This paper was written for the Conference on Genocide: History and Prevention, Vienna, November 8-9, 2001. It has been revised since then, and will be published in Idea: The Journal of Social Issues. This web edition © 2002 Dennis R. Papazian.
Modern Genocide: The Curse of the Nation State and
Ideological Political Parties
The Armenian Case
By Dennis R. Papazian
The University of Michigan-Dearborn
Résumé
The character of the Young Turk dictatorship of Talât, Enver, and Cemal (Jemal) Pashas during the twilight of the Ottoman Empire reveals elements conducive to genocide. The state was in decline. The Empire was being drastically truncated by a series of wars. Thousands of Muslim refugees were flooding Anatolia where the bulk of Armenian peasantry had lived for centuries as a settled population. The triumvirs saw themselves as the saviors of the Turkish nation, and on this basis entered World War I on the side of Germany in the hope of recouping territorial losses and punishing an old enemy, Russia. Power was exercised through the Committee of Union and Progress, a power parallel to, but not a part of the state structure. The Ottoman elites, who heretofore had ruled the state, saw their authority become a chimera as the parallel structure exercised the real power, just as the Communist Party unofficially ruled the Soviet Union for so many years and somewhat as the Nazi Party ruled Germany.
All three of these political parties could find domestic scapegoats during war, unencumbered by tradition and the values of the old social system. Such unlimited power, unhindered by traditional values, was ripe for solving perceived domestic problems by final solutions, the eradication of perceived domestic enemies to cleanse the state and to make it homogeneous in order to strengthen the state and make it able to achieve domestic and foreign goals.
The avoidance of genocide in the future, accordingly, is to offer protection to minorities and to punish crimes against humanity, until such time as world markets and social internationalization develop a common standard of behavior for the nation state and weaken the current view that a given dominant population is best served by a homogeneous state rather than a multinational society of peoples. In other words, strengthen the ideas universally that nationality is determined not by language, blood, or religion, but rather by state boundaries and that all mankind shares a common humanity that transcends borders.
Modern Genocide: The Curse of the Nation State and
Ideological Political Parties: The Armenian Case
By Dennis R. Papazian
University of Michigan-Dearborn
I want to thank the organizers of this conference for inviting me to speak. I would also like to commend them for their humanitarian concerns. In my opinion, there are three dreadful man-made evils threatening civilization today— war, genocide, and terrorism. We are dealing here with genocide, its history and prevention, one of the major three. If we can help move forward only a bit the process of eradicating genocide through the insights we provide, our time and efforts will be well rewarded.
My assignment is to discuss the Armenian Genocide, frequently referred to as the first genocide of the 20th century, although it is sometimes known as the forgotten Genocide. The Armenian Genocide, although not well known to today's public, attracted wide attention while it was taking place in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. While it was best known in the United States, it was also publicized in Great Britain and in continental Europe. The U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, was inundated by reports of large scale Armenian massacres coming from his consular officials [1] and American missionaries [2] stationed throughout Anatolia (present day Turkey). He immediately relayed these reports to the U.S. State Department and, through the State Department, the information was released to the American public and published in all the major newspapers. In Britain, Viscount Bryce and his young assistant Arnold Toynbee, equally concerned, prepared a Blue Book, which was widely distributed, in which was recorded the testimony of a variety of eyewitnesses, chiefly Europeans. [3]
Two Germans, among the many who were living at that time in the Ottoman Empire as military personnel, diplomats, consular officials, missionaries or businessmen, [4] stand out above others for their concern for the plight of the Armenians. The first was Johannes Lepsius, a missionary who reported the ongoing Armenian massacres in the German press until he was prevented from doing so by war censorship, and who after the war was given permission by the German Foreign Office to publish a large collection of official German archival documents which gave clear and compelling evidence of the guilt of the Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress [CUP]) in conceiving, planning, and carrying out the expulsion and massacre of the Armenian population of historic Armenia. [5]
The second German who stands out for the contemporary evidence he provided is Armin T. Wegner, a soldier attached to the German-Ottoman Sanitation Mission, who actually took photographs in 1915 of the genocidal process as it was being carried out, one of the two most complete photographic collections extant. [6]
Later in Germany, in 1933, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, [7] an historical novel by Franz Werfel, a German Jewish writer, attracted wide attention and was translated into English and several other languages, and widely distributed in America. That book, the story of a small band of Armenian resisters who were finally rescued by a French ship off the coast of Cilicia, became something of a cult book, furtively passed hand to hand, among Jewish resisters during World War II. [8]
Finally, we should mention a young soldier who was aware of the genocidal process taking place and its ultimate effectiveness. [9] Some twenty-five years later, after he had risen to power in Germany, he sent troops into Poland stating to his generals: ". . . I have placed my death-head formations in readiness—for the present only in the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of the Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" [10] . . . "Poland will be depopulated and then settled by Germans." [11]
Since most people know little about the "annihilation of the Armenians," it seems appropriate, before I begin my analysis, to provide a brief outline and explanation.
During the 19th century, Europe was modernizing politically, economically, and socially at a pace which was not matched anywhere in the world except in North America. The Ottoman Empire, while located partially in Europe, did not participate in that process of rapid modernization, thus gaining the title "the Sick Man of Europe." [12] The "Tanzimat," the political reform movement of 19th century Turkey led by the Ottoman elite, failed in large measure due to the refusal of the dominant Muslims to give up their superior social, legal, and political status [13] and to grant protection to Armenian Christians who were suffering serious depredations in the degenerated provinces of eastern Anatolia, [14] the Armenian homeland. While protection under the law was granted on paper, these measures were highly unpopular among the vast majority of the Muslim population of Turkey whose culture and traditions made reform inoperative, and even heightened latent hostility toward the minorities. [15]
The 19th century in Europe was a century of revolution, a century of increasing domestic democratization, rising standards of living, tolerance and higher expectations for the common man. Unfortunately, the military-theocratic regime in Turkey, under the Sultan-Caliph (Kalif), was unable to come to grips with modernization, democratization, or religious toleration. The downtrodden masses in Turkey, both Christian and Muslim, became restive with dissatisfaction.
The 19th century also witnessed the gradual disintegration of the Ottoman Empire at the same time that the European powers were in the process of expanding their supremacy over vast parts of the globe, including large areas inhabited by Muslims. [16] This inversion of the Muslims' perceived right to rule produced great consternation and frustration among them and an even greater abhorrence of Christians within the Ottoman Empire.
Furthermore, the 19th century in Europe was a century of nationalism and the forming of nation-states. [17] The force of nationalism, the concept of the nation-state, and the rising expectations for democratic rule and a higher standard of living which were transforming Europe, also inspired the subject Christians in the Ottoman Empire, particularly those in Europe, who one by one demanded reforms, autonomy and later outright independence from their Ottoman Muslim overlords. [18] In effect the Balkan Christians were seeking no more or less than their European contemporaries. [19] Aided by the Christian powers of Europe, one by one over the century, the Balkan states gained their emancipation, thus increasing the hatred of the Turkish Muslims for Christians—the emancipated as well as the emancipators. As a consequence of their losses in Europe and Africa, by the beginning of the 20th century the Turks considered Anatolia to be their national heartland.
The Ottoman Empire hardly felt the formative influences that produced modern European culture. There was no struggle between church and state, which would result in the separation of these powers into two separate authorities. There was no Renaissance that fed the forces of humanism, secularism and democracy in society. There was no Protestant Reformation that raised the status of the individual believer relative to the hierarchal authorities. There was no Enlightenment that taught a secular, rather than a theological, view of the universe. And the major contemporary ideologies of Europe—secularism, nationalism, social Darwinism, and Marxism—were imported as a veneer over ancient, alien, often hostile, and seemingly incompatible cultures. [20]
Modern Genocide: The Curse of the Nation State and
Ideological Political Parties
The Armenian Case
By Dennis R. Papazian
The University of Michigan-Dearborn
Résumé
The character of the Young Turk dictatorship of Talât, Enver, and Cemal (Jemal) Pashas during the twilight of the Ottoman Empire reveals elements conducive to genocide. The state was in decline. The Empire was being drastically truncated by a series of wars. Thousands of Muslim refugees were flooding Anatolia where the bulk of Armenian peasantry had lived for centuries as a settled population. The triumvirs saw themselves as the saviors of the Turkish nation, and on this basis entered World War I on the side of Germany in the hope of recouping territorial losses and punishing an old enemy, Russia. Power was exercised through the Committee of Union and Progress, a power parallel to, but not a part of the state structure. The Ottoman elites, who heretofore had ruled the state, saw their authority become a chimera as the parallel structure exercised the real power, just as the Communist Party unofficially ruled the Soviet Union for so many years and somewhat as the Nazi Party ruled Germany.
All three of these political parties could find domestic scapegoats during war, unencumbered by tradition and the values of the old social system. Such unlimited power, unhindered by traditional values, was ripe for solving perceived domestic problems by final solutions, the eradication of perceived domestic enemies to cleanse the state and to make it homogeneous in order to strengthen the state and make it able to achieve domestic and foreign goals.
The avoidance of genocide in the future, accordingly, is to offer protection to minorities and to punish crimes against humanity, until such time as world markets and social internationalization develop a common standard of behavior for the nation state and weaken the current view that a given dominant population is best served by a homogeneous state rather than a multinational society of peoples. In other words, strengthen the ideas universally that nationality is determined not by language, blood, or religion, but rather by state boundaries and that all mankind shares a common humanity that transcends borders.
Modern Genocide: The Curse of the Nation State and
Ideological Political Parties: The Armenian Case
By Dennis R. Papazian
University of Michigan-Dearborn
I want to thank the organizers of this conference for inviting me to speak. I would also like to commend them for their humanitarian concerns. In my opinion, there are three dreadful man-made evils threatening civilization today— war, genocide, and terrorism. We are dealing here with genocide, its history and prevention, one of the major three. If we can help move forward only a bit the process of eradicating genocide through the insights we provide, our time and efforts will be well rewarded.
My assignment is to discuss the Armenian Genocide, frequently referred to as the first genocide of the 20th century, although it is sometimes known as the forgotten Genocide. The Armenian Genocide, although not well known to today's public, attracted wide attention while it was taking place in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. While it was best known in the United States, it was also publicized in Great Britain and in continental Europe. The U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, was inundated by reports of large scale Armenian massacres coming from his consular officials [1] and American missionaries [2] stationed throughout Anatolia (present day Turkey). He immediately relayed these reports to the U.S. State Department and, through the State Department, the information was released to the American public and published in all the major newspapers. In Britain, Viscount Bryce and his young assistant Arnold Toynbee, equally concerned, prepared a Blue Book, which was widely distributed, in which was recorded the testimony of a variety of eyewitnesses, chiefly Europeans. [3]
Two Germans, among the many who were living at that time in the Ottoman Empire as military personnel, diplomats, consular officials, missionaries or businessmen, [4] stand out above others for their concern for the plight of the Armenians. The first was Johannes Lepsius, a missionary who reported the ongoing Armenian massacres in the German press until he was prevented from doing so by war censorship, and who after the war was given permission by the German Foreign Office to publish a large collection of official German archival documents which gave clear and compelling evidence of the guilt of the Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress [CUP]) in conceiving, planning, and carrying out the expulsion and massacre of the Armenian population of historic Armenia. [5]
The second German who stands out for the contemporary evidence he provided is Armin T. Wegner, a soldier attached to the German-Ottoman Sanitation Mission, who actually took photographs in 1915 of the genocidal process as it was being carried out, one of the two most complete photographic collections extant. [6]
Later in Germany, in 1933, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, [7] an historical novel by Franz Werfel, a German Jewish writer, attracted wide attention and was translated into English and several other languages, and widely distributed in America. That book, the story of a small band of Armenian resisters who were finally rescued by a French ship off the coast of Cilicia, became something of a cult book, furtively passed hand to hand, among Jewish resisters during World War II. [8]
Finally, we should mention a young soldier who was aware of the genocidal process taking place and its ultimate effectiveness. [9] Some twenty-five years later, after he had risen to power in Germany, he sent troops into Poland stating to his generals: ". . . I have placed my death-head formations in readiness—for the present only in the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of the Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" [10] . . . "Poland will be depopulated and then settled by Germans." [11]
Since most people know little about the "annihilation of the Armenians," it seems appropriate, before I begin my analysis, to provide a brief outline and explanation.
During the 19th century, Europe was modernizing politically, economically, and socially at a pace which was not matched anywhere in the world except in North America. The Ottoman Empire, while located partially in Europe, did not participate in that process of rapid modernization, thus gaining the title "the Sick Man of Europe." [12] The "Tanzimat," the political reform movement of 19th century Turkey led by the Ottoman elite, failed in large measure due to the refusal of the dominant Muslims to give up their superior social, legal, and political status [13] and to grant protection to Armenian Christians who were suffering serious depredations in the degenerated provinces of eastern Anatolia, [14] the Armenian homeland. While protection under the law was granted on paper, these measures were highly unpopular among the vast majority of the Muslim population of Turkey whose culture and traditions made reform inoperative, and even heightened latent hostility toward the minorities. [15]
The 19th century in Europe was a century of revolution, a century of increasing domestic democratization, rising standards of living, tolerance and higher expectations for the common man. Unfortunately, the military-theocratic regime in Turkey, under the Sultan-Caliph (Kalif), was unable to come to grips with modernization, democratization, or religious toleration. The downtrodden masses in Turkey, both Christian and Muslim, became restive with dissatisfaction.
The 19th century also witnessed the gradual disintegration of the Ottoman Empire at the same time that the European powers were in the process of expanding their supremacy over vast parts of the globe, including large areas inhabited by Muslims. [16] This inversion of the Muslims' perceived right to rule produced great consternation and frustration among them and an even greater abhorrence of Christians within the Ottoman Empire.
Furthermore, the 19th century in Europe was a century of nationalism and the forming of nation-states. [17] The force of nationalism, the concept of the nation-state, and the rising expectations for democratic rule and a higher standard of living which were transforming Europe, also inspired the subject Christians in the Ottoman Empire, particularly those in Europe, who one by one demanded reforms, autonomy and later outright independence from their Ottoman Muslim overlords. [18] In effect the Balkan Christians were seeking no more or less than their European contemporaries. [19] Aided by the Christian powers of Europe, one by one over the century, the Balkan states gained their emancipation, thus increasing the hatred of the Turkish Muslims for Christians—the emancipated as well as the emancipators. As a consequence of their losses in Europe and Africa, by the beginning of the 20th century the Turks considered Anatolia to be their national heartland.
The Ottoman Empire hardly felt the formative influences that produced modern European culture. There was no struggle between church and state, which would result in the separation of these powers into two separate authorities. There was no Renaissance that fed the forces of humanism, secularism and democracy in society. There was no Protestant Reformation that raised the status of the individual believer relative to the hierarchal authorities. There was no Enlightenment that taught a secular, rather than a theological, view of the universe. And the major contemporary ideologies of Europe—secularism, nationalism, social Darwinism, and Marxism—were imported as a veneer over ancient, alien, often hostile, and seemingly incompatible cultures. [20]
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