Late Ottoman genocides

The late Ottoman genocides is a historiographical theory which sees the concurrent Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides^[1][2][3] that occurred during the 1910s–1920s as parts of a single event rather than separate events, which were initiated by the Young Turks.^[2][4] Although some sources, including The Thirty-Year Genocide (2019) written by the historians Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi, characterize this event as a genocide of Christians,^[3][5][6] others such as those written by the historians Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer [de] contend that such an approach "ignores the Young Turks' massive violence against non-Christians", in particular against Muslim Kurds.^[7][8][9]

Monument in Berlin to the victims of Ottoman genocides of 1912–22. It names "Armenians", "Greeks of Asia Minor, Pontus and East Thrace" and "Aramaeans (Syriacs/Assyrian/Chaldeans)."

Overview

Dutch–Turkish historian, professor of Genocide studies, and sociologist Uğur Ümit Üngör explains that the mass violence and enslavement which occurred in the late Ottoman Empire and its successor state includes, but is not limited to, the Adana massacre; the persecution of Muslims during Ottoman contraction; the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides; the 1921 Koçgiri massacres; "the mass violence against Kurds from the 1925 Sheikh Said conflict to the 1938 Dersim massacre"; the 1934 Thrace pogroms, through the 1955 Istanbul pogrom against Greek and Armenian Christians.^[10]

Other scholars sometimes also include the earlier Hamidian massacres of Christian Armenians in the 1890s or the deportations of Kurds between 1916 and 1934.^[11]

According to the journalist Thomas de Waal, there is a lack of a work similar to historian Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands (2010) that attempts to cover all of the mass violence in Anatolia and the Caucasus between 1914 and 1921.^[12] De Waal suggests that while "the genocide of 1915–1916 would stand out as the biggest atrocity of this period... [such a work] would also establish a context that would allow others to come to terms with what happened and why, and also pay homage to the many Muslims who died tragically in this era".^[12]

Citations

1. Smith 2015, pp. 1–9.
2. Roshwald 2013, pp. 220–241.
3. Morris, Benny; Ze'evi, Dror (4 November 2021). "Then Came the Chance the Turks Have Been Waiting For: To Get Rid of Christians Once and for All". Haaretz. Tel Aviv. from the original on 4 November 2021. Retrieved 5 November 2021.
4. Shirinian, George N. (2017). Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, 1913–1923. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-78533-433-7.
5. Morris, Benny; Ze'evi, Dror (2019). The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 3–5. ISBN 978-0-674-24008-7.
6. Gutman, David (2019). "The thirty year genocide: Turkey's destruction of its Christian minorities, 1894–1924". Turkish Studies. Routledge. 21: 1–3. doi:10.1080/14683849.2019.1644170. S2CID 201424062.
7. Schaller, Dominik J.; Zimmerer, Jürgen (2008). "Late Ottoman genocides: the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish population and extermination policies—introduction". Journal of Genocide Research. 10 (1): 7–14. doi:10.1080/14623520801950820. S2CID 71515470.
8. Schaller, Dominik J.; Zimmerer, Jürgen, eds. (2013). Late Ottoman Genocides: The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish population and extermination policies. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-99045-1.
9. Akçam, Taner (2011). The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity. Princeton University Press.
10. Üngör, Uğur Ümit (June 2008). "Seeing like a nation-state: Young Turk social engineering in Eastern Turkey, 1913–50". Journal of Genocide Research. London and New York: Routledge. 10 (1): 15–39. doi:10.1080/14623520701850278. ISSN 1469-9494. OCLC 260038904. S2CID 71551858.
11. Deringil, Selim; Adjemian, Boris; Nichanian, Mikaël (2018). "Mass Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire: A Discussion". Études Arméniennes Contemporaines. OpenEdition Journals (11): 95–104. doi:10.4000/eac.1803. ISSN 2425-1682. S2CID 165468004.
12. de Waal, Thomas (2015). Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. p. 254. ISBN 978-0-19-935069-8.

General and cited references

• Roshwald, Aviel (2013). "Part II. The Emergence of Nationalism: Politics and Power – Nationalism in the Middle East, 1876–1945". In Breuilly, John (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 220–241. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199209194.013.0011. ISBN 9780191750304.
• Smith, Roger W. (Spring 2015). "Introduction: The Ottoman Genocides of Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks". Genocide Studies International. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 9 (1): 1–9. doi:10.3138/GSI.9.1.01. ISSN 2291-1855. JSTOR 26986011. S2CID 154145301.
• Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2012). "Disastrous Decade: Armenians and Kurds in the Young Turk Era, 1915–25". In Jongerden, Joost; Verheij, Jelle (eds.). Social Relations in Ottoman Diyarbekir, 1870–1915. Islamic History and Civilization. Vol. 51. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. pp. 267–295. doi:10.1163/9789004232273_010. ISBN 978-90-04-23227-3. ISSN 1380-6076. S2CID 130614294.