This would explain why Armenians serving in the armed forces, fighting Russians, where taken off and slaughtered? Why were Armenians living in perfect peace hundreds and hundreds of miles from the nearest battlelines were rounded up and sent to the deserts? Also, the Young Turks desired a state composed of Turks. The Kurds and such were to be assigned their own regions, as they were after all Muslim. The largely Christian minority populations- Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians- did not fit into the Young Turk's scheme of things. They were irregularities in the landscape. I suppose I should have qualified social order- it is more of a case of the ruling group's perception of the social order, so on that point you have me. And you are correct that it was not so much religious as it was ethnic, though one cannot seperate the religious component- why were Armenian children kidnapped and placed in devout Muslim homes?
Most certainly, they were not some progressive movement suppressed by the Turks, as you seem to present it.
It was not my intention to present it thusly (nor did I wish to debate the "troubles" as we shall call them, but did anyway I suppose). But the Young Turks saw a threat in the Armenian population- that of progress and revolution. The other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire had revolted and held their own states, so what was keeping the Armenians from doing so? Certainly there were revolutionary movements in the population, and Armenians had climbed upwards economically all through the nineteenth century, but the movements were hardly widespread. Certainly most of the people who died had nothing to do with any movement, and would have remained perfect citizens.
29 Armenians achieved the highest governmental rank of pasha,
22 Armenians became ministers, including Ministers of Foreign Affairs,
33 Armenians were elected to the Parliament,
7 Armenians were appointed as Ambassadors, 11 as Consul Generals,
11 Armenians served in universities as professors.
Why where were 803 Armenian schools employing 2088 teachers with over 80,000 pupils within the Ottoman Empire in 1901-2?
One would hardly allow such policies for a certain group if one's policy was the destruction of that group.