The Armenian Genocide was a mass violence event committed by a wide-ranging group of perpetrators. The individuals who were involved in this atrocity did so in line with their own decisions, regardless of the circumstances, making individual responsibility a pertinent concept. Alleging that this mass violence was committed only by a group headed by the CUP or Talat Pasha (infamously known as the architect of the genocide) causes us to, primarily, disregard the aggregate dimension of the genocide itself as well as the individual and collective responsibilities of those who partook of their own free will. 

It becomes necessary to construct a new paradigm in this regard by shifting our point of focus from CUP elites to local (and grass-roots perpetrators), as the responsibility for the destruction of Ottoman Armenians is not limited to merely the central government, CUP dignitaries, or Talat Pasha. For a deeper dive into the that aspect of the Armenian Genocide head over here. This podcast may also help you place the violence in the Ottoman Empire and particularly Armenian Genocide in its deeper historical context. 

The Armenian National Institute website provides a huge swath of information on the history, study, and research of the genocide. For readings that explore different stories, check out the Houshamadyan website and Ottoman History Podcast Series, Sam Dolbee’s article “The Desert at the End of Empire: An Environmental History of the Armenian Genocide,” and Ümit Kurt’s research on the microhistory of the Armenian genocide and its manifold dimensions. 

From 1895 until 1915, Muslims and Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, who had previously coexisted in relative harmony, turned against one another, with the former committing inconceivable acts against the latter. In this study, the lens through which intercommunal and state-minority relations are viewed is primarily an economic one. But political economy also broadly entails law, commerce, property relations, and socioeconomic tensions. Economic rivalries were overladen on ethno-religious hierarchies in the late 19th century in Asia Minor. 

The belief among members of the dominant nation that the normative social order was being gravely upset was shaped by the “nationalization” of the Armenian nation under the modernizing influence of a burgeoning Armenian middle class. International pressure for reforms to ensure the rights of and protection for Armenians seemed to confirm this impression. The 1895 massacres featured extensive plunder of Armenians, which was an integral step in restoring the hierarchy that the massacres augured. Important members of urban Muslim elite, clergy, and local government were implicated in scapegoating Armenians and in cheerleading the killing—moreso, it appears, than Abdülhamid II’s central regime.

One cornerstone of the wartime campaign against Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was the confiscation of their properties and wealth, which were subsequently transferred to Muslim elites and used in reshaping the domestic economy as well as covering wartime expenses. More significant than the transfers themselves was the fact that these extraordinary measures belonged to a set of laws, regulations, rules, and decrees that created a legal basis for a more systematic campaign against the movable and immovable properties of Armenians. These laws and statutes came to be known as the Abandoned Properties Laws.  Learn more about them in Taner Akçam and Umit Kurt’s book The Spirit of the Laws, or in this podcast interview with Kurt. 

The existing research on violence in the Ottoman Empire suffers from an important methodological problem: the lack of sources from ethnic groups subjected to violence. Some works reconstruct the history of violence solely through the prism of the Ottoman archives, while others rely only on European sources. Both are deficient in terms of Armenian sources. Using sources from as many of the parties involved as possible provides us with a better understanding of the factors that led to the eruption of violence in the region and its culmination in the massacres. 

If you are interested in excavating topics from sexual violence to conversion, and from resistance to the post-war period in the Armenian Genocide, chances are there is a book or a podcast on that! 

As a citizen son of Turkey from Gaziantep, I now fully realize that through having attended the same schools with grandsons and granddaughters of former perpetrators, I myself have witnessed the consequences of Armenians’ physical and material destruction. My account here is only a small step in understanding the complete picture of not only what happened but also how and why these events transpired. Unseen in the archived letters, telegrams, and property lists are the trauma and suffering of Armenian survivors repeatedly subjected to attacks on their lives, culture, assets, and social status. The base motives of their former neighbors left some of the most indelible wounds, which more than a century later remain unhealed.

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