The Armenian Genocide
The Armenian Genocide is a period from 1915 and continuing into the 1920s that describes the mass killing of over one million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, which is known today as Turkey (Bloxham 141). The genocide “officially” started on April 14, 1915, a day in which “prominent members of the Ottoman Armenian community were incarcerated en masse in Constantinople” (Bloxham 141). This began the eventual surge of imprisonment and killings of Armenian men, and deportation, rape, and killings of Armenian women and children (Bloxham 141). To this day, the Turkish government refuses to call the horrible events that happened over one hundred years ago a ‘genocide’, which is in line with the final of the 8 Stages of Genocide (Bloxham 142). The
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This is when the victims are prepared to be killed, by means of segregation and starvation, and often times extermination camps are built in order to concentrate the group and kill them easily (Stanton 7). For the Armenian Genocide, this preparation meant separating the men and the women and children. The communal leaders and Armenian men were either killed immediately or imprisoned, to be later killed (Bloxham 141). The women, children, and elderly Armenians were sent to the desert regions in the south, where they either starved, raped, kidnapped, mutilated, killed, or any combination of those horrible things (Bloxham 141). Whoever survived this harsh, horrible treatment was then sent to a concentration camp, where they also eventually died or were killed (Bloxham 141). The killing of these people is viewed as “extermination” or “cleansing”, similar to how one might treat a wild animal loose in their house. The victims are not seen as humans who have rights, so it is not viewed as outright murder. The perpetrators see it as making their society free of impurity, and getting rid of people who do not belong. This extermination is usually carried out or financed by the state (Stanton 8). There were at least one million Armenians killed in total during the genocide, a huge portion of those who were deported out of the Ottoman Empire (Bloxham 141). The Turkish government refuses to call what happened a “genocide”, which leads to the final
This is when the victims are prepared to be killed, by means of segregation and starvation, and often times extermination camps are built in order to concentrate the group and kill them easily (Stanton 7). For the Armenian Genocide, this preparation meant separating the men and the women and children. The communal leaders and Armenian men were either killed immediately or imprisoned, to be later killed (Bloxham 141). The women, children, and elderly Armenians were sent to the desert regions in the south, where they either starved, raped, kidnapped, mutilated, killed, or any combination of those horrible things (Bloxham 141). Whoever survived this harsh, horrible treatment was then sent to a concentration camp, where they also eventually died or were killed (Bloxham 141). The killing of these people is viewed as “extermination” or “cleansing”, similar to how one might treat a wild animal loose in their house. The victims are not seen as humans who have rights, so it is not viewed as outright murder. The perpetrators see it as making their society free of impurity, and getting rid of people who do not belong. This extermination is usually carried out or financed by the state (Stanton 8). There were at least one million Armenians killed in total during the genocide, a huge portion of those who were deported out of the Ottoman Empire (Bloxham 141). The Turkish government refuses to call what happened a “genocide”, which leads to the final