“I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915.”
Henry Morgenthau, Sr.
U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
April 24, 1915
April 24 symbolizes the beginning of the Young Turk government's organized genocidal campaign to
eliminate Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. On that day in 1915, the Ottoman Turkish government
arrested some 200 Armenian community leaders, most of whom were later murdered.
Background
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the Armenian population of the decaying Ottoman
Empire became the target of heightened persecution. These persecutions culminated in a three-decade
period during which the Armenians were systematically uprooted from their homeland of 3,000 years and
eliminated through deportation and massacres.
Sultan Abdul Hamid’s brutal reign ended in 1908 when a coalition known as the Young Turks came to
power and established a new constitution. Initially there was tremendous support for the new rulers who
promised many reforms and appeared to favor fraternity among the various nationalities within the
empire. Armenian political parties actively participated in this movement for political reform. However,
by 1914, the triumvirate of Young Turk dictators, Talat, Enver and Jemal Pashas, had adopted pan-Turkism
as a nationalist ideology and set out to Turkify the country’s minorities, beginning with the Armenians.
Before the onset of World War I, they had already declared that the war would create an opportunity to
pursue a final solution to the "Armenian Question", i.e. forcible removal of the Armenian population from
the area of its ancestral settlement. These premeditated, well-planned decisions were put into effect and
deportations and exterminations began under the Ottoman Government’s order and supervision.
The Pattern of Persecution: 1894-1923
1894-1896 - 300,000 Armenians massacred during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
1909 - 30,000 Armenians massacred in Cilicia; Armenian villages and city quarters
looted and burned.
1915-1923 - 1,500,000 Armenians perished, and 500,000 survivors forcibly exiled from their ancestral
homes in Ottoman Turkey.
At the beginning of World War I, there were some 2,100,000 Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire.
After the Armenian Genocide, fewer than 100,000 declared Armenians were left in Turkey.
Mobilization for World War I Sets the Stage for Genocide
1. On August 2, 1914, the Ottoman Turkish army mobilized. Like their fellow Turkish citizens, all
ablebodied Armenian men, with few exceptions, were called up for military service. Beginning in
February, 1915, the Armenians in the armed forces were segregated into labor battalions, disarmed,
and ultimately worked to death or massacred.
2. Also in August 1914, the Young Turk government began to release murderers and other confirmed
criminals from prisons throughout Asia Minor to be used by the Ottoman Security Service (Teshkileti
Mahsusa) for the express purpose of ending the “Armenian Question” by annihilating the Armenians.
Whole villages in the eastern provinces were massacred outright in the fall and winter of 1914-1915.
3. In Spring, 1915, the Ottoman government disarmed the Armenian mountaineers of Zeitun, near.
Marash, and deported the population to the Salt Desert near Konia in Central Turkey, or to the Syrian
desert. Packed into boxcars, or forced to walk, often without food or water for days, they quickly
perished. Deportations and massacres soon became the plight of Armenians in other areas as well.
4. On April 24, 1915, about 200 Armenian religious, political, and intellectual leaders were arrested
in Constantinople (now Istanbul), taken to the interior of Turkey and murdered. Similar measures were
implemented throughout the empire in all Armenian centers.
5. The Edict of Deportation was formally promulgated on May 27, 1915. Soon afterwards, Armenians
throughout the Ottoman Empire were deported on short notice. Men were usually separated from the
group and massacred. The remaining women, children and elderly were marched across Asia Minor
and Turkish Armenia to the Syrian desert. Thousands were kidnapped. Most of the deportees were
massacred by brigands and the Special Organization or died of starvation, disease or exposure.
First Genocide of the 20th Century
Professor Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer who escaped Poland during the Nazi invasion of 1939, is the key
figure in the history of establishing genocide as a crime under international law. Having lost 49
members of his own family in the World War II Holocaust, he coined the word “genocide” in 1944.
He worked tirelessly until his death in 1959 toward the adoption of the UN Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was ratified by the U.S. in 1988.
Professor Lemkin was the first to characterize the atrocities of 1915-1923 as the “Armenian Genocide.”
During his effort to obtain ratification of the Genocide Convention, Lemkin repeatedly cited the
Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust as prototypes for the crimes of genocide.
Documentation of the Armenian Genocide.
The U.S. National Archives contain thousands of pages documenting the premeditated extermination of
the Armenian people. American intervention prevented the full realization of Ottoman Turkey’s genocidal
plan, and U.S. humanitarian assistance was extended to those who survived.
The U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, acting on instructions from Secretaries
of State William Jennings Bryan and Robert Lansing, protested the slaughter of the Armenians to the
Young Turk leaders. Other nations, including Great Britain, France and Russia accused Turkey of crimes
against humanity. An organization known as Near East Relief, chartered by an act of the U.S. Congress,
contributed some $113 million between 1915 and 1930 to aid Armenian Genocide survivors. In addition,
132,000 orphans became foster children in American families and owe their lives to this effort.
While the U.S. record on the Armenian Genocide is the most expansive in the detail of its coverage of
the events of 1915 to 1918, the official records of many other countries corroborate the evidence
gathered by
U.S. diplomats.
Researchers have now established that all major European states, whether friends or
foes of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, hold substantial archival collections of documents.
These countries include Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and Russia.
International Affirmation of the Armenian Genocide
A growing number of countries and multinational organizations, including the European Parliament and
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, have recognized and reaffirmed the Armenian
Genocide as historical fact. In the last several years alone, parliaments of Belgium, Canada, Cyprus,
France, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland have passed resolutions officially
recognizing the Armenian Genocide. In 2000 and 2001, Pope John Paul II issued statements condemning
the Armenian Genocide as a "prologue to horrors" that would follow in the 20th century, and the European
Parliament renewed its calls on Turkey to publicly recognize the Genocide.
U.S. Reaffirmation
April 24, 2001
White House Statement by President George W. Bush:
"Today marks the commemoration of one of the great tragedies of history: the forced exile and
annihilation of approximately 1.5 million Armenians in the closing years of the Ottoman Empire. These
infamous killings darkened the 20th century and continue to haunt us to this day. Today, I join Armenian
Americans and the Armenian community abroad to mourn the loss of so many innocent lives. I ask all
Americans to reflect on these terrible events."
April 24, 1996
White House Statement on the Armenian Remembrance Day by President Bill Clinton:
"Eighty-one years ago today, in the city of Constantinople, more than two hundred Armenian civic,
political, and intellectual leaders were arrested, deported and subsequently executed. That day marked
the beginning of one of this century's darkest moments. I join with Armenians around the world, on this
solemn day, in commemorating the senseless deportations and massacres of one and a half million
Armenians that took place from 1915-1923 in the Ottoman Empire."
April 22, 1981
Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust
Proclamation 4838, by President Ronald Reagan:
“Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which
followed it – and like too many other such persecutions of too many other peoples – the lessons of
the Holocaust must never be forgotten.”
April 8, 1975
House Resolution 148
“April 24, 1975, is hereby designated as ‘National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to
Man’…for all victims of genocide, especially the one and one-half million people of Armenian
ancestry who succumbed to the genocide perpetrated in 1915.”
March 13, 1920
Senate Resolution 359
“…the testimony adduced at the hearings conducted by the sub-committee of the Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly established the truth of the reported massacres and
other atrocities from which the Armenian people have suffered.”
January 27, 1896
Concurrent Resolution of Congress
“Whereas the American people, in common with all Christian people everywhere, have
beheld with horror the recent appalling outrages and massacres of which the Christian population of
Turkey have been made victims…”
In addition to the U.S. Congress, a growing number of states have adopted resolutions, proclamations
and official statements recognizing the Armenian Genocide and commemorating its victims. These states
include Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maine,
Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New
Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia,
Washington and Wisconsin.
WEB:Morgentau Archive
Official Documents /germ. & engl./
Original Telegrams