The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire by Taner Akçam (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire by Taner Akçam Rouben Paul Adalian Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012. Pp. 528, cloth, $42.00 US. Paper, $24.95 US. A lot of ink has been spilled attempting to explain why the Young Turks embarked upon the destruction of the Armenian people. A good amount of it has entailed arguments seeking to establish the primary cause in one or another of the “military exigencies” connected with the conduct and fortunes of the Ottoman state during World War I, effectively making the general case that elevated tensions and heightened security concerns contributed to a combustible environment across historic Armenia. In The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity, Taner Akçam finds the source of the trouble in an entirely different framework, shifting the focus away from unrest and harkening to an earlier thesis. Armed conflict, especially of a global nature arraying alliances of great states in a total war, presented unequalled opportunities for simultaneous social and political reengineering of internal power structures. Herein lies Akçam’s most original argument. The Young Turks, who had seized power through a series of revolutionary acts, overthrowing the sultan to dismantle the old autocracy and capturing the government as a result of the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars that well-nigh removed the Ottomans from what remained of their southeastern European holdings, were a group constitutionally averse to external proposals for reform, resenting them as risks to the integrity of the empire. According to Akçam, the much-awaited Armenian Reforms program, finally agreed upon by the Ottoman government in February 1914 in concert with the European Powers, could not have been more ill timed. It only precipitated the Young Turks toward anticipating, and preparing for, a set of anti-Armenian measures to be implemented when occasion favored activation. Akçam insists that no blueprint was drawn up sketching the parameters of a genocide, and yet he is even more adamant that a great deal of preparation was made from the very beginning of the war in Europe, in August. He locates “the first serious decision” in September 1914: the disarming of Armenian draftees (153). The Young Turks were not to wager their fortune on the battlefield until the end of October, and the first military reversal, that of Sarikamish, did not occur until the end of December, when the minister of war, Enver Pasha, insisted on a campaign in the dead of winter, in the snow-bound highlands of Armenia. This chronology of ample preparation, preceding any real events on the war front, clearly overturns the case for contingent action, a theory that Akçam head-on disputes. Starting from Lemkin’s construct of genocide, which the author explains “as a series of connected acts, a process that unfolded over time” (xvii), he reconstructs the political objectives formulated by the Young Turk regime. While this method reduces the weight of ideological persuasion and the animus it generated toward the Armenian minority, from the evidence that Akçam marshals, a more disturbing background emerges to the relationship between the Ottoman Armenian population and the Young Turk government, as it already envisioned far in advance the deception and entrapment of the Armenians, while seemingly maintaining legal order. [End Page 174] Given how closely Akçam has woven all the themes together in a highly complex work, even a brief summary is a challenge. As he builds a distinct case with each of these themes, Akçam places the emphasis on the selected topics instead of giving us a chronology of how the genocide unfolded. Argument is one thing, evidence another, and Akçam’s entire work navigates a new wave of documentation that heretofore has not been available. As he puts it, “this book could be considered a ‘first’ in another way because it explains the demographic policy and genocidal character of the actions against the Armenians on the basis of Ottoman archival records” (xxi). Needless to say, the Ottoman material confirms the documentation from multiple...