Khatchig Mouradian is a journalist and academic who works as a lecturer at Columbia University. [1]
Mouradian was born in an Armenian family in Lebanon. [2] He worked as the editor of the Armenian Weekly. [3] He is the recipient the Gulbenkian Armenian Studies research fellowship to study the Armenian community in China in the 20th century (2014). [4] Mouradian is also the recipient of the first Hrant Dink Freedom and Justice Medal (2014) of the Organization of Istanbul Armenians. [5] In 2016, Mouradian earned the first PhD in Armenian Genocide studies at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University; scholars Taner Akçam, Debórah Dwork, and Raymond Kévorkian formed the committee that approved his dissertation, titled Genocide and Humanitarian Assistance in Ottoman Syria (1915–1917). [6]
The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of others, primarily women and children.
Mehmed Talaat, commonly known as Talaat Pasha or Talat Pasha, was an Ottoman Young Turk activist, politician, and convicted war criminal who served as the de facto leader of the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1918. He was chairman of the Union and Progress Party, which operated a one-party dictatorship in the Empire; during World War I he became Grand Vizier. He has been called the architect of the Armenian genocide, and was responsible for other ethnic cleansings during his time as Minister of Interior Affairs.
Ahmed Djemal, also known as Djemal Pasha, was an Ottoman military leader and one of the Three Pashas that ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
The Three Pashas, also known as the Young Turk triumvirate or CUP triumvirate, consisted of Mehmed Talaat Pasha, the Grand Vizier and Minister of the Interior; Ismail Enver Pasha, the Minister of War and Commander-in-Chief to the Sultan; and Ahmed Djemal Pasha, the Minister of the Navy and governor-general of Syria, who effectively ruled the Ottoman Empire after the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état and the subsequent assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha.
Armenians in Turkey, one of the indigenous peoples of Turkey, have an estimated population of 50,000 to 70,000, down from a population of over 2 million Armenians between the years 1914 and 1921. Today, the overwhelming majority of Turkish Armenians are concentrated in Istanbul. They support their own newspapers, churches and schools, and the majority belong to the Armenian Apostolic faith and a minority of Armenians in Turkey belong to the Armenian Catholic Church or to the Armenian Evangelical Church. They are not considered part of the Armenian Diaspora, since they have been living in their historical homeland for more than four thousand years.
Djevdet Bey or Djevdet Tahir Belbez was an Ottoman Albanian governor of the Van vilayet of the Ottoman Empire during World War I and the Siege of Van. He is considered responsible for the massacres of Armenians in and around Van. Clarence Ussher, a witness to these events, reported that 55,000 Armenians were subsequently killed. Djevdet is also considered responsible for massacres of Assyrians in the same region.
Armenian genocide denial is the claim that the Ottoman Empire and its ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), did not commit genocide against its Armenian citizens during World War I—a crime documented in a large body of evidence and affirmed by the vast majority of scholars. The perpetrators denied the genocide as they carried it out, claiming that Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were resettled for military reasons, not exterminated. In the genocide's aftermath, incriminating documents were systematically destroyed, and denial has been the policy of every government of the Republic of Turkey, as of 2023, and later adopted by the Republic of Azerbaijan, as of 1991.
Armenian resistance included military, political, and humanitarian efforts to counter Ottoman forces and mitigate the Armenian genocide during the first World War. Early in World War I, the Ottoman Empire commenced efforts to eradicate Armenian culture and eliminate Armenian life, through acts of killing and death marches into uninhabitable deserts and mountain regions. The result was the homogenisation of the Ottoman Empire and elimination of 90% of the Armenian Ottoman population.
Mustafa Yamulki, also known as "Nemrud" Mustafa Pasha, was a Kurdish military officer, chairman of the Ottoman military court, minister for education in the Kingdom of Kurdistan and a journalist. Mustafa was born in the city of Sulaimaniyah which was then in the Mosul Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire.
Mehmed Reshid was an Ottoman physician, official of the Committee of Union and Progress, and governor of the Diyarbekir Vilayet (province) of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. He is known for organizing the 1915 genocide of the Armenian and Assyrian communities of Diyarbekir, in which between 144,000 and 157,000 Armenians, Assyrians, and other Christians were killed. During the Allied occupation of Istanbul, Reshid was arrested and his roles in the massacres were exposed. He later escaped from prison, but committed suicide after being cornered by local authorities.
Hans-Lukas Kieser is a Swiss historian of the late Ottoman Empire and Turkey, Professor of modern history at the University of Zurich and president of the Research Foundation Switzerland-Turkey in Basel. He is an author of books and articles in several languages.
Witnesses and testimony provide an important and valuable insight into the events which occurred both during and after the Armenian genocide. The Armenian genocide was prepared and carried out by the Ottoman government in 1915 as well as in the following years. As a result of the genocide, as many as 1.5 million Armenians who were living in their ancestral homeland were deported and murdered.
Hasan Tahsin Bey was an Ottoman and later Turkish bureaucrat and politician. Throughout his career as a politician, Tahsin served as a governor to several Ottoman cities including Aydın, Erzurum, Van and the province of Syria. Thereafter, he served as deputy to the cities of Ardahan, Erzurum, and Konya. During the Armenian genocide, he was complicit in the Kemah massacres. After the war, he provided important testimony on the genocide.
Ali Cenani was a Turkish politician of the Republican Peoples Party (CHP) and member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. He served as a Minister of Commerce in the 1920s during the presidency of Kemal Atatürk. Before, he was also member of the Ottoman Parliament.
Ahmet Faik Erner (1879–1967) was an Ottoman Turkish bureaucrat and a member of the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP).
The terminology of the Armenian genocide is different in English, Turkish, and Armenian languages and has led to political controversies around the issue of Armenian genocide denial and Armenian genocide recognition. Although the majority of historians writing in English use the word "genocide", other terms exist.
On 15 March 1921, Armenian student Soghomon Tehlirian assassinated Talaat Pasha—former grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire and the main architect of the Armenian genocide—in Berlin. At his trial, Tehlirian argued, "I have killed a man, but I am not a murderer"; the jury acquitted him.
Hovhannes Bujicanian was an Armenian academic and teacher in the Ottoman Empire. He was a defender of the Second Constitutional Order within the Ottoman Empire and an influential functionary in the Euphrates College.
Differing views of what caused the Armenian genocide include explanations focusing on nationalism, religion, and wartime radicalization and continue to be debated among scholars. In the twenty-first century, focus has shifted to multicausal explanations. Most historians agree that the genocide was not premeditated before World War I, but the role of contingency, ideology, and long-term structural factors in causing the genocide continues to be discussed.
Hilmar Kaiser is a German historian who has a PhD from European University Institute, Florence, and works at Yerevan State University.