What happened to the Armenians in Ottoman Turkey

Objective 2:

Key Terms• Millet System– System of organization in the Ottoman empire based on

religion– Religious minorities = second class citizens

• Hamidian Massacres– Series massacres against Armenians in the 1890s started by

Sultan Abdul Hammid, the last emperor of the Empire

• Young Turks– Political party/group that took over in 1908– Supposed to be more “open”, but actually more nationalist

Who were the Armenians?

• Ancient peoples, lived on the same land for thousands of years

• Historically located at the intersection of major trade routes from east to west

• First Christian nation – Most neighboring countries are

Islamic

Babylonian clay tablet 600BC

Who were the Ottomans?

• The Ottoman Turkish state was founded in Anatolia in 1299

• Became an empire after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453– Armenia was taken over by the Ottomans in the 1500s

• Height of power during the 16th and 17th centuries – controlled most of southeast Europe, West Asia +North

Africa

Ottoman Empire• Ruled by kings called “sultans”• Very large empire spanning 3 continents• Lots of minority groups

Ottoman Government

• Millet system– Empire divided into subgroups by religion to make it

manageable– Christians= minority– Armenians= largest group of Christians in the empire

– Each minority group was led by their religious leader• Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Jewish

– Had some autonomy (ability to rule themselves), but were treated as second class citizen

Ottoman empire at start of WWI

• At the time of WWI, the empire was crumbling– Rise of nationalism led many groups to ask for

independence– Lost Christian lands in the Balkans (ie Serbia) Fear of the Christians within the empire

Hamidian Massacres – Some Armenians looked

to Christian Russia to help free them from Turkish rule

– “Pogroms” or massacres started by Sultan Abdul Hammid• 1896-98---200,000 killed

by king’s forces• 1909– massacre in Adana

30,000 killed

Young Turks

• Abdul Hamid= last sultan, 1909, Young Turks take over

• Ultra nationalist group– Wanted a union of all Turkish people in one country

that included only Turks

• Kicked out the “emperor”– New government was to be more democratic and open

Recap

• Armenians lived in the region for thousands of years

• Ottoman Empire took over Armenia in the 1500s

• Ottoman empire was at the height of its power in the 16th + 17th centuries, but was crumbling around WWI– Armenians + other Christians were considered a threat

“The Armenian Question”

Problem: Crumbling Empire• Nationalism means:• more Christians getting independence= Christians

are a threat to the Empire• Ottoman Empire losing land + power• Armenians= largest group of Christians, largest

threatSolution:

Armenians are a threat, get rid of them

Over 2 million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire at the start of WWI

• Execute/ kill all able bodied men

What happened?

Second Class Citizenship

• As Christians, Armenians were treated as gavours or “infidels”

• They did not have the same rights as Turkish citizens

• Things got progressively worse as the empire began to crumble

April 24, 1915

• 250 community, political, religious, educational, leaders were rounded up in the middle of the night in Istanbul, shot and killed

• Because they were considered threats to the empire, they were told to turn in all their weapons to the government

• Quotas were so high that some families actually bought guns just to turn them in

• Execute/ kill all able bodied men

• Men were separated from the women, children, and the elderly, escorted out of the villages and killed– They were often asked to dig their own graves first– Sometimes they were asked to step in a cave,

locked in with a giant stone and burnt alive in primitive gas chambers

Armenian women and children were forced to march into the desert, escorted by armed soldiers

Women, children and the elderly were marched into the desert… without any food or water

The Armenian Genocide

Most of the deported Armenians starved to death in the desert

The Armenian Genocide

Result: By the end of 1915, approximately 1,000,000 Armenians had died

Numbers

• No one knows exactly how many people died• There were about 2+ million Armenians living

in the Ottoman Empire in 1915… by 1923… only about 200,000 could be officially accounted for and mostly in Istanbul

How do we know?

Primary Source Accounts

• Corroboration of survivor witness stories/narratives

• Letters and accounts written by diplomats– including the ambassador of the United States to

President Wilson• Letters and accounts of foreign missionaries• Letters, accounts, photos from orphanages• Photographs and video footage• Turkish archives• Etc.

Henry Morgenthau

• was a lawyer, businessman and United States ambassador to Turkey

• Wrote reports to President Woodrow Wilson urging action on behalf of the Armenians

Leslie Davis

• US consul to Harput

• personally witnessed how huge clusters of Armenian populations were being marched to the Der Zor desert in Syria, "only to be butchered”

• Wrote a diary recording his observations in detail– Ex: no men in the convoys

Armin T. Wegner

• A second lieutenant in the German army stationed in the middle east

• Photography was absolutely forbidden– Penalty= death– He took these secretly

Wide media coverage

New York Times, December 15, 1915