Armenian Genocide Analysis

Anatolia was located between the Ottoman army’s headquarters and many of the theatres of war. The region bounded the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Caucasus, Syria and Mesopotamia. Eastern Anatolia region extended in the east to a line between the Gulf of Iskenderun and the Black sea. Eastern Anatolia was part of the Ottoman Empire, but this region converged with Caucasus which was part of the Russian Empire. Large Armenian population centered in the eastern Anatolia and Young Turks want to secure that region by destroying the Armenians (Bloxham 2002, 39). Russia protested against the slaughtering of Armenians in eastern Anatolia because Russians wanted to keep their Russian Armenian happy. However, at St. Petersburg Russians were planning

Armenian were suspected of deserting to the Russian side when World War I started. There was rumour the Armenians are calling for independence, even though Armenian elites and patriarchy in Istanbul did not support the movement (Aksakal 2014, 338). “Armenians in the ranks were being singled out as potential defectors to the Russian side and were already being shot preemptively – ‘accidentally’ (Aksakal 2014, 339). These rumour were somewhat true because Russian Armenian leaders recruited Ottoman Armenians to volunteer to fight against the Ottoman Empire. The purpose of these volunteer was the Armenians would act as ‘guide or scouts’ because they knew the topography of the combat zone, thus Russians would be at advantage (Dadrain 2002, 67). Ottoman Armenians would volunteer because it was better than being targeted by CUP. The volunteering program created local uprisings in eastern Anatolia. When the local uprising occurred the CUP started deportation, however CUP provoked the local uprising based on disloyalty of the Armenians (Dadrain 2002, 68-69). Hence, Russians program of volunteering only created more violence. At the same time, Britain did ‘lip-service’ to encourage the Armenians in order to maintain sympathy of the Ottoman Christians because Britain wanted to maintain eastern Anatolian to stay within the Ottoman empire to restrict Russian expansion