“The Young Turk’s Crime Against Humanity - the Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire” by Turkish historian Taner Akçam, is a very detailed examination of documents issued by the Young Turk government during the First World War, which point to a systemic policy to deport and then murder vast numbers of Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire.
The telegrams and letters issued by government officials that gave orders for deportations, congratulated successes in “solving the Armenian problem” in areas where massacres and deportations succeeded in removing them, gave orders to deny assistance to starving Armenians interred in concentration camps, to distribute property left behind by those who were taken away, and to investigate and punish those who tried to help.
Outlined also is a very disturbing and disgusting practice in some areas of giving some Armenians the option of either converting to Islaam or being deported, and of children whose parents were murdered and were then made to convert and given away to families as young brides (girls) or farm labour (boys). Many other Armenian children were killed alongside their parents, in actions that sometimes included mass drownings. Many of those adults who were forcibly converted were later deported and killed anyway, as decisions were made in some areas to get rid of all Armenians including those who accepted Islaam.
To me as a Muslim this is probably the most infuriating, how these bandits twisted and attempted to use the religion of Allah SWT as a tool.
The book mostly cites on documents produced by the Young Turkish government, as well as their German allies who for the most part were horrified by what was happening. Cited also in a few places are reports by American missionaries and Armenian church leaders. The first two sources - ie Young Turk and German government reports- are most damning because they had no political opposition to the WW1 era Young Turk led Ottoman government and in contrast were working for it. It is less a narrative of what took place and more a painstaking examination to demonstrate the conclusion that this crime against humanity was a systemic policy.
It is a strong rebuke to the blatant lie peddled by the Turkish government that the Armenian genocide did not happen.
While well written, the book does have its blind spots. While mentioning that Muslim refugees were fleeing to the Ottoman Empire from the Balkans and Caucasus, Akçam does not point out the reason they were fleeing, which was massacres and genocides of Muslims that were at the same time and prior being perpetrated by European powers. Also glaringly omitted is the fact that while Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were often falsely accused of crimes and the actions of their armed groups exaggerated to justify a harsh and genocidal response, across the border in Russian occupied Caucasus, Armenian armed groups were indeed massacring and displacing Muslims.
In a way, Akçam’s work is very similar to that of Justin McCarthy. While both authors did a very thorough and in my view very well done job in documenting and bringing to light the suffering of millions of innocent people - Armenian and to a lesser and non-genocidal extent Greek Christians in the Ottoman Empire (Akçam) and Muslims of all nationalities and ethnicities in the Balkans and Caucasus (McClatchy)- both very disappointingly in my view chose to ignore or downplay the crimes that were being perpetrated by the other side.
