Wars and Genocide

Abstract

The historical settlement area of the Armenians, the Armenian Highland, as well as the South Caucasus have been among the most disputed and contested areas in the world since ancient times. This has had far-reaching negative consequences for the people living in this region: Difficulties in establishing a central state or small statehood, strong dependence on competing regional hegemonic powers, foreign domination, insecurity for life and limb resulting in migration or mass exodus and even genocide.

Genocide is one of those crimes caused by wars and civil wars, but also by periods of transformation, by one-party regimes, and by the suspension of parliamentary rule. In the 20th century, serial genocides occurred, not coincidentally, during the two world wars. These wars provided the smokescreen behind which states could realize an intention of extermination usually conceived before the war began.

However, the actual military starting point for the Ottoman genocide of three million indigenous Christians was not the First World War, but the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, which became a test run for deportations in the Ottoman province of Edirne (Adrianoupolis), which were carried out as death marches. The Young Turk rulers learned from this occasion that people expelled across state borders returned, while a high proportion of those deported to the interior perished.