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.
Medz Yeghern (Մեծ եղեռն, Mets yegherrnlit. 'Great Evil Crime') is an Armenian term for genocide, especially the Armenian genocide. The term has been the subject of political controversy because it is perceived as more ambiguous than the word genocide. [1] [2] [3] The term Aghet (Աղետ, lit. 'Catastrophe') is also used. [4] The term Հայոց ցեղասպանություն (Hayots tseghaspanutyun), literally "Armenian genocide", is also used in official contexts, for example, the Հայոց ցեղասպանության թանգարան (Armenian Genocide Museum) in Armenia.
Contemporary observers used unambiguous terminology to describe the genocide, including "the murder of a nation", "race extermination" and so forth. [5] [6]
In their declaration of May 1915, the Entente powers called the ongoing deportation of Armenian people a "crime against humanity". Crimes against humanity later became a category in international law following the Nuremberg trials. [7] [8]
The English word genocide was coined by the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1943. Lemkin's interest in war crimes stemmed from the 1921 trial of Soghomon Tehlirian for the assassination of Talaat Pasha; he recognized the fate of the Armenians as one of the main cases of genocide in the twentieth century. [9] [10] Although most international law scholars agree that the 1948 Genocide Convention, which established the prohibition of genocide in international criminal law, is not retroactive, [11] [12] the events of the Armenian genocide otherwise meet the legal definition of genocide. [13] [14] David Gutman states that "few if any scholars, however, reject the use of 'genocide'" for the Armenian case solely because they consider it anachronistic. [15] However, it is possible to write about the Armenian genocide without downplaying or denying it, using a variety of terms other than genocide. [6]
As well as having a legal meaning, the word genocide also "contains an inherent value judgment, one that privileges the morality of the victims over the perpetrators". [16]
The term ethnic cleansing , which was invented during the 1990s Yugoslav Wars, is often used alongside or instead of genocide in academic works. Some Turkish historians are willing to call the Armenian Genocide ethnic cleansing or a crime against humanity but hesitate at genocide. [17]
The names in French are Génocide arménien and génocide des Arméniens.[ citation needed ]
French served as a foreign language among educated people in the post-Tanzimat/late imperial period. [18]
Völkermord, the German word for genocide, predates the English word and was used by German contemporaries to describe the genocide. [5]
The Turkish government uses expressions such as "so-called Armenian genocide" (Turkish : sözde Ermeni soykırımı), "the Armenian Problem " (Turkish : Ermeni sorunu), often characterizing the charge of genocide as "Armenian allegations" [19] or "Armenian lies". [20] Turkish historian Doğan Gürpınar writes that sözde soykırım is "the peculiar idiom to reluctantly refer to 1915 but outright reject it", invented in the early 1980s to further Armenian genocide denial. [21] However, in 2006, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered government officials to say "the events of 1915" instead of "so-called Armenian genocide". [22] Erdoğan, as well as some Turkish intellectuals,[ who? ] have distinguished between "good" Armenians (those who live in Turkey and Armenia) who do not discuss the genocide and "bad" ones (primarily the Armenian diaspora) who insist on recognition. [23] [24]
Many Turkish intellectuals have been reluctant to use the term genocide because, according to Akçam, "by qualifying it a genocide you become a member of a collective associated to a crime, not any crime but to the ultimate crime". [25] According to Halil Karaveli, "the word [genocide] incites strong, emotional reactions among Turks from all walks of society and of every ideological inclination". [26]
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.
Vahakn Norair Dadrian was an Armenian-American sociologist and historian, born in Turkey, professor of sociology, historian, and an expert on the Armenian genocide.
The Greek genocide, which included the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia which was carried out mainly during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) on the basis of their religion and ethnicity. It was perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire led by the Three Pashas and by the Government of the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire. The genocide included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches through the Syrian Desert, expulsions, summary executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece. Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.
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 genocide recognition is the formal acceptance that the systematic massacres and forced deportation of Armenians committed by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, during and after the First World War, constituted genocide.
The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official Documents Relating to the Deportation and the Massacres of Armenians, containing the Talat Pasha telegrams, is a book published by historian and journalist Aram Andonian in 1919. Originally redacted in Armenian, it was popularized worldwide through the English edition published by Hodder & Stoughton of London. It includes several documents (telegrams) that constitute evidence that the Armenian genocide was formally implemented as Ottoman Empire policy.
Altuğ Taner Akçam is a Turkish-German historian and sociologist. During the 1990s, he was the first Turkish scholar to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, and has written several books on the genocide, such as A Shameful Act (1999), From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (2004), The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity (2012), and Killing Orders (2018). He is recognized as a "leading international authority" on the subject. Akçam's frequent participation in public debates on the legacy of the genocide have been compared to Theodor Adorno's role in postwar Germany.
Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum is a memorial-museum complex which promotes Armenian genocide denial.
Anti-Armenian sentiment or Armenophobia in Turkey has a long history dating back to the Ottoman Empire, something that eventually culminated in the Armenian genocide. Today, anti-Armenian sentiment is widespread in Turkish society. In a 2011 survey in Turkey, 73.9% of respondents admitted having unfavorable views toward Armenians. According to Minority Rights Group, while the government recognizes Armenians as a minority group, as used in Turkey this term denotes second-class status. The word "Armenian" is widely used as an insult in Turkey by both civilians and by politicians.
The late Ottoman genocides is a historiographical theory which sees the concurrent Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides that occurred during the 1910s–1920s as parts of a single event rather than separate events, which were initiated by the Young Turks. Although some sources, including The Thirty-Year Genocide (2019) written by the historians Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi, characterize this event as a genocide of Christians, others such as those written by the historians Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer contend that such an approach "ignores the Young Turks' massive violence against non-Christians", in particular against Muslim Kurds.
The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire is a 2011 book by Taner Akçam, published by Princeton University Press. It discusses the role of the Young Turk movement in the Armenian genocide and other ethnic removals.
The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide is a 2006 book by Guenter Lewy about the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. In the book, Lewy argues that the high death toll among Ottoman Armenians was a byproduct of the conditions of the marches and on sporadic attacks rather than a planned attempt to exterminate them.
Genocide justification is the claim that a genocide is morally excusable/defensible, necessary, and/or sanctioned by law. Genocide justification differs from genocide denial, which is the attempt to reject the occurrence of genocide. Perpetrators often claim that genocide victims presented a serious threat, justifying their actions by stating it was legitimate self-defense of a nation or state. According to modern international criminal law, there can be no excuse for genocide. Genocide is often camouflaged as military activity against combatants, and the distinction between denial and justification is often blurred.
Bibliography of the Armenian genocide is a list of books about the Armenian genocide:
The relationship between the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust has been discussed by scholars. The majority of scholars believe that there is a direct causal relationship between the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, however, some of them do not believe that there is a direct causal relationship between the two genocides.
During World War I, Imperial Germany was a military ally of the Ottoman Empire, which perpetrated the Armenian genocide. Many Germans present in eastern and southern Anatolia witnessed the genocide, but censorship and self-censorship hampered these reports, while German newspapers reported Turkish denial of the massacres. About 800 Imperial German Army officers and 25.000 German soldiers were an integral part of the Turkish army and belonged to its command and general staff. It is known that individual German military advisors signed some of the orders that led to deportations of Armenians.
Ahmet Esat Uras (1882–1957) was a perpetrator of the Armenian genocide who later wrote The Armenians in History and the Armenian Question (1950), an apologist work which has been described as "the ur-text of Turkish denialist 'scholarship'".
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.
On 24 May 1915, on the initiative of Russia, the Triple Entente—Russia, France, and the United Kingdom—issued a declaration condemning the ongoing Armenian genocide carried out in the Ottoman Empire and threatening to hold the perpetrators accountable. This was the first use of the phrase "crimes against humanity" in international diplomacy, which later became a category of international criminal law after World War II.
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.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help)The Turkish government persists in its long-standing refusal to call the killings genocide, denying the claims as "Armenian lies."