Armenia

On April 24, 2009, people around the world will gather to commemorate the Armenian genocide. Each year, hundred of thousands of Armenians silently march to the Armenian Genocide Memorial, leaving flowers to place around the eternal flame. Find out more about Armenian commemoration events: Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan, Armenia Check back for more information about the events to take place in New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere Background The atrocities committed against the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire during World War I are called the Armenian Genocide. Between 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. The deportations were disguised as a resettlement program. The survivors who reached northern Syria were collected at a number of concentration camps and news reports indicate that the Ottoman government did not provide any facilities or supplies to sustain the Armenians during their deportation, nor when they arrived. After only a little more than a year of calm at the end of WWI, the atrocities were renewed between 1920 and 1923 and surviving Armenians were subjected to further massacres and expulsions. In 1923 the Ottoman Empire was replaced by the Republic of Turkey. It is estimated that one and a half million Armenians were slaughtered, perished or exiled between 1915 and 1923. The Armenian population of the Ottoman state was reported at about two million in 1915 and by 1923 virtually the entire Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey had disappeared. The Ottoman Empire was during this time ruled by the Turks who had conquered lands extending across West Asia, North Africa and Southeast Europe. The Armenians, a Christian minority in the Ottoman Empire, lived as second class citizens subject to legal restrictions which denied them normal safeguards. The Armenian genocide was perpetrated by the political party in power in the Ottoman Empire, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), usually known as the Young Turks. 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. Response from the International Community 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. 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. The American, British, and German governments sponsored the preparation of reports on the atrocities and numerous accounts were published. Despite the moral outrage of the international community, no strong actions were taken against the Ottoman Empire either to sanction its brutal policies, to salvage the Armenian people from the grip of extermination, or to require the postwar Turkish governments to make restitution to the Armenian people for their material and human losses. In the post-war period, however, nearly four hundred of the key CUP officials implicated in the atrocities committed against the Armenians were arrested. A number of domestic military tribunals were convened. Some of the accused were found guilty of the charges, which ranged from the unconstitutional seizure of power and subversion of the legal government, the conduct of a war of aggression, and conspiring the liquidation of the Armenian population, to more explicit capital crimes, including massacre. Most significantly, the ruling triumvirate of the Young Turks was condemned to death. They, however, fled abroad. Controversy Surrounding the Armenian Genocide Today The present-day Republic of Turkey adamantly denies that genocide was committed against the Armenians. Although there has been much academic recognition of the Armenian Genocide, some governments, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Ukraine, and Georgia, do not officially use the word genocide to describe these events. Although there is no US Federal recognition of the Armenian Genocide, 40 of the 50 U.S. states recognize the events as genocide. Learn More The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Armenian National Institute The Genocide Education Project Armenian National Committee of America