American Genocide Issues

“By 1923, a 3,000-year-old civilization virtually ceased to exist,” (Cohan). This civilization is Armenia, once a nation under the rule of the formidable Ottoman Empire, a powerful Islamic dynasty that controlled extensive territories throughout Southeast Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa. As citizens of the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian people were challenged for their firm Christian identity by its Turkish rulers through discriminatory laws and taxes. With the Empire facing territorial decline and a severe collapse of power amidst Armenian protests for civil rights, the ruling Turkish party transformed their resentment and suspicions of the minority group into a genocide of Armenians.

The massacres that took place in the Ottoman Empire between 1914-1918 exhibited the dehumanization and persecution stages of genocide and also violated the human rights to freedom from torture and degrading treatment and freedom from interference with family, home or correspondence.

The Armenian Genocide displayed the dehumanization and persecution stages of genocide. For instance, the dehumanization stage was illustrated in author Adam Bagdasarian’s novel about the genocide, Forgotten Fire, in which an orphaned Armenian boy named Vahan describes a deserted street: “And when the bodies began to appear, the oddly posed refuse that had once been Armenian men and women, I glanced at them as cursorily as a Turkish youth might and stepped over and around them as though they were dung or rotten fruit or broken glass” (Bagdasarian 87). In other words, the Turkish prejudice leads them to regard their lifeless bodies strewn across the streets as meaningless obstacles or pieces of trash to be ignored and stepped over. By equating the corpses of fallen Armenians with garbage and openly disregarding their deaths, the Turks are denying their humanity and victimizing them to objectification.

In addition to dehumanization, the genocidal stage of persecution was demonstrated during the Armenian Genocide by the nationalist leaders of the ruling Turkish triumvirate, established as the Committee of Union and Progress, who “sent orders to province leaders to gather women and children and either load them onto trains headed for the Syrian Desert or lead them on forced marches into the desert…with little food and supplies” (Cohan). To elaborate, leaders of Turkish provinces conducted the forced relocation of Armenians to the Syrian Desert with insufficient resources. Because the Armenians were maliciously targeted, isolated in a debilitating environment, and intentionally deprived of resources vital to sustaining their lives, they were subject to Turkish persecution. It is clear that the dehumanization and persecution stages of genocide were exhibited during the Armenian genocide.
Moreover, human rights violations such as freedom from torture and degrading treatment, and freedom from interference with family, home, or correspondence were infringed upon during the Armenian Genocide. For instance, in the novel Forgotten Fire, the right to freedom from torture is graphically portrayed when Vahan recounts the physical abuse of an Armenian girl named Seranoush by Turkish soldiers: “And every night for seven nights, the soldiers took her outside and raped her” (Bagdasarian 136). The Turkish soldiers’ lust, mercilessness, and discrimination against the Armenian people drove them to sexually assault Seranoush for an exploitative period of seven consecutive nights. The multiple instances of ruthless violation subjected Seranoush to severe, degrading pain for the soldiers’ pleasure and resulted in an unethical destruction of her dignity. This unequivocally transgresses her human right to freedom from torture and degrading treatment. Furthermore, the Armenian Genocide was also characterized by a violation of the human right to freedom from interference with family, home, or correspondence in instances where “children were abducted and sold, or children were raised as Turks by Turkish families” (Cohan). This meant that Armenian children were illegally taken and separated from their original families and homes to fulfil the Turks’ personal desires. Due to these transgressions, the Armenian children experienced sudden disruption from their families and homes, effectively breaching their human right to freedom from interference with family, home, or correspondence. Evidently, the Armenian Genocide flagrantly contravened basic human rights such as freedom from torture and degrading treatment, and freedom from interference with family, home, or correspondence.

From 1914-1918, the Armenian Genocide palpably exhibited features of dehumanization and persecution characteristic of genocidal acts. It also embodied the violations of human rights constituting freedom from torture and degrading treatment, and freedom from interference with family, home, or correspondence. Armenians were dehumanized by the Turks who treated their corpses as garbage and were persecuted through identification and isolation in the Syrian Desert. Moreover, an Armenian girl’s human right to freedom from torture and degrading treatment was explicitly violated through sexual abuse. Similarly, Armenian children’s rights to freedom from interference with family were infringed upon by forcibly removing them from their original families. Presently, Turkey continues to staunchly deny these inhuman massacres as genocidal. However, their evident involvement in the stages of genocide and their numerous transgressions against the human rights of Armenians serve only to contradict their claims and confirm the genocidal nature of the massacres.

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