build its own state. The basis was Pan-Turkism and Turkish nationalism - ideas that did not suggest anything good for Armenians and other ethnic minorities.

In 1914, the Ottoman Empire, on the wave of its new political course, entered into an alliance with the Kaiser Germany. Under the treaty, the Powers agreed to provide Turkey with access to the Caucasus, where numerous Muslim peoples lived. But in the same region there were also Christian Armenians.

With the entry of Turkey into the First World War, the first repressions against the entire non-Muslim population began, including the requisition of property in favor of the state. At the same time, the authorities declared jihad - a holy war against the infidels. Over the winter, storm clouds began to gather. The Armenian genocide was inexorably approaching (1915), the causes of which we are considering in our article.

The first murders

When the Ottoman Empire only entered the First World War on the side of Germany, mobilization was declared throughout the country. Armenian men also fell under the call. Their detachments were mainly involved in the battles against Persia and Russia. But from the very beginning the Turks began to suffer strategic defeats on all fronts. A serious blow to Istanbul was the defeat in the Sarykamysh battle in December 1914 - January 1915. The authorities immediately found the perpetrators, because of which the Russian imperial army achieved a decisive victory. Of course, they were Armenians.

In February, mass disarmament of soldiers of this nationality began. About 100,000 people passed through confiscation. At the same time, the first cases of ethnic killings occurred. Armenian servicemen, who did not want to obey the order, were deprived of their lives without ceremony. The unfortunates were tortured. Rumors of disarmament in a distorted form seeped into Istanbul, where all the media spread news about the traitors and spies. It was not the Armenian genocide of 1915, but its prelude.

Deportations

Symbolic for the whole world was the date April 24, 1915. The Armenian Genocide today is associated with this day (for example, in Armenia itself it is considered a day of commemoration of the victims of the genocide). This is due to the events in Istanbul at that time. On April 24, 1915, the Armenian elite of the capital of the Ottoman Empire was first arrested and then deported. This event signaled the holding of such campaigns throughout the country.

Even before the Istanbul events, Armenian residents of the front-line provinces began to suffer deportations. The authorities expelled them on the pretext of moving to safer areas. In fact, people were sent to the desert, where they massively died of thirst, hunger and terrible conditions of existence. This was done purposefully. Most of the women, children and the elderly were sent to such trips, people who could not stand up for themselves. Men were arrested in advance so that there would be no organized resistance.

In May, the Armenian genocide of 1915 covered the areas of compact settlement of this people in Anatolia, a region far from the theater of military operations. Now the authorities did not even have a plausible excuse for resettlement of residents. However, by that time the flywheel of repression had already been promoted, and the deportation campaigns took an avalanche-like character.

On April 19, an Armenian uprising flared up in Van. Residents, realizing what awaits them during the deportations, took up arms. Their fighting against the Turkish army, sent by the authorities, lasted a month. Armenians waited for the arrival of Russian troops, which saved from the imminent death of civilians. During the defensive battles and the massacre that preceded the uprising of life, about fifty-five thousand Armenians lost their lives. Throughout the genocide in the Ottoman Empire, there were several more such major acts of disobedience. The Turkish authorities used the news about them as evidence of the betrayal and hostility of the Armenians.

Apogee of the anti-Armenian campaign

On May 26, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed Talaat Pasha, prepared a new law, according to which those who do not agree with the government policy should be expelled. In June, he gave the order to deport almost all Armenians from ten eastern provinces of the country. The next campaign was conducted according to several rules. According to the power orders, in each region the number of Armenians had to be reduced to 10% of the rest of the Muslim population. In addition, the ethnic minority was banned from opening their own schools, and their new settlements were to be located at a considerable distance from each other.

In July expulsions swept the western provinces and, thus, spread to the entire Ottoman Empire. The cause of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 1915 and subsequent months was the pan-Turk policy of the authorities. However, in the capital and some major cities deportations were not so massive. This was due to the fact that the government was afraid of publicity of foreign journalists living in Istanbul, Izmir, etc.

The killings during the deportations were of an organized nature. In addition, many Armenians died from terrible conditions of detention on the road or in concentration camps. Later, the Turkish tribunal provided evidence that the authorities conducted medical experiments on members of the ethnic minority. They, in particular, tried the vaccine against typhus. Thousands of Armenians died daily from tortures and bullying of gendarmes.

Victims

Today, there are several directly opposite assessments of how many people died and suffered during the Ottoman events of those years. The history of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 continues to be studied at various universities around the world. Sources are opened, certificates are analyzed.

For example, in August 1915, one of the leaders of the Young Turks Enver Pasha spoke about 300 thousand Armenians who were killed. German public figure Johannes Lepsius, who conducted his own study of those events in hot pursuit, released several documentary collections. He named the figure of one million dead. Lepsius analyzed the entire history of the Armenian genocide of 1915. In particular, he stated that about 300 thousand people were forcibly converted to Islam.

Modern studies offer a variety of figures. For example, sources in Turkey say about 200 thousand dead, while Armenian publications claim about 2 million. And, for example, the famous Encyclopedia Britannica does not give accurate estimates at all, adhering to a very wide range of 600,000 to 1.5 million victims. Here he was, April 1915 ...

The Armenian Genocide and all the events of that time have long ago passed. A whole century has passed, for which the last witnesses of the atrocities died. Ottoman authorities, while carrying out their campaigns for deportations and killings, were carefully getting rid of any documents, written orders and other sources that could adequately judge what happened. All this together and leads to such different estimates of the tragedy.

Military Tribunal in Turkey

Despite the attempts of the Ottoman authorities to hide their crimes, news of deportations and mass illegal murders of civilians began to leak abroad. Already in May 1915, the allied countries of the Entente (Great Britain, France and Russia) signed a joint declaration urging Istanbul to stop repressions against its own population. Of course, these statements did not lead to anything.

Revaluation of what happened in Turkey occurred only in 1918, when the country was defeated in the First World War. Istanbul was occupied by the Entente forces, and the first persons of the former authorities fled the country beforehand. These were the very young Turks who committed the military coup in 1908 and dragged their country into the world war on the side of Germany.

Now the Entente, as victorious, demanded that the new Ottoman authorities investigate what the Armenian genocide led to (1915). The reasons, the history, the surviving documents - all this was closely studied at the tribunal, which began its work in December 1918 (before that, a few months ago, the government commission conducted its proceedings). It was proved that the murders of civilians were committed in an organized way, which was an international war crime.

The main perpetrators of the tragedy were: Mehmed Talaat Pasha (former Minister of Internal Affairs and Grand Vizier), Enver Pasha (one of the leaders of the Young Turks Party), and Ahmed Jemal Pasha (also a party functionary). These three, who were in power, created an unofficial triumvirate and adopted all important state decisions. The Tribunal sentenced them to execution in absentia, as all of them fled the country on the eve of the arrival of the Entente troops in Istanbul.

Operation "Nemesis"

The tragic Armenian genocide (1915), the causes and consequences, which were long considered in court, for many years echoed throughout the world. In 1919, the congress "Dashnaktsutyun" was held in the independent Yerevan. This ruling Armenian party compiled lists of hundreds of people who were the main initiators and executors of repressions against Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

In fact, at that congress, the "Dashnaktsutyun" announced a campaign to retaliate the perpetrators of the national tragedy. Although at that time in Istanbul, and worked as a tribunal, which condemned the leaders of the Young Turks, they managed to escape punishment. In Yerevan, they abandoned legal methods to fight those responsible for genocide. The organization of the murders of people who fell into the party's executions lists began. The action was called the operation "Nemesis" (reference to Nemesis - Greek goddess of revenge).

In the period from 1918 to 1922. Many functionaries of the Ottoman government, who initiated the Armenian Genocide (1915), were killed. The reasons for it have already been considered at the Turkish military tribunal, and the guilt of the criminals - is proved. Although Dashnaktsutyun activists acted at their own peril and risk, they always stated that they were only executing the legitimate decisions of the international court.

Murder of the Young Turks

On March 15, 1921 in Berlin, Armenian Soghomon Teyliryan killed Talaat Pasha, hiding in Europe under an assumed name, in front of many witnesses. The shooter was immediately arrested by the German police. The trial began. Taylirian volunteered to defend the best lawyers in Germany. The process led to a wide public resonance. Numerous facts of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire were again voiced at the hearings. Teylirian sensationally justified. After that, he emigrated to the United States, where he died in 1960.

Another important victim of Operation Nemesis was Ahmed Djemal Pasha, who was killed in Tiflis in 1922. In the same year, another member of the triumvirate Enver died during the fighting with the Red Army in present-day Tajikistan. He fled to Central Asia, where for a while he was an active participant in the Basmachi movement.

Legal assessment

It should be noted that the term "genocide" appeared in the legal lexicon much later than the events described. The word originated in 1943 and initially meant the mass murder of Jews by the Nazi authorities of the Third Reich. A few years later, the term was officially formalized according to the convention of the newly established UN. Already later events in the Ottoman Empire were recognized as the Armenian Genocide in 1915. In particular, this was done by the European Parliament and the UN.

In 1995, the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was recognized as genocide in the Russian Federation. Today, most US states, almost all countries of Europe and South America, adhere to this same point of view. But there are also countries that deny the Armenian Genocide (1915). The reasons, briefly, remain political. First of all, modern Turkey and Azerbaijan are on the list of these states.