Armenian Genocide essays

Armenian Genocide essays The Armenian genocide was perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish government against its defenseless and law-abiding citizens, who were a Christian minority in a Muslim state. This was a campaign instigated and carried out by a regimental government against its loyal subjects. The rationale behind this horrendous massacre is political, but its aim was to loot, destroy and seize Armenian properties and businesses, and to perform the complete annihilation of a culture and civilization. Although the Turkish government currently denies that an Armenian genocide occurred and claims instead that Armenians were being removed from the eastern war zone, the systematic fashion and widespread organization of the genocide proves that it was directed by the Young Turkish government. The political atmosphere of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was tempestuous; when the Ottoman government entered the European War in 1914 it had ruled Armenia for only four hundred years, and a majority of its population was comprised of the Armenian people (Houannisian 24). The Armenian citizens were scattered throughout the Ottoman Empire; the whole Empire was their heritage, and it was a heritage that they were required to share with the Turks, who held the reins of political power. The alternative to an Ottoman State was not an Armenian State, but a partition among the Powers, which would have ended the ambitions of Turk and Armenian alike. The Powers concerned were prepared for a partition, but an agreement on division was not within reach. The problem the Armenians faced was not how to overthrow the Ottoman Empire but how to preserve it, and their interest in its preservation was even greater than that of their Turkish neighbors and co-heirs. Therefore, a national entente with the Turks was imperative, and seemed attainable in the middle of the nineteenth century. The efforts of Sultan Mahmoud and the influences from France and ...