U.S. congressional panel recognize as genocide 1915 Massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks

PanARMENIAN.Net - A U.S. congressional panel has described as Genocide the 1915 killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks. The non-binding resolution in the House Foreign Affairs Committee recommends that President Barak Obama recognize the 1915 killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as Genocide. The measure was passed by a narrow 23 to 22 vote with one member not participating.



Historians agree Armenians were massacred by the Ottoman Empire - what was to become Turkey - during World War I. But not all agree that it was genocide, VOA News reported.



Ronald Suny, an expert on Armenia with the University of Chicago, defines genocide. "The definition of genocide that is most often used is the official U.N. definition in the Genocide Convention of the late 1940s. And that definition argues that a genocide is the intentional killing of all or part of a designated people defined by their faith, their race, their ethnicity or their nationality," he said.



Suny explains that during the First World War, the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany and was thus at war with Russia and most of Europe. "When the Ottomans were defeated at a major battle in the winter of 1914-15, the government saw the Armenians, who were on both sides of the Russian-Turkish frontier, as a potential 'fifth column' - a danger, an internal danger to their empire," he said.



"And they then carried out systematically, deportations of Armenians from eastern Anatolia, first demobilizing the Armenian soldiers who were serving with the Ottoman army, forcing them to dig their graves and shooting them. And then women and children, deporting them into the deserts of Syria, massacring them along the way and ultimately killing thousands and thousands when they reached Dayr az Zawr, the end point in the Syrian desert," he added.



Suny says the case is clear - the action by the Ottoman Turks was genocide. "There is no doubt that there was, in fact, a state organized, systematic deportation and massacre of a designated population, defined by their religion and ethnicity, namely the Armenians," he said.



"And that it was carried out, initiated and organized by this government. So if you have a mass killing of an ethno-religious group, carried out by a government in order to eliminate those people from their homeland, or to destroy their political and cultural potential - that is, by the conventional definition and most scholarly definitions, a genocide," he continued.



The majority of scholars and historians agree with Ronald Suny. But Guenter Lewy from the University of Massachusetts does not. "I don't think there was any intent to exterminate the Armenian community. There was an intent to remove them and neutralize them as a fifth column," he said. Experts also disagree on the number of Armenians killed by the Ottoman Turks. Guenter Lewy says close to 700,000 perished.



But most scholars - such as Roger Smith with the College of William and Mary - say the figure is higher. "Out of about two million Armenians that were thought to exist in 1915, probably about a million and a half - at least over a million - perished and others were dispersed. So that if you say in 1915 there were two million Armenians in what we call Turkey, but the Ottoman Empire - there are now about 60,000 Armenians in Turkey. So a huge, vast population change," he said.