ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: WHAT HAPPENED, HOW MANY PEOPLE DIED AND WHY IS IT STILL CAUSING DEBATE?

09:00 * 23.04.15

By Lizzie Dearden

As the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on 24 April
approaches, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people continues
to stoke international tensions.

Mass killings at the hands of Ottoman Empire soldiers during the First
World War are not disputed but historians continue to argue about
whether the atrocities constituted a systematic effort to destroy
ethnic Armenians.

What happened?

The Ottoman Empire, based in modern-day Turkey, was fighting the Allies
as part of the Quadruple Alliance in the Middle Eastern theatre of
the First World War.

Enver Pasha, the Minister of War, had publicly blamed military defeats
on Armenians siding with the Russians and propaganda portrayed them
as a “fifth column” working against the state.

On the orders of the government in 1915, Armenian soldiers in the
Ottoman army were demobilised and transferred to “labour battalions”,
where some were executed or died.

As the Russian Caucasus army marched into Anatolia, Ottoman authorities
started deporting ethnic Armenians from the region, deeming them a
threat to national security.

The slaughter, starvation and death that ensued claimed between
300,000 and 1.5 million Armenian lives, according to vastly differing
estimates.

How did they die?

Contemporary reports listed numerous atrocities committed by Ottoman
Turks, including massacres by shooting, stabbing, hanging, burning,
drowning and alleged drug overdoses.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in forced marches into the
Syrian desert where they starved and died of thirst or disease.

Many of those who survived the journey were put into a network of 25
camps, where mass graves have subsequently been found.

The rape and sexual enslavement of Armenian women was also reported
to be rife and even actively encouraged by some military commanders.

What is disputed?

Many modern-day arguments about the killings focus on the term
“genocide”, with Turkey refusing to use it, claiming that the deaths
were not systematic and the term was coined after the Second World
War and could not be retrospectively applied.

The UN Convention on Genocide describes it as carrying out acts
intended “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial
or religious group” and Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term in 1943,
cited atrocities against the Armenians as well as the Nazi Holocaust
in his investigations.

Turkey has portrayed the killings as part of the chaos of war and
claims there was no organised attempt to destroy Christian Armenians,
although other states have argued that the deaths were caused by
policies orchestrated by the Young Turks government.

According to the International Association of Genocide Scholars,
evidence shows that the “government of the Ottoman Empire began a
systematic genocide of its Armenian citizens and unarmed Christian
minority population.”

“More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct
killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches,” the group
said.

Who recognises the deaths as genocide?

The governments of 24 countries, including France, Italy, Russia and
Canada recognise the events as “genocide”.

The British government does not, although the regional parliaments
and assemblies of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland do so.

Germany is set to use the term on 24 April, despite an intervention
by the Turkish Prime Minister, and Austria did so this week.

Pope Francis called the massacres a genocide earlier this month,
prompting Turkey to summon the Vatican’s envoy and recall its own.

Countries including the US and Israel who have not previously used the
term are facing calls to adopt it as the 100th anniversary approaches.

Why is it marked on 24 April?

Although the deaths continued through the First World War, 24 April
1915 was selected as the starting date of the genocide.

It was the day when the Ottoman government arrested around 250
Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople,
who were later executed

Was anyone punished?

Several senior Ottoman officials were put on trial in Turkey in 1919
in connection with the atrocities but the Young Turks’ leading trio
had already fled abroad and were sentenced to death in absentia.

Historians have since questioned the judicial process at the time,
when Turkish authorities are accused of attempting to appease the
victorious Allies.

From: Baghdasarian