'Scholar Rouben P. Adalian's The Armenian Genocide'

Although genocide may seem like a foreign, outdated, and barbaric concept, the rates of genocide have actually increased over the span of the 20th century. Academic scholars have taken notice and have written many detailed essays describing the events of each atrocity. For the amount of information recorded about the Armenian Genocide of 1915, it is surprising how few members of the general population are actually aware of its occurrence. Scholar Rouben P. Adalian offers his readers knowledge on this topic in his essay “The Armenian Genocide” in Centuries of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness Accounts by Totten and Parsons. In his article, Adalian provides insight into the history of both the victims and the perpetrators of the genocide, why the

As he previously stated, the Ottoman Empire was in the process of trying to become a major world power; however, the social and political discontent they faced meant the empire’s authority was, in reality, slowing declining (122). In 1913, the Ottoman Empire lost its land in the Balkans and relinquished considerable control to surrounding European nations. Secondly, Armenian culture appealed to other Christian European countries, some of which the Turkish government just lost its territory to, so the government viewed the Armenians as a threat (122). Next, Adalian states, “… the military weakness of the Ottoman Empire left it exposed to external threats and therefore made it prone to resorting to brutality as a method of containing domestic dissent, especially with disaffected non-Muslim minorities” (122). Just a few examples of the brutality against the Armenians are the massacres that took place in the small, vulnerable Armenian villages in the late 1800s. Another reason that the government raised the “Armenian Question” is that the villagers demanded better treatment and equal rights, especially after the massacres occurred. This angered the government since the Armenians avoided assimilating to the Turkish culture and instead clung to their own (123). The government did not believe that the villagers deserved what they were requesting. Lastly, as Adalian mentioned earlier, the Muslim Turks were envious of the Armenians’ economic and cultural development and viewed non-Muslim success as a threat to the empire. While Adalian does not try to explain every factor that contributed to the genocide, he supposes that these five main reasons influenced the Turkish government’s decision to