Response to Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide: Response Paper The movie highlights the extermination of Armenians from the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It uses newspaper articles, photographs, personal statements and experts in the topic to discuss Turkey’s denial of the genocide to this day. In class we discussed how the Young Turks led the Ottoman Empire during WWI and used the war as a cover-up. The documentary discussed the genocide as a result of the civil war between Muslims and Christians. The government rationalized this by stating that the genocide never occurred, it was just a removal of the Armenians from the border. This would give Russians access to the Ottoman Empire through the Black Sea. They feared that the Armenians would ally with the enemies, the Russians, in hope to use Russian aid to create nationalized stated for the Armenians. I found this interesting because of the pull between these two reasoning for the killing of numerous Armenians. Another point that the movie made was that strategic attack by the Turks on the Armenians. A few experts in the movie mentioned that the Turks would extinguish the intellectual, and spiritual elite because it would be easier after to extinguish the rest; the leaderless, the less of the nation. By removing the Armenians leaders and support, the people would have no hope or faith to follow and be strong to fight the Turks. I believe that this was a good strategy for the Turks for an easier removal of the Armenians. With no strong pillars to hold the Armenians together, it would be easier to knock down and remove the Armenians. Based on the documentary, there have been many books and almost movies that were created and written. Almost always there have been critics of the book and genocide deniers, and almost always they were Turkish or sent by the Turkish government. The question that many ask is “why is the Turkish government so quick in denying and dismissing the topic of genocide?” This makes them look