Polish-Jewish lawyer and scholar Raphael Lemkin introduced the term “ Genocide” in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe in 1944. Lemkin defined genocide as “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.” Genocide was recognized as a crime under international law in 1948. Article 2 of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as:
“(A)ny of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part1; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The International Association of Genocide Scholars has issued three resolutions recognizing the atrocities that took place in the Ottoman Empire from 1914 – 1923 as genocide. The most recent resolution, issued in 2007, includes Pontian and Anatolian Greeks and Assyrians as genocide victims.
Genocide can occur in times of war or peace.
Days after the Defense of Van began in Eastern Anatolia, the CUP launched an attack on the Armenian intellectual community in Western Anatolia. On April 24, 1915, soldiers arrested approximately 250 Armenian cultural leaders in Constantinople. The diverse city had enjoyed a thriving intellectual life for centuries. It was home to prominent Armenian writers, artists, musicians, merchants, doctors, and clergymen. The men were imprisoned in military barracks. Some were tortured and killed immediately. Within a few weeks the military had deported more than 2,300 men from the northwestern Turkey. The majority died in prison camps in the desolate Turkish interior.
April 24 has been observed as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day since 1919.
The CUP blamed the Armenians for the Ottoman army’s disastrous attempt to invade Russia in December 1914. The government accused the Armenians of collaborating with the Russian army to thwart the invasion. Ottoman officials used the failed invasion as a pretext for a plan to destroy the Ottoman Armenian population.
The first deportations took place in the city of Zeitun on April 8, 1915. Men were marched out of town and executed. Women and children were forced from their homes and loaded into railroad cars bound for the desert. The Zeitun deportations served as a training event for the Ottoman killing squads.
The Republic of Turkey was recognized as a continuation of the Ottoman Empire under the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. The Treaty also forced a population exchange: 1.1 million ethnic Greeks left their homes in Turkey for Greece, and 380,000 Muslims living in Greece moved to Turkey. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk served as president until his death in 1938. To date, Turkey has not acknowledged the events of 1915 – 1922 as genocide.
Thousands of Armenians immigrated to the United States to join family members in Los Angeles and New York City. Thriving Armenian communities developed in Massachusetts and Illinois. War and economic instability in the Middle East and the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted a new wave of Armenian immigration to the United States and France in the 1990s.
The Ottoman Empire had a significant non-Muslim population apart from the Armenians. Ethnic Greeks had been living in Constantinople and western Turkey for centuries. There was also a thriving community of Pontian Greeks living in the Pontus region on the coast of the Black Sea. These communities practiced Greek Orthodox Christianity. Between half a million and one million Assyrian Christians lived in southeastern Ottoman Turkey, particularly in the Vilayet of Diarbekir, Bitlis, and Van. Assyrian Christianity follows a unique liturgical tradition.
Beginning in 1923, Near East Relief urges families across the nation to eat a simple orphanage-style meal on the first Sunday in December. They are then asked to donate the difference between the orphanage-style meal and a normal Sunday dinner to Near East Relief. Several U.S. presidents issue proclamations and endorsements for Golden Rule Sunday, including President Calvin Coolidge.
Orphans and adult refugees arrived at Near East Relief stations dressed in scavenged rags. In the States, local volunteers organized daylong campaigns to gather used clothing for shipment overseas. Bundle Day volunteers gathered sacks of sturdy clothing and shoes, which were then sorted based on gender and age. “The Bigger Your Heart, the Bigger the Bundle” was a popular Bundle Day slogan.
The new medium of film had produced a completely new phenomenon: the movie star. Popular silent film actors used their fame to publicize Near East Relief’s important work. Stars participated in Bundle Days by donating old clothes and collected canned food as the price of admission to special film screenings.
Ambassador Morgenthau recognizes that many lives are still at stake. On Sept. 3, 1915, Morgenthau sends a Telegram to the U.S. State Department requesting that the Secretary of State ask Cleveland Dodge, Rabbi Stephen Wise, and other prominent men to form a committee to raise funds for Armenian refugees. This telegram effectively calls upon private citizens to intervene where the U.S. government has not.
Near East Relief launches the steamship Pensacola for Beirut, Syria (now Lebanon) carrying 4,000 tons of food and supplies. On February 19, 1919, 250 Near East Relief volunteers sail from Hoboken, NJ on the S.S. Leviathan. The party includes doctors, nurses, and other technical specialists.
A special Commission made up of civilian volunteers and U.S. military officers sails to the Near East to assess the refugee situation. The Commissioners conclude that 50,000 – 60,000 children are currently in care, and that Near East Relief should be ready to care for 120,000 children by the end of 1920.
President Wilson declares these “joint days for Americans to make contributions for the Armenians and Syrians.” Churches, synagogues, and service organizations like the Rotary and Lions clubs raise donations. Parents tell children to “remember the starving Armenians” and not to waste food at mealtimes.
Orphanage graduates joined the Near East League, an alumni group that helped the young adults to socialize and to find work. Graduates often married one another. A thriving Diaspora grew wherever these young survivors settled — the cities of Beirut and Cairo, the farmlands of Macedonia and France, and even the distant United States.
Children living in Near East Relief orphanages were encouraged to play and socialize. Physical activity played a vital role in recovery. Toys were scarce, so children played hopscotch or jacks with small stones. Girls made their own dolls out of sticks and scraps of fabric. Boys made trains and trucks from tin cans.
After suffering malnutrition, the children welcomed the simple meals that they ate together – often prepared with ingredients that they grew themselves. Near East Relief orphanages strove to be self-supporting. This included producing as much food as possible to feed thousands of growing children. The focus was on the maximum number of calories at minimal cost per meal. The average cost was $0.05 per child per meal. Donations of food from America supplemented the orphanage meals.
By February 1921, Near East Relief was operating dozens of orphanages in Ottoman Turkey, Syria (parts of which are now Lebanon), Palestine, and the Caucasus region.
As World War I drew to a close, Near East Relief turned its attention to the thousands of refugee children scattered across the Anatolian Peninsula. Through careful budgeting, Near East Relief determined that it could feed each child for $0.17 per day. The organization set out to raise an unprecedented $30 million for direct relief.
Suffering repeated defeats against Kemal’s army in Anatolia, the Greek army withdraws from Smyrna. Kemalist forces enter the city on September 9, 1922. Four days later, fires rage through the Christian quarters of the city. Greek and Armenian homes are looted. An estimated 300,000 Greek and Armenian people flee to the docks in an attempt to escape the burning city. Three U.S. ships in the harbor decline to intervene because U.S. policy forbids American involvement in the conflict.
France withdraws all troops from the Cilicia region, which it had occupied in anticipation of the ratification of the Treaty of Sèvres. The region is left vulnerable to the Kemalist army. Near East Relief begins the arduous process of moving 12,000 children out of central Anatolia to safety in Syria.
The conflict in Smyrna helps fuel the rise of Mustafa Kemal Pasha and Turkish Nationalism. A former Ottoman military officer (later known as “Atatürk,” or “Father of the Turks”), Kemal leads a split with the Allied Powers-approved Ottoman government and declares an independent Turkish state. Kemal assembles a competing government, the Turkish Grand National Assembly, and wages the Turkish War of Independence.
The Allies give the Greek army permission to occupy the historically Greek city of Smyrna on the west coast of the Anatolian Peninsula. The Greek army lands in May, inspiring celebration by ethnic Greeks and anger from ethnic Turks. Greece and Ottoman Turkey are soon embroiled in war.
Against this turbulent backdrop, representatives from 27 countries convene in Paris to discuss the terms of peace for the defeated Central Powers. Britain, Italy, France, Greece, and Russia all lay claims to portions of the collapsing Ottoman Empire. President Wilson advocates for a League of Nations to govern emerging countries through a mandate system. Wilson campaigns for the establishment of Armenia as an American mandate.
The Reform Act brought international attention to issues that the Ottoman government perceived as internal. The Committee on Union and Progress ( CUP) was incensed. The European inspectors had barely reached their posts when an imperial edict sent them home. Under the leadership of Mehmed Talaat Pasha, the Ottoman government suspended the Reform Act in December 1914 based on the Empire’s entry into World War I.
Ambassador Morgenthau estimated that one million Armenian refugees had survived the Genocide. The survivors were mainly women and children left destitute by the deportations. By the end of 1916, the Committee was assisting as many as 500,000 women and children. Hundreds of people in Constantinople were dying of starvation, having nothing to eat but grass.
American medical professionals had worked in Asia Minor for years. Dr. Ruth Parmelee worked at the American hospital at Harput. She would become a Near East Relief volunteer through the American Women’s Hospitals organization. Similar hospitals staffed by American and Armenian doctors and nurses existed throughout the Anatolian Peninsula.
The deportations of Armenian Christians left the once-thriving mission stations in Armenian communities empty. Missionaries use Committee funds to convert existing mission buildings into relief centers and orphanages. The relief stations quickly fill with children – many of them the sons and daughters of former students.
The government adopted a policy of Turkification – the forced transition from the multicultural Ottoman Empire to a homogenous Turkish state. Turkification was an extreme form of nationalism. The government implemented a paramilitary training program for young men. Launched in 1913, the Association for the Promotion of Turkish Strength trained young warriors for the fight for Turkish identity. Enver Pasha’s War Ministry provided free rifles to youth groups. Government propagandists argued that a strong society must have only one culture, one religion, and one level of education. CUP leaders portrayed non-Muslims as an invasive virus within the Turkish nation.
For a few brief months it seemed as if peace was possible. But in April 1909, counterrevolutionaries in Constantinople sought to restore Sultan Abdul Hamid. As news of the counterrevolution spread, an enraged mob besieged the prosperous Armenian community in the far-off city of Adana. The countercoup was quickly suppressed, and the CUP emerged an efficient and brutal governing body. Young Turk soldiers were ordered to Adana under the pretense of restoring order. Instead, they further brutalized the city, claiming that the Armenians provoked them.
By the end of April 1909, thousands of Armenians had been massacred at Adana. The city was almost completely destroyed.
This highly charged political atmosphere gave rise to an opposition group called the Young Turks, which opposed the sultan and sought a constitutional government. The Young Turks joined forces with the revolutionary Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) in 1906. Minority populations supported the CUP because it promised additional rights to non-Muslims. Armenians saw the CUP as a welcome change from the brutal Hamidian regime.
Sultan Abdul Hamid II enjoyed absolute power over the territories of the Ottoman Empire from 1876 until 1909. The Sultan had a special hatred for the Ottoman Armenians. The missionary school system had produced an educated class of Armenians that began to advocate for civil and political rights. But political activism could lead to kidnapping, torture, or execution.
In the 1300s, the Ottomans conquered the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek regions of the Anatolian Peninsula. The Ottoman Empire’s reach only grew over the centuries. At its peak, it controlled much of the Middle East and parts of North Africa. However, cracks appeared by the dawn of the 19th Century: Greece claimed independence in 1821; Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia gained independence in the late 1800s.
Deprived of able-bodied men, the remaining Armenian women, children, and elderly are removed from their homes and deported. Thousands are sold into slavery. Most are forced into cattle cars on the Baghdad Railway.
In the month of October 1915 more than 30,000 Armenians are deported via railroad to Konia, then southeast to the Der Zor Desert. Those that are not massacred upon arrival die of starvation and disease. Thousands more are exiled in forced marches.
Stateless and caught between two warring empires, the Armenians were more vulnerable than ever. The tyrannical Djevdet Bey, the vali (governor) of Van , took advantage of this. In April 1915 he demanded that the vilayet offer up more than 4,000 men for forced labor in Ottoman military battalions – a thinly veiled plan to massacre the city’s able-bodied men. The Armenians refused.
Ottoman soldiers laid siege to the city on April 20, 1915. Armenian civilians defended the city with improvised weapons and barricades. Secret messengers appealed to the Russian army. Russian forces helped the Armenian civilians to drive the Ottoman troops out of the city in May 1915. The resistance at Van became a new pretext for deportation.
The Ottoman Empire had lost almost all of its European territory in the Balkan Wars of 1912 -1913. Russia remained a formidable enemy. Recognizing that the Ottoman Empire was newly vulnerable, a group of Armenian activists approached the European powers and Russia about a reform program.
Officials from the Russian and Ottoman Empires signed the Armenian Reform Act on February 8, 1914. The Act created two provinces from six historically Armenian Vilayet in eastern Turkey. It appointed two European inspectors general to oversee Armenian issues; they would live in the vilayets of Erzerum and Van.
