Armenian genocide what is it

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Cancel Save. They were later executed. Armenians in the Ottoman army were disarmed and killed. Armenian property was confiscated. Several senior Ottoman officials were put on trial in Turkey in in connection with the atrocities. A local governor, Mehmed Kemal, was found guilty and hanged for the mass killing of Armenians in the central Anatolian district of Yozgat.

The Young Turks' top triumvirate - the "Three Pashas" - had already fled abroad. They were sentenced to death in absentia. Historians have questioned the judicial procedures at these trials, the quality of the evidence presented and the degree to which the Turkish authorities may have wished to appease the victorious Allies. Argentina, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia and Uruguay are among the more than 20 other countries which have formally recognised genocide against the Armenians.

In some cases the recognition has come in parliament resolutions, not from governments. Among the most significant was that of the US Congress in US governments had held back for decades, partly because Turkey is the second-biggest military power in Nato and strategically vital for the West. The US hosts the largest Armenian diaspora after Russia, estimated at more than a million. Turkey reacted angrily after Pope Francis called it "the first genocide of the 20th Century" in the run-up to the centenary commemorations.

Turkey recalled its Vatican ambassador and accused the Pope of having "discriminated about people's suffering". The Pope "overlooked atrocities that Turks and Muslims suffered in World War One and only highlighted the Christian suffering, especially that of the Armenian people", the Turkish foreign ministry said. France has a large Armenian diaspora and since it has officially commemorated "the Armenian genocide" on 24 April, including a ceremony at a Paris monument.

The killings are regarded as the seminal event of modern Armenian history, binding the diaspora together. Armenians are one of the world's most dispersed peoples. In Turkey, public debate on the issue has been stifled. It also subscribed to an ideology of aggrandizement through conquest directed eastward toward other regions inhabited by Turkic peoples, at that time subject to the Russian Empire. The Ottoman armies initially suffered a string of defeats which they made up with a series of easy military victories in the Caucasus in before the Central Powers capitulated later that same year.

Whether retreating or advancing, the Ottoman army used the occasion of war to wage a collateral campaign of massacre against the civilian Armenian population in the regions in which warfare was being conducted. These measures were part of the genocidal program secretly adopted by the CUP and implemented under the cover of war. They coincided with the CUP's larger program to eradicate the Armenians from Turkey and neighboring countries for the purpose of creating a new Pan-Turanian empire.

Through the spring and summer of , in all areas outside the war zones, the Armenian population was ordered deported from their homes. Convoys consisting of tens of thousands including men, women, and children were driven hundreds of miles toward the Syrian desert. The deportations were disguised as a resettlement program. The brutal treatment of the deportees, most of whom were made to walk to their destinations, made it apparent that the deportations were mainly intended as death marches.

Moreover, the policy of deportation surgically removed the Armenians from the rest of society and disposed of great masses of people with little or no destruction of property. The displacement process, therefore, also served as a major opportunity orchestrated by the CUP for the plundering of the material wealth of the Armenians and proved an effortless method of expropriating all of their immovable properties. The genocidal intent of the CUP measures was also evidenced by the mass killings that accompanied the deportations.

Earlier, Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman forces had been disarmed and either worked to death in labor battalions or outright executed in small batches. With the elimination of the able-bodied men from the Armenian population, the deportations proceeded with little resistance. The convoys were frequently attacked by bands of killers specifically organized for the purpose of slaughtering the Armenians.

This secret outfit was headed by the most ferocious partisans of the CUP who took it upon themselves to carry out the orders of the central government with the covert instructions of their party leaders. A sizable portion of the deportees, including women and children, were indisciminately killed in massacres along the deportation routes.

The cruelty characterizing the killing process was heightened by the fact that it was frequently carried out by the sword in terrifying episodes of bloodshed. Furthermore, for the survivors, their witnessing of the murder of friends and relatives with the mass of innocent persons was the source of serious trauma. Many younger women and some orphaned children were also abducted and placed in bondage in Turkish and Muslim homes resulting in another type of trauma characterized by the shock of losing both family and one's sense of identity.

In spite of these obstacles, the Armenian community thrived under Ottoman rule. They tended to be better educated and wealthier than their Turkish neighbors, who in turn grew to resent their success. This resentment was compounded by suspicions that the Christian Armenians would be more loyal to Christian governments that of the Russians, for example, who shared an unstable border with Turkey than they were to the Ottoman caliphate. These suspicions grew more acute as the Ottoman Empire crumbled.

In response to large scale protests by Armenians, Turkish military officials, soldiers and ordinary men sacked Armenian villages and cities and massacred their citizens. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were murdered. In , a new government came to power in Turkey. According to this way of thinking, non-Turks — and especially Christian non-Turks — were a grave threat to the new state.

At the same time, Ottoman religious authorities declared a holy war against all Christians except their allies. Military leaders began to argue that the Armenians were traitors: If they thought they could win independence if the Allies were victorious, this argument went, the Armenians would be eager to fight for the enemy.

As the war intensified, Armenians organized volunteer battalions to help the Russian army fight against the Turks in the Caucasus region. On April 24, , the Armenian genocide began. That day, the Turkish government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals. After that, ordinary Armenians were turned out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. Frequently, the marchers were stripped naked and forced to walk under the scorching sun until they dropped dead.

People who stopped to rest were shot. These killing squads were often made up of murderers and other ex-convicts. They drowned people in rivers, threw them off cliffs, crucified them and burned them alive.