1. What happened to the Armenians in Ottoman Turkey
Objective 2:

2. Key Terms Millet System Hamidian Massacres Young Turks
System of organization in the Ottoman empire based on religion
Religious minorities = second class citizens
Hamidian Massacres
Series massacres against Armenians in the 1890s started by Sultan Abdul Hammid, the last emperor of the Empire
Young Turks
Political party/group that took over in 1908
Supposed to be more “open”, but actually more nationalist

3. Who were the Armenians?
Ancient peoples, lived on the same land for thousands of years
Historically located at the intersection of major trade routes from east to west
First Christian nation
Most neighboring countries are Islamic

4. Babylonian clay tablet 600BC
Ancient Babylonian map dating back to the 6th century BC, illustrates that Armenians were autonomously living in the region in the 7th century BC

5. Who were the Ottomans?
The Ottoman Turkish state was founded in Anatolia in 1299
Became an empire after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453
Armenia was taken over by the Ottomans in the 1500s
Height of power during the 16th and 17th centuries
controlled most of southeast Europe, West Asia +North Africa

6. Ottoman Empire Ruled by kings called “sultans”
Very large empire spanning 3 continents
Lots of minority groups

8. Ottoman Government Millet system
Empire divided into subgroups by religion to make it manageable
Christians= minority
Armenians= largest group of Christians in the empire
Each minority group was led by their religious leader
Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Jewish
Had some autonomy (ability to rule themselves), but were treated as second class citizen

9. Ottoman empire at start of WWI
At the time of WWI, the empire was crumbling
Rise of nationalism led many groups to ask for independence
Lost Christian lands in the Balkans (ie Serbia) 
Fear of the Christians within the empire

10. Hamidian Massacres
Some Armenians looked to Christian Russia to help free them from Turkish rule
“Pogroms” or massacres started by Sultan Abdul Hammid
,000 killed by king’s forces
1909– massacre in Adana 30,000 killed

11. Young Turks Abdul Hamid= last sultan, 1909, Young Turks take over
Ultra nationalist group
Wanted a union of all Turkish people in one country that included only Turks
Kicked out the “emperor”
New government was to be more democratic and open

12. Recap Armenians lived in the region for thousands of years
Ottoman Empire took over Armenia in the 1500s
Ottoman empire was at the height of its power in the 16th + 17th centuries, but was crumbling around WWI
Armenians + other Christians were considered a threat

13. “The Armenian Question”
Problem: Crumbling Empire
Nationalism means:
more Christians getting independence= Christians are a threat to the Empire
Ottoman Empire losing land + power
Armenians= largest group of Christians, largest threat
Solution:
Armenians are a threat, get rid of them

14. Over 2 million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire at the start of WWI

15. Execute/ kill all able bodied men

16. What happened?

17. Second Class Citizenship
As Christians, Armenians were treated as gavours or “infidels”
They did not have the same rights as Turkish citizens
Things got progressively worse as the empire began to crumble

18. April 24, 1915
250 community, political, religious, educational, leaders were rounded up in the middle of the night in Istanbul, shot and killed

19. Because they were considered threats to the empire, they were told to turn in all their weapons to the government
Quotas were so high that some families actually bought guns just to turn them in

20. Execute/ kill all able bodied men

21. Men were separated from the women, children, and the elderly, escorted out of the villages and killed
They were often asked to dig their own graves first
Sometimes they were asked to step in a cave, locked in with a giant stone and burnt alive in primitive gas chambers

22. Armenian women and children were forced to march into the desert, escorted by armed soldiers

23. Women, children and the elderly were marched into the desert… without any food or water

24. The Armenian Genocide
Most of the deported Armenians starved to death in the desert

25. The Armenian Genocide
Result: By the end of 1915, approximately 1,000,000 Armenians had died

32. Numbers No one knows exactly how many people died
There were about 2+ million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire in 1915… by 1923… only about 200,000 could be officially accounted for and mostly in Istanbul

34. How do we know?

35. Primary Source Accounts
Corroboration of survivor witness stories/narratives
Letters and accounts written by diplomats
including the ambassador of the United States to President Wilson
Letters and accounts of foreign missionaries
Letters, accounts, photos from orphanages
Photographs and video footage
Turkish archives
Etc.

36. Henry Morgenthau
 was a lawyer, businessman and United States ambassador to Turkey
Wrote reports to President Woodrow Wilson urging action on behalf of the Armenians

37. Leslie Davis US consul to Harput
personally witnessed how huge clusters of Armenian populations were being marched to the Der Zor desert in Syria, "only to be butchered”
Wrote a diary recording his observations in detail
Ex: no men in the convoys

38. Armin T. Wegner
A second lieutenant in the German army stationed in the middle east
Photography was absolutely forbidden
Penalty= death
He took these secretly

39. Wide media coverage

40. New York Times, December 15, 1915