ARMENIAN GENOCIDE:

The Ottoman Empire was home to a number of non-Muslim communities, among who were the Armenians. Most non-Muslims lived with little interference from the Ottoman government under a system of religious communities known as millets. Every millet had a leader - usually a religious patriarch - who reported directly to the Sultan. Millets were in charge of collecting their own taxes and settling conflicts within their own communities. Islamic law ruled supreme in matters involving any Muslim, and testimonies of Christians were not readily accepted. Religious minorities, under the autonomy granted by the Millet System, were in many cases, able to achieve relative prosperity.

During nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was referred to as the “sick man of Europe.” Mounting military, financial and territorial losses put the Empire into a long succession of decline. In addition, with the ceding of large amounts of territory to the Russian Empire by the Ottomans, Europeans sought to get involved and obstruct Russian advances. A series of reforms were enacted by the Ottomans known as the Tanzimat Reforms. These reforms, coerced by European powers, were meant to modernize the Empire and grant equal rights to non-Muslims. However, centuries of fundamental socio-religious norms were too deeply entwined for such a radical transformation. Objections were soon raised from all over the Islamic community, against which the government had no power to enforce its policies. Many Muslims not only disliked the diminishment of their status of superiority over Christians, but they also feared being dominated in the Eastern part of the Empire, the Armenian homeland. Civil strife was abounding in the Empire among the Christians and Muslims, and radical elements among the latter—both Turkish and Kurdish—devastated Armenian communities. Armenian revolutionary organizations arose as a counter-measure. With urging from Russia and the Armenian population in the Russian Empire, many Armenians saw the only recourse as autonomy within the Empire. Retaliation against the Armenians culminated in a series of massacres from 1894-1896, when around 200,000 Armenians were killed by the Sultan's forces and Muslim citizens.

Hope was high when the Committee of Union and Progress (Young Turks) deposed the Sultan in 1909. Initially supported by many non-Turkish peoples (including the Armenians), the progressive Young Turks eventually lost to the Turkish Nationalist element among them, whose goal was an Islamic-Turkish state with the intent of unification with other Turkish populations in the east. This Pan-Nationalist ideology, known as Pan-Turkism, left little room for the Christians, a non-Turkic population in the Empire. With the onset of WWI, the opportune time had come for settling the “Armenian Question” by radical and genocide-minded members of the Young Turk government, including Talaat Pasha, Enver Pasha, and Drs. Nazim and Shakir. Armenian soldiers were disarmed, forced into servitude and eventually murdered. Armenian communities too were disarmed, uprooted and sent into the Syrian Desert, under the guise of relocation and without any sustenance. Kurdish tribesmen were set up on the outskirts of towns to loot, rape, kidnap and murder as they wished. Released felons, Turkish refugees from the Balkans, as well as hardened military units, manned caravans of Armenians so that there would be no reservations about killing them. By the early 1920s, more than one million Armenians had died.

The Young Turk government was ultimately ousted by the military leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who in 1923, declared the Turkish Republic and served as its first President and great reformer. His new form of Turkish national identity, however, left little room for discussion about what had happened during the Young Turk government, especially the Armenian Genocide. Kemal's vision of Turkish identity is what survives today. This identity was built on and, to this day, inspires strong denial efforts against the historic reality of genocide.

US Genocide Resolutions
H.RES.316
H.CON.RES.195
S.RES.320