The Armenian genocide is an atrocity that dates way back to the early twentieth century within the establishment of the Turkish-Orptoman Empire. Armenians were Christians living in an empire dominated by Muslims. The Ottoman Empire had Armenians and Muslims as their subjects. The Armenians being Christians within an Islamic regime made it hard for them as they were undermined and subjected to unequal treatment. Christians had fewer legal and civil rights and paid high taxes compared to Muslims. Besides being referred to as infidels, they were quite learned and financially stable, and this made the Muslims resent their status.
The Ottoman government was not pleased with the Armenians as it deemed them as people who could be loyal to some of the neighbouring Christian countries. Suspicion towards Armenians by the Ottoman Empire grew much amid its crumbling. Cruel Sultan Abdul Hamid, the leader of the Ottoman by then, was very pissed off by the idea of unloyalty among the Armenians. This is evidenced when the Armenians are seen pushing forward for their rights, and Sultan Hamid responded by issuing threatening messages when interviewed by the media.
The Act of Genocide
The first genocide in the Ottoman Empire occurred between 1894 and 1896, following the Armenian protests. Sultan Hamid’s controversial phrase “Give them a box on the ear” came to pass when the Turkish government orchestrated the extermination of Armenians. This comes into play when Ottoman soldiers and common men raid the Armenian villages and cities, kill them, and assume their properties.
In the early twentieth century, the Young Turk reformist group was formed after Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid II was taken from power. The new Young Turk government in place gave hope to the Armenians as it was established on a constitutionality aspect. Unluckily, the Armenians felt that their civil rights had hit a brick when the Young Turk regime fueled its successor’s bad governance.
The occurrence of the First World War initiated the inhumane act of genocide as the Turk government sided with Germany and the Hungarian Empire. At the same time, the Ottoman religion waged a jihad war on Christian countries except for their supporters. In this scenario, the Armenians sought to help the Russian army when the war intensified, hoping to survive when the Turk’s enemies could win. This led to the removal of the Armenian soldiers from the eastern front zones. By mid-1915, the real act of ethnical extermination began when several learned Armenians were captured and executed. Thereafter, the ordinary Armenian citizens were forced to match naked in the Mesopotamian desert, pushed via a cliff, butchered and crucified alive by Young Turk’s killing squad. Young Armenian kids were abducted and indoctrinated into the Islamic religion.
By the 1920s, the genocide was over, with only about 388,000 Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. By then, the Ottomans had already fled to Germany, where it seemed safe for their hideout. The Armenian nationalists within the Turkish leadership formed a Nemesis operation that made sure to search and punish the perpetrators of the genocide.
Role of the Turkish Tribunal. Tribunals emerged all over the Turkish state according to the existing Regulations on Martial Law. Later on, the Court- Martial was constituted, and it handled about 130 cases of aftermath suspects. In regard to the Criminal Procedure Code, the evidence against the suspects should be incriminating to allow for court proceedings to take place. Courts-Martial underwent crucial changes, including the implementation of strictly military Courts-Martial from military-civilian Courts-Martial and the replacement of court staff. It is also seen that Grand Vizier Damad Ferid guaranteed the involvement of the foreign government towards legal prosecution. During the proceeding of Courts-Martial, the prosecutors were guided by the principle of the Ottoman Penal Code. They used the existing Penal Code but implemented the charges concerning aftermath killings in the new approach. The main role of this Tribunal was to formulate an indictment clearly laying out the time, places, the whole plan and the individual responsible for the crime against humanity.
Works Citation
Dadrian, Vahakn N. “The Turkish Military Tribunal’s Prosecution of the Authors of the Armenian Genocide: Four Major Court-Martial Series.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies11.1 (1997): 28-59.
Akçam, Taner. The Young Turks’ crime against humanity: The Armenian genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton University Press, 2012.
Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, transl Paul Bessemer (New York, NY: Metropolitan Books New York, 2006), 5–6.
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