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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I dug through Ottoman box, finding pamphlets that were American in origin and discussed the United States\u2019 responsibility in the war in relation to the Ottoman Empire. At first, these pamphlets seemed straightforward: The United States had a responsibility to take down the \u201csavage\u201d Turks who threated modern civilization. But as I read on, I found that the issue was multi-faceted\u2014because the Ottoman Empire was multi-ethnic and not just made up of those \u201csavage Turks\u201d the United States propaganda attacked. In relation to the Ottoman Empire, the United States took up the role of defender of the Christian faith and the Christian people, branding the fighting on Middle Eastern front as an opportunity to liberate Ottoman Armenians from Turkish rule (and, later, from Genocide).<\/p>\n
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In \u201cThe Murderous Tyranny of the Turks,\u201d Arnold J. Toynbee outlines this opportunity for the United States to protect the faith. In stating that \u201cthe Armenians were the first people to make Christianity their national religion,\u201d he appeals to American citizens\u2019 sympathy toward fellow Christians. He describes the Armenian people as \u201cintellectual,\u201d \u201ccivilized,\u201d and, in a sense, Western, before describing how the Muslim Turks \u201cconquest[ed]\u201d and \u201cdestroyed\u201d their civilization, \u201crepress[ing] all symptoms of Armenian revival.\u201d What\u2019s most interesting about his pamphlet is the way he describes Armenians like Christian neighbors, people that white Americans could sympathize with. And at the end of it all, Toynbee uses the Armenian Genocide as an opportunity to propel the United States into war, capitalizing on the suffering and deaths of millions of Armenians and framing the war in the Middle East as a battle between Christianity and Islam.<\/p>\n
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In \u201cThe \u2018Clean Fighting Turk\u2019: A Spurious Claim,\u201d an unnamed author who is \u201ca distinguished authority on Oriental affairs\u201d and \u201cthe ways of the Turk\u201d makes similar claims to those of Toynbee. But instead of painting Armenians as Western-like Christians, he paints Turks as ruthless, savage followers of \u201cMohammadism.\u201d He discusses soldiers\u2019 and generals\u2019 claims that the Turks were \u201cchivalr[ous]\u201d and \u201cgood nature[d],\u201d thwarting these claims by stating that Turks only act like gentlemen when they are in positions of inferiority, and when they rule, they turn into \u201cmerciless oppressor[s].\u201d Of course, his argument is grounded in his belief that Turks feel inferior when they encounter Westerners, but in the era of race (pseudo-)science, this claim makes perfect sense.<\/p>\n
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In short, U.S. pamphlets used the Ottoman Empire\u2019s interior ethnic and religious tensions as a call to arms\u2014once again portraying the United States as the savior of Christianity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I dug through Ottoman box, finding pamphlets that were American in origin and discussed the United States\u2019 responsibility in the war in relation to the Ottoman Empire. At first, these pamphlets seemed straightforward: The United States had a responsibility to … Continue reading