Labour battalion (Turkey)

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For more information on battalion see Labour battalion
Armenian Genocide
Background
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire · Armenian Question · Hamidian Massacres · Zeitun Resistance (1895) · 1896 Ottoman Bank Takeover · Yıldız Attempt · Adana Massacre · Young Turk Revolution
The Genocide

Armenian notables deported from the Ottoman capital · Tehcir Law · Armenian casualties of deportations · Ottoman Armenian casualties  · Labour battalion

Major extermination centers:
Bitlis · Deir ez-Zor · Diyarbakır · Erzurum · Kharput · Muş · Sivas · Trabzon

Resistance:
Zeitun  · Van · Musa Dagh · Urfa · Shabin-Karahisar  · Armenian militia  · Operation Nemesis

Foreign aid and relief:
American Committee for Relief in the Near East · National Armenian Relief Committee
Responsible parties

Young Turks:
Talat · Enver · Djemal · Behaeddin Shakir · Committee of Union and Progress · Teskilati Mahsusa · The Special Organization · Ottoman Army · Kurdish Irregulars · Reşit Bey · Cevdet Bey · Topal Osman
Trials
Courts-Martial  · Malta Tribunals  · Trial of Soghomon Tehlirian
Aftermath
Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire · Denial of the Genocide · Post-Genocide timeline
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A labour battalion (Turkish: Amele Taburu, Greek: Τάγμα Εργασίας Tagma Ergasias) was a form of unfree labor in late Ottoman Empire and later in Turkish Republic [1] The term is associated with disarmament and murder of Ottoman Armenian soldiers during WWI[2] [3] and with the Pontic Greek Genocide. [4]

Contents

[edit] Armenians in labor battalions

During the beginning of WWI, Enver ordered that all Armenians in the Ottoman forces, some as old as sixty, to be disarmed, demobilized and assigned to labor battalion units. Many of the Armenian recruits were taken and executed by Turkish soldiers and armed squads known as chetes (from the word çete meaning gang in Turkish) in remote areas.[5] Those who initially survived were turned into road laborers (hamals) and construction mules, but were eventually killed thereafter.[6]

[edit] Depictions

The well-known writer-novelist Elias Venezis later described the situation in his work the Number 31328 (Το Νούμερο 31328).

Leyla Neyzi has published a study of the diary of Yaşar Paker, a member of the Jewish community of early 20th century Ankara who was drafted to the Labour Battalions twice, first during the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and then during the Second World War in which Turkey did not take part. Neyzi's paper on the basis of Paker's diary published by Jewish Social Studies presents an overall picture for the conditions in these battalions which were composed entirely of non-Muslims. [7]


[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Henry Morgentau, Sr., "I was sent to Athens", Garden City N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co, 1929
  2. ^ Foreign Office Memorandum by Mr. G.W. Rendel on Turkish Massacres and Persecutions of Minorities since the Armistice, March 20, 1922, Paragraph 35
  3. ^ USA Congress, Concurrent Resolution, September 9, 1997
  4. ^ Notes on the Genocides of Christian Populations of the Ottoman Empire
  5. ^ Balakian. The Burning Tigris, p. 178
  6. ^ Toynbee, Arnold. Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915. pp. 181–182
  7. ^ Strong as Steel, Fragile as a Rose: A Turkish Jewish Witness to the Twentieth Century, Leyla Neyzi paper on the basis of Yaşar Paker's diary published in the Jewish Social Studies in Fall 2005