Thesis Statement The United States Did Not Step Up Ag Ainst The Ottom

Thesis Statement: The United States did not step up ag ainst the Ottoman Empire because the did not have anything to gain from the Armenians. The term Genocide is very frequently used in recent times. It is a Latin compound made up of two words. Gens, meaning people or race, and the root meaning cid meaning "to destroy". In 1915, the Turks of the Ottoman Empire massacred the Armenians. While these series of massacres that started in 1894 were taking place, where was the US? The US did not step up against the Ottoman Empire because they had no interest and nothing to gain from the Armenians. On the other hand, they imported agricultural products from Turkey. From 1990 to 1923, there was a complete transformation of the Ottoman State. The heterogeneous empire with a large Christian population, ruled by a Sultan, changed into a one party Turkish republic in which the Chrisitians were only a small minority. During this period, the Turks assassinated Abdul Hamid in 1909 and set up a dictatorship four years later, and brought Turkey into the First World War. When World War I broke out in the summer of 1914, Russia, Great Britain, and France were allied against Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Turks considered Russia the traditional enemy of the Ottoman Empire. On August 2, 1914, the Ottoman minister of war, Enver Pasha, and Ministry of Interior Tallat Pasha, concluded a secret treaty of alliance wit hGermany. The Ottoman Empire agreed to join Germany against Russia, Great Britain and France. The Turks hoped to defeat Russia with German help and thereby gain control of the Turkish populated regions of the Russian Empire. A victory over the Russians would enable the Turks to establish a Turkish state extending to Central Asia , and thus to achieve the unity of the Turkish speaking peoples. This creation of such a state would create "Pan- Turkism". This alliance with Germany created big concerns. War against Russia by the Ottoman Empire meant that the Armenian plateau would become the battleground between the two powers. Since the homeland of the Armenians lay on both sides of the Russo-Ottoman frontier, the Armenians would suffer severely no matter who won the war. During the first six months of the war it was increasingly clear that the young Turks government was treating their Armenian citizens badly. In the winter of 1914 to 1915, the Ottoman army had launched a major attack against the Russians with the aim of opening the way of Central Asia. The operation was poorly planned and carried out, and so the Russian counter offenses made great victory against the Ottoman forces. During the winter months, the Ottoman army retreated from the Russian front. Armenian villages carried the burden of Turkish anger at defeat. Turkish army officials used the Armenians as their scapegoats for their humiliating losses and charged the Armenians as being untrustworthy to the Ottoman government. Massacres of Armenians in the villages along Russo-Ottoman frontier spread. On the night of April 23rd 1915, hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders were arrested and imprisoned, and shortly thereafter the prisoners were deported to the inner provinces where nearly all of them were murdered by authorities. Having lost their leaders, the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were now totally vulnerable and defenseless. On May 30, 1915, the minister of internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire ordered the deportation of the Armenian population "from the war zones to the relocation centers". From May 1915 until the spring of 1916, nearly all the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire disappeared from the Armenian plateau. The Turkish authorities said that the deportation of Armenians was only a war time measure. Families were allowed to take only a minimum amount of baggage and the government reassured that all their belongings and livestock would be safeguarded until their return. The deportations began, the Armenians were organized in convoys and were made to walk from the Syrian Desert to the south. The boys over fifteen and the men were separated from their families, and were either shot, hanged, beatento death, burned, or otherwise slaughtered. The women, children, and elderly were to die a much slower death. They were forcefully dragged from one province to