In the 1800s, the once powerful Ottoman Empire began to seriously decline. It began losing battles to the modern European armies. Because of the Empire’s decline, formerly subjected people such as the Greeks, Serbs and the Romanians gained their independence as free states. Only the Armenians and the Arabs of the Middle East remained stuck in the empire under autocratic rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid.

In the 1890s, young Armenians began calling for political reforms, a constitutional government, the right to vote and an end to discriminatory practices against them because they were Christian. The Sultan responded to these acts by brutally persecuting them. Between 1894 and 1896, over 100,000 inhabitants of Armenian villages were massacred.

In 1908, the reform-minded Turkish nationalists known as the Young Turks forced the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Abdul Hamid, to allow a constitutional government and guarantee basic rights. The Young Turks were ambitious junior officers in the Turkish Army who hoped to stop the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Armenians were praising this new turn of events that was pushed forward by the Young Turks. Public rallies were held, attended by both the Turks and Armenians. But their hopes were crushed by three of the Young Turks, who seized full control of the Government in 1913. These three Turks were Mehmed Talaat, Ismail Enver and Ahmed Jemel. They had their own ambitious plans for Turkey. The wanted to unite all of the Turkish people in the entire region and expand the borders of Turkey eastward across the Caucasus, all the way into Central Asia. This would create the new Turkish Empire.

The one big problem they faced was that the traditional historic homeland of Armenia lay right in their path of expansion. On that land was a large population of Christian Armenians totaling around two million people about which was 10% of Turkey’s overall population.

There was a huge cultural difference between Armenians and Turks. The Armenians had always been the best-educated communities within the old Ottoman Empire. Armenians were the professionals in society, the businessmen, lawyers, doctors and skilled craftsmen. They were open to new scientific, political and social ideas from the West.

By contrast, the Turks were illiterate peasant farmers and small shopkeepers. Leaders of the Ottoman Empire always placed little value on the higher education system in Turkey. They valued obedience and loyalty above all.

The Young Turks decided to glorify the virtues of simple Turkish peasantry at the expense of the Armenians in order to capture peasant loyalty. They exploited the religious, cultural, economic and political differences between them so that the average Turk came to regard Armenians as the strangers among them.

When WWI broke out in 1914, leaders of the Young Turk regime sided with the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary. The outbreak of the war provided the perfect opportunity to solve the “Armenian Question” once and for all.
As a prelude to the coming action, Turks disarmed the entire Armenian population under the pretext that the people were naturally sympathetic toward Christian Russia. All rifles, pistols and many other weapons were seized from the Armenians, with severe penalties for anyone who refused.

At this time, there were about 40,000 Armenian men serving for the Turkish Army.
All of their weapons were confiscated and they were put into slave labor battalions building roads. Under the brutal work conditions, they suffered a very high death rate. Those who survived the conditions were to be shot. The time had come to move against the Armenians.

Photograph provided by Armenica.org

Photograph provided by Armenica.org

Photograph provided by Armenica.org