Armenian Genocide

Louis Charles, please do not think this is directed at you, as I understand you are simply preparing to teach a course on genocide, and the debate surrounding the Armenian massacres certainly belongs there.

But I have to say I have been perplexed for some years as to why there has been such a widespread upsurge of interest in what happened in Asia Minor almost a century ago, even to the point of calls for the U.S. Congress to conduct an investigation and hearings.  

Why has there been no similar clamor across Europe and in the U.S. to examine the Russian government's role in two centuries of pogroms and in creating the Pales of Settlement?  Why no real clamor to examine the 19th-century U.S. policy toward American Indians which definitely had a racist component and involved our own government?  It seems to me almost as if there is a trans-national political agenda somewhere behind this drumbeat of demands that modern Turkey confess its collective historical sins from a century ago.

Modern Turkey is in a very difficult situation which, at least from the U.S. perspective, it has handled adroitly.  With an overwhelmingly Muslim population, it has managed -- almost alone of the major regional powers -- to keep its government and society largely secular.  It has a robust economy based on capitalist principles and an enterprising and innovative population.  It is one of the very few Muslim countries which an American can visit without a flak jacket or constant worry that he might transgress in some unsuspected way that can get him into serious trouble.  It has been a reliable military and economic ally of the U.S. and western Europe -- something that many Muslim states view with great suspicion and even hostility.  Turkey walks a very high tightwire over a very stony chasm in having to live geographically and sociologically between the two diametrically opposed viewpoints of the Muslim and the non-Muslim world.   So why, exactly, are we haranguing Turkey with a constant refrain of "say it was genocide . . . say it was genocide . . . say it was genocide"?

Certainly I think Turkey goes too far in denying that atrocities occurred against the Armenians.  But, by the same token, I think there are significant arguments that those atrocities did not rise to the level of "genocide", not the least of which is that some of Turkey's handling of the Armenians was a response to Armenian violence against Turks in preceding decades.  So I think most Turks today honestly believe their recent ancestors did not engage in genocide.  And to the extent that they go too far in arguing that nothing happened, I sometimes wonder if that is not a strident denial born of an unrelenting international clamor to admit to something of which they do not believe they were or are guilty.

The U.S. and western Europe have precious few reliable allies in that critical part of the world.  The demands that we put that ally onto the hot seat for something that happened in a different era in a different world truly perplexes me.  Does this really arise from a legitimate western agenda . . . or from some agenda hatched elsewhere for other purposes?

Can you think of any reasons that a Muslim country -- especially in the post 9/11 world -- would bridle at demands to say it tried to wipe out Christians as a group?  I can.

Can you think of whose interests might be served by trying to force such an admission and thereby encourage popular sentiment among Turks to turn their backs on the West and its secular ways?  I can.

I'll eventually address your concerns about why there seems to be a "ganging up" on Turkey about the Armenian genocide (in fact we are probably looking at an academics' dust-up as opposed to anything that Turkey needs to worry about), but I want to start with the idea that it was genocide. The following was issued in secret by the Turkish Committee for Union and Progress, which ruled the Ottoman Empire in its last days, and acquired by the British High Command of Constantinople. The document was not meant to be seen by more than a few people (certainly not by the British or other allies), and was composed in either December 1914 or January 1915. It is a series of directives to those in positions of power in the Empire:

1) Close all Armenian Societies and arrest all who worked against the governemnt at any time, send them into provinces such as Baghdad or Mosul, and wipe them out either on the road or when they arrive.
2) Collect arms (from the Armenians)
3) Excite Muslim opinion by suitable and special means in places where the Armenians have already won the hatred of the Muslims; provoke organized massacres.
4) Use military disciplinary forces (i.e. the Gendarmerie) ostensibly to stop massacres while, on the contrary, actively helping the Muslims with military force.
5) Apply measures to exterminate all males under fifty, priests and teachers, leaving girls and children to be Islamized.
6) Carry away the families of all who succeed in escaping and cut them off from all connection with their native place.
7) On the grounds that Armenian officials may be spies, expel and drive them out of every government post.
Kill off all the Armenians in the army --- this will be left for the military to do.
9) All actions must begin everywhere simultaneously and thus leave no time for the preparation of defensive measures.
10) These instructions are strictly confidential, and must not go beyond two or three persons.

Now, as to the conditions under which genocide may take place. While they do not mandate genocide, these conditions make it more likely. All of the conditions do not have to be present.

I. THE RISE OF THE NATION STATE, which we might define as an organized political system under one government. This definition covers different kinds of political structures, from empires to tribes. We can define a NATION as a community of people with a common identity. This is the definition that triumphs in the 19th century, and becomes the principal form of nation in the West. It begins with the removal of foreign influence to create homogeneity, and then proceeds to get rid of threatening groups. It may be affected by state centered factors, which result in the creation of an unstable state that remains weak (the conflict between the Turkish Committee and the Ottoman Empire after the deposition of Hamid II). There may be factors that are society centered, such as pre-existing ethnic or social animus (again, the relationship between the Turks and Armenians prior to 1915, or to use another example, between the Hutu and Tutsis in Rwanda). And finally, there may be factors that are individual centered, such as personal convictions about human nature, or individuals who are willing to sublimate their own will ("I was only following orders").

II. IMPERIALISM. Modern states have coalesced and expanded through acts of imperial genocide. There is internal colonialism to turn citizens into loyalists. The population has to be transformed, as in slogans such as "We've made Italy, now let's make Italians" in post Garibaldi Italy, "Make peasants into Frenchmen", the educational slogan of universal classes in 19th century France, "Kill the Indian, save the man", used to describe educational transformation of Native Americans by white schools, and "Turkey for the Turks" from the period of the Armenian genocide.

III.  WAR. In the twentieth century, the large-scale targeting of civilian population. There are no longer non-combatants. War provides opportinities for: (1) desensitivization --- a young male population becomes accustomed to a life devoted to inflicting violence; the psychological inhibitions against violence diminish. (2) war increases fear and hatred, with both an increased docility toward and resentment of power. (3) the logistics of genocide become easier to arrange. (4) it provides a smokescreen, as censorship is more easily practiced.

(CONTINUED)

(5) War increases solidarity towards the perceived enemy; in hatred there is unity (example, the perceived "solidarity of the trenches" after WW I that led to the development of the Freikorps.
(6) Intervention from outside becomes more difficult, and it becomes easier to come up with reasons not to intervene, as exemplified by the Holocaust, Bosnia/Serbia, Rwanda and yes, Turkey/Armenia.
(7) War stokes resentments/girevances against future enemies, and creates a desire for retribution. It needs a figure in the present to bring these concerns into contemporary life, ex. Hitler.
( A weak state that emerges from a war leads to smaller units focused on their own sense of honor (again, the Freikorps in the midst of Weimar Germany, because the state has been dishonored.

IV. REVOLUTION
This is a rapid transformation (usually) of violence inflicted upon the political or social structures.It usually is driven by a vision for a better society and the will to implement it; those who disagree become the "other". When revolutions take place as part of nation-building, the ideas for which the revolutionaries fight become the fundamentals that they will base the nation on (hello, Bolsheviks). The revolutionaries seek purity of identity (hello, Pol Pot). If you don't understand it, you cannot comprehend it from the outside. No amount of evidence can change your mind if you are part of this, cf. Robespierre or Hitler in the bunker writing a last will and testament that continues to blame the Jews. Revolutions can enable a genocidal regime to come to power, because they encourage radical ideology, mobilize groups of people, making it easy to know who's who, and they facilitate implementation of genocidal policies.

And finally, leadership is a key component of genocide. It harnesses all of the conditions, and organizes hatred. It provides tactics, preparation and strategy. All of these concerns need decision makers, i.e. leaders.

I'll eventually address your concerns about why there seems to be a "ganging up" on Turkey about the Armenian genocide (in fact we are probably looking at an academics' dust-up as opposed to anything that Turkey needs to worry about), but I want to start with the idea that it was genocide. The following was issued in secret by the Turkish Committee for Union and Progress, which ruled the Ottoman Empire in its last days, and acquired by the British High Command of Constantinople. The document was not meant to be seen by more than a few people (certainly not by the British or other allies), and was composed in either December 1914 or January 1915. It is a series of directives to those in positions of power in the Empire:

1) Close all Armenian Societies and arrest all who worked against the governemnt at any time, send them into provinces such as Baghdad or Mosul, and wipe them out either on the road or when they arrive.
2) Collect arms (from the Armenians)
3) Excite Muslim opinion by suitable and special means in places where the Armenians have already won the hatred of the Muslims; provoke organized massacres.
4) Use military disciplinary forces (i.e. the Gendarmerie) ostensibly to stop massacres while, on the contrary, actively helping the Muslims with military force.
5) Apply measures to exterminate all males under fifty, priests and teachers, leaving girls and children to be Islamized.
6) Carry away the families of all who succeed in escaping and cut them off from all connection with their native place.
7) On the grounds that Armenian officials may be spies, expel and drive them out of every government post.
Kill off all the Armenians in the army --- this will be left for the military to do.
9) All actions must begin everywhere simultaneously and thus leave no time for the preparation of defensive measures.
10) These instructions are strictly confidential, and must not go beyond two or three persons.

Louis Charles, I will respond to your series of posts in full when I have a little more time.  But for now I have question about the post quoted here.

This is a very long list of atrocities, involving numerous government operatives moving in synchronization against masses of people spread across an empire.  Was it realistic to expect it to be accomplished without letting the instructions "go beyond two or three persons"?

I'd be interested to know how these instructions dropped into the lap of the British High Command?

And I found items 3 and 4 particularly interesting.  Change the words "Muslims" to "Russians" and "Armenians" to "Jews", and you'd have a pretty accurate prescription for the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 in the heart of Holy Mother Russia.

Then there is item 7 -- pretty much a dead ringer for Alexander II's policies toward Poland after the Polish rebellion of 1861 . . . policies made even more sweeping by his son.

And item 8.  Though admittedly not as extreme as killing off the Armenians in the army, there was this choice nugget from a Russian instruction of 1882 regarding Jews in military service:  "It is necessary to stop the constant growth of the number of physicians of the Mosaic persuasion in the Military Department, in view of their deficient conscientiousness in discharging their duties and their unfavorable influence upon the sanitary service in the army."  (So this is what the phrase "dirty Jew" means?  I had been thinking it had more to do with racism than hygiene.)

But back to the central question.  How did these instructions come to light?  The words agent provocateur somehow keep flitting across my mind.  Perhaps I've just been reading too much of Fontanka 16, which I bought last week.

Okay . . . continuing my response to your thought-provoking posts:

Now, as to the conditions under which genocide may take place. While they do not mandate genocide, these conditions make it more likely. All of the conditions do not have to be present.

I. THE RISE OF THE NATION STATE . . .

II. IMPERIALISM . . .

III.  WAR. In the twentieth century, the large-scale targeting of civilian population. There are no longer non-combatants.

I do not see these as exclusively modern phenomena.

Consider, for instance, the battle of Jericho, which began Joshua's 6-year campaign to conquer Canaan and clear out the indigenous inhabitants so that the Hebrews could settle there.  After his opening victory in Jericho, Joshua slaughtered every man, woman, and child found in the defeated city (except for the family of his internal spy, Rahab).  Much of war in the ancient near and middle east was directed not just at victory, but at total annihilation of other tribes and nations.  

While not attempting to eradicate entire populations in order to settle his own people into a region, Alexander the Great, as he entered a new region targeted for conquest, often massacred entire civilian populations in the first towns he attacked to send a message that resistance to him was both futile and deadly.  It was only after making this point by wholesale massacres that his famed cosmopolitan outlook moved onto center stage as administrative integration into Alexander's new empire got underway in the newly-conquered region.

To me, the differences between what Joshua did with Canaanites and what Hitler did with Jews, and the differences between what Alexander did in his attempts to expand eastward and the U.S. government did in its attempts to expand westward (when entire Indian villages were sometimes massacred to make a point) is a matter of organizational and technological reach, not a fundamental difference in the way ancients and moderns approach conquest or in their moral frameworks for justifying their actions.

To understand just how comfortable the American government could be with a genocidal maniac on its payroll, one should consider the case of Colonel John Chivington and the Sand Creek massacre of 1864.  One of the most celebrated popular entertainments of the era in Colorado was Chivington's stage show where he displayed 100 Indian scalps . . . and the scalped pubic regions of Indian women.  (His men also ran around brandishing Indian fetuses and penises they had acquired during the massacre.)  Sure, I know Chivington was later excoriated for his murderous bent . . . but only after it had served its purpose to the government and become too widely known for political comfort.  He was investigated but suffered no more punishment than the cooling down of his political aspirations.  (I also find it darkly amusing that Chivington began his career as Methodist minister.  And I find it downright ironic that his color-blindness caused him not to be able to discern shades of gray.  And how.)

In our own times, how many people have tapped their feet to the rousing Mahalia Jackson gospel rendition of "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho", celebrating (perhaps unwittingly) Joshua's total massacre of a civilian population and the genocide of the Canaanites?

I'm sorry, but I just find modern hand-wringing over the Armenian genocide not to be unjustified when looked at in a historical vacuum . . . but to be outrageously hypocritical when put into a historical context.

(7) War stokes resentments/girevances against future enemies, and creates a desire for retribution.

I generally agree with this, but I would also note that the 20th century brought us not only catastrophic world wars.  It also brought us, at long last and through the agency of near-global war, into a new maturity about how to deal with vanquished enemies.

Compare the punitive, almost vindictive, handling of the defeated nations by the Treaty of Versailles to the treatment of Germany and Japan after World War II, where the U.S. helped put its two main enemies on the path not only to prosperity but to economic near-dominance of their regions.  And those two nations, who shed their hyper-militaristic mantles and reconciled themselves with their defeats, remain among our most reliable allies as the 21st century dawns.

On the other hand, the biggest bogey-man for the U.S. of the immediate post-war era was our wartime ally, the Soviet Union.

It seems to me that the region of the world where old, sometimes ancient, grievances most inform current relations between peoples is the Islamic world, where the modern world and its evolution beyond our primal tribal instincts has made fewer inroads . . . and may, in fact, be beating a retreat.

And finally, leadership is a key component of genocide. It harnesses all of the conditions, and organizes hatred. It provides tactics, preparation and strategy. All of these concerns need decision makers, i.e. leaders.

Agreed.