Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

4-2026

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Government

Reader 1

Hicham Bou Nassif

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2026 Rachel E Svoyskiy

Abstract

The Armenian Genocide functioned as a form of coup-proofing under the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Existing scholarship emphasizes nationalism, wartime radicalization, and security dilemmas, but does not fully account for why the military complied, why dissenters were removed, or how Armenian property became tied to political loyalty. Applying Hicham Bou Nassif’s framework of coup-proofing, this study examines four tactics the CUP used to secure military obedience while carrying out mass violence. First, the regime framed Armenians as an existential threat to align the officer corps ideologically with the state. Second, it promoted the material interests of military and political elites through the systematic confiscation and redistribution of Armenian assets, making their wealth dependent on the regime’s survival. Third, it built parallel coercive institutions and a dual-track system of coded telegrams to counterbalance the regular military. Fourth, it fragmented authority through surveillance, vertical cleavages in the officer corps, and bureaucratic divide and rule tactics to prevent coordinated resistance. The postwar Istanbul Trials and Mazhar Commission documented the state’s role in genocide, but were shut down under nationalist pressure. Their suppression took the CUP’s views on the Armenian Genocide into the Turkish Republic, and denial became its own form of regime security.

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