What did the Turks want from Armenians during Armenian genocide?

Answer 1

Turkish Perspective

The Turkish position is that the Armenians and others were subversive to the Ottoman Empire. This argument is that the Armenians and the Russians had a historic relationship and that the Armenians were likely to mobilize on the Russians' behalf in World War I. This would open the Ottoman Empire to a fourth front (in addition to Gallipolil, Egypt, and Arabia) and deplete Ottoman resources. As a result, it would be necessary to remove them. The Pontic Greeks were seen to locked with independent Greece in order to create a pincer attack in future Balkans Wars. The Assyrians were subject to suspicion on the idea that they would follow the Armenians. As a result, it was necessary to target these groups to remove any possible collaborators. The Turks simply became overzealous in this act.

Turks point to how the Jews, Kurds, and Alevis, who were other minorities in roughly the same regions as where the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians lived, were not subject to the same types of attacks because there was no evidence that these Non-Turkish groups would be subversive.

Commentary on the Turkish Perspective
Most people around the world do consider the Armenian genocide to be a genocide and the Turkish view is a minority view in academic circles.

(1) Armenians Were Subversive

This argument is littered with holes. The first is that the Armenian-Russian relationship was always cultural and never military. The Ottoman Empire went to war with Russia eight times in the prior two centuries and the Armenians never fought alongside the Russians. When the Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, and other Balkan minorities rose up against the Ottomans, the Armenians were consistently called "the Loyal Minority" because they remained loyal to the Ottoman leadership and never demanded an independent state. There was no evidence of Armenian-Russian collaboration. It is also well-known that Ismail Enver Pasha, one of the leaders of the Genocide, blamed his failure in the Battle of Sarikamish on his Armenian soldiers, even though an Armenian named Hovannes had saved his life during a battle by carrying Enver through battle lines on his back. It was ironically being saved by an Armenian that allowed Enver Pasha to spin lies and commit atrocities against the people who saved his life.

The second major hole is that there was absolutely no reason to think that Assyrians would help Armenians in declaring independence, were the Armenians to want such a thing. Armenian independence would reduce Assyrian land-claims.

The third major hole is that Greeks in Greece had never relied on Anatolian or Pontic Greeks in the various Balkans Wars, so there was no reason to suspect that Greeks would do so this time.

The fourth major hold is to discuss the non-targeted minorities. The Jews were not large enough to stage a rebellion, the Kurds were actively fighting in militias in the mountains where they were harder to target, and the Alevis were considered Turks - keeping them within the acceptable definition of "Turkishness" and not subject to the genocide. The Christian Ex-Ottomans, the Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians were (1) large enough to rebel, (2) not actually fighting, and (3) clearly not Turks. This is why they were targeted,

However, the largest hole is the persistent organization of the genocide. The first group attacked and murdered were the Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul, which were the very people who would be most attached to the Ottoman State and willing to argue against independence in their communities. It makes sense to kill intellectuals if you are trying to destroy an ethnic group, not if you are trying to pacify internal disquiet. Next, entire villages were expunged of the majority-Armenian, majority-Greek, and majority-Assyrian inhabitants and the names of the cities completely altered to create "theoretical" Turkish names in a process called Turkification. Again it would not make sense to target a civilian population if the threat is a military one, but it makes perfect sense to target a civilian population if genocide is the goal. The Armenians were marched to Deir ez-Zur in the Syrian desert without food and water (the Pontic Greeks and the Assyrians were marched to other places). There were numerous massacres and concentration camps along the route to Deir ez-Zur. That genocide was the goal is basically assured. This is not to mention the courageous work of Gregoris Balakian who detailed how the system was organized.