Pathological homogenisation and Turkish state-building: the Armenian genocide of 1915–1916

Abstract

Chapters 2 and 3 investigated examples of pathological homogenisation pursued through policies of forced conversion or expulsion. In both of these cases, although state-builders sought to destroy the collective identity of the targeted minority, and caused great suffering in the process, they were not intent on the physical destruction of all members of the targeted group. This was, however, the intention of those responsible for the Armenian genocide of 1915–16. The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) that came to power in the Ottoman Empire in the revolution of 1908 was animated by a chauvinist strand of Turkish nationalism, and was intent on building a rationalised and homogeneous Turkish national state. Accordingly, minority groups, of whom the Armenians were the largest and most vulnerable, were to be removed from Turkey. This is the first of two cases, therefore, that consider how pathological homogenisation has operated in the age of nationalism. With the ascension to power of the conservative Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1876, reform was blocked in the Ottoman Empire until the early twentieth century, when the so-called Young Turks came to power. The Young Turks, though initially concerned with reforming the Empire in order to save it, ultimately sought to remake the remains of the crumbling Ottoman Empire into a centralised, modern and national state, one that would stand as an equal among European powers.