Of the many inhumane phenomena to arise
from the inherent inhumane experience of war, the most inhumane is genocide. At
least as understood since the 20th century, genocide is thankfully an
infrequent occurrence. The first genocide of the 20th century was that of the
Ottoman Armenian population of eastern Anatolia at the hands of the Ottoman
Army and irregular forces during World War I. Among the forces that contributed
to the emergence of genocide as a consequence of war was the increased
technological advances of modern armies. In the case of the Armenian genocide,
a pivotal technology that contributed to its unfolding was the wireless
telegraph.
World War I was the first major conflict
in which all major combatants had access to wireless telegraphy. In the case of
the Ottoman Empire, historian Taner Akçam of Clark University (Mass.) has
detailed the extent to which telegraphic communications played a role in
internal communications regarding the Armenian genocide, as well as in the
covering up of these crimes -- both during their commission and once they were
over. In particular, Akçam details how a dual system of telegrams was
established between Mehmet Talaat Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of the Interior
during the genocide, and local and regional offices of the government in
eastern Anatolia. Official telegraph channels sent communications that, while
explicit on the matter of the expulsion from their homes and expropriation of
the property of the Armenians, lacked any specific content on murderous actions
against these civilians. In contrast, telegraphs sent from Talaat's home were
explicit and often contradicted "official" communications.[1]
Establishing this dual track of communications emanating from Talaat's offices
and home is an inherently difficult undertaking, Akçam concedes, because of
pervasive orders for telegrams to be destroyed after reading. In searching
Ottoman archives, Akçam himself was only able to identify three such telegrams
that escaped this fate.[2]
Nevertheless, primary sources that
survived the war indicate that the "sanitized" language of many
surviving telegrams had more insidious intent. For instance, the series of
telegrams known as the "Andonian telegrams," which date from March
1915 to January 1916, are often explicit in exhorting action, but none of the
documents is clear that the physical extermination of Armenian civilians
regardless of sex and age is the actual policy. Examining the telegrams
illustrates this issue. As an example, the telegram of March 25 states is quite
explicit in calling for violence, calling for "wiping out of existence the
well-known elements who for centuries have been the barrier to the empire's
progress in civilization,"[3]
using the terms "uproot and annihilate"[4] and
"very bloody methods."[5]
However, nowhere in the document are Armenians mentioned specifically, and the
telegram can easily be interpreted as indicating that only guerrillas or
terrorists are to be executed.
Similarly, the telegram of September 3,
even as it refers to the inclusion of women and children "in the orders
which have been previously prescribed as to be applied to the males of the
intended persons,”[6]
is sanitized to the extent that the orders are not specified and could easily
refer only to expulsion and not mass murder. The telegram of September 16,
perhaps the most explicit of all in referring to a government order to "to
destroy completely all the indicated persons [Armenians] living in
Turkey," is nevertheless vague on the identity of the indicated persons
and could easily refer, again, to guerrillas and terrorists.[7] Even those
telegrams that refer to dead bodies seen on roads or by American observers
could be depicted to be the unfortunate "collateral damage" inflicted
in anti-insurgency actions against Armenian separatists.
However, another primary source
unearthed in 1993 by the sociologist and historian Vahakn Dadrian, director of
the Zoryan Institute (Mass.), makes clear the true intent of the murkier
Andonian telegrams. This document, referred to as the "Ten
Commandments" by the British officials who found it in 1919,[8] is explicit
where the telegrams are not. For example, the third "commandment"
directs local officials to "provoke organised [sic] massacres" in the
Armenian areas, to be committed by the Muslim populations, with the fourth
commandment advising the use of faked intervention by the gendarmerie in some
areas but to collaborate actively with the massacres in others.[9] Most
explicit of all are the fifth commandment -- "Apply measures to
exterminate all males under 50, priests and teachers, leave girls and children
to be Islamized" and the eighth commandment -- "Kill off in an
appropriate manner all Armenians in the Army -- this to be left to the military
to do."[10]
Importantly, Dadrian is careful to consider the provenance and authenticity of
the document,[11]
before using it to support his theory of premeditation with regard to the
genocide at large.
In conclusion, wireless telegraphy
contributed enormously to the ability of the Ottomans to exterminate the
Armenian population in eastern Anatolia. In addition, it allowed for the
establishment of a dual system of communications: one sanitized for general
consumption and one far more explicit in its exhortations to mass murder.
Although the factors that contributed to the Armenian genocide existed
independent of the modern technologies introduced in World War I, it is likely
that the rapidity and ultimately the success of the genocide would have been
less had wireless telegraphy not been available to Talaat Pasha and the Ottoman
leadership.
[1] Taner Akçam, The
Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 2012), 383.
[2] Ibid, 292.
[3] Mehmet Talaat
Pasha, "Talaat Pasha's Alleged Official Orders Regarding the Armenian
Massacres, March 1915-January 1916," firstworldwar.com, accessed August 9,
2016, http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/armenia_talaatorders.htm, para. 1.
[4] Ibid, para. 2.
[5] Ibid, para. 3.
[6] Ibid, para. 1.
[7] Ibid, para. 1,
the bracketed word has been interpolated by the translator.
[8] Vahakn N.
Dadrian, "The Secret Young-Turk Ittihadist Conference and the Decision for
the World War I Genocide of the Armenians," Holocaust and Genocide
Studies 7, no. 2 (1993): 173.
[9] Ibid, 174.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid, 178-80.
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