The Armenian Issue

The Armenian Issue

In 2005, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan opened up Turkey’s official archives to “those people who claim there was genocide.” The statement given by the former Prime Minister clearly shows that Turkey has nothing to hide. The Armenian issue cannot be classified as genocide because it does not comply to the United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The Armenians and Turkish had lived peacefully with each other for many years, up until the Armenians started their independence movement in the 1880s. When World War I began, the Armenians helped Russia advance into Turkey. This prompted large scale uprisings in Asia Minor and by February 1915, the Muslim and Armenian were in constant communal conflict.

Justin McCarthy, and American demographer and professor of history at the University of Louisville published that the Turkish government had to deport the Armenians “because of, or for fear of, their rebellion.” Without evidence, it cannot be concluded that the Turkish government deliberately annihilated the Armenians because of their religion. Furthermore, the Armenians who were deported were escorted be Turkish soldiers but many died in the process, “regardless of Turkish attempts to protect and care for them; others died in communal strife or in a civil war between Armenians and Muslims.”

Guenter Lewy, an author and political scientist does not label the Armenian issue as genocide because “the argument that the deportations in reality constituted a premeditated program of extermination of the Armenians of Turkey is difficult to square with many aspects and characteristics of the relocations.” The explanation given by Lewy for the numerous deaths while travelling on foot to the place they had been deported to was that there were no railroads in many parts of the country. The government had even wanted to arrange the relocation of the Armenians in an orderly manner but they were lacking in...