Sultan Abdul Hamid II overthrown and replaced with a constitutional figurehead. The
new exclusivist, ethnonationalist group which held near-unlimited power as a result of
the coup thus sought to stamp out further instability – the Armenians were seen as a
political threat not only because they seemed likely to demand independence but
because their Christian faith made them a potential vassal for increased Russian meddling in Ottoman affairs - 50 in a letter to the German Imperial Chancellor, the
German Ambassador in Constantinople claimed that “[the Armenians] have found in
neighbouring Russia an ally that is just as active and single-minded”, suggesting – at least from a German perspective - that this fear was not unsubstantiated. 51 The Young
Turks deemed genocide against the Armenians the best way to avoid threats to their
authoritarian rule and saw the First World War as an ideal cover due to the instability it
was causing across Europe. Finally, the Khmer Rouge famously gained power in
Cambodia as a result of the brutal civil war they had waged, although even before
their rise Cambodia was an autocratic state led by a King who espoused ethnic purity, and then a dictatorial party that stressed national pride. 52 A history of authoritarianism
with exclusivist policies thus existed in the region, facilitated primarily by the constant
state of revolution, civil war, and bombing by the United States. When the Khmer
Rouge gained power in 1975, it unsurprisingly sought to consolidate it and prevent the
instability it caused from toppling them. Thus, cities were emptied and over 2 million citizens died before another conflict deposed them in 1979. 53 Clearly, the emergence
of an unstable political system, commonly due to war and regime change, can
facilitate the rise of groups who seek to facilitate violence, and so can be seen as a
circumstance that may contribute to genocide.
50 Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 4. 51 Wolfgang Gust, The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916 (New York, NY: Berghahn, 2014), p. 135. 52 Rummel, p. 162. 53 Rummel, p. 4.
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