Ottoman Empire & The Armenian People
What’s in a word?
Ottoman Empire
Long running Islamic Empire
Ottoman Empire
Entry into WWI
Ottoman Empire - Armenian People
Christian ethnic group in Eastern Turkey
Ottoman Empire - Armenian People
During WWI
Ottoman Empire - Armenian People
During WWI
Ottoman Empire - Armenian People
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1915, Armenian civilians were removed from their homes, and marched through valleys and mountains towards desert concentration camps. The deportation, which was overseen by civil and military officials, was accompanied by a systematic campaign of mass murder carried out by irregular forces and local nomadic groups. Survivors who reached the deserts of Syria languished in concentration camps. Many dehydrated and died, starved to death, and the massacres continued into 1916. Estimates have calculated that somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000 Armenians were slaughtered or died on the marches. The events of 1915–16 were witnessed by a number of foreign journalists, missionaries, diplomats, and military officers who sent reports home.
Adapted from http://www.britannica.com/event/Armenian-Genocide
Ottoman Empire - Armenian People
The Turkish had utter contempt (hatred) for the Armenians. The Armenians were dogs and pigs to be spat on. For the Armenian, neither his property, his house, his life, his person, nor his family was safe from violence and to resist meant death. I do not mean that every Armenian suffered so; but that everyone lived in conscious danger.�-- An account by William Ramsey, British Observer (Edited), March 1915
Ottoman Empire - Armenian People
“As it got worse, all of us, and all the people, began gathering in our school. The word came around that the Turks were going on the streets and killing all the Armenians and leaving them on the streets. I, myself, was in school already, so I simply stayed there. Then orders came from the school that we, too, should run away. But where? All the buildings were on fire! The Turks were burning everything. There was a whole group of us running away from the school.” �-Annalin, a survivor from Smyrna on events of 1922
Ottoman Empire - Armenian People
My brother, if you want news from here we have killed 1,200 Armenians, all of them as food for the dogs… Father, 20 days ago we made war on [them]… There is a rumor that we will kill all the Armenians. �-- Letter from an Ottoman (Turkish) Soldier, February 1916
What are your thoughts on these documents?
Armenian __________________
Massacre: �an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people; �to deliberately and violently kill (a large number of people)
Genocide as defined by the United Nations in 1948: �"any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
Armenian __________________
Massacre: �an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people; �to deliberately and violently kill (a large number of people)
Genocide as defined by the United Nations in 1948: �"any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
Does this event fit the definition of Genocide?
Armenian __________________
Massacre: �an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people; �to deliberately and violently kill (a large number of people)
Genocide as defined by the United Nations in 1948: �"any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
If you were Armenian, what would you likely call this event?
What’s in a word? �Does it matter how we define things?