Yeghia Tashjian – How the Ottoman Turkish state tried to convert Armenian orphans into Islam and Turkishness by force
25 ԱՊՐԻԼ 2020 – ՀԱՅՈՑ ՑԵՂԱՍՊԱՆՈՒԹԻՒՆ – ԿԸ ՅԻՇԵՄ ԵՒ ԿԸ ՊԱՀԱՆՋԵՄ – ARMENIAN GENOCIDE – I REMEMBER AND I DEMAND – GÉNOCIDE ARMÉNIEN – JE ME SOUVIENS ET J’EXIGE
Yeghia Tashjian
April 23 at 8:06 AM
How the Ottoman Turkish state tried to convert Armenian orphans into Islam and Turkishness by force? The picture belongs to the Armenian Genocide orphans holding the portray of Enver Pasha in Adana.
One of the salient features of the Armenian Genocide was the forcible transfer of children and women from an Armenian to a Muslim/Turkish identity. Ara Sarafian was one of the first researchers on the genocide to show that orphan transfer “was a major element in the genocidal designs of the Ottoman state.”
This was based on the belief of the Young Turks that a child was a blank slate who could be molded and trained in keeping with their ideals of social engineering. Vahé Tachjian has pointed out that the Young Turks had an “idée fixe of changing the national identity” of the most vulnerable victims of the genocide, women, and children:
This explains why, during the war years, Turkish authorities collected thousands of children on the roads of exile and placed them in newly opened establishments where they received an education characterized by strict disciplinary codes that aimed at ‘turkifying’ them and converting them to Islam.
Lerna Ekmekçioğlu has drawn attention to the fact that regarding the Armenian women and children, “following a metamorphosis, these groups could be made into proper Muslims and cease to threaten the Young Turks’ final solution: population homogeneity”.
There was indeed an empire-wide policy dating from the earlier days of the war that orphans were to be taken into state orphanages. On November 16 Talat Pasha was to send a circular telegram to the provinces of Syria, Aleppo, and Medina ordering that, “if there are any orphaned children in your province they are to be sent to Istanbul in order to be placed in various orphanages”.
The Ministry of Education wrote to the mutasarrıf of Ankara that after the closing down of the orphanage run by American missionaries in the district of Kayseri, two hundred and nineteen orphans had been transferred to orphanages in Kayseri, “in order to be raised in keeping with national morals”.
A further sixty-seven had been left without a place to go and the mutasarrıf was asked if they could be placed in the orphanage of Niğde. The emphasis that the aim was to train orphans in orphanages according to “national morals” is key here.15
Province after province was asked to provide precise numbers and locations of orphans in their districts. On August 2, 1917, the Ministry of Interior was to send a circular cipher to all provinces asking the following two questions:
16 BOA DH. ŞFR 78/204, 2 August 1917, Minister of Interior Talat to all provinces.
1- How many refugees and immigrants are there in your province/district and how many Armenian and Greek orphans are located in the district? What are the numbers of males and females, Muslims and non-Muslims?
2- How many of these are actually in orphanages, how many are left out and how are they being provided for?
Taner Akçam has convincingly demonstrated that the assimilation of Armenian children through Islamization and Turkification was an integral part of the genocidal process. A telegram dated June 26, 1915, sent from the Ministry of Education to the provinces of Trabzon, Sıvas, Harput and others clearly stated:
“As it has been decided that the children aged less than ten years, of those Armenians who are being deported, should be placed in orphanages to be opened for this purpose or in existing orphanages for the purposes of training and education (talim ve terbiye).
The most striking thing about this telegram is that it was sent to provinces from which the deportations had not yet begun, therefore the Ottoman authorities fully expected the deportations to produce orphans. Some two weeks later, the Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Refugees of the Ministry of Interior sent another telegram to the provinces mentioning,
“Armenian children who will most likely become parentless during the displacement and transfer of their parents”. The orphanage of Antoura (Lebanon) was to be the final destination for what amounted to a handful of these thousands of orphans. A few orphans of Antoura did write their memoirs later in life and talked about their ordeal there.
#ArmenianGenocide #Genocide #AgainstallGenocides #Turkey #OttomanEmpire #orphans #assimilation #Armenians
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