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The Armenian Genocide
A Tragedy the World Would Like to Ignore
(In memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide and in honor of its survivors)
By Michael S. Ladah
April 4, 2002
Many historians record that the Ottoman Turks blamed the minorities in their Ottoman Empire, especially the Armenians, for all of their ills, and the Ottoman Empire had many. Starting with the last decade of the 19th century and until after they lost their First World War battles on both fronts, the Ottoman Turks conducted a process of retaliation and “cleansing” that most of the world today cares little about. Some historians, in spite of their accounts of the atrocities committed by the Turks, have been very kind to the Ottoman Turks in their historical analysis of the reasons for the Turkish massacres of the Armenians.
The Armenians were totally different from the Turks. Among all the nations who were ruled by the Ottoman Turks, the Armenians were the least compatible as a nation with the occupying and ruling Turks. The Turks were Moslems, descendants of nomadic Mongol tribes who were converted to Islam by the Arab invaders, and had very little civilization of their own. As a matter of fact, the reign of the Ottoman Turks contributed almost nothing to the nations whom they invaded and ruled. The Armenians were very devout Christians, with Armenia being the first state ever to adopt Christianity. They were among the most educated people in the Eastern part of the Ottoman Empire and, because of that, held the most sensitive positions in the heart of the Empire, at the seat of its power, more than any of the other occupied nations. The Turkish rulers did not trust their own people to hold sensitive positions. Thus, they appointed minorities, especially Armenians, to hold such positions; their purpose was to avoid the possibility that such positions, if otherwise given to Turks, would take advantage of their power and overthrow the rule of those in power to substitute a different Turkish rule.
Every change in power in the Ottoman Empire brought with it the wrath of the new rulers against the Armenians who were associated with the previous rule. The new rulers, in turn, did not trust the sensitive positions to Turks and found it practical to continue to have Armenians in these positions, for this provided better security for their regimes. The Armenians came to be envied by many Turks who looked upon them as foreign minorities who were in positions that the Turks thought they were more worthy of holding. The Armenians were hated more because they were Christians, well educated, cultured and refined, and because they were blamed for the failures of the rulers who employed them to protect their interests. Any mass discrimination and hatred is extremely contagious. As the massacres of Armenians started, the hatred of the Armenians in Turkey went totally out of control, among individuals and organized groups. This was especially true among the Turkish military, which had the power to act on their feelings of hatred. The Turkish military also started to incite, against the Christian Armenians, those Moslem minorities who were the Armenian’s neighbors in the eastern half of the Ottoman Empire. Once these actions were systematically started, there was little that could be done by anyone there to stop the organized persecution of Armenians, which snowballed into one of the most horrible genocides in history.
Those Armenians who left western Armenia and today's eastern Turkey, were forced to abandon their homeland, their homes and their belongings and walk from village to village and town to town risking meeting the ravages of the Turkish soldier; nevertheless, they were the lucky ones to have made it out of their villages. They traveled on foot, sometimes on roads and other times cross-country, trying to dodge the bands of Turkish soldiers who were ravaging the countryside looking for Armenians, by explicit orders of their government.
Many of the Armenian refugees who were stopped for inspection by army regulars and army deserters tried to hide their identities to escape the wrath of the Turkish soldier. Many of them pretended they were Moslem Turks and called each other by typical Moslem names so that the soldiers might sympathize with them. The soldiers confiscated their belongings, valuables and food; they questioned young men and women and asked them to recite verses from the Koran to test their claim that they were Moslems, a despicable abuse of the Holy Book. The results were disastrous; men were shot on the spot and women were raped in front of their children and were sent into the wilderness like wounded wild animals. Armenians, just like the Arabs, Greeks, Bulgarians, Slovaks and most nations who came under the rule of the Turks during the last few hundred years of the Ottoman Empire, knew the wrath of the Turkish soldier and did everything possible to avoid the Turkish encounter. Many refugees took treacherous mountainous roads to avoid Turkish soldiers. Some of them were lucky, for after months and hundreds of miles they crossed into Syria. The first towns where they found tolerance and common grievance against the Turks were the Arab towns of Iskenderun and Aleppo. Many of them settled in Aleppo for years and then some of them slowly continued their journey to Lebanon, which now has the largest concentration of Armenians outside Armenia. Some continued on to Palestine.
The unlucky Armenians were those who were rounded up from their villages with the whole village population, and taken into the wilderness. They had to dig holes in the ground, under the threat of the guns and swords of the Turkish soldiers. They had to walk down into the holes, large enough to bury every man, woman and child in the procession, and lie face down; the soldiers would shoot as many as they could; some would die immediately without much physical suffering while others would just get injured, but lie there silently hoping to escape death. But then, barrels and barrels of quicklime would be poured down the hole by the soldiers until all the faces were covered by the white powder, or drowned by the sometimes liquid which ate into their skin and their eyes. Finally, the soldiers would start to cover the holes, if they could and if they were not too large.
The unlucky Armenians were those who were stopped and murdered by the roaming bands of Turkish soldiers hunting down Armenians to eliminate them. The unlucky Armenians were those who could not make the escape journey, who could not survive the exposure to the weather or to hunger or thirst. When it was all done, there were over 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children tortured and killed, many of them buried alive.
Why did the Turks massacre the Armenians? They massacred them because of hate; hate for people of different culture, beliefs and religion. They massacred them because of hatred that was preached by religious and secular organizations, every hour of the day. Thus, over time, the hate had a cumulative brainwashing effect on the entire Turkish population and reached epidemic proportion which made most Turks believe that it was okay to feel the hatred and justified to act on those awful feelings.
By the time the orders came down from the leadership to “cleanse” the empire of Armenian infidels, the military was mentally prepared, the evil people were mentally prepared and even the “good” people were mentally prepared and desensitized. The more Armenians were massacred, the more desensitized the military felt to the atrocities and the more atrocities they committed. It was this same kind of hate which was sown and which reaped the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis in Europe later in the same century. It is this kind of hate which is still being sown today in many parts of the world, unfortunately under the banner of religion. It is the use of religion to perpetrate feelings and acts of hate that is the most dangerous disease that humanity has ever known.
One and a half million Armenians were massacred at the hands of the Turks, for no reason other than someone in the Turkish Ottoman hierarchy singled them out as scapegoats for the ill fate of the Ottoman Empire. The fact that so many of them, or any of them, were massacred is very disturbing in itself. What is more disturbing is that the present Turkish authorities continue to deny this fact, just like it was denied by their predecessors. More disturbing still is that the massacres were and continue to be ignored by the world, except for a handful of countries. Even some experts on the Jewish holocaust claim that the Jewish holocaust at the hands of the Nazis was the first attempt in recent history at systematic mass murders and annihilation of a race; this statement is disturbing because it does not acknowledge the genocide of the Armenians. Unless any genocide is acknowledged, how can the world have peace and how can humanity continue on a path of peace and respect for the most basic human right, the right to life? About thirty years after the end of the Armenian genocide, when his deputies tried to warn him of the repercussions of his planned extermination of the Jews, Hitler is reported to have exclaimed “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
Even today, the world has not even acknowledged the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks. The world had acknowledged the holocaust of the Jews at the hands of Nazi Germany, perhaps because the actions of the Germans were more apparent to the world and because there was more news coverage of war and war atrocities. Even then, there are those who claim, and continue to insist, that such atrocities never existed during the Second World War. But, with the passage of time, all truths become known, and even the truth about the Armenian genocide, which the Turks have so skillfully tried to hide, should have become known; yet the world remains silent. The Turks have never acknowledged the atrocities committed by their ancestors nor have they offered any apology to the world or material reparations to the survivors or to the descendants of the victims.
It is time for the Turks to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, and it is time for the world to apologize to the Armenian victims and survivors of the Genocide for the world’s earlier denials.
© 2002 by Michael S. Ladah.* The writer is the author of “Quicksand, Oil and Dreams: The Story of One of Five Million Dispossessed Palestinians.”* This article is an extract from the book.* The author may be reached at [email protected] *
A Tragedy the World Would Like to Ignore
(In memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide and in honor of its survivors)
By Michael S. Ladah
April 4, 2002
Many historians record that the Ottoman Turks blamed the minorities in their Ottoman Empire, especially the Armenians, for all of their ills, and the Ottoman Empire had many. Starting with the last decade of the 19th century and until after they lost their First World War battles on both fronts, the Ottoman Turks conducted a process of retaliation and “cleansing” that most of the world today cares little about. Some historians, in spite of their accounts of the atrocities committed by the Turks, have been very kind to the Ottoman Turks in their historical analysis of the reasons for the Turkish massacres of the Armenians.
The Armenians were totally different from the Turks. Among all the nations who were ruled by the Ottoman Turks, the Armenians were the least compatible as a nation with the occupying and ruling Turks. The Turks were Moslems, descendants of nomadic Mongol tribes who were converted to Islam by the Arab invaders, and had very little civilization of their own. As a matter of fact, the reign of the Ottoman Turks contributed almost nothing to the nations whom they invaded and ruled. The Armenians were very devout Christians, with Armenia being the first state ever to adopt Christianity. They were among the most educated people in the Eastern part of the Ottoman Empire and, because of that, held the most sensitive positions in the heart of the Empire, at the seat of its power, more than any of the other occupied nations. The Turkish rulers did not trust their own people to hold sensitive positions. Thus, they appointed minorities, especially Armenians, to hold such positions; their purpose was to avoid the possibility that such positions, if otherwise given to Turks, would take advantage of their power and overthrow the rule of those in power to substitute a different Turkish rule.
Every change in power in the Ottoman Empire brought with it the wrath of the new rulers against the Armenians who were associated with the previous rule. The new rulers, in turn, did not trust the sensitive positions to Turks and found it practical to continue to have Armenians in these positions, for this provided better security for their regimes. The Armenians came to be envied by many Turks who looked upon them as foreign minorities who were in positions that the Turks thought they were more worthy of holding. The Armenians were hated more because they were Christians, well educated, cultured and refined, and because they were blamed for the failures of the rulers who employed them to protect their interests. Any mass discrimination and hatred is extremely contagious. As the massacres of Armenians started, the hatred of the Armenians in Turkey went totally out of control, among individuals and organized groups. This was especially true among the Turkish military, which had the power to act on their feelings of hatred. The Turkish military also started to incite, against the Christian Armenians, those Moslem minorities who were the Armenian’s neighbors in the eastern half of the Ottoman Empire. Once these actions were systematically started, there was little that could be done by anyone there to stop the organized persecution of Armenians, which snowballed into one of the most horrible genocides in history.
Those Armenians who left western Armenia and today's eastern Turkey, were forced to abandon their homeland, their homes and their belongings and walk from village to village and town to town risking meeting the ravages of the Turkish soldier; nevertheless, they were the lucky ones to have made it out of their villages. They traveled on foot, sometimes on roads and other times cross-country, trying to dodge the bands of Turkish soldiers who were ravaging the countryside looking for Armenians, by explicit orders of their government.
Many of the Armenian refugees who were stopped for inspection by army regulars and army deserters tried to hide their identities to escape the wrath of the Turkish soldier. Many of them pretended they were Moslem Turks and called each other by typical Moslem names so that the soldiers might sympathize with them. The soldiers confiscated their belongings, valuables and food; they questioned young men and women and asked them to recite verses from the Koran to test their claim that they were Moslems, a despicable abuse of the Holy Book. The results were disastrous; men were shot on the spot and women were raped in front of their children and were sent into the wilderness like wounded wild animals. Armenians, just like the Arabs, Greeks, Bulgarians, Slovaks and most nations who came under the rule of the Turks during the last few hundred years of the Ottoman Empire, knew the wrath of the Turkish soldier and did everything possible to avoid the Turkish encounter. Many refugees took treacherous mountainous roads to avoid Turkish soldiers. Some of them were lucky, for after months and hundreds of miles they crossed into Syria. The first towns where they found tolerance and common grievance against the Turks were the Arab towns of Iskenderun and Aleppo. Many of them settled in Aleppo for years and then some of them slowly continued their journey to Lebanon, which now has the largest concentration of Armenians outside Armenia. Some continued on to Palestine.
The unlucky Armenians were those who were rounded up from their villages with the whole village population, and taken into the wilderness. They had to dig holes in the ground, under the threat of the guns and swords of the Turkish soldiers. They had to walk down into the holes, large enough to bury every man, woman and child in the procession, and lie face down; the soldiers would shoot as many as they could; some would die immediately without much physical suffering while others would just get injured, but lie there silently hoping to escape death. But then, barrels and barrels of quicklime would be poured down the hole by the soldiers until all the faces were covered by the white powder, or drowned by the sometimes liquid which ate into their skin and their eyes. Finally, the soldiers would start to cover the holes, if they could and if they were not too large.
The unlucky Armenians were those who were stopped and murdered by the roaming bands of Turkish soldiers hunting down Armenians to eliminate them. The unlucky Armenians were those who could not make the escape journey, who could not survive the exposure to the weather or to hunger or thirst. When it was all done, there were over 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children tortured and killed, many of them buried alive.
Why did the Turks massacre the Armenians? They massacred them because of hate; hate for people of different culture, beliefs and religion. They massacred them because of hatred that was preached by religious and secular organizations, every hour of the day. Thus, over time, the hate had a cumulative brainwashing effect on the entire Turkish population and reached epidemic proportion which made most Turks believe that it was okay to feel the hatred and justified to act on those awful feelings.
By the time the orders came down from the leadership to “cleanse” the empire of Armenian infidels, the military was mentally prepared, the evil people were mentally prepared and even the “good” people were mentally prepared and desensitized. The more Armenians were massacred, the more desensitized the military felt to the atrocities and the more atrocities they committed. It was this same kind of hate which was sown and which reaped the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis in Europe later in the same century. It is this kind of hate which is still being sown today in many parts of the world, unfortunately under the banner of religion. It is the use of religion to perpetrate feelings and acts of hate that is the most dangerous disease that humanity has ever known.
One and a half million Armenians were massacred at the hands of the Turks, for no reason other than someone in the Turkish Ottoman hierarchy singled them out as scapegoats for the ill fate of the Ottoman Empire. The fact that so many of them, or any of them, were massacred is very disturbing in itself. What is more disturbing is that the present Turkish authorities continue to deny this fact, just like it was denied by their predecessors. More disturbing still is that the massacres were and continue to be ignored by the world, except for a handful of countries. Even some experts on the Jewish holocaust claim that the Jewish holocaust at the hands of the Nazis was the first attempt in recent history at systematic mass murders and annihilation of a race; this statement is disturbing because it does not acknowledge the genocide of the Armenians. Unless any genocide is acknowledged, how can the world have peace and how can humanity continue on a path of peace and respect for the most basic human right, the right to life? About thirty years after the end of the Armenian genocide, when his deputies tried to warn him of the repercussions of his planned extermination of the Jews, Hitler is reported to have exclaimed “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
Even today, the world has not even acknowledged the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks. The world had acknowledged the holocaust of the Jews at the hands of Nazi Germany, perhaps because the actions of the Germans were more apparent to the world and because there was more news coverage of war and war atrocities. Even then, there are those who claim, and continue to insist, that such atrocities never existed during the Second World War. But, with the passage of time, all truths become known, and even the truth about the Armenian genocide, which the Turks have so skillfully tried to hide, should have become known; yet the world remains silent. The Turks have never acknowledged the atrocities committed by their ancestors nor have they offered any apology to the world or material reparations to the survivors or to the descendants of the victims.
It is time for the Turks to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, and it is time for the world to apologize to the Armenian victims and survivors of the Genocide for the world’s earlier denials.
© 2002 by Michael S. Ladah.* The writer is the author of “Quicksand, Oil and Dreams: The Story of One of Five Million Dispossessed Palestinians.”* This article is an extract from the book.* The author may be reached at [email protected] *