When was the armenian genocide started

It started in early , when the Young Turk regime rounded up hundreds of Armenians and hanged many of them in the streets of Istanbul, before beginning the genocidal deportation of most of the Armenian population to the desert, in which up to a million died or were murdered en route. The Armenian minority in Ottoman Turkey had been subject to sporadic persecutions over the centuries. The origin of the term genocide and its codification in international law have their roots in the mass murder of Armenians in — Lawyer Raphael Lemkin , the coiner of the word and later its champion at the United Nations, repeatedly stated that early exposure to newspaper stories about Ottoman crimes against Armenians was key to his beliefs about the need for legal protection of groups a core element in the UN Genocide Convention of Ottoman authorities, supported by auxiliary troops and at times by civilians, perpetrated most of the persecution and mass killing.

The Ottoman government, controlled by the Committee of Union and Progress CUP; also called the Young Turks , aimed to solidify Muslim Turkish dominance in the regions of central and eastern Anatolia by eliminating the sizeable Armenian presence there. Mass atrocities and genocide are often perpetrated within the context of war. The destruction of the Armenians was closely linked to the events of World War I.

Fearing that invading enemy troops would induce Armenians to join them, in spring the Ottoman government began the deportation of the Armenian population from its northeastern border regions.

In the months that followed, the Ottomans expanded deportations from almost all provinces regardless of distance from combat zones. The victims of the Armenian genocide include people killed in local massacres that began in spring ; others who died during deportations, under conditions of starvation, dehydration, exposure, and disease; and Armenians who died in or en route to the desert regions of the southern Empire [today: northern and eastern Syria, northern Saudi Arabia, and Iraq].

In addition, tens of thousands of Armenian children were forcibly removed from their families and converted to Islam. The Armenian genocide cast a long shadow into the Holocaust era. Ambassador Morgenthau's son, Henry Morgenthau Jr. In part due to his memories of the Armenian genocide, Morgenthau Jr.

Congress voted in a nonbinding resolution to recognize the killings as genocide in Previously, President Ronald Reagan, who started his political career among a large Armenian-American population in California, referred to the massacres as a genocide in comments about the Holocaust and other atrocities.

Other presidents, however, have stopped short of using that terminology during their time in office. You may change your billing preferences at any time in the Customer Center or call Customer Service.

The sultan, a dynastic title given to the traditional ruler of the Ottoman Empire, had given up absolute power in , causing a power vacuum.

The group known as the Young Turks took advantage of the situation, and seized power. Initially, the group was intending to make wide-sweeping reforms to create equality within the Empire by creating a constitutional government, which many Armenians supported.

This is not uncommon; rather, seemingly all parties who attempted to create single party states used propagandist newspapers and magazines to spread their message. One of the main goals of this group was to regain some of the honor and prestige lost during the Balkan War, and to reassert the dominance of the Ottoman Empire in the region Armenian National Institute.

One of the most effective ways to carry out this goal was by suppressing the ethnic minorities living within their borders to ensure no further uprisings, and to send a message to the newly autocratic peoples that their recently gained freedom would not last for long. These radical Muslim leaders found the perfect group to send the message in the Armenian population within Turkey, a population accustomed to maltreatment, and an economically successful ethnic and religious minority.

During the Balkan War, many Armenians in the eastern reaches of the Empire had, in fact, joined forces with the Balkan uprisers and the Russians, much to the dismay of the Turkish government Case. After the humiliating defeat at the hands of their former subjects, the Turks decided to round up the Armenians from these provinces, and relocate them into concentration camps.

Naturally, they were subject to innumerable and unimaginable abuses such as murder, rape, beatings, and food deprivation throughout the course of the journey, in what was the beginning of the massacre.

As previously mentioned, the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire at the time was quite wealthy, which is not a problem in and of itself, but became an issue because the Turkish population, and the government itself, were far from financially secure.

Working as craftsmen and farmers, Armenians paid a lot of taxes to the Empire. To make matters worse, the first several years of World War I had been a complete disaster for the Ottoman Empire, and the new Young Turk government was running out of the funds needed to wage war.

In light of this, it is reasonable to assume that part of the reason for the genocide was to acquire the wealth, which had been amassed by the Armenians Armenian. The Armenian populations in Tiflis and Baku controlled the majority of the local wealth—wealth which was desperately needed both by the Islamic civilians of the area, as well as the Young Turk government.

Aside from the financial struggles in the war, the fighting itself was going poorly, and the Armenians caught the blame for this as well. As the government continued to turn its people against the Armenians, they portrayed the minority as the reason for the militaristic defeats, claiming that they were being undermined from within.

To back up this claim, and to prevent any resistance to the impending assault, the Turkish government disarmed all of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Another cause for the persecution of Armenians between and was the religious tension created by the fact that they were a large group of Christians living under the rule of an Islamic nation.

The Ottoman and Seljuk Empires had a unique geopolitical location in that they were located on the border between the Islamic Middle East and the Christian eastern Europe. The two empires had always viewed themselves as guardians of the Islamic faith, and believed it was their role to spread the Islamic faith throughout their territories.

Furthermore, Armenia was not simply a Christian nation, but in the 4th century A. While the level of religious freedom and tolerance within the Ottoman and Seljuk Empires had fluctuated over the years, the Young Turks wanted to establish Islamic dominance throughout the region more so than any of the leading groups before them.

However, it is important to note that many Islamic religious leaders protested the deportation and execution of the Armenians, and later testified on behalf of the persecuted minority during war crime trials. Despite this, it would be difficult to deny that religious animosity, of which the region has had an extensive history, played a major role in the events which were to unfold between and With the main causes for the genocide having been examined, it is time to investigate the persecution itself.

In the year , there were approximately 1. By the end of the persecution in , as many as 1. It is widely accepted that the first several assaults upon the Armenians were carried out by civilians; the government authorities and troops also contributed to the destruction as the persecution blossomed.

Armenians were killed in all sorts of horrific ways, but the vast majority died during the forced marches, during which the Ottoman military and civilians alike herded Armenians, sometimes entire towns at a time, and simply marched them into the desert without resources and left them there to perish. They are hungry, they are thirsty, they are cold in the night air.

They have no place to rest. They cannot freely move their bowels. They are suffering. They are visualizing the unbearable journey of the next day and its horrors, and they are going mad.

The young girls and prettier women are being snatched away, and zaptiye Turkish soldiers satisfy their lusts on them.