Suchergebnisse

Starvation is widely recognized as a weapon of extreme mass violence, a gross violation of human rights, and a crime in international criminal law, yet forced starvation is still practiced today. Starvation was used as a political tool against Ukraine in the Holodomor, was part of Nazi strategy during World War II, and is one of the most readily identified aspects of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire during the period 1915 to 1923. This study examines how starvation was used by the Young Turk regime as a deliberate policy against the Armenians, the Armenians' experience of starvation, and why starvation was chosen as a tool of genocide. Starvation was highly effective in the large number of Armenians that perished, and was deliberately chosen as a method of killing, partly for plausible deniability and partly for the prolonged suffering it caused, resulting in the eradication of Armenian identity.

During the Armenian Genocide, Turks, Kurds, Arabs, and other Muslims were both perpetrators and beneficiaries of the deportations and killing—but they also saved non-Muslims. This study documents and analyzes the ways in which Armenians were rescued and the various motives of the rescuers. Unlike previous studies, which are based solely on survivor oral histories or anecdotal family material, this paper also utilizes missionary reports, published survivor memoirs, German consular reports, archival sources, and other material. It discusses the concept of Righteous among the Nations and it explores the application of this idea to the context of the Armenian Genocide. Wider recognition of the phenomenon of Turks who saved Armenians can facilitate dialogue between Armenians and Turks today, many of whom tend to view each other as enemies.

Turkey has gone through significant transformations over the last century-from the Ottoman Empire and Young Turk era to the Republic of today-but throughout it has demonstrated troubling continuities in its encouragement and deployment of mass violence. In particular, the construction of a Muslim-Turkish identity has been achieved in part by designating "internal enemies" at whom public hatred can be directed. This volume provides a wide range of case studies and historiographical reflections on the alarming recurrence of such violence in Turkish history, as atrocities against varied ethnic-religious groups from the nineteenth century to today have propelled the nation's very sense of itself