Armenian Question

Abstract: The Great Game of Genocide addresses the origins, development and aftermath of the Armenian genocide in a wide-ranging reappraisal based on primary and secondary sources from all the major parties involved. Rejecting the determinism of many influential studies, and discarding polemics on all sides, it founds its interpretation of the genocide in the interaction between the Ottoman empire in its decades of terminal decline, the self-interested policies of the European imperial powers, and the agenda of some Armenian nationalists in and beyond Ottoman territory. Particular attention is paid to the international context of the process of ethnic polarization that culminated in the massive destruction of 1912-23, and especially the obliteration of the Armenian community in 1915-16. The opening chapters of the book examine the relationship between the great power politics of the 'eastern question' from 1774, the narrower politics of the 'Armenian question' from the mid-nineteenth century, and the internal Ottoman questions of reforming the complex social and ethnic order under intense external pressure. Later chapters include detailed case studies of the role of Imperial Germany during the First World War (reaching conclusions markedly different to the prevailing orthodoxy of German complicity in the genocide); the wartime Entente and then the uncomfortable postwar Anglo-French axis; and American political interest in the Middle East in the interwar period which led to a policy of refusing to recognize the genocide. The book concludes by explaining the ongoing international denial of the genocide as an extension of the historical 'Armenian question', with many of the same considerations governing modern European-American-Turkish interaction as existed prior to the First World War.

Abstract: Part 1: war neurotics propaganda lies. Part 2: vile bodies visible differences. Part 3: the tank and the manufacture of consent Mrs Dalloway and the Armenian question.

Abstract: Seven decades after the destruction of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian genocide remains largely ignored by governments and forgotten by the world public, even though the annihilation of Armenians was headlined around the world in 1915. Scholarly investigation of the Armenian genocide is just beginning, made more difficult by the tendency of many establishment figures to rationalize the past and the attempt of perpetrator governments and their successors to deny the past. This volume is a pioneering collective attempt to assess and analyze the Armenian genocide from differing perspectives, including history, political science, ethics, religion, literature, and psychiatry. Focusing on the general implications of denial, rationalization, and responsibility, it is particularly important as a precursor to the study of the Holocaust and other genocides. Contents: Israel Charny, "Preface"; Terrence Des Pres, "Introduction"; Richard G. Hovannisian, "The Historical Dimensions of the Armenian Question, 1878-1923"; Leo Kuper, "The Turkish Genocide of the Armenians, 1915-1917"; Robert Melson, "Provocation of Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry into the Armenian Genocide of 1915"; Richard Hrair Dekmejian, "Determinants of Genocide: Armenians and Jews as Case Studies"; Marjorie Housepian-Dobkin, "What Genocide? What Holocaust? News from Turkey, 1915-1923: A Case Study"; Richard G. Hovannisian, "The Armenian Genocide and Denial Patterns"; Vigen Guroian, "Collective Responsibility and Official Excuse Making: The Case of the Turkish Genocide of the Armenians"; Leo Hamalian, "The Armenian Genocide and the Literary Imagination"; Vahe Oshagan, "The Impact of the Genocide on Western Armenian Letters"; Levon Boyajian and Haigaz Grigorian, "Psychological Sequelae of the Armenian Genocide"; Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, "An Oral History Perspective on Responses to the Armenian Genocide."

Abstract: The persistence of genocide or near-genocidal incidents from the 1890s through the 1990s, committed by Ottoman and successor Turkish and Iraqi states against Armenian, Kurdish, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek communities in Eastern Anatolia, is striking. This article traces the origins of these incidents by examining emerging Armenian, Turkish, and Kurdish national movements and their competition for the region's resources. It argues that the creation of this "zone of genocide" in Eastern Anatolia cannot be understood in isolation, but only in light of the role played by the Great Powers in the emergence of a Western-led international system. This article examines patterns of genocide and ethnic hostility in Eastern Anatolia from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. This region has been described as a "natural geographic unit" of some 120,000 square miles.1 Its core is a largely steppe-like mountain plateau, with Lake Van and Mount Ararat its most significant physical features. To the north it is bounded by the Black Sea after a dramatic descent via the Pontus range; the Caucasus mountains provide a natural barrier in the northeast. To the south, it falls away in a series of steep, parallel folds descending along the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates, to the Jazira, the great SyrianMesopotamian plain. Eastern Anatolia consists of the six Ottoman administrative vilayets that most concerned the European powers in the late nineteenth century due to "the Armenian Question," as well as the vilayet of Trabzon and a substantial part of Mosul. This would embrace historic western "Armenia," with the exception of Cilicia, but not eastern Armenia (and thus the modern independent republic of that name). It would also include the northern and central core of "Kurdistan," some of which today lies in northern Iraq. Eastern Anatolia is our focus because it is at once an arena in which competing national interests have laid claim to its territory and assets, and a geographic region that since the 1890s has been repeatedly plagued by genocidal killings. Within the