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The Times Higher Education Supplement
August 6, 2004
Young Turks Who Set Stage For The Century Of Slaughter
by: William Rubinstein
The Burning Tigris: A History of the Armenian Genocide. By Peter
Balakian. Heinemann 473pp, Pounds 18.99. ISBN 0 434 00816 8
The 20th century has often been called the century of genocide, and
the first of its genocidal horrors, at least in the Western world,
was the Armenian genocide of 1915. Carried out by the Turkish
Government and its allies among the local populations of northeastern
and central Turkey against its own citizens, it anticipated many of
the enormities made familiar to the world in the Nazi genocide of the
Jews a quarter of a century later. In some respects, the Armenian
genocide provides an archetype for most subsequent state-sponsored
mass killings down to Pol Pot and beyond.
The Armenian genocide originated among the ultra-nationalist
extremists of the Committee for Union and Progress (the CUP), also
known as the Ittihad (Union), or, more popularly, the "Young Turks",
who had seized power in the Ottoman Empire in 1908. Originally a
broadly based modernising movement, its Turkish majority became ever
more committed to extreme Turkish nationalism, entailing the
elimination of most Armenians and Greeks from the Turkish economy.
Their extremism was accentuated by the progressive loss of territory
suffered by Turkey in the Balkans and elsewhere up until 1914. In
1915, during the First World War, extremists within the CUP took the
smokescreen provided by the war as their opportunity to eliminate
most of the Armenians in Anatolian Turkey. At least 600,000 Armenians
perished - other estimates are far higher - often in ways and
circumstances that directly anticipated the Nazi Holocaust.
Many thousands were deported in sealed boxcars to remote desert
areas; many were machine-gunned in pits at the edge of towns. For one
of the first times in modern Western history, this slaughter spared
no one, not even women, children and the elderly, who are normally
protected to a certain extent in wartime. (On the other hand,
conversion to Islam spared the lives of some, while many Armenian
women wound up as Islamified wives or concubines of Turks.) This
harrowing story has attracted a growing literature in the burgeoning
and controversial field of "genocide studies", but Peter Balakian's
work is perhaps the first general account of the Armenian genocide
intended for a literate mass audience; it is clearly meant to
parallel the many popular accounts of the Holocaust, regularly
drawing analogies with the Nazi genocide.
Among its many merits are a full discussion of the appalling
persecutions endured by the Armenians in the decades before 1914, and
of the not-inconsiderable efforts of the Western democracies,
particularly the US, to publicise their fate and relieve their
suffering. This work is likely to become the best-known book on the
Armenian genocide. Balakian, professor of humanities at Colgate
University in New York state, is one of a growing number of
historians of Armenian descent who have assessed and publicised the
tragedy of their people. The work includes harrowing photographs of
the 1915 genocide that beggar belief.
Granted all of this, one must also point out that much about the
Armenian genocide of 1915, as diabolical as it obviously was, can be
interpreted in a somewhat different light compared with the sequence
of events typically set out in recent accounts of this event. First,
it seems clear that there was no pre-existing plan among Turkish
leaders to exterminate the Armenians, as is now frequently suggested
by many scholars. The last Ottoman Parliament, elected in 1914 just
before the outbreak of the war, saw 14 Armenians elected among its
259 members, exactly the same number as in the previous Parliament,
elected in 1908. Early in 1914, both the Armenian and Greek
communities in Turkey - the Greeks also being targeted by Turkish
extremists - carried out extensive and successful negotiations aimed
at guaranteeing their existing percentages in future Ottoman
parliaments. At this stage, a number of Armenians were major figures
in the CUP movement, for instance Bedros Halacian, the public works
minister. The contrast between this and the situation of the Jews in
Nazi Germany, ostracised from day one, is self-evident.
It was also plainly the case that Turkey did not start the First
World War and could not have foreseen the course of catastrophic war
declarations and mobilisations that unfolded in mid-1914. Indeed,
Turkey remained neutral for the first three months of the conflict,
declaring war only on October 19, 1914. In fact, most Turkish elite
opinion was originally pro-British rather than pro-German, with
Britain traditionally seen as the Ottoman Empire's protector, and
arguably only the extraordinarily inept handling of the situation by
the British Government - something for which it has received
insufficient criticism - prevented Turkey from joining the Allies
rather than the Central Powers, with profound consequences.
>From October 1914, however, Turkey found itself at war with Russia.
Turkey's nationalist extremists saw its Christian Armenian minority
as likely to be a subversive force working for Russia. Turkey then
proceeded to invade the Russian Caucasus, with disastrous results,
leading, in late November 1914, to a Russian counter-invasion of
northeastern Anatolia, which resulted in its seizure of much of the
area. Many Armenians supported the Russian drive against the hated
Turks. That Russia had successfully invaded northeastern Turkey in
1914-15 is obfuscated and camouflaged in the most recent accounts of
the Armenian genocide.
It was at this point, in the spring of 1915, that the CUP Government,
now dominated by extremists, decided forcibly to transfer its
Armenian population in northeastern Anatolia to the southern part of
Turkey. This forcible transfer was carried out with the utmost
brutality and inhumanity, and certainly included the deliberate
murder of tens of thousands of Armenians, by the nationalist
extremists who controlled the Turkish Government as well as their
henchmen among anti-Christian Muslim fundamentalists, Kurds and
criminals recruited especially to carry out the transfers as brutally
as possible.
The genocide occurred when the very existence of Turkey was certainly
threatened by its enemies, creating a mood of panic where murderous
fanaticism became the order of the day. While the parallels with the
Holocaust are clear, there were obvious differences as well: most
killings by the Nazis occurred in Poland and Russia, which Germany
had invaded largely for ideological reasons, the persecution of the
Jews being at the very core of Hitler's world-view. In contrast,
Turkey inflicted slaughter on its own people while being invaded.
It is also no coincidence that the Armenian genocide occurred during
the First World War. The profoundly destructive effects of that
conflict led to the triumph of extremist, genocidal ideologies whose
impact was arguably not made good until the fall of Communism 75
years later.
William D. Rubinstein is professor of history, University of Wales,
Aberystwyth.
August 6, 2004
Young Turks Who Set Stage For The Century Of Slaughter
by: William Rubinstein
The Burning Tigris: A History of the Armenian Genocide. By Peter
Balakian. Heinemann 473pp, Pounds 18.99. ISBN 0 434 00816 8
The 20th century has often been called the century of genocide, and
the first of its genocidal horrors, at least in the Western world,
was the Armenian genocide of 1915. Carried out by the Turkish
Government and its allies among the local populations of northeastern
and central Turkey against its own citizens, it anticipated many of
the enormities made familiar to the world in the Nazi genocide of the
Jews a quarter of a century later. In some respects, the Armenian
genocide provides an archetype for most subsequent state-sponsored
mass killings down to Pol Pot and beyond.
The Armenian genocide originated among the ultra-nationalist
extremists of the Committee for Union and Progress (the CUP), also
known as the Ittihad (Union), or, more popularly, the "Young Turks",
who had seized power in the Ottoman Empire in 1908. Originally a
broadly based modernising movement, its Turkish majority became ever
more committed to extreme Turkish nationalism, entailing the
elimination of most Armenians and Greeks from the Turkish economy.
Their extremism was accentuated by the progressive loss of territory
suffered by Turkey in the Balkans and elsewhere up until 1914. In
1915, during the First World War, extremists within the CUP took the
smokescreen provided by the war as their opportunity to eliminate
most of the Armenians in Anatolian Turkey. At least 600,000 Armenians
perished - other estimates are far higher - often in ways and
circumstances that directly anticipated the Nazi Holocaust.
Many thousands were deported in sealed boxcars to remote desert
areas; many were machine-gunned in pits at the edge of towns. For one
of the first times in modern Western history, this slaughter spared
no one, not even women, children and the elderly, who are normally
protected to a certain extent in wartime. (On the other hand,
conversion to Islam spared the lives of some, while many Armenian
women wound up as Islamified wives or concubines of Turks.) This
harrowing story has attracted a growing literature in the burgeoning
and controversial field of "genocide studies", but Peter Balakian's
work is perhaps the first general account of the Armenian genocide
intended for a literate mass audience; it is clearly meant to
parallel the many popular accounts of the Holocaust, regularly
drawing analogies with the Nazi genocide.
Among its many merits are a full discussion of the appalling
persecutions endured by the Armenians in the decades before 1914, and
of the not-inconsiderable efforts of the Western democracies,
particularly the US, to publicise their fate and relieve their
suffering. This work is likely to become the best-known book on the
Armenian genocide. Balakian, professor of humanities at Colgate
University in New York state, is one of a growing number of
historians of Armenian descent who have assessed and publicised the
tragedy of their people. The work includes harrowing photographs of
the 1915 genocide that beggar belief.
Granted all of this, one must also point out that much about the
Armenian genocide of 1915, as diabolical as it obviously was, can be
interpreted in a somewhat different light compared with the sequence
of events typically set out in recent accounts of this event. First,
it seems clear that there was no pre-existing plan among Turkish
leaders to exterminate the Armenians, as is now frequently suggested
by many scholars. The last Ottoman Parliament, elected in 1914 just
before the outbreak of the war, saw 14 Armenians elected among its
259 members, exactly the same number as in the previous Parliament,
elected in 1908. Early in 1914, both the Armenian and Greek
communities in Turkey - the Greeks also being targeted by Turkish
extremists - carried out extensive and successful negotiations aimed
at guaranteeing their existing percentages in future Ottoman
parliaments. At this stage, a number of Armenians were major figures
in the CUP movement, for instance Bedros Halacian, the public works
minister. The contrast between this and the situation of the Jews in
Nazi Germany, ostracised from day one, is self-evident.
It was also plainly the case that Turkey did not start the First
World War and could not have foreseen the course of catastrophic war
declarations and mobilisations that unfolded in mid-1914. Indeed,
Turkey remained neutral for the first three months of the conflict,
declaring war only on October 19, 1914. In fact, most Turkish elite
opinion was originally pro-British rather than pro-German, with
Britain traditionally seen as the Ottoman Empire's protector, and
arguably only the extraordinarily inept handling of the situation by
the British Government - something for which it has received
insufficient criticism - prevented Turkey from joining the Allies
rather than the Central Powers, with profound consequences.
>From October 1914, however, Turkey found itself at war with Russia.
Turkey's nationalist extremists saw its Christian Armenian minority
as likely to be a subversive force working for Russia. Turkey then
proceeded to invade the Russian Caucasus, with disastrous results,
leading, in late November 1914, to a Russian counter-invasion of
northeastern Anatolia, which resulted in its seizure of much of the
area. Many Armenians supported the Russian drive against the hated
Turks. That Russia had successfully invaded northeastern Turkey in
1914-15 is obfuscated and camouflaged in the most recent accounts of
the Armenian genocide.
It was at this point, in the spring of 1915, that the CUP Government,
now dominated by extremists, decided forcibly to transfer its
Armenian population in northeastern Anatolia to the southern part of
Turkey. This forcible transfer was carried out with the utmost
brutality and inhumanity, and certainly included the deliberate
murder of tens of thousands of Armenians, by the nationalist
extremists who controlled the Turkish Government as well as their
henchmen among anti-Christian Muslim fundamentalists, Kurds and
criminals recruited especially to carry out the transfers as brutally
as possible.
The genocide occurred when the very existence of Turkey was certainly
threatened by its enemies, creating a mood of panic where murderous
fanaticism became the order of the day. While the parallels with the
Holocaust are clear, there were obvious differences as well: most
killings by the Nazis occurred in Poland and Russia, which Germany
had invaded largely for ideological reasons, the persecution of the
Jews being at the very core of Hitler's world-view. In contrast,
Turkey inflicted slaughter on its own people while being invaded.
It is also no coincidence that the Armenian genocide occurred during
the First World War. The profoundly destructive effects of that
conflict led to the triumph of extremist, genocidal ideologies whose
impact was arguably not made good until the fall of Communism 75
years later.
William D. Rubinstein is professor of history, University of Wales,
Aberystwyth.