THE THIRTY-YEAR GENOCIDE
Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924
By Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi

Using the word “genocide” to describe an episode of mass killing has consequences. If the horrors are unfolding now, it invites other countries to intervene and punish the perpetrators. If the unspeakable events are in the past, the word’s use can affect the way they are discussed, by historians or ordinary people. Once the term “genocide” has been established, it can seem tasteless or morally impossible to talk in much detail about the context in which mass murder occurred. Any speculation about precise motives or catalysts can sound like making excuses.

But one merit of "The Thirty-Year Genocide,” about the agonies suffered by Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire immediately before and after its collapse, is that the authors overcome that problem. Their narrative offers a subtle diagnosis of why, at particular moments over a span of three decades, Ottoman rulers and their successors unleashed torrents of suffering.

The book examines three episodes: first, the massacre of perhaps 200,000 Ottoman Armenians that took place between 1894 and 1896; then the much larger deportation and slaughter of Armenians that began in 1915 and has been widely recognized as genocide; and third, the destruction or deportation of the remaining Christians (mostly Greeks) during and after the conflict of 1919-22, which Turks call their War of Independence. The fate of Assyrian Christians, of whom 250,000 or more may have perished, is also examined, in less detail.

The authors are distinguished Israeli historians. Benny Morris, a chronicler of the fighting that attended Israel’s birth, has written bluntly about incidents in which Arabs were killed or expelled. He also argues (contentiously) that it would have been better if the result had been total separation between Jew and Arab. His co-author, Dror Ze’evi, is a fellow professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Each of their chosen episodes occurred at a particular historical moment. The first unfolded in an Ottoman Empire that was at once modernizing and crumbling, while in chronic rivalry with the Russians. The second took place when the Turks were at war with three Christian powers (Britain, France and Russia) and were concerned about being overrun from west and east. During the third, Greek expeditionary forces had occupied the port of Izmir, with approval from their Western allies, and then marched inland.



An impressive chapter explains the buildup to the 1894-96 massacres. It describes the strain imposed on rural Anatolia by newcomers fleeing Russia’s march through the Caucasus, and the transformation of the Armenians from a religious minority into a political community feared by the Ottomans.

This story is told with a feeling for shading and nuance. Yet there is a paradox about the book. As diligent historians, Morris and Ze’evi acknowledge many differences between the three phases of history they recount. (For example, different regimes were involved: in the first case, the old guard of the empire; in the second, a shadowy clique of autocrats; in the third, a secular republic.)

But their self-imposed mission is to emphasize continuity. As they argue, the Armenian death marches of 1915-16 are by now well documented, and their status as a genocidal crime, with one million or more victims, well established. By contrast, they feel, things that happened at the beginning and end of their chosen 30 years need to be better known, so that all the travails of the Ottoman Christians over that time can be seen as a single sequence.



Between 1894 and 1924, they write, between 1.5 million and 2.5 million Ottoman Christians perished; greater accuracy is impossible. Whatever the shifts in regime, all these killings were instigated by Muslim Turks who drew in other Muslims and invoked Islamic solidarity. As a result the Christian share of Anatolia’s population fell from 20 percent to 2 percent.

Well, all those statements are accurate as far as they go, and they reflect one aspect of the multiple tragedies that attended the region’s lurch toward modernity. Yet it remains difficult to express the authors’ core case in a single true-or-false proposition. Are they suggesting that Islam is intrinsically violent? No, they reject that view. Are they implying that a 30-year plan was formulated and then implemented, albeit by different regimes? At times, they hint at something like that. But their skill as historians holds them back from saying anything so crude.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/b...-genocide.html


When Turkey Destroyed Its Christians

https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-tu...ns-11558109896