welcome to another segment of what's going on my name's bob feldman and i'll be our host tonight we are privileged to have with us two distinguished dollars in the field of i mean in history and the i mean in genocide and other genocides to my right is mock me and i go and director of academic affairs national association for i mean in studies and research and to mark's right wister state university president of the international association of genocide scholars i best market and and really if they join this is the great challenge of course is that armenia and the armenians go back very very far in history probably at least three thousand years of known recorded history and d testing and other such such things are pushing the dates back further and further all the time but armenians have been living in the area of eastern asia minor which is present day turkey and  south southern caucasus in the area that is the current day republic of armenia and northern iran for thousands of years and armenians speak a language the armenian language which is an indo european language but it's very different from other indo european languages such as english german latin french etc and you have to be a linguist i think in order to to really detect and explain the similarities between armenian and the other indo european languages but nevertheless they do exist and the armenian language is written at least since the  fourth century or fifth century in a distinctive alphabet the armenian alphabet was created just expressly for the purpose of writing the armenian language and its a unique alphabet  and not like any other existing alphabet in the world armenians were variously independent or not independent throughout ancient times often times adopting christianity around the turn of the fourth century a d so around three zero one a d is the time that it's marked for i mean it's becoming christian which created helped create a distinctly distinct national identity and the creation of the alphabet subsequently and the creation of a large body of literature and translations from other languages contributed greatly to to a distinctive armenian national what we would call an armenian national consciousness although some scholars would say that that's too early in history to talk about a national consciousness but but others would disagree so the armenians continued to dwell in that region throughout the centuries and down to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when we get to the twentieth century and the period of the armenian genocide is when there's a major break in armenia is historical continuity because in the larger part of the armenian historic homeland armenians no longer and the place that is today the republic of armenia is a rather small percentage of the historic our union homeland and the global armenian diaspora was  created in the aftermath of the genocide or greatly increased in the aftermath of the genocide which is why many of us find ourselves here in the united states or in other parts of the world all armenians of always been a course the first major undertaking after the creation of the alphabet by an armenian monk named it was the translation of the bible into armenian and the armenian translation of the bible does  by a very important place in i mean in history in the history of the armenian church and in the history of the bible in general because the armenian translation occurring at such an early date is a very important source for  empire western armenia historically was a or ultimately maybe seven hundred years ago or so was conquered by different turkish groups and became you know was ultimately integrated into the ottoman  empire so about two thirds of armenians lived in the western part about a third were in the eastern part and you know they had i mean slightly different language variance developed and so forth but there were there was some sense of you know cultural continuity in the system that emerged from the conquest by by the turkish groups that came in there was a hierarchy it was a it was it's called  system so there's a hierarchy of muslims at the top so called people of the book jews and christian groups which would be mainly greeks armenians assyrians and certain other groups under the ottoman rule and then others who  sort of below people of the book had this sort of middle status it was definitely a second class citizenship but with some kinds of rights and one of the ways those rights were developed was each group had its community that sort of took care of internal affairs so there was an armenian mallette there was a greek milat and they were able to regulate some of the internal workings but at the same time that system i would argue was really a freezing of the imperial conquest that happened that created the society ottoman society and so for instance armenians and others in the second class citizenship position were barred from certain professions professions so political military service and so forth except through mechanisms that are a little bit complicated and meant giving up their background so that's really you know an important i think in a porton issue is this sort of structure where there were different laws different levels of you know of human rights protections and so forth and by the one nine hundred centuries you had a weakening of the ottoman empire and that's again where the majority of armenians were for that ye your and there was a lot of mismanagement you can get we can discuss at length why that happened but part of it was as european countries we're developing through the industrial revolution and sort of finance capitalism and those kinds of things i think the ottoman empire still clung to more of a militarist older model of empire and they weren't able to make that adjustment as well as they they they might have which weaken them but their response was not very productive in other words they didn't they didn't figure out ways to catch up or figure out ways to preserve you know there are society and state in a way that would have enabled them to to at least have you know real sovereignty so they were there are a lot of issues happening and throughout period throughout the one nine hundred centuries that really triggered a worsening of treatment of minority groups who became more identified as minority groups in sort of a political sense so armenians again jews small small jewish community but still there and other groups were much more marginal and so by the time you get to the late one nine hundred centuries and there's this sort of influx of nationalist thinking that comes into turkey and so forth these divisions which had been a hierarchy before became even more important to the to the level of questions of what who had the right to be in the ottoman empire what did you have to be to be in the ottoman empire again not dissimilar from nazi germany and so forth this idea of this homogenous population and so that dynamic got worse and worse as these ideologies really took hold and ultimately you know by the early one thousand nine hundred so there were sort of crisis points in  which for a short time opened up into at least on paper a new kind of sort of more european focus aside where you would have basic civil rights for all people regardless of religion or ethnic background they really started pushing towards us homogenization of the ottoman empire and by that time i think it was too late to go back to the mallette system which was this hierarchy and so you have armenians you have greeks  and other groups that really just couldn't fit in this new vision of of turkey greeks were you know certainly also targeted in genocidal process but also because there was a greek state some there were population exchanges and things like that for armenians assyrians are a much smaller group but still significance which there was nowhere for them to go and so what you get with the population as far as we can guess it's in the empires or one which represented ten percent of the population of about twenty million and then also keep in mind greeks were a similarly large population and certain other groups were similarly recognized so it was you know a very different  exacerbate the tensions between the groups under the elites i mean was that a main factor in giving rise to to the violence i mean i would say that i don't know  if the armenian genocide happened soley because i wouldn't say that it happened soley because of the war but i think you could make the argument that it might not have happened if not for the war that of say that the war in its way provided a setting in which this kind of mass violence against the civilian population could be justified as a necessary war measure because i mean make a living in different trades different items and so the break happens during the war even though i can relate to the fact that the war is certainly the sole cause the preexisting conditions before the work we're all sitting there and it should be kept in line to that i'm from the throughout the nineteenth century into the twentieth century the the so called great powers mainly we're talking about britain france russia attempted to force the ottomans to implement reforms for the armenians and these there there were a number of episodes throughout the hundred years before the genocide where promises were made or or papers were signed saying that reforms would be implemented and they were never implemented and the war also provided an extreme opportunity for the ottoman empire to say the way we're going to put an end to this interference from the great powers and from outside countries is to remove the root cause which is to say the population that behalf of whom they keep intervening and unfortunately the great powers seldom did more than try to extract promises and  intense systematic violence against armenians that that killed the estimates are even harder i mean the genocide there are there are better estimates of because of the difficulty of even knowing populations that time the estimates range from scholars one hundred thousand and three hundred thousand i think it's probably in the two hundred thousand range you just couldn't buy when oprah well it wasn't you and systematically putting armenians down but i think the difference between that and genocide is at that time there was still this strong  system armenians at that time were pushing for civil rights essentially you know were challenging you know the armenians were typically victims of violence there were you know kidnapping of women and girls was not infrequent things like that property issues  treatment and so our means were looking for protections they were looking at what was happening in europe and of course very imperfect but you know at least the idea of democratization of basic civil rights and so forth and so they imported those ideas and and many people see the comedian massacres as they call them as a reaction to sort of put armenians back in their place which did have an effect and then maybe part of what happened was as  know as this new hope of one thousand eight came in you know armenians and other groups started pushing again in a significant way or expecting you know basic civil rights and really thought there could be this great ottoman empire with citizenship for all and actually from outside the ottoman empire but to take action to effect changes within the ottoman empire primarily and this was something that was viewed with great consternation by the sultan  as well and these organizations not all of them because they were there were disagreements among the organizations but when the one thousand nine hundred eight young turk revolution occurred they are especially the main revolutionary group the i mean revolutionary federation they were allied with and partnered with the turks and worked with them in fact right up practically until the eve of world war two surprised if that was the way the turks described at some point the armenians i think i mean there's a there's a lot there is interesting that two of the main ideologues of the arc of the main perpetrators of the army genocide were medical doctors and used the sort of metaphor of armenians as a disease in the empire you know so there's that whole thing there's also the disloyalty claims which again that's part of why world one is so important is because it did not go well for turkey you know really all the way through i mean if russia hadn't had the revolution dropped out it would have been even even worse but you know especially one hundred fifteen there were defeats there were thing you know and armenians again and that unfortunately time tested an effective way were scapegoated even though the historical record is very clear our means in the ottoman empire generally you know you know were loyal in the military they did where they're supposed to do until they were barred from from military from real military service and in fact even among armenians there was a there was an agreement very explicitly at the beginning of world war one that armenians in the ottoman empire should be loyal to their government and armenians in the russian empire should be loyal to their government even if there are even if they were fighting and that was a really important and i think practical reality was if they weren't that was going to open up some really dangerous problems on either side but i think that world war one cover and scapegoating in those that combination of things really did have an important impact on on the fate of armenians and i would just add there also is a good article by a scholar name step on a story in from a number of years ago on just what we'll call folk sayings that are very prejudicial against armenians and there was a sort of history against armenians greeks jews and so forth of the you know these kind of very of prejudicial sayings that were sort of common currency in the ottoman empire in the one nine hundred centuries before but they helped create this idea exactly the thing you're saying of a group that you can insult with impunity you can denigrate you can mock and moral issues yeah and then it just sort of escalates and then when there's a political situation when there's a military situation that that allows more than that the groundwork is already there so i think that's that's very much on track unfortunately the areas had very little recourse because as henry said before they were sort of institutionally inferior within the hierarchy of the ottoman empire so whether it was whether it was you know mere insults quote unquote or more more serious action prejudicial actions taken against them they had very little way of having those problems addressed really had no one to talk to complicated yeah because for example in the eight hundred ninety s in the period that henry mentioned before one part of the violence directed against the armenians during the many an era were forced conversions and this would definitely come back in the period of the armenian genocide where an untold number of thousands of armenians were  convert to islam to or else to die so the difficulty comes in when you start thinking about whether this was religious leader motivated or whether religion was merely a device that was leverage by the government to carry out their plans of essentially eliminating the armenian identity as such because most muslim nations w these are christians whatever lived there yes second class citizens but they always had certain rights and i have never found any historical examples religion was there but a side issue a list of turks were different than other muslim yeah i would just add that that it varied i think depending on the attitudes of different segments of the turkish population were they closing churches belong to the board with any record of in the end yeah yeah i mean i think i mean variable pressure but it really could be village by protective of minority rights whereas in another region next door there might be one who was you know very anti minority and so it could vary a lot and a lot of that was the groundwork that the genocide was able to be perpetrated on like as mark said you know  if you look at the main perpetrators i think a lot of evidence is that they weren't thinking religiously at all they may have been atheists if they were thinking you know sort of where they were but they definitely saw you know islam as one of the tools and in fact use jihad at one point but in order to do that they actually had to remove a leading you know the main cleric in turkey who was resistant to that and then replaced with somebody who was willing to willing to sort of told the government line  and that actually happened not infrequently in the ottoman empire both religious turkish religious leaders and secular political leaders who resisted the process of genocide were removed from power and there were there are a number of  them who really deserve note for their their willingness to stand firm against human rights violations and i heard the formulation recently i think it was learned that mit gets like with the war itself i think right i mean i generally think of one thousand nine hundred fifteen that's a fairly clear beginning although for greeks if you look at the ottoman sort of minority population as a general target of genocide the greeks really start in one thousand fourteen and really through nine hundred twenty three but there are things that happen even later than that that are and that are part of a genocidal process against some greeks some armenians other other minority groups and there are some who would  push it back and see the eight hundred ninety s massacres as if as part of perhaps not part of the genocide itself but as part of the continuum that led to genocide and there are also those who would say that if as as scholars frequently say genocide is the is the final phase of that denial is the final phase of genocide that since denial is active and ongoing on the part of the turkish government that the genocide itself has not end