Turkey and Kurdish vomited genocide in Armenia

1. The state-directed nature of the 1915 atrocities

Primary scholarship and archival evidence characterize the wartime policy against Ottoman Armenians as a centrally planned campaign that used deportation, mass murder, and forced marches as instruments of destruction, with organs of the state such as the Special Organization and army units implicated in atrocities in key eastern provinces ^[1]; postwar courts-martial convened by Ottoman authorities themselves initially acknowledged war crimes even as successor Turkish governments later disavowed responsibility ^[4].

2. Where Kurdish actors fit into the picture

Contemporary research and Kurdish memory work show that Kurdish tribes were among the non-state actors who participated in attacks, seizures of property, abductions and killings of Armenians in various regions, often operating under the co‑optation or direction of Ottoman authorities, though the extent of participation varied across nomadic and settled Kurdish groups ^{[2] [3] [5]}.

3. Diversity of Kurdish responses then and now

Historical accounts document both participation in violence and instances of Kurds sheltering or adopting Armenian survivors, and modern Kurdish public discourse has trended toward acknowledgment, local acts of atonement and literary reckoning; Kurdish municipal apologies and Kurdish novelists’ engagement with the events illustrate this evolving collective memory ^{[6] [7] [8]}.

4. Gendered and local crimes: forced marriage, abduction, and profiteering

Victim testimony and institutional summaries note that many Armenian women and children were abducted, forced into servitude or sale, and in some cases taken as brides by both Turkish and Kurdish militiamen and gendarmes — a pattern corroborated by missionary, consular and later scholarly accounts of the period ^{[9] [1]}.

5. The centrality of Ottoman/Young Turk policy and the limits of local blame-shifting

While some scholarship and political narratives have shifted blame toward local militias or tribes, leading historians emphasize that the genocidal framework originated in the Committee of Union and Progress’s identification of Armenians as an existential internal threat, and that the role of Kurdish groups, though real and at times significant, does not absolve central Ottoman responsibility ^{[1] [8]}.

6. Politics of recognition and contemporary denialism

The Turkish state has long rejected the legal label “genocide,” invested in denialist institutions and diplomatic campaigns, and until recent decades cultivated domestic and international narratives that downplay or reframe 1915; by contrast, a significant and growing number of states, scholars and civil society actors recognize the events as genocide, and recognition remains politically charged given implications for reparations or territorial claims ^{[10] [11] [9]}.

7. Why the question of Kurdish complicity provokes strong responses today

Disputes over Kurdish involvement intersect with modern Turkish, Kurdish and Armenian politics: Kurdish admissions or apologies can threaten Turkish nationalist narratives, while Turks have sometimes shifted blame onto Kurds; simultaneously, Kurdish memory work serves both a moral reckoning and current identity politics that seek to distance contemporary Kurds from Ottoman-era state crimes and to forge solidarity with other oppressed groups ^{[3] [12] [8]}.

Conclusion

The weight of historical evidence attributes genocidal policy to the Ottoman state while documenting participation by a range of local actors including some Kurdish tribes; at the same time, Kurdish historical experiences and modern memory practices are heterogeneous, containing both complicity and rescue, and contemporary politics continues to shape how these facts are acknowledged or denied ^{[1] [2] [3] [10]}.