The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence

by Ervin Staub

  Abraham Hartunian, an Armenian pastor, who survived both the killings of 1894-96 and the genocide of 1915-16, wrote of the earlier killings:

  On Sunday morning, November 3,1895, the church bells were silent. The churches and schools, desecrated and plundered, lay in ruins. Pastors, priests, choristers, teachers, leaders, all were no more. The Armenian houses, robbed and empty, were as caves. Fifteen hundred men had been slaughtered, and those left alive were wounded and paralyzed. Girls were in the shame of their rape....

  On Thursday, November 7, the fifth day of our imprisonment, we were taken out and driven to the courtyard of a large inn. As we moved along in a file under guard, a crowd of Turkish women on the edge of the road, mocking and cursing us like frenzied maenads, screeched the unique convulsive shrill of the zelgid, the ancient battle cry of the women of Islam-the exultant lu-lu-lulu filled with the concentrated hate of the centuries.20

  Under the Young Turks massacres of the Armenians continued. In Adana in the spring of 1909, about thirty thousand Armenians were killed. Administrative and military officials did not try to stop the massacre, and some of the troops fired on the Armenians. While the Young Turks probably did not initiate the killings, they let the two principal officials of Adana off with light sentences.21 Dr. Chambers, the director of the American Missionaries at Adana, wrote in a message to London:

  A frightful massacre began on April 14; it subsided on the 16th, but it is continued in the suburbs. The following week an organized effort was made to bring help to 15,000 sufferers. The massacre began all over again furiously on the 25 of April, the soldiers and the bashibozouk (irregulars) began a terrible volley of firearms on the Armenian school where around 2,500 persons had taken refuge. Then the building caught fire and when the refugees tried to save themselves by running outside they were fired upon; many perished in the flames. The destructive fire continued until Tuesday morning. Four churches and the adjacent schools were burned as well as hundreds of homes in the most populated quarters of the city.22

  Armenian “provocation”

  Some writers claimed that the genocide was a response to Armenian provocation, to the great threat the Armenians presented to Turkey and the Committee of Union and Progress.23 The Armenians increasingly resisted repression and violence against them and demanded greater rights and more autonomy. From the middle of the nineteenth century, they repeatedly turned to foreign powers for protection. Russia helped other subject peoples, such as the Bulgarians, in their fight for independence, and its 1877 military action was at least partly on the instigation of Armenians. The Turkish government constantly feared that foreign powers would intervene on behalf of the Armenians or use the Armenians as an excuse for their designs on Turkey. The Armenians were closely linked to Russia (much hated by the Turks as the ancient and current enemy) by their Greek Orthodox religion and, after the Russian conquest of parts of Armenia, by the large population of Armenians in Russia. It was thus easy to associate the loss of power and humiliation by foreigners with the Armenians inside Turkey.

  The Armenians attempted to gain increased rights as well as protection as conflicts between them and displaced Muslims moving into Turkey intensified. They organized and formed societies. The government-directed killings in 1894-96 arose partly from the sultan’s fear of the “Armenian peril,” a result of Armenian “agitation,” protests, and demonstrations.24 Occasional refusal to pay taxes, for what to the Armenians seemed justifiable reasons, also incited anger. One of the events leading up to the massacre of Armenians at Sassoon in 1893 was refusal to pay taxes; they claimed the Kurds forced them to pay and could not pay a second time.25

  Armenian acts designed to call attention to their plight also resulted in violence. At the time of the large-scale killings under Abdul Hamid, in 1896, a group of Armenians seized the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople and held it until they were guaranteed free passage to Europe. More Armer in massacres followed in Constantinople.26 Once an intensely negative image of a group develops, its acts of self-assertion or defense will be regarded as evidence of hostility and evil nature.

  In 1876 the Young Turk movement sought the cooperation of the Armenians against their common enemy, the sultan, for the “good of the fatherland.” The appeal was rejected, and the Young Turks interpreted this as evidence of Armenian aspirations “apart from the welfare of Turkey,” which pushed them to “criminal resolution.”27 The role of outside powers was a persistent issue for the Young Turks. Ahmed Riza of the Young Turks complained that the Turks suffered too under Abdul Hamid, but had no foreign protectors. At the 1902 Congress of Ottoman Liberals, the Armenian delegates and Ahmed Riza’s Young Turks were at odds, especially about outside powers ensuring the rights of minorities in the Ottoman Empire.28

  The conflict continued after the Young Turks came to power and was intensified by the refusal of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation at its meeting in 1914 to organize an insurrection in Russian Armenia if a war was declared. In a book edited by Arnold Toynbee, The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916, this is described as follows:

  At the beginning of the European war, the Dashnaktzoutioun’ party met in congress at Erzeroum in order to decide on the attitude to be observed by the Party. As soon as they heard of this congress, the Young Turks sent their representatives to Erzeroum to propose that the Party should declare its intention of aiding and defending Turkey, by organizing an insurrection in the Caucasus in the event of a declaration of war between Turkey and Russia. According to the project of the Young Turks, the Armenians were to pledge themselves to form legions of volunteers and to send them to the Caucasus with Turkish propagandists, to prepare the way there for insurrection.... The Erzeroum Congress refused these proposals, and advised the Young Turks not to hurl themselves into the European conflagration – a dangerous adventure which would lead Turkey to ruin.29

  In postwar Turkish writings, the Armenians are described as instruments of foreign agitation, tools of the European powers, an avenue for their mingling in the internal affairs of Turkey and for pursuing their designs on the empire.

  Did the Armenians represent a dangerous internal enemy? There was some violence by Armenians against Turks in the early part of the First World War, its extent a matter of dispute. According to Turkish writers, as the war started, invading Russian Armenian troops were joined by Turkish Armenian volunteers, killing Turks, with estimates as high as 150,000 to less than 40,000 killed. Apparently, the source of some of these estimates was the unreliable and repeatedly revised claims of the Ottoman government, for example, claims presented to their German allies.30 Non-Turkish sources claim that participation by Turkish Armenians was very limited. They also claim that uprisings by Turkish Armenians were attempts at self-defense as the genocide began.31

  An uprising at Van in April 1915 was the immediate justification for the deportations that started in May 1915. The nature of this uprising is also in dispute. Armenian writers minimize its scope. Missakian, for example, claims that it was only a defense of the Armenian quarter of the city when it was attacked by Turkish troops; Turkish troops had massacred Armenians in outlying villages, and the deportations had already started in Cilicia before the fighting broke out in Van.32 Richard Hovannisian, a leading historian of the genocide, also sees the uprising as defensive. It started after three leaders of the Armenian community were killed and refugees from surrounding villages were coming into Van (personal communication).

  Gurun, a Turkish writer, claims that Armenians seized Van and delivered it to the Russians.33 Turkish writers claim Armenians endangered Turkey through acts of sabotage, defection, spying, and mass uprisings. Their actions made it necessary to deport them “from the neighborhood of the front and from the vicinity of railroads and lines of communications. “34 There was no genocide. Lives were lost during the deportations as were Turkish lives in the war, but much fewer than the number claimed by Armenians.

  Justin McCarthy makes singular claims. There was a civ
il war. “Large elements of the Muslim population in the Kars region of the Russian Empire aided the Ottomans whenever possible, and Armenian activities at the rear of the Ottoman army were a factor in Ottoman defeats.”35

  Other non-Turkish accounts make the claim of a civil war untenable. There were some Turkish Armenian attacks on Turks, but the Armenians gave only limited aid to the Russians and perhaps only after the atrocities against them had begun.

  It is certainly possible that the Turks believed that the Armenians represented a serious threat to them. They had long mistrusted Armenians. Armenian males in the army were placed in unarmed batallions – although perhaps already in preparation for genocide. The Armenian unwillingness to cooperate with Turkish designs, however unreasonable they were from an Armenian point of view, conflicted with the evolving ideology and goals of Turkish leaders and what they saw as their long-established right to rule. This occurred when the war was already being lost and the empire was near collapse. Armenian actions before the war threatened nationalistic aspirations; those during the war perhaps generated a belief that the Armenians threatened Turkey’s existence.

  To sum up, the Armenians were victims of a progression of increasing destructiveness. They were devalued because of their religion and inferior status as a subject people. They were resented because of their financial, commercial, and administrative success. They provoked hostility by their attempts to protect themselves and to gain greater rights and autonomy, and in the end by acts of violence against Turks. Their religion, commercial involvements, and attempts to gain outside support linked them to foreign powers, especially Russia. Armenians were subject to many forms of discrimination, brutality, and murder on increasing scales.

  The evolution of Young Turk ideology

  The Young Turks began as liberals who promised equality regardless of religion or ethnic background. They favored religious tolerance and freedom of religious practice, self-government in education, and the right of all to private property. Colleges and schools were to be opened to Christians. The word rajah, or cattle, used to designate Christians, was to the removed from all public documents.36

  From the start, however, there was a strong nationalistic element in the Young Turks’ movement and a nationalistic component in their ideology. Young Turks wanted to restore the glory of the Ottoman Empire. They hoped to forge a new nationalism that would include other ethnic groups. In 1908 Enver Bey, a Young Turk leader, declared, “We are all equal, we glory in being Ottomans.”37 Ahmed Riza, whose outlook came to dominate the policies of the Young Turks, was a strong nationalist who believed that subject nationalities should be made into good Turks. After the outbreak of the Balkan wars, the Young Turks organized the Committee for National Defense. Its purpose was to encourage popular support for the war effort, substituting national identity for the old Ottoman or Islamic identity.38

  From the start, despite their liberalism, the Young Turks were insistent on Muslim and Turkish supremacy. They feared non-Muslim supremacy in parliament and manipulated elections to ensure a Muslim majority. They believed, probably correctly, that only the Muslim element would work to maintain the empire’s integrity.39 To ensure their dominance the Young Turks were ready to use power ruthlessly. According to some, they brutalized political life. They successfully mobilized the people, held mass meetings, and organized effective boycotts of foreign goods.40

  The Congress of the Committee for Union and Progress met in Saloniki in October 1911 and proclaimed a nationalistic pan-Islamic program. “The sole reign of the Turkish race and the construction of the Empire on a purely Islamic basis” became the program of the government according to the German doctor Johannes Lepsius, president of the German-Armenian Society.

  Sooner or later the total Islamization of all Turkish subjects must be accomplished, but it is clear that this can never be achieved by verbal persuasion, therefore the power of arms must be resorted to. The character of the Empire will have to be Mohammedan, and respect for Mohammedan institutions and traditions is to be enforced. Other nations must be denied the right to organize because decentralization and self-government would constitute treason against the Turkish Empire. The nationalities will become a negligible quantity. They could keep their religion, but not their language. The proliferation of the Turkish language would be a principal means to secure Mohammedan predominance and to assimilate the remaining elements.41

  New visions set new goals: the creation of a single pure and homogeneous Turkic culture and an empire that would unite all the Turkic peoples, a worthy successor to the late Ottoman Empire.42 The Young Turks feared that the Armenians might succeed in creating an independent state in eastern Anatolia, which would form a barrier between the Ottoman Turks and Turkic people to the east and destroy the possibility of the new empire.43 Greater Turkishness, a national-cultural purity, and the creation of a new empire were to reestablish a feeling of unity and positive identity in Turks, including the Young Turk leaders themselves.

  The machinery of destruction

  As in Germany, preparations that initially served other purposes later came to function as part of the machinery of genocide. The Young Turks set up a party apparatus whose leaders in the Armenian regions became organizers of the genocide. The genocide was under the control of the Interior Ministry, led by Talat, and its subsidiaries, the Directorate of Public Security, the Istanbul police, and the Deportation Service, as well as the provincial gendarmerie. Turkish refugees from emancipated Balkan countries were also active. At the time of the genocide, a special organization was created to massacre the Armenians deported in convoys. It consisted of jailed criminals who were freed, organized into detachments, and placed, together with other suitable groups such as Kurds, in the path of Armenians on the deportation march.44 Executive officers of cities were instructed to evacuate Armenians along designated routes, guarded by military police.

  The genocide

  A group of political activists had gained power in Turkey. Within a few years their hopes and visions were profoundly frustrated by losses of wars and territories and by all the hardships and internal conflicts inside Turkey, including Armenian opposition and actions. In response to these conditions, their nationalistic ideology became more extreme. The Young Turks could at least in part deal with their intense frustrations, with the experience of threat and attack, and the resulting needs and motives by turning against the Armenians, one of the few enemies they could defeat. Genocide was not intrinsically tied to ideology, as it was in Germany. But it was a way – maybe the only one available at the time – to fulfill both ideological goals and emotional needs.

  The Turkish population adopted the nationalistic fervor, and shared with its leaders the complex of motives and lack of prohibitions that I have previously described as reasons why a society turns against a subgroup. Those selected to perpetrate the genocide were willing, and the rest of society gave its support. A telegram to Jemal Bey, a delegate at Adana, said that it was the duty of all to realize the noble project of “wiping out of existence the Armenians who have for centuries been constituting a barrier to the Empire’s progress in civilization.”45 As in the Holocaust, the killings were meant to realize a “higher” value.

  It is known that specific orders for genocide were given by the government. The evidence comes from telegrams captured by the British and from accounts by foreign observers, including a detailed account by the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau.46 A frequently quoted “memoir” was published in London in 1920 by Nairn Bey, the chief secretary of the Aleppo committee in charge of deported Armenians.a48 Another memoir, by Merlanzade Rifat, a Young Turk on the committee’s Central Board, described the meeting at which the extermination policy was decided.49 Rifat’s account shows that the leadership meant to revitalize Turkey by purging it of non-Turkish nationalities, especially Armenians. The war provided the opportunity to exterminate them.

  The Naim-Andonian documents outline a “radical solution” to the lingering Turk
o-Armenian conflict. They contain no reference to the wartime conduct of the Armenian populations, but refer to “the humiliations and bitterness of the past.”50 Morgenthau notes that Talat referred to the policy as the result of prolonged and careful deliberation. The documents show secret orders from various ministers. All Armenians were to be killed and the responsibility fully assumed by the government. The designated officials are assured that they will not be held accountable. Officials who stall are threatened with sanctions. Some telegrams exhort functionaries to show no mercy to women, children, or the sick and to dispose of Armenian orphans who were retained by Muslim families.51

  First the leaders of the Armenians and the men in the labor battalions were killed.52 Then the rest were marched into the desert without supplies. Many died along the way, and many were killed. Armin T. Wegner, a German eyewitness, wrote to President Wilson:

  “And so they drove the whole people – men, women, hoary elders, children, expectant mothers and dumb sucklings – into the Arabic desert, with no other object than to let them starve to death.”

  “ . . .They drove the people, after depriving them of their leaders and spokesmen, out of the towns at all hours of the day and night, half-naked, straight out of their beds; plundered their houses, burned the villages, destroyed the churches or turned them into mosques, carried off the cattle, seized the vehicles, snatched the bread out of the mouths of their victims, tore the clothes from off their backs, the gold from their hair. Officials – military officers, soldiers, shepherds – vied with one another in their wild orgy of blood, dragging out of the schools delicate orphan girls to serve their bestial lusts, beat with cudgels dying women or women close on childbirth who could scarcely drag themselves along, until the women fell down on the road and died....

  “Parties which on their departure from the homeland of High Armenia consisted of thousands, numbered on their arrival in the outskirts of Aleppo only a few hundred, while the fields were strewed with swollen, blackened corpses....”