‘Aghet’ – the catastrophe; the act that penetrates and destroys – is how Armenians refer to the genocide of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire from 1915 onwards. According to historians, around 1.5 million Armenians were murdered.
In the Ottoman Empire, Armenians had been tolerated as a ‘non-Muslim’ minority, but their status was subordinate to that of the Muslim population. They were excluded from government activities or military service. As early as the end of the 19th century, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were labelled ‘internal enemies’. They were distrusted and often fell victim to anti-Armenian stereotypes and discrimination.
From 1913 to 1918, the Ottoman Empire was ruled by a Young Turk ‘Committee for Unity and Progress’. The chairmen of this committee were Talat Pasha, Enver Pasha, and Cemal Pasha, who sought to maintain their power over the decaying Ottoman Empire. They are considered the main perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. The Young Turk government pursued a goal of ethnic homogenisation. In order to implement this policy, an Islamic-influenced Turkish nation state was to be established, which would once again turn Armenians into enemies. Talat Pasha, as Minister of the Interior, thus ordered the arrest of numerous Armenian politicians and intellectuals in Istanbul on 24 April 1915. Initially, the main aim was to destroy the Armenian intellectual and economic elite. That date, 24 April, is therefore considered the beginning of the genocide of the Armenian population. Those arrested were interrogated, tortured, and then killed. From the end of May 1915, the violence was directed against the rest of the Armenians in the country, becoming systematic. When the ‘Law on Population Resettlement’ came into force, Armenians from the eastern areas of settlement, where most of them lived, were sent on week-long marches into the Syrian desert towards Aleppo. Armenians from the west were deported in cattle cars on the Baghdad railway. Armenian men were usually murdered in the villages, while women and children were sent on death marches. They were subjected to torture, sexual violence, hunger, and thirst. Few survived the death marches.
The genocide took place during the First World War. As such, hundreds of German officers had operational command over the army of their Turkish allies. German generals were even involved in the planning and execution of the deportations. The so-called Baghdad railway, which was used to carry out the deportations, was also built under German direction. The German Reich saw no reason to intervene.
The Armenians who survived the death marches through the Syrian desert were interned in camps and died in their thousands every day from hunger, thirst, and disease, which quickly spread throughout the camps. In 1916, the newly appointed governor of the Ottoman Empire decided to close the camps and murder the Armenians remaining in them. Over 200,000 Armenians were killed in this context, with only around 1,000 people surviving the massacres – severely scarred and traumatised.
Many Armenian orphans who had survived the genocide or had been taken from their families were handed over to Turkish families and forced to assimilate. Despite the massacres, violence, and torture that the Armenian population faced, there were also survivors who set out to build a new life for themselves in exile.
Many survivors, often the only ones in their families, managed to flee to France and the USA in the early 1920s. Others remained in Lebanon, the British Mandate of Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. They had experienced a cut with their language, their history, and their families. In the diaspora, they had to rebuild everything from the ground up.
While Turkey has denied the genocide until this day, the survivors struggled both to have the atrocities recognised as genocide and to come to terms with their own trauma. The denial of the genocide was a further burden for them in this struggle. Even today, their relatives and Armenians around the world continue to campaign for recognition of the genocide, which many states have done, due mainly to their tireless efforts. However, the collective memory of the Armenians continues to be called into question by Turkey’s denial, a continuing affront to the community of remembrance.
Armenians in Turkey are still subject to hostility and discrimination today. The murder of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink by a Turkish nationalist on 19 January 2007 painfully demonstrated that the danger for Armenian people is still omnipresent.
