by Benny Morris
need to account for their whereabouts or condition.8
A Policy of Genocide
According to the testimony of CUP officials at the postwar trials, the pivotal
planning meetings occurred in March and April, as CUP leaders summoned
provincial administrators and CUP representatives to Constantinople. In ad-
dition to Talȃt, Enver, Şakır, Nȃzım, and other members of the Central Com-
mittee, attendees included several of the provincial responsible secretaries
and se nior army officers deemed loyal to the party.9 Evidently the cabinet
was never informed of these meetings, and even Cemal Pasha claimed he was
not privy to decisions taken in them.10 One of the most impor tant gatherings,
apparently on March 22–23, featured Şakır. He presented the CUP Central
Committee with documents from the eastern provinces, which supposedly
proved Armenians were preparing to betray their homeland and attack the
Ottoman army in the rear.11 This was prob ably the moment when the Special
Organ ization was converted from a military combat unit to a domestic death
squad.12 We know from postwar trials that Şakır insisted on being given au-
thority over all Special Organ ization operations and on moving its headquar-
ters to Erzurum.13 Some of his requests were denied; the Special Organ-
ization was subordinated to the Third Army. But Şakır was given authority
to requisition Special Organ ization men and was moved to Erzurum. At the
same time, according to a series of tele grams exchanged between the Interior
Ministry and some of the eastern vilayets, another large group of convicts was
released from prison to participate as “volunteers” and gang members in the
forthcoming campaign.14
After these meetings, a pattern of identical actions played out across the
empire, offering crucial proof of centralized, state planning. Among these were
the clearing from the police force of suspect ele ments; staffing of telegraph
stations and other vital government ser vices with individuals selected for their
loyalty to the empire and the CUP; preparation of lists of Armenian leaders
who would be capable of organ izing re sis tance or pulling strings; decisions
on deportation routes and destinations; preparation of gendarmerie and Spe-
cial Organ ization units to lead the hundreds of thousands of deportees to
their destination; and coordination of movements between districts and prov-
inces. The first fruit of these preparations came in April 1915, when leaders
of Armenian communities across the country, from Edirne to Van, were ar-
rested and imprisoned.15 Could far- flung officials calling upon dodgy, early
electronic communication networks have effected virtually simultaneous mass
The Young Turk s
arrests of a consistently defined population group— Armenian notables—
without the benefit of advanced planning? Perhaps, but such a contention
strains credulity.
Conclusive Evidence
The most compelling evidence for prior top- down planning and for the true
genocidal intentions of the CUP leadership is the way the deportation and
mass murder actually unfolded. The initial moves were perfectly designed to
soften up the broader civilian population. First came the disarming of the sol-
diers, then the beheading of the Armenian communities via the April mass
arrests of notables. Most of the notables and soldiers were soon murdered.
By removing the prominent Armenians and disarming the soldiers, the gov-
ernment rendered the community unable effectively to resist.
As well, the timing and scope of the April mass arrests is telling. Arresting
community leaders in Constantinople, and perhaps even Izmir, on the eve of
the Gallipoli landings could be seen as a logical precaution against collusion
with the enemy. Perhaps the same could be said if the mass arrests in the east
had occurred immediately after the defeat at Sarıkamış. But the arrests came
months later. Similarly, Armenians were arrested in places far from any war
zone, such as Konya, Kütahiya, and Bursa. And in Thrace, the Black Sea lit-
toral, and parts of the Aegean coast, where Armenians were greatly outnum-
bered by Greek Orthodox— who had demonstrated their sympathy with the
enemy in the recent Balkan wars— the Greeks were left untouched and the
Armenians persecuted. Another point to bear in mind is that spies and pos-
si ble collaborators need not necessarily be notables. If the authorities’ goal
had been to contain a real or perceived immediate threat, they targeted the
wrong people. One can only reasonably conclude that that was not the goal—
that the government wasn’t engaged in prudential war planning but instead
was systematically ridding the country of the Armenian leadership.
Even more striking is that individual instances of deportation followed a
clear playbook. They would begin with the arrest of the remaining community
leaders, who were held in local prisons and usually subjected to torture.
After securing a few minor confessions, some of which may be have been true,
the authorities escorted the community leaders out of prison and sent them
A Policy of Genocide
away under guard to an announced destination. They were then, routinely,
murdered, after which the mass deportations began. This is precisely how
events unfolded in Erzurum, Diyarbekir, Harput, Sivas, and Trabzon.
Lastly, consider the formulaic nature of the mass killings, as the convoys set
out and along the road. True, there was variation as far as the perpetrators:
sometimes it was soldiers and gendarmes; sometimes Kurdish, Turkmen,
or Circassian tribesmen or criminal gangs or villa gers. But the pro cess itself
was more- or- less uniform. Men were almost always separated from their
families at the beginning of the journey, taken to remote locations, and sys-
tematically slaughtered. Afterward, according to the testimony of survivors
from across the empire, the bodies would be looted, suggesting that organizers
routinely brandished the prospect of ill- gotten riches in order to recruit killers.
Then, as the remaining deportees made their way south, they were subject to
periodic ambushes and harassment. Those not killed or abducted by ma-
rauders and gendarmes might gradually succumb along the roads to starva-
tion, illness, exhaustion, and the ele ments. In 1915–1916 anyone who had
survived this standardized program of killing and predictable course of attri-
tion was “settled” in camps and villages in the Syrian Desert and subse-
quently dispatched from there to the killing fields around Deir Zor.
Such uniformity is unthinkable in the absence of guidance from Constan-
tinople. That guidance evidently was broad enough to admit some variation
at the local level by governors, CUP apparatchiks, and military and Special
Organ ization commanders. But they knew their jobs and took similar ap-
proaches, working with Turks and other Muslims on the ground to achieve
the same outcomes.
But what, one might ask, of western Anatolia? There notables were less
likely to be killed in advance of the removals, and able- bodied men were usu-
ally marched with their fami
lies rather than murdered before the marches got
underway. That these cases defied the eastern pattern only demonstrates how
carefully the authorities had crafted their blueprint. Captivated as they were
by the emerging sciences of demography and statistics— including ideas about
population engineering— CUP leaders differentiated between the eastern and
western provinces, developing separate formulas tailored to each area.
Another indicator of centralized planning is the secretiveness with which
the genocide was carried out, which also attests to the perpetrators’ recognition
The Young Turk s
of their criminality. Killings did not take place in the middle of towns where
Western diplomats and missionaries might see them, but rather far from prying
eyes. Organizers also used elaborate methods to obfuscate their identities.
Recall that Diyarbekir’s Reşid Bey hired the Kurdish brigand Amero to kill
Armenians for him, and then most likely had Amero assassinated in order
to cover up his own responsibility. Hence as well the elusiveness of the Spe-
cial Organ ization at Kemah Gorge and elsewhere, the use of misleading
uniforms, and the shadowy participation of military units. Secrecy also ne-
cessitated the urgent burial of the dead, such as of the thousands killed at
Lake Gölcük.
One reason the premeditated and carefully planned nature of the killings
and deportations is sometimes questioned is that inefficiency, sometimes bor-
dering on chaos, accompanied the entire pro cess. Decisions not to deport a
certain segment of the Christian population might be rescinded the next day.
Conversion to Islam was encouraged and then rejected. Convoys to the south
“leaked,” with some deportees taking to the hills. There was also disagree-
ment between leaders about the right course of action. Such inefficiency had
many causes, the most obvious of which may be the need to keep the entire
operation under wraps. Decisions were made by a small group of party leaders
and kept secret even from other committee members. Killing orders were re-
layed by coded tele gram or orally from messenger to governor. Most provin-
cial- and district- level officials received no orders at all, instead obtaining their instructions second hand. If the reports we have are reliable, the orders themselves were vague, in the style of “burn, demolish, kill,” and prob ably made
sense only in light of earlier verbal exchanges. It should also be borne in mind
that the entire concept of killing- by- deportation was new, and many of the
prob lems that emerged— shortage of qualified gendarmes, difficult terrain,
kindhearted people along the way, nosy American consuls and missionaries
in remote provinces— were not foreseen. Fi nally, there was much room for
horse- trading, ensuring frequent corruption.
After all this, it remains true that direct evidence of a genocide plan is im-
possible to come by. Maybe that will change someday, if Turkey opens its
archives. But the available combination of direct and circumstantial evidence
concerning genocide itself weighs strongly in favor of a planning pro cess oc-
curring in the winter and spring of 1915. The consistent character of the
A Policy of Genocide
deportations and massacres that followed suggests that these instructions
specified not only removing Armenians but also, at least in the east, killing
them en masse with as much secrecy as pos si ble. We do not know if the
second stage— mass murder along the Euphrates in 1916— was included in
the planning during spring 1915. Perhaps the organizers did not believe that
substantial numbers would survive to reach the Syrian Desert, so they ar-
ranged for the slaughter of Deir Zor only when it became necessary. One way
or another, that final and most extreme spasm of vio lence proves that the
CUP- led government’s intention and policy was genocide, not relocation.
The Prob lems of Conversion and Assimilation
As in the previous bout of genocide, between 1914 and 1916, Armenians
throughout Anatolia and Syria converted to Islam. Some grasped the oppor-
tunity, knowing that it was the surest way to stay alive. “During this reign of
terror,” an Armenian from Merzifon recounted at the height of the deporta-
tions in July 1915, “notice was given . . . that anyone who accepted Islam
would be allowed to remain safely at home. The offices of the lawyers who
recorded applications were crowded with people petitioning to become
Mohammedans. Many did it for the sake of their women and children.”16
Others did not so much convert as discover all of a sudden that they were
Muslim. They were women taken by and then married to Muslim men, their
children adopted and raised Muslim. This pro cess, too, was at least partially
systematic. One Armenian deportee reported seeing sixty wagons carry ing
Turkish women to Constantinople, each having “five or six Armenian girls of
10 or under with her.”17 Thousands were placed in Muslim- run orphanages
to be reeducated. On the whole, converts tended to be women, children, the
el derly, and men only in the western provinces. Their eastern brothers were
rarely given the option.
As for the Turks who brought Armenians into the fold of Islam, they had
numerous methods and motivations. Sometimes local governors and religious
leaders encouraged conversion out of compassion, in order to spare people
deportation and massacre. Occasionally they would convert Armenians en
masse. In June 1915, for instance, the German consul in Samsun reported that
“the government sent fanatical, strictly religious Muslim men and women, to
The Young Turk s
spread propaganda for conversion to Islam, of course with the threat of se-
rious consequences for those who remain true to their beliefs.” The consul
estimated that many had already converted and the numbers were increasing.
In Merzifon it was publicly announced that people could save themselves by
conversion.18 Some governors encouraged this by inviting Armenians to fill
out official conversion applications, which were presented as name- change
forms so they would be easier to swallow.
Often, though, the aims of facilitators were venal. Officials sought to im-
press their superiors or enhance their standing in their communities by win-
ning trophies in the form of converts.19 Or they directed conversion appeals
to members of essential professions, people whose removal would do eco-
nomic damage.20 Officials and other Muslim men of standing also targeted
the daughters and sons of rich Armenians for abduction, adoption, and mar-
riage. Then, taking advantage of an Interior Ministry decree allowing recog-
nized Armenian converts to inherit family wealth and property, their new
Muslim families laid claim to their inheritances.21 Sophia Tahargian, an Ar-
menian who was abducted while her prominent family was deported, testi-
fied, “In order further to facilitate stealing of my trousseau and my husband’s
property, [Mehmet Ali] adopted me as his daughter. All my property and my
deported husband’s thus became his and the vali could not claim it.”22
Children were taken to shore up house hold staff
or to serve as field workers.
For instance, “ Children and young people arriving in Aleppo told of depor-
tations, separations, mass extrajudicial killings and repeated rape, followed by
years of unpaid servitude as agricultural workers or domestic servants,
servile concubines, unconsenting wives, and involuntary mothers.” After the
war, at an Aleppo rescue home, Lütfiyye Bilemjian, a young woman from
Antep, recounted that at six years of age she was deported with her family,
her parents and brother were killed by gang members, and she was seized
and sold. She was then resold several times until she reached the house hold
of one Mahmud Pasha, where she remained, presumably as a servant, for
eleven years.23
Conversion might happen, as well, at the behest of an opportunistic lover,
a Turk or tribesman infatuated with an Armenian woman suddenly available
for the taking. She might be plucked from a convoy. One missionary told of a
Professor Vorperian from Harput who “has a daughter fourteen years old
A Policy of Genocide
which a lieutenant noticed on the way and began to beg the parents to give
her to him as his wife. They . . . were fi nally forced to give her by the threats of . . . higher officers. Now she has gone back to be his wife, with her parents’
consent.”24
Children were sometimes entrusted by their parents to Muslim neighbors,
friends, or business acquaintances, for good and ill. Some proved consci-
entious guardians, even trying after the war to return foster children to their
parents. But in many cases, adoptive families assumed that Armenian parents
had died, or tried to keep the children anyway.25 Other children ended up in
overflowing orphanages or else, having escaped convoys and dragnets, roamed
the towns and countryside.26
It can never be far from our minds that a great many of the Armenian women
placed in the house holds of Muslim men during 1914–1916 were abducted
for the purpose of rape. Officials, gendarmes, soldiers, and the general popu-
lation treated women on convoys as prey, to be consumed and disposed of.27
Prepubescent girls and boys were raped and abused, sometimes for many
