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Event

Deportations and killings of Ottoman Armenians, 1915 to 1916

From 1915 the Ottoman government deported most of its Armenian subjects, and its officials, soldiers and irregulars killed very many, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says. The U.S. House and Senate, President Biden, the Museum and the International Association of Genocide Scholars call it genocide; Turkey's government rejects the word and the plan it implies.

21 links, 7 backed by primary records

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Dates
1915–1916
Also known as
Armenian genocide, Medz Yeghern, Aghet

Connections 21

interventions

involved

  • Johannes Lepsius German expert who testified in Berlin, 1921, that he had published the documents Scholarship & press 6
  • Special Organization enforced the party's instructions, the museum says; the 1919 indictment charged it with attacks in Erzurum province Scholarship & press 78
  • Bahaeddin Sakir field director of the Special Organization, per the museum; named in the 1919 indictment Scholarship & press 78
  • Deir ez-Zor where Lepsius said the deportees were sent Scholarship & press 6
  • Erzurum one of six provinces where convoys began Scholarship & press 7
  • Van one of six provinces where convoys began Scholarship & press 7
  • Harput where the U.S. consul reported the deportations Primary record 2
  • Ottoman Empire the state whose officials carried out the deportations Scholarship & press 7
  • Committee of Union and Progress the party that controlled the government Scholarship & press 7
  • Talaat Pasha one of the four leaders the 1919 Ottoman court named as principal accused Primary record 89
  • Enver Pasha one of the four leaders the 1919 Ottoman court named as principal accused Primary record 9
  • Henry Morgenthau Sr. U.S. ambassador who cabled Washington about it Primary record 2
  • Leslie Davis U.S. consul at Harput who reported it Primary record 2
  • Christine Terzibashian survivor of the July 1915 deportation from Erzurum; witness in Berlin, 1921 Scholarship & press 6
  • Krikoris Balakian survivor, exiled with 47 other men; witness in Berlin, 1921 Scholarship & press 6

part of

includes

influenced

Timeline 2 dates
  1. 1915–1916 Deportations and killings of Ottoman Armenians, 1915 to 1916
  2. 1915 Henry Morgenthau Sr. intervened in Deportations and killings of Ottoman Armenians, 1915 to 1916
Proof 12 sources
  1. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1915, Supplement, document 1397: the Ambassador in Turkey (Morgenthau) to the Secretary of State, 2 May 1915, U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, 2 May 1915. Primary record
    Minister of the Interior stated that the Sublime Porte had sent instructions to provincial authorities to protect from molestation all innocent people and that any official who disobeyed these orders would be punished.
  2. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1915, Supplement, document 1400: the Ambassador in Turkey (Morgenthau) to the Secretary of State, 10 July 1915, U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, 10 Jul 1915. Primary record
    My arguments were unavailing except as to Constantinople.
    Consul Davis of Harput reports:
    Persecution of Armenians assuming unprecedented proportions.
    Professors American College have been tortured.
  3. Telegram 858, Ambassador Morgenthau to the Secretary of State, 16 July 1915 (U.S. National Archives, RG 59, 867.4016/76), Armenian National Institute (transcription of the National Archives record), 16 Jul 1915. Primary record
    a campaign of race extermination is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against rebellion
  4. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1915, Supplement, document 1402: the Secretary of State (Lansing) to the Ambassador in Turkey, 16 July 1915, U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, 16 Jul 1915. Primary record
    Department approves your procedure in pleading with Turkish Minister of Interior and Minister of War to stop Armenian persecution
  5. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1915, Supplement, document 1410: the Ambassador in Turkey (Morgenthau) to the Secretary of State, 3 September 1915, U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, 3 Sep 1915. Primary record
    Destruction of Armenian race in Turkey is progressing rapidly.
  6. Trial of Soghomon Tehlirian, first afternoon (1985 English translation of the German court record), Armeniapedia, a wiki reproducing The Case of Soghomon Tehlirian (Los Angeles, 1985), 1921. Scholarship & press
    I have published all of this in a book.
    the total Armenian population of the areas I have just described was deported to the northern and eastern edges of the Mesopotamian desert: Deir-ez-Zor, Zor, Rakka, Meskene, Ras-ul-Ain, and as far as Mosul.
    My immediate family consisted of twenty-one persons, only three of whom survived.
    If we only killed the men, he replied, and not the women and children, then, 50 years from now, we would have a couple million Armenians.
    All together there were 500 families.
  7. The Armenian Genocide (1915-16): In Depth, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia. Scholarship & press
    The CUP issued instructions from Constantinople and ensured enforcement through agents in its Special Organization and local administrations.
    At the center of the operation were: Talât Pasa (minister of interior), Ismail Enver Pasa (minister of war), Baheddin Sakir (field director for the Special Organization), and Mehmed Nâzim (leader of demographic planning).
    Many of these convoys originated in six heavily Armenian provinces in eastern Anatolia—Trabzon, Erzurum, Bitlis, Van, Diyarbakir, Mamuretü'l Aziz, and the district of Maras—and, eventually, from virtually all areas of the Empire.
    Taking orders from the central government in Constantinople, regional officials implemented mass shootings and deportations, assisted by local civilians.
    The government, controlled by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP; also called the Young Turks)
    This roundup is commemorated today by Armenians as the beginning of the genocide.
    The origin of the term genocide and its codification in international law have their roots in the mass murder of Armenians.
  8. Indictment of the Turkish Military Tribunal, 1919 (excerpts translated by Vahakn N. Dadrian), Armenian National Institute, 1919. Scholarship & press
    The July 15, 1915 cipher telegram of Governor Mr. Tahsin attesting to the criminal attacks and atrocities against the Armenians in the localities of Erzurum province by the Special Organization and by some gendarmes attached to it.
    Mr. Behaeddin Sakir, headquartered at Erzurum, took charge of the command of the forces operating in the eastern provinces
    The massacre and destruction of the Armenians were the result of the decision-making by the Central Committee of Ittihad ve Terakki
  9. Verdict ("Kararname") of the Turkish Military Tribunal, 5 July 1919, Armenian National Institute (English translation by Haigazn K. Kazarian, Armenian Review, 1971), 5 Jul 1919. Primary record
    are the members of its General Assembly, the fugitives -- Prime Minister Talaat Pasha and Minister of War Enver Effendi
  10. World War I and the Armenian Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia. Scholarship & press
    The Armenian genocide was closely linked to World War I in the Near East and the Russian Caucasus.
  11. Open letter to Prime Minister Erdogan, International Association of Genocide Scholars, 13 June 2005, International Association of Genocide Scholars, 13 Jun 2005. Scholarship & press
    Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, when he coined the term genocide in 1944, cited the Turkish extermination of the Armenians and the Nazi extermination of the Jews as defining examples of what he meant by genocide.
  12. The Armenian Genocide Resolution Unanimously Passed by the Association of Genocide Scholars of North America, 13 June 1997, International Association of Genocide Scholars, 13 Jun 1997. Scholarship & press
    reaffirms that the mass murder of over a million Armenians in Turkey in 1915 is a case of genocide which conforms to the statutes of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
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