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What can a propaganda book tell us about the genocide? Faiz el-Ghusein’s Memoir on the Armenian Genocide
Abstract
The Ottoman Empire left unforgettable and unrecoverable footprints visible in many ways after the Great War. Around two million citizens mobilized into the armed forces were killed in the trenches, wounded, captivated or died from diseases. Alongside this loss of human capital, Ottoman imperial policies led to irreversible disintegration in already disentangling political, economic, and social ties of the empire. Particularly Armenians and Arabs fell victim of these deadly ‘precautions’ as they were deemed a fifth column by the Ottoman state. Arab notables were executed in the city squares of Damascus and Beirut, while Armenian intellectuals were murdered on their way to deportation. As millions of Armenians were forcibly resettled in Syria, five thousand Arab families were relocated to the Central Anatolia. Seferberlik connotes, for Armenians, massacres of men in Ottoman military uniform; Similarly, for the Arabs, the term has become a synonym for the terrible famine and locust invasion that overran Greater Syria. Not only did many people witness but also experienced the entangled tragedies of these peoples. One of them was a former Ottoman official and Bedouin notable, Faiz el-Ghusein. His life shattered by the war and Cemal Pasha’s terror regime compelled him to encounter with the annihilation of Armenians. He penned down what he had seen and heard even before the war ended and the British propaganda bureau availed itself to publish the text casting light on the atrocities it belligerent state committed. This paper focuses on recontextualizing Faiz’s witness account and its writing process and probes into what it tells about the genocide, political conditions at the time, and its author.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Syria
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries