Armenian Genocide. Talaat Pasha
It was the attempted elimination of the Armenian people by the Ottoman Empire during and following the First World War which led to the creation of the word genocide. In 1914 planning for the removal of the Armenians from the Ottoman Empire had resulted in a racially charged propaganda campaign declaring persons of Armenian descent to be enemies of the Ottoman Empire, helping to destroy it from within.
In the spring of 1915 Armenian notables, intellectuals, and other persons of influence were arrested for deportation, most were later murdered. In May Talaat Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of State, pushed an order to deport all Armenians from the Ottoman Empire through the government. This order was viewed by state security forces as an order to execute Armenians.
Armenians were forced marched into the desert of what is now Syria, where they were held in camps without food, adequate shelter, medicines, or even sufficient water. Death by starvation and overwork was the unofficial policy of the Ottoman Empire, and although the plight of the Armenians was observed by representatives of several western nations, little aid was provided and what did come was diverted by Ottoman officials.
Once the deported Armenians reached their destination point, preordained by the Ottoman government, those who had survived were gathered into concentration camps. Married women deemed desirable by the Turks were selected for marrying after their husbands were starved to death. Some camps were used simply as mass grave sites, the Armenians arrived there to die of starvation or thirst in a few days. Some villages were packed with Armenian deportees and burned.
Turkish doctors engaged in medical experiments on Armenian prisoners, a precursor to the activities of German doctors during the Holocaust years later. Experiments with drug overdoses, typhus and other communicable diseases, and poison gas were all conducted and documented by Turkish doctors. By the time the Armenian genocide ended in 1922 half of all Armenians in Turkey had died, a number which has been estimated to be as high as 1.5 million men women and children. Talaat Pasha was assassinated in 1921 after having fled the Ottoman Empire near the end of the First World War. His assassin was a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.
