Metz Yeghern:
the Armenian Genocide
WHERE AND WHEN:
Metz Yeghern is the Armenian term for the extermination of the Armenian population of Turkey that took place between 1915 and 1923 under the government of the "Young Turks", who came to power in 1908.
SCALE OF THE KILLINGS:
Historians calculate that the genocide caused the death of two thirds of the Armenian population of the former Ottoman Empire, some 1,500,000 victims. Among the survivors, many children were Islamized and the women confined in harems.
Today, the government of Turkey and most Turkish historians still refuse to admit that genocide was committed in 1915 against the Armenian population of their country.
THE PERPETRATORS:
The decision that led to the genocide was taken under pressure from the extremist wing of the "Union and Progress" party. The government created a paramilitary structure, the Special Organization (S.O.), under the Ministry of War with the cooperation of the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice. The main political responsibility for the genocide lay with: Talaat, Enver and Djemal.
In the years that followed, Mustafa Kemal, known as Ataturk, endorsed and completed the work of the "Young Turks" with new killings, thereafter denying any responsibility for the crimes committed.
PLANNING:
The formalities of the massacre were defined between December 1914 and February 1915 with the aid of advisers from Germany - Turkey's ally in World War I. The goal was the liquidation of the Armenians, who were Christians and who opposed the transformation - in a nationalist sense - of the Turkish State on an ethnic and religious basis.
IDEOLOGICAL REASONS:
The underlying motive is to be found within the ideology of pan-Turkism. This inspired the actions of the Government of the Young Turks, determined to reform the State on nationalist principles, and therefore on ethnic and religious lines. With their demands for autonomy, the Armenian population, which was Christian and had absorbed the ideals of a western-style constitutional state, could have been an obstacle and have opposed the government's plans.
The main reasons for the genocide perpetrated by the Turkish government were therefore political. The Ottomans' goal was to annihilate the Armenian community as an historical, cultural and above all political entity. No less deliberate was the plunder of Armenian assets and lands.
Even today, the government and most Turkish historians still refuse to admit that in 1915 genocide was committed against Turkey's Armenian population.
METHODS OF EXECUTION:
In January 1915, the S.O. started systematically deporting the Armenian population out towards the Der-Es-Zor desert. On 24 April 1915, all the eminent Armenians of Constantinople were arrested, deported and massacred. The provisional deportation order was dated May 1915, and was followed by another ordering all Armenian assets to be seized.
All the men liable for military service were slaughtered and the civilian population subjected to indiscriminate violence and killings. The survivors were forcibly deported and robbed of all they possessed. Many died of hunger and hardship during the terrible march and those who reached the desert found no chance of survival. They were thrown into caves, burnt alive or drowned in the River Euphrates and in the Black Sea.
