Avery LeVan

HIST 181U: Introduction to the Middle East

Professor J. Safran

27 February 2019

How Was the Armenian Genocide Possible?

The Armenian Genocide is known for being one of the largest humanitarian disasters of the 20th

century, and perhaps one of the largest of all time. The Genocide is generally thought to have taken

place from 1915 to 1917 and saw roughly 1,500,000 Armenians massacred at the hands of the Ottoman

Empire, indiscriminate of age and sex. In his memoir, Armenian Golgotha, first-hand witness Grigoris

Balakian describes the horrors experienced by the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire, including

the death marches and mass slaughters which took place to the backdrop of World War I. There were

many complex reasons that allowed the implementation of the Genocide; however, through Balakian’s

Armenian Golgotha, one can see that the vast dictatorial power possessed by the Ottoman government

(namely the Ittihad ve Terakki nationalist party) is ultimately what allowed the Armenian Genocide to

take place.

In Armenian Golgotha, Balakian describes the process which took place at the beginning of the

effort to weaken the Armenian people and the steps leading up to the Genocide. One of the first things

the Ottomans did, per Balakian’s account, was strictly prohibit the Armenian population from traveling.

“First, under the new martial laws, the Armenians of Turkey were absolutely forbidden to travel. Even

travel between the closest towns and villages was unconditionally forbidden. The official order of the

Ittihad government imposed on the Armenians was: ‘All Armenians Must Stay Put Where They Are’”

(Balakian 77). The prohibition of travel was a way for the Ittihad government to bind the hands of the

Armenians and keep them separated from other Armenians in case they would try to assemble and form

a resistance to the Ottoman’s persecution (for it is much easier to persecute an entire race of people
while they are separate and powerless, rather than when they are together and strong). An outright ban

of travel of this nature represents a level of government control over citizens’ lives that can only be

described as dictatorial; it was through the government’s abuse of power that the Armenians were

allowed to be made utterly defenseless against the Ittihad government’s predatory ambitions. The

Ottoman government was allowed to commit the atrocities they committed because of the unchecked

dictatorial power that they possessed over their people in the first place.

After the travelling ban imposed on the Armenians, the second step in the Ittihad government’s

plan of Armenian extermination was to round up Armenian political leaders and intellectuals and

separate them from their people in order to leave the Armenian population powerless to assemble and

defend themselves. In Armenian Golgotha, Balakian describes that “in every town with an Armenian

population, the influential Armenians- clergy and laypeople, party members and nonparty members,

liberals and conservatives- and those thought to have influence were arrested and imprisoned to

prevent their organizing the people in resistance” (Balakian 77). The imprisonment of influential leaders

of the Armenian community was a way to soften the Armenians even further in preparation for

slaughter. Similar to the goals of imposing a travel ban on Armenians, separating community leaders

from their communities was a way to prevent any assemblies of resistance to the Ittihad government’s

plans of genocide. The simple fact that Ottoman leadership could just round up and arrest hundreds of

citizens on a whim without having to be held accountable just goes to show that the Ottoman

government possessed dictatorial powers that were a danger to its people. These dictatorial powers

facilitated the series of events that would become known as the Armenian Genocide.

The Ittihad government’s final step taken to weaken the Armenians in preparation for

government-sanctioned genocide was disarming the Armenian population. “The Armenian people were

generally disarmed, even to the point of confiscating their large kitchen knives, in order to make

impossible any seditious movement” (Belakian 77). As this quote explains, the reason this measure was
taken was to ensure that the Armenians could not fight back against what their government was about

to do to them. They were completely disarmed, and as a result they were left wide open for the

government to harm. In Armenian Golgotha, Balakian describes the process of disarmament: “First, they

issued a decree requiring the population […] to turn in their weapons at a designated site. Obviously this

decree was aimed at the Armenians, all of whom, irrespective of his denomination, fearing the threat of

severe punishment, turned in whatever kinds of weapons they had, and did not receive them back”

(Belakian 83). This quote shows how the government used threats of coercion to disarm the Armenian

population and leave them wide open to be slaughtered without the possibility of resistance. Now that

the disarmed Armenian population had no way of fighting back, the government was free to massacre

them virtually unopposed. When a population is disarmed, they are left defenseless to the ones who

want to hurt them. When a government has the power to disarm its people, it has the power to take

advantage of them and exploit them, or in this case, to slaughter them. Possession of such power by a

government over its people poses a danger to its people. For most Armenians, it cost them everything. It

was because of the Ittihad government’s power to strip a group of people of their ability to defend

themselves that put the events of the Armenian Genocide in place.

The Armenian Golgotha by Grigoris Balakian is an invaluable first-hand testimony of what

happened during the Armenian Genocide. Through Balakian’s writings, it is easy to see how the

Armenian Genocide was allowed to take place by the immense dictatorial power possessed by the

government of the Ottoman Empire. This power had also allowed the Ottomans to lie and create false

pretexts on which the Genocide was based that continue to convince some people to this day that the

Genocide never actually happened. The original measures of disarmament and separation taken against

the Armenians were simply a predecessor to the atrocities that would be committed from 1915 to 1917,

however they showed some red flags that people would be wise to learn from in the future. The deaths

of 1,500,000 innocent Armenians were allowed to happen because the government had a type of power
that was corrupted by a wave of animosity toward an entire race of individuals while no one could stop

them. It is easy to disregard the rights of people when in possession of immense power.