page_title: Racism in Turkey
section_title: Against Armenians
hierarchical_section_title: Racism in Turkey / Against Armenians
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture showing Armenians killed during the Armenian Genocide. Image taken from Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, written by Henry Morgenthau, Sr. and published in 1918. Original description: "THOSE WHO FELL BY THE WAYSIDE. Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces, in the spring and summer months of 1915. Death in its several forms---massacre, starvation, exhaustion---destroyed the larger part of the refugees. The Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise of deportation" Français&#160;: Photo montrant le corps de plusieurs Arméniens abattus alors que se déroulait le génocide des Arméniens. Photo publiée dans Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, ouvrage rédigé par Henry Morgenthau senior et publié en 1918. Deutsch: Auf diesem Foto schrieb der amerikanische Botschafter Henry Morgenthau senior: „Szenen wie diese waren in den Frühlings- und Sommermonaten 1915 in den armenischen Provinzen der Türkei an der Tagesordnung. Tod in mehreren Formen—Massaker, Verhungern, Erschöpfung—vernichtete den Großteil der Flüchtlinge. Die türkische Politik war die einer Vernichtung unter dem Deckmantel der Deportation“.
context_page_description: In Turkey, racism and ethnic discrimination are present in its society and throughout its history, including institutional racism against non-Muslim and non-Sunni minorities. This appears mainly in the form of negative attitudes and actions by Turks towards people who are not considered ethnically Turkish. Such discrimination is predominantly towards non-Turkish ethnic minorities such as Kurds, Zazas, Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Jews, as well as hostility towards minority forms of Islam such as Alevis, Sufis, and Shias.
  In recent years, racism in Turkey has shifted towards Syrian refugees and Arabs in general.
context_section_description: Although it was possible for Armenians to achieve status and wealth in the Ottoman Empire, as a community they were accorded a status as second-class citizens (under the Millet system) and were regarded as fundamentally alien to the Muslim character of Ottoman society. In 1895, demands for reform among the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire lead to Sultan Abdul Hamid's decision to suppress them resulting in the Hamidian massacres in which up to 300,000 Armenians were killed and many more tortured. In 1909, a massacre of Armenians in the city of Adana resulted in a series of anti-Armenian pogroms throughout the district resulting in the deaths of 20,000–30,000 Armenians. During World War I, the Ottoman government massacred between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians in the Armenian Genocide. The position of the current Turkish government, however, is that the Armenians who died were casualties of the expected hardships of war, the casualties cited are exaggerated, and that the 1915 events could not be considered a genocide. This position has been criticized by international genocide scholars, and by 28 governments, which have resolutions affirming the genocide.
  The incident of The Twenty Classes was a policy used by the Turkish government to conscript the male non-Turkish minority population mainly consisting of Armenians, Greeks and Jews during World War II. All of the twenty classes consisted of male minority population, including the elders and mentally ill. They were given no weapons and quite often they did not even wear military uniforms. These non-Muslims were gathered in labor battalions where no Turks were enlisted. They were allegedly forced to work under very bad conditions. The prevailing and widespread point of view on the matter was that wishing to partake in the World War II, Turkey gathered in advance all unreliable non-Turkish men regarded as a “fifth column”.
  Varlık Vergisi ("Wealth tax" or "Capital tax") was a Turkish tax levied on the wealthy citizens of Turkey in 1942, with the stated aim of raising funds for the country's defense in case of an eventual entry into World War II. The bill for the one-off tax was proposed by the Şükrü Saracoğlu government, and the act was adopted by the Turkish parliament on November 11, 1942. It was imposed on the fixed assets, such as landed estates, building owners, real estate brokers, businesses, and industrial enterprises of all citizens, including the minorities.  However, those who suffered most severely were non-Muslims like the Jews, Greeks, Armenians, and Levantines, who controlled a large portion of the economy. Though it was the Armenians who were most heavily taxed.
  Some difficulties currently experienced by the Armenian minority in Turkey are a result of an anti-Armenian attitude by ultra-nationalist groups such as the Grey Wolves. According to Minority Rights Group, while the government officially recognizes Armenians as minorities but when used in public, this term denotes second-class status. In Turkey, the term 'Armenian' has often been used as an insult. Kids are taught at a young age to hate Armenians and the "Armenian" and several people have been prosecuted for calling public figures and politicians as such.
  In February 2004, the journalist Hrant Dink published an article in the Armenian newspaper Agos titled "The Secret of Sabiha Hatun" in which a former Gaziantep resident, Hripsime Sebilciyan, claimed to be Sabiha Gökçen's niece, implying that the Turkish nationalist hero Gökçen had Armenian ancestry. The mere notion that Gökçen could have been Armenian caused an uproar throughout Turkey as Dink himself even came under fire, most notably by newspaper columnists and Turkish ultra-nationalist groups, which labeled him a traitor. A US consul dispatch leaked by WikiLeaks and penned by an official from the consulate in Istanbul observed that the entire affair "exposed an ugly streak of racism in Turkish society."
  In 2004, Belge Films, the film's distributor in Turkey pulled the release of Atom Egoyan's Ararat film, about the Armenian Genocide, after rece
caption: The Armenian Genocide was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of its Armenian subjects within the territory constituting the present-day Republic of Turkey. The total number of people killed has been estimated at 1.5 million.
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