From the end of the 19 th century, the Ottoman Empire crumbled with the awakening of Turkish and Greek nationalism. To fight against this, the Empire acts on the minorities that it considers responsible for this agitation. From 1908, the nationalist movement of the Young Turks came to power. They want all people inside the Empire to become Turkish and abandon their original nationality. The Armenian minority is a prime target for the Young Turks:it has often been the subject of threats or of massacres throughout the 19 th century, and in 1909, nearly 30,000 Armenians were massacred in the region of Cilicia.
April 1915 - July 1916
Characters
Ismail Enver
Talaat Pasha
Procedure
The genocide began on the night of April 24, 1915:270 Armenian notables (doctors, journalists, artists, teachers, etc.) were arrested, deported and then massacred. They are accused of collaborating with Russia, an enemy of the Ottoman Empire. The next day, 550 Armenians suffer the same fate. They are then questioned about their possible complicity with the enemy, then tortured and deported. While men are systematically massacred, some women and children may have been sold as slaves.
The Ottoman government justifies these massacres, so that civil servants who disapprove of the genocide are dismissed from the civil service. Interior Minister Talaat Pasha says “scruples of conscience have no place here” .
In addition to Armenians, other Christian minorities in the country have been targeted.
Those who are not killed at the time are expropriated of all their property.
Consequences
- On May 24, 1915, the Allies recognized this genocide as a crime against humanity.
- One and a half million women, men and children belonging to the Armenian minority in the Ottoman Empire lost their lives, as did 250,000 Eastern Christians.
- The population of Armenia was estimated at 2.5 million before this genocide.
- The few survivors who escaped the massacres went into exile in Persia (Iran). Others remain, under French protection.