The enemy within? : Armenians, Jews, the Military Crises of 1915 and the Genocidal Origins of the 'Minorities Question

This chapter identifies two simultaneous First World War military crises, the one Ottoman, the other Russian, with major consequences in the way post-war nation-states began “seeing” minorities and resorting to genocidal action against them. Russian Jews and Ottoman Armenians were largely held responsible for the near-military disasters of 1915 in each case leading to mass communal deportations. While genocide was avoided in the former case, realised in the latter, both sequences acted as “military” models for how “new” states might eliminate unwanted groups through ethnic cleansing. While an alarmed international community responded with a 1919 commitment to minorities’ protection this same community’s imprimatur to mass compulsory population exchange at the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne rather suggests a post-war acceptance of programmes of violent state homogenisation