Assignment Armenian Genocide.doc - 1 MIDTERM EXAM Faisal...

1
MIDTERM EXAM
Faisal Alomair
American Public University System
HIST310 I001

2
Armenian Genocide
Introduction
All the genocides of modernity have some common patterns: dehumanization, racism,
deportation and modern techniques to exterminate entire populations. The final phase of that
process is denial and attempts to relativize extermination actions, thus opening the doors to
expand that impunity to other cases. The genocides have sadly crossed the twentieth century
becoming one of the main causes of destruction of civilian population. During the First World
War, the systematic and planned extermination of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire began.
This genocide, to this day denied and little diffused, became an archetypal case to understand
these phenomena. The impunity of the Armenian Genocide was closely linked to the Holocaust
suffered by the Jewish people, gypsies and political dissidents during the Nazi occupation of
Europe in World War II. After the German defeat in 1945, the Nuremberg trials occurred, but the
genocides and human rights violations continued: Cambodia in the 1970s, Rwanda and the
Balkans in the 1990s. Now, entering the new century.
The Armenian Genocide (1915-1923)
Why is knowledge about the Armenian Genocide - which took place in one of the most
violent centuries in history - relevant to the 21st century? Because this crime represents the
model of the genocides of modernity. The characteristics of this extermination will also be
present in other historical cases of the twentieth century such as the Holocaust during World War
II, the genocide in Cambodia or that of Rwanda, among others. In addition, during the Armenian
Genocide it was the first time that the legal figure of “crimes against humanity” was used.

3
The genocide against the Armenians was a systematic murder planned and executed by
the Ottoman Empire. Between 1915 and 1923 - where the Republic of Turkey is currently
located - one and a half million people were exterminated by order of the State. The "Young
Turks" party that had taken power in 1908 had the political objective of creating an ethnically
uniform empire and recovering the greatness lost through territorial expansion. From an ideology
that borrowed pseudo-scientific and racist terms, the "diagnosis" was reached that the decline of
the empire was linked to those groups that in the eyes of the government should be assimilated or
eradicated forever. In other words, a "Turkey for the Turks" should be created. In a language that
would be repeated in future genocides, potential victims would be equated with parasites, insects
or tumors to be removed. Thus, the leaders of the Ottoman Empire considered the Armenian
population as a disease that should be destroyed from the body of society. This was the first step
of all genocide: to take out the human character of those who were going to be killed.