Marriage War Bride in Armenian genocide
Armenian genocide recognized by 22 Nations (including the Argentina), is an issue of high sensitivity that was always denied by Turkey. Francisco was the first Pope to verbally denounce that the Armenian people were “genocide". Exactly one hundred years ago, there began one of the most discussed event in the history of Turkey is the Armenian genocide. It is the killing of Armenian citizens during the First World War. The eventual happenings of those mass murders generated strong tensions with Turkey, by mentioning that the political heir of the Turkish Ottoman Empire responsible for the carnage (Smith 1-22).. But he refused to acknowledge the responsibility of academics, Governments and international organizations.
The bodies of the women and children were basically the subject of protagonist discourses and the policies. The issue of belief in Armenian genocide and proof have brought the acceptance towards the continuing disputes that the crimes against the Armenian people were part of the many claims which were intended to target the Christian Armenians. During the Armenian genocide, Armenian women were owned and were forcibly kept as the wife and sex slave. This paper discusses the War bride in the Armenian genocide which had adverse effects afterwards.
Body:
The genocide definition corresponded to the nationalist government of the young Turks, who seemed to share the idea of equal citizenship with ethno-religious minorities (Greeks, Armenians and Jews) in the Constitutionalist revolution of 1908. Until this duration, they lived under autocracy of the sultan in a situation of pluralism-subordinate. Legal (Turkish) Muslims prevailed over minorities. Ottoman tolerance was also the consideration that any dissent against their domination triggered relentless punitive action. Nationalist uprisings of the 19th century in the Balkans had the opportunity to check it, and incidentally generated a growing distrust against the Armenians. The main core of settlement, aside from Constantinople, was isolated in Eastern Anatolia. Hence, when the Congress of Berlin, by article 61, ordered sultan Abdul Hamid II to grant reforms to the Armenians and protect them from Kurdish and Circassian, the result ended up being contrary. The reforms were expected, there were killings of tens of thousands of victims, again and again in 1909.
The genocide of Armenia was one of the mass extermination of "root" ever waged against helpless people. In 1915, when the First World War was at its peak, the Turkish Government (President of the Ottoman Empire) decided the systematic extermination of the majority of the Armenian population faced forced deportation, including mostly women, children and old (Ekmekcioglu, 522-553). The deportation became a death March, with extreme violence and deprivation, leading towards the death of the survivors of the initial genocide. At the time, exhausted and traumatized survivors sought refuge in neighboring countries. They had exterminated more than three quarters of the entire population of Ottoman Armenia.
Armenia is one of the oldest populations and lived in the South of the Caucasus region for 3,000 years. Christians formed the largest population of non-Muslim of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. Peaceful relations between Armenians and Ottomans were the norm. Despite acts of discrimination, the Armenians were called "loyal millet." This changed in the 19th century, when nationalist forces took control of both the Ottoman realm and the Armenians and the Ottoman Empire - "the sick man of Europe" - began to crumble before the regional revolts. The calls of the European powers for the protection of the population of Armenia had the opposite effect (Dadrian, 2003). The regime of Sultan Abdul Hamid II saw that "intervention" from outside as a threat to its sovereignty and said in 1896 with a campaign of mass murder in which at least 200,000 Armenians were killed. One of the most atrocious Imperial acts of the 19th century, however, was simply a harbinger of total genocide which descended two decades later.
The involuntary deportation of children, women and old that were left alive after genocide against Armenian men gave rise to unavoidable circumstances that are remembered in the history. An option was offered to Armenian women and children to convert to Islam and subsequently be slaves in houses in Turkey. Tother people were taken from his homeland to tip bayonet. Women who were left behind were fired with bayonets on road, or thrown towards the cliffs, or on top of the bridges (Kévorkian, 2011).
The entire course of the journey became a perpetual struggle with the Muslim inhabitants. Separations of the gendarmes continued forward, notifying Kurdish tribes about the victims who were about to reach and Turkish farmers were also informed about their anticipated opportunity had arrived. Government had also opened the prisons and let free the convicts, with the understanding that how good Muslims should behave with the Armenians who approached (Anzia, 2011).
Thus, each Convoy had a long battle for its existence with various kinds of enemies. And we have to remember that individuals who would have protected these walkers had been nearly all murdered or forced into the army to work as laborers, and that they themselves were exiled had been intentionally deprived of any weapon before the day began (Matossian, 12-29).
After spending one night in horrible camp, exiles, or those who had survived started the journey next morning. Armenians start to die in the hundreds by hunger and the thirst. When they went to rivers, the gendarmes did not allow them to drink water just in order to annoy them. The heat of desert sun burned their bodies and their feet while walking along hot sand of desert, suffered so many injuries that thousands died or fell or were killed.
End result of these irritations was close to total extinction. Morgenthau described a typical group consisting of about "18,000 souls" containing only children and women reached their destination. Few of remaining women who were the most beautiful were living as prisoners of the Kurds and Turks. Last survivors were totally naked because every piece of clothing has been torn along the way. The witnesses saw their arrival and pointed out that there were young or beautiful faces seen amongst them and certainly there were no survivors who were really old.
Conclusion:
The survivors of Armenian genocide had to face a lot of struggle. The protection for the women and families of the Armenian people had completely vanished. The women were trapped in the war and forced to convert to Islam and become war brides and sexual wives. Older estimates are in a range of 1.1 to 1.8 million and recent estimates are 2.5 million of Armenian living in Ottoman lands at the beginning of the massacre in 1915. As a proportion of the population, it is believed that between half or three quarters of all Ottoman Armenians were killed in the genocide. References:
Anzia, Lys. “100 years later Armenian women continue to be haunted by genocide”. Retrieved From http://womennewsnetwork.net/2012/10/19/armenian-women-genocide/. [Novermber, 2011].
Dadrian, Vahakn N. The history of the Armenian genocide: ethnic conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. Berghahn Books, 2003.
Ekmekcioglu, Lerna. "A Climate for Abduction, a Climate for Redemption: The Politics of Inclusion during and after the Armenian Genocide." Comparative Studies in Society and History 55.03 (2013): 522-553.
Kévorkian, Raymond. The Armenian genocide: a complete history. IB Tauris, 2011.
Matossian, Lou Ann. "Armenian Women in a Changing World: Women living in the newly independent state and its diasporan communities discuss their history, identity, and political agenda." Off Our Backs (1995): 12-29.
Smith, Roger W., Eric Markusen, and Robert Jay Lifton. "Professional ethics and the denial of Armenian genocide." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 9.1 (1995): 1-22.