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America and the Armenian Genocide of
1915

Frequently Asked Questions about the Armenian Genocide

Home > Educational
Resources

What
is the Armenian Genocide?

Who
was responsible for the Armenian Genocide?

How
many people died in the Armenian Genocide?

Were
there witnesses to the Armenian Genocide?

What
was the response of the international community to the
Armenian Genocide?

Why
is the Armenian Genocide commemorated on April 24?

Are
the Armenian massacres acknowledged today as a Genocide
according to the United Nations Genocide Convention?

What is the Armenian Genocide?
[top
of list]
The atrocities committed against the Armenian
people of the Ottoman Empire during W.W.I are called the
Armenian Genocide. Genocide is the organized killing of a
people for the express purpose of putting an end to their
collective existence. Because of its scope, genocide requires
central planning and a machinery to implement it. This makes
genocide the quintessential state crime as only a government
has the resources to carry out such a scheme of destruction.
The Armenian Genocide was centrally planned and administered
by the Turkish government against the entire Armenian
population of the Ottoman Empire. It was carried out during
W.W.I between the years 1915 and 1918. The Armenian people
were subjected to deportation, expropriation, abduction,
torture, massacre, and starvation. The great bulk of the
Armenian population was forcibly removed from Armenia and
Anatolia to Syria, where the vast majority was sent into the
desert to die of thirst and hunger. Large numbers of Armenians
were methodically massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire.
Women and children were abducted and horribly abused. The
entire wealth of the Armenian people was expropriated. After
only a little more than a year of calm at the end of W.W.I,
the atrocities were renewed between 1920 and 1923, and the
remaining Armenians were subjected to further massacres and
expulsions. In 1915, thirty-three years before UN Genocide
Convention was adopted, the Armenian Genocide was condemned by
the international community as a crime against
humanity.

Who was
responsible for the Armenian Genocide? [top
of list]
The decision to carry out a genocide against
the Armenian people was made by the political party in power
in the Ottoman Empire. This was the Committee of Union and
Progress (CUP) (or Ittihad ve Terakki Jemiyeti),
popularly known as the Young Turks. Three figures from the CUP
controlled the government; Mehmet Talaat, Minister of the
Interior in 1915 and Grand Vizier (Prime Minister) in 1917;
Ismail Enver, Minister of War; Ahmed Jemal, Minister of the
Marine and Military Governor of Syria. This Young Turk
triumvirate relied on other members of the CUP appointed to
high government posts and assigned to military commands to
carry out the Armenian Genocide. In addition to the Ministry
of War and the Ministry of the Interior, the Young Turks also
relied on a newly-created secret outfit which they manned with
convicts and irregular troops, called the Special Organization
(Teshkilati Mahsusa). Its primary function was the
carrying out of the mass slaughter of the deported Armenians.
In charge of the Special Organization was Behaeddin Shakir, a
medical doctor. Moreover, ideologists such as Zia Gokalp
propagandized through the media on behalf of the CUP by
promoting Pan-Turanism, the creation of a new empire
stretching from Anatolia into Central Asia whose population
would be exclusively Turkic. These concepts justified and
popularized the secret CUP plans to liquidate the Armenians of
the Ottoman Empire. The Young Turk conspirators, other leading
figures of the wartime Ottoman government, members of the CUP
Central Committee, and many provincial administrators
responsible for atrocities against the Armenians were indicted
for their crimes at the end of the war. The main culprits
evaded justice by fleeing the country. Even so, they were
tried in absentia and found guilty of capital crimes. The
massacres, expulsions, and further mistreatment of the
Armenians between 1920 and 1923 were carried by the Turkish
Nationalists, who represented a new political movement opposed
to the Young Turks, but who shared a common ideology of ethnic
exclusivity.

How many people
died in the Armenian Genocide? [top
of list]
It is estimated that one and a half million
Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923. There were an
estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire
on the eve of W.W.I. Well over a million were deported in
1915. Hundreds of thousands were butchered outright. Many
others died of starvation, exhaustion, and epidemics which
ravaged the concentration camps. Among the Armenians living
along the periphery of the Ottoman Empire many at first
escaped the fate of their countrymen in the central provinces
of Turkey. Tens of thousands in the east fled to the Russian
border to lead a precarious existence as refugees. The
majority of the Armenians in Constantinople, the capital city,
were spared deportation. In 1918, however, the Young Turk
regime took the war into the Caucasus, where approximately
1,800,000 Armenians lived under Russian dominion. Ottoman
forces advancing through East Armenia and Azerbaijan here too
engaged in systematic massacres. The expulsions and massacres
carried by the Nationalist Turks between 1920 and 1922 added
tens of thousands of more victims. By 1923 the entire landmass
of Asia Minor and historic West Armenia had been expunged of
its Armenian population. The destruction of the Armenian
communities in this part of the world was total.

Were there witnesses to the Armenian
Genocide? [top
of list]
There were many witnesses to the Armenian
Genocide. Although the Young Turk government took precautions
and imposed restrictions on reporting and photographing, there
were lots of foreigners in the Ottoman Empire who witnessed
the deportations. Foremost among them were U.S. diplomatic
representatives and American missionaries. They were first to
send news to the outside world about the unfolding genocide.
Some of their reports made headline news in the American and
Western media. Also reporting on the atrocities committed
against the Armenians were many German eyewitnesses. The
Germans were allies of the Turks in W.W.I. Numerous German
officers held important military assignments in the Ottoman
Empire. Some among them condoned the Young Turk policy. Others
confidentially reported to their superiors in Germany about
the slaughter of the Armenian civilian population. Many
Russians saw for themselves the devastation wreaked upon the
Armenian communities when the Russian Army occupied parts of
Anatolia. Many Arabs in Syria where most of the deportees were
sent saw for themselves the appalling condition to which the
Armenian survivors had been reduced. Lastly, many Turkish
officials were witnesses as participants in the Armenian
Genocide. A number of them gave testimony under oath during
the post-war tribunals convened to try the Young Turk
conspirators who organized the Armenian
Genocide.

What was the response
of the international community to the Armenian
Genocide? [top
of list]
The international community condemned the
Armenian Genocide. In May 1915, Great Britain, France, and
Russia advised the Young Turk leaders that they would be held
personally responsible for this crime against humanity. There
was a strong public outcry in the United States against the
mistreatment of the Armenians. At the end of the war, the
Allied victors demanded that the Ottoman government prosecute
the Young Turks accused of wartime crimes. Relief efforts were
also mounted to save "the starving Armenians." The American,
British, and German governments sponsored the preparation of
reports on the atrocities and numerous accounts were
published. On the other hand, despite the moral outrage of the
international community, no strong actions were taken against
the Ottoman Empire either to sanction its brutal policies or
to salvage the Armenian people from the grip of extermination.
Moreover, no steps were taken to require the postwar Turkish
governments to make restitution to the Armenian people for
their immense material and human losses.

Why is the Armenian Genocide commemorated on
April 24? [top
of list]
On the night of April 24, 1915, the Turkish
government placed under arrest over 200 Armenian community
leaders in Constantinople. Hundreds more were apprehended soon
after. They were all sent to prison in the interior of
Anatolia, where most were summarily executed. The Young Turk
regime had long been planning the Armenian Genocide and
reports of atrocities being committed against the Armenians in
the eastern war zones had been filtering in during the first
months of 1915. The Ministry of War had already acted on the
government's plan by disarming the Armenian recruits in the
Ottoman Army, reducing them to labor battalions and working
them under conditions equaling slavery. The incapacitation and
methodic reduction of the Armenian male population, as well as
the summary arrest and execution of the Armenian leadership
marked the earliest stages of the Armenian Genocide. These
acts were committed under the cover of a news blackout on
account of the war and the government proceeded to implement
its plans to liquidate the Armenian population with secrecy.
Therefore, the Young Turks regime's true intentions went
undetected until the arrests of April 24. As the persons
seized that night included the most prominent public figures
of the Armenian community in the capital city of the Ottoman
Empire, everyone was alerted about the dimensions of the
policies being entertained and implemented by the Turkish
government. Their death presaged the murder of an ancient
civilization. April 24 is, therefore, commemorated as the date
of the unfolding of the Armenian Genocide.

Are the Armenian massacres acknowledged
today as a Genocide according to the United Nations Genocide
Convention? [top
of list]
The United Nations Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide describes
genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole
or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."
Clearly this definition applies in the case of the atrocities
committed against the Armenians. Because the U.N. Convention
was adopted in 1948, thirty years after the Armenian Genocide,
Armenians worldwide have sought from their respective
governments formal acknowledgment of the crimes committed
during W.W.I. Countries like France, Argentina, Greece, and
Russia, where the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and their
descendants live, have officially recognized the Armenian
Genocide. However, as a matter of policy, the present-day
Republic of Turkey adamantly denies that a genocide was
committed against the Armenians during W.W.I. Moreover, Turkey
dismisses the evidence about the atrocities as mere
allegations and regularly obstructs efforts for
acknowledgment. Affirming the truth about the Armenian
Genocide, therefore, has become an issue of international
significance. The recurrence of genocide in the twentieth
century has made the reaffirmation of the historic
acknowledgment of the criminal mistreatment of the Armenians
by Turkey all the more a compelling obligation for the
international community.

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