armenian genocide

Stephen Zunes 11-30-2020
Illustration of two semi-automatic rifles being held by puppet strings, pointing at each other.

Illustration by Michael George Haddad

THE WAR BETWEEN Armenia and Azerbaijan this past autumn was an avoidable tragedy.

The disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region has been populated since at least the second century B.C.E. by Armenians, one of the world’s oldest Christian civilizations. The Muslim Azeris and others have lived there and in neighboring areas for centuries as well, and the region was ethnically mixed (albeit majority Armenian) when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Stalin’s divide-and-rule policy for drawing borders made Nagorno-Karabakh a theoretically “autonomous region” within the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic. As the Soviet Union was breaking up and Azerbaijani persecution of ethnic Armenians increased, the Armenian and Nagorno-Karabakh governments, with widespread support of their respective populations, demanded the transfer of the region to Armenia.

When Azerbaijan refused, Armenia seized the territory by force in the 1990s—along with large swaths of western Azerbaijan, populated primarily by Azeris, that were never part of Nagorno-Karabakh. Hundreds of thousands of Azeris, and a smaller number of Armenians, were victims of ethnic cleansing by both sides.

Francis’ trip to the site carries huge significance, following the pontiff’s description of the killings as “the first genocide of the 20th century.”

 

Ariana DeNardo 8-03-2015
James Tufenkian

James Tufenkian

I spoke with James Tufenkian, founder of Tufenkian Foundation which serves to promote social, economic, cultural and environment justice in Armenia as it recovers from its genocide. I asked him about his connection with Sojourners, and how his work and faith intersect.

Ariana Denardo (AD): How did you get connected with Sojourners, and why did you decide to become a donor?

James Tufenkian (JT): My brother, a retired pastor, and I were having a series of conversations about the involvement of the church in social issues. He mentioned Sojourners, so I visited the website, read the magazine, and got interested. I found Sojourners to be the best, maybe the only organization I know of that works on social justice as Christians living out Christ’s example. It was natural for me to want to support that in different ways, one of them being as a donor.

Photo via REUTERS / Amir Cohen

An Armenian woman lights a candle in remembrance of the Armenian genocide. Photo via REUTERS / Amir Cohen

One hundred years ago — April 1915 — as World War I raged across Europe, the government of the Ottoman Empire attacked its Armenian citizens. Over the next several years, it is estimated that as many as 1.5 million Armenians died. Able-bodied men were murdered or enslaved as forced labor in the army, and hundreds of thousands of women, children, the infirm, and the elderly were marched into the Syrian desert to face death.

Supported by the Young Turks, an ultranationalist party that approved systematic deportation, abduction, torture, massacre, and the expropriation of Armenian wealth, the German-allied Ottoman government used the excuse of war to initiate the forcible removal of Armenians from Armenia and Anatolia where they had lived for centuries.

The targeting and mass murder of Armenians has been termed a genocide.

Although racial, ethnic, and religious wars have killed millions over the centuries, genocide is a unique byproduct of the 20th century. It requires both a rabid nationalism and the capacity of a central authority to organize and implement a sustained and systematic program of targeted mass destruction. Not until the 20th century had governments the necessary technologies, resources, and means to ally their historical ethnic, religious, or racist hatreds with radical nationalism to end the collective existence of a people.

The Armenian genocide was recognized and deplored around the world, even as modern Turkey resists the “genocide” label. American diplomats, Russians, Arabs, and German officers stationed in Ottoman lands witnessed the slaughter and alerted the wider world. In May 1915, Great Britain, France, and Russia vowed to hold the Turks personally responsible for their crimes. Relief efforts to save the “starving Armenians” were widespread.

Becky Garrison 4-08-2009
On the anniversary of the 1994 Tutsi Genocide in Rwanda, I was invited by Miracle Corners of the World to attend a ceremony held at the Church Center