Rape during the Armenian genocide

Young Armenian woman looking to the side
Armin Wegner's description: "Looking at you is the dark [and] beautiful face of Babesheea who was robbed by Kurds, raped, and freed only after ten days; like a wild beast the Turkish soldiers, officers, and gendarmes swept down on this welcome prey. All the crimes that had ever been committed against women, were committed here. They cut off their breasts, mutilated their limbs, and their corpses lay naked, defiled, or blackened by the heat on the fields."[1]

During the Armenian genocide, which occurred in the Ottoman Empire, led at the time by the Young Turks, the Turkish armed forces, militias, and members of the public engaged in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape against female Armenians and children of both sexes. Before the genocide had begun, one method used to intimidate the Armenian population was sexual humiliation.[a] Women and young girls were not only subjected to rape, but also forced marriage, torture, forced prostitution, slavery and sexual mutilation.[3][4]

Heinrich Bergfeld, the German consul to Trabzon, reported "the numerous rapes of women and girls," a crime he regarded as being part of a plan for "the virtually complete extermination of the Armenians." The systematic use of rape during the genocide was testified to by Turkish, American, Austrian, and German witnesses and officials.[5]

  1. ^ Ihrig, Stefan (2016). Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismark to Hitler. Harvard University Press. pp. 200–201. ISBN 978-0-674-50479-0.
  2. ^ Derderian 2005, pp. 1–25.
  3. ^ Herzog 2011, p. 47.
  4. ^ Miller & Miller 1999, p. 24.
  5. ^ Dadrian 2008, p. 83.


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