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Genocide Recommended Reading Week 3a

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  • GenocideRecommended Reading

    Week 3a

  • 2

    O

    The Ottoman Empire

    and the Armenian Question

    O

  • The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

    33

    Three main reasons brought about the Armenian ques-tion at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century. One was the national Armenian awak-ening in the second half of the nineteenth century. A second was the ambivalent intervention of the European powers in the growing tension between the Armenian minority and the Ottoman regime. The third was the declining potency of the Empire and its disintegration; just as Turkish nationalism and

    nation-building were on the rise. These three reasons combined served to instigate violence between the two groups which, at its conclusion, brought about Armenian extermination. It may

    be said that the Armenian Genocide was undertaken in order

    to solve the Armenian Problem of the Ottoman Empire.

    During the nineteenth century, Armenia was divided between Turkeythe larger partPersia, and Russia. The Armenians

    under the Russian regime enjoyed many years of economic prosperity and thrived culturally. Most Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were farmers, mostly in the six districts (vilay-eti) of the Armenian Plateau: Erzurum, Sivas, Bitlis, Kharput (Harput, Mamuret-ul-Aziz), Van, and Diarbekir, known col-lectively as the Armenian Districts. In these regions, the Armenians made a substantial part of the population, though, when adding up all components of the population, the Muslim component was larger.

  • The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied

    34

    About 250,000 Armenians resided in the capital, Istanbul. Prominent among them were bankers, merchants, public ser-vants, and architects. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Armenianslike the Jewsplayed important

    parts in international commerce as real estate brokers, transla-tors and interpreters.During the eighteenth century, and more so in the nineteenth, a momentous shift took place in the Armenians status and the

    attitude of others toward them. The Ottoman administrative, financial, and military organizations started to falter due to

    corruption and atrophy at home and external threats by other

    powers. During the nineteenth century, the Empire was facing impending economic collapse. Concurrently, ethnic-religious minorities made demands for equality and democracy as part of the national awakening that bubbled up in Europe during the

    middle of the nineteenth century. Some of them, the Greeks,

    for instance, reached independence during the first half of

    the century, receiving in the process sporadic assistance from European countries. The Ottoman rulers felt threatened by what appeared to be the gradual crumbling of the Empire. The European powers observed the process with interest, eying territories and areas of influencethey had hoped for and anticipated the vacuum left

    behind by the former Ottoman Empire. These developments intensified intolerance and oppression within the Empire.

    During the second part of the nineteenth century, hostility emerged between the Christian Armenians and Muslim Kurds and Turks after countless generations during which they peace-fully coexisted (though previous eras were not incident-free

    of anti-Armenian manifestations). Now, however, the Arme-

  • The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

    35

    nians became subjected to frequent attacks by their Muslim

    neighbors. The tension was not occasioned by the religious dis-similarity, even though it enhanced it. Following the Crimean

    War between Russia and Turkey (18551856), the European powers insisted that the sultan should improve his Christian subjects well-being, Armenians included. In 1863, the Arme-nians were recognized, once more, as a special ethno-religious

    community, enjoying, like the Jews and the Empires remaining

    Greeks, the privileges accorded a millet.

    Map 2. Early 20th century: Western (Ottoman)

    and Eastern (Russian) Armenia.

  • The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied

    36

    National AwakeningDuring the latter decades in the nineteenth century, with the encouragement of the European powers, a national awaken-ing had started in the European-Christian parts of the Empire, which brought in its wake tribulation, wars, and loss of territory

    for the Empire. The authorities responded with a heavy hand. For example, in April 1876, in the process of putting down a rebellion in Bulgaria, the Turks committed a vast massacre,

    murdering between 12,00015,000 Bulgarians. The carnage shocked the European public opinion as well as the Armenians.

    During the 80s (nineteenth century), Armenian political activ-ity, based on ideas and hopes for autonomy and equal rights, had cohered. This was not necessarily an independence move-ment. The strenuous condition and deteriorating status of the Ottoman Empire, which was dubbed The Sick Man upon the

    Bosphorus, enhanced these hopes. Likewise, the indepen-dence secured in Bulgaria and Serbia during the decade of the 70s of the nineteenth century and the accomplishments of the national movements of the other Balkan peoples inflamed the

    imagination of members of the Armenian community.The national stirring of the Balkan nationalities was awarded

    European support, if nothing else, because it matched their own interests. The Armenians, however, lived mostly in the eastern part of Anatoliarelatively far from Britain, Germany, and Frances areas of interest. Accordingly, the European

    powers, save for Russia, displayed no genuine interest in their national awakening.

    It is worth noticing how conduct of what we have dubbed the

    rest of the world affects processes that lead to genocide. When

    we will later deal with the phenomenon of genocide itself, we

  • The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

    37

    will see how the rest of the world has a crucial effect on the

    evolution of relevant events. During the 18771878 war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, additional Armenian revolutionary elements joined the Russian military forces invading eastern Anatolia and made contact with their brethren within the Ottoman Empire, encouraging them to rebel against the sultan. The majority of the Armenian population remained loyal to the government and the war was over rather quickly. In March 1878, Russia entered the Treaty of San Stefano with the Turks that granted

    territorial gains to the Russians. In Article 16, protection from abuse of the Armenians was vouched for by the Ottoman side. The powers (Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany,

    Italy, and the Ottoman Empire) who were concerned about

    what was occurring on the eastern front and the correspond-ing expansion of Russian influence convened (the Russians

    included, of course) in Berlin in 1787 and drafted the Berlin Treaty in which, among other matters, its Article 61 promised protection for life and property of the Armenians in the six

    Armenian districts of Turkey; it also promised reforms. All

    participating powers were signatories of said treaty. The refer-ent article states:

    The Sublime Porte12 is committed to execute, without delay,

    the requisite improvements and reforms necessitated by local demands in Armenian inhabited populations, and ensure their safety from threats by Circassian [Adyghe people] and Kurds. A periodical report regarding the steps taken will be provided

    the Powers who will supervise its implementation.

    12 The Sublime Porte, a synecdoche for the central government of the Ottoman Empire, by reference to the High Gate of the Divan (court) of Topkap Palace in Istanbul and the seat of the grand vizier.

  • The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied

    38

    The Armenians had hoped that the treaty would assist in improv-ing their status. In reality, nothing was done to that effect.

    By the end of the 1880s, two Armenian political organizations were founded, Huncak (Bell, pronounced hoonchak) and

    Dernek (Association, pronounced dashnak). Their centers operated in several cities in Europe as well as in Tiflis in the

    Caucasus region of Eurasia (now Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia).

    These organizations incited the local population in the eastern

    districts to rebel against the Ottoman government. In August 1894, an Armenian revolt erupted in the vicinity of a town called Sassoon. The Ottomans responded with massive brutality and many of the Armenian community (in the area)

    were slaughtered, though the reports that spread in Europe, representing that about 20,000 were murdered, were probably exaggerated. Local clashes between the Armenians, Turks, and

    Kurds lasted about three years (18941896). In September 1895, Armenians demonstrated against the con-clusions of a government commission of inquiry appointed to investigate these clashes. In response, the Muslim population attacked the demonstrators and committed another massacre

    which was accompanied by an outburst of violence toward the Armenians in many cities in Anatolia. British, French, and

    Russian diplomats emphatically protested against the violence. The sultan promised again to issue reforms (20 October 1895), which were never performed. Nevertheless, the massacres and harassment persisted throughout the Empire during 1896. In AugustSeptember 1896, the events intensified and reached Istanbul itself.In an attempt to bring about the European powers interven-tion on their behalf, the Armenians engaged in a well-planned

  • The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

    39

    multitarget terror activity against the Ottoman regime. On the 26th of August 1896, a group of militants took over the main building of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul. Another group

    burst into the Sublime Porte, the seat of the grand vizier, and

    caused severe destruction and even threatened the life of the vizier himself. A third group threw a bomb at the sultan who

    was on his way to Friday prayer and 20 policemen serving as his bodyguards were killed. The sultan, Abdul Hamid II, refused

    to accede to the demands. On the following day, his forces took

    over the bank building and captured the perpetrators. During

    the next few days, thousands among the Armenian population

    in Istanbul were massacred. In order to soothe public opinion (especially in the West), the

    sultan declared general amnesty for all participants in the events of the 26th of August and even appointed Christian officials to serve at the districts with large Armenian popula-tions. Britain offered military intervention on the side of the

    Armenians in eastern Anatolia, however, the Russian czar, who

    was apprehensive about British military presence inside the Ottoman Empire, opposed the proposed intervention as did the French. When it turned out that the Powers had no viable

    plan to assist the Armenians, calm prevailed and, for a while, it seemed that life in Anatolia returned to normalcy. The Arme-nians estimated their victims at 150,000200,000. Some claim the number of victims was 300,000. The number of refugees is estimated to equal that figure. There are lower estimates,

    mostly those of the Turks.13

    It is worth noticing the sizeable differences in estimates of the

    13 Vahakn Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (Providence, RI and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995), 15556.

  • The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied

    40

    number of those who perished. This is a recurring phenomenon in many cases of genocide. Later, we will examine the different

    estimates of the number of victims the Armenian Genocide exacted during World War I. In many genocides, not every

    man has a name (i.e., many of the victims remain uniden-tified, thus, anonymous) and it is difficult to estimate with

    precision the actual number of victims, among other reasons, because the murderers actively seek to hide and obscure their

    deeds. Similarly, the method of extermination, the character

    of society where the genocide takes place and the condition

    of documentation and research of the events affect the facility

    for estimating such numbers. Occasionally, there are controversies regarding the number of those who perished between the group to which the perpetra-tors belong versus the group to which the victims belong, or their successors, respectively. From a moral viewpoint, this is a

    difficult situation. In this respect, the Holocaust has a unique

    attribute: it is the only genocide about which we have almost precise data about the number of its victims.The European powers reaction, though it was neither unequiv-ocal nor focused, nonetheless was, so it seems, one of the factors that eventually brought about an end to the bloodbath.And though the carnage ceased, nothing was done to punish the perpetrators or compensate the victims. It was, in effect, a

    sort of a lesson with future implications: For the world, mass

    murder by the Ottoman Empire was business as usual. However, the traditional harmony between Muslims and Armenians had vanished while mutual hostility intensified till, in 1915, it reached a new nadirannihilation on a scale much worse than all its predecessors.

  • The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

    41

    Some Armenians contend that the massacres taking place

    during the decade of the 90s of the nineteenth century are the initial component of the Armenian Genocide that cul-minated during World War I; or, alternatively, that it was an

    interlude to genocide. To my mind, however, it is akin to the

    vast pogroms committed on the Jews in czarist Russia during

    those same decades, more or less, at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.The Sultan Abdul Hamid II ruled Turkey for a long period

    (18761908). His era was very hard not only for the Armenianshe was dubbed the Red Sultan, a hint as to the very harsh

    massacres committed during his rule, mostly of Armenians. The criticism of the corrupt, oppressive regime was espe-cially severe among Turks who were educated in Europe or in

    American or European schools within the Empire. The Sultans manner of governance was seen by them as autocratic and conservative, which they found unacceptable. Small groups among them formed the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), colloquially known as the Young Turks. They sought to

    reform the political structure in the state. They hoped to estab-lish a central government, subject to a parliamentary political system, that would be able to unite the various components. In July 1908, they conducted a military coup, took over the country, drafted a constitution, and conducted parliamentary elections.When the Young Turks deposed Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the

    Armenian leaders, especially members of Huncak, had hoped

    that their aspirations for autonomy would be fulfilled. Indeed,

    when the Young Turks took power, the Armenians were granted

  • The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied

    42

    equal rights, the right to serve in the military,14 and the right to fully participate in the new parliamentary system. However, in March 1909, pogroms erupted, aimed at the Armenians in Cilicia (on the Mediterraneans shores). At least 20,000 Armenians were slaughtered (estimates vary between 20,000 and 30,000), and Armenian urban districts and rural villages were burned to the ground and plundered. These massacres took place amid the struggle between the Young Turks and

    the sultan, who was then attempting a counterrevolutionary move of his own. The Armenians, so it seems, were assaulted by both sides. They served as a political weapon and a scapegoat in the internal scuffle taking place at the time in Turkish society.

    (Enver Pasha, the Turkish minister of war, made them into a

    scapegoat following his 1915 defeat in his war with Russia.)Even on this point there is a similarity to the pogroms suffered

    by the Jews in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century where attacks on a minor-ity group were incorporated into internal struggles within the majority group.Rather quickly, the Armenians were disillusioned, for the Young

    Turksafter short relationships with the various minorities

    were even less inclined than the sultan to grant them autonomy. The Young Turks had found themselves under strong pressures,

    both internallyfrom the conservatives who supported the sultanas well as externally, by foreign powers who had hoped

    to take advantage of the political instability.

    The Ottoman army was defeated in battles that occurred prior

    14 This right was already granted, in a reform decree, as early as 1856; however, dhimmis preferred at the time to pay ransom instead of serving.

  • The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

    43

    to World War I, as a result of which the Empire had lost most of its territories in Europe and North Africa and shrunk back

    into Asia Minor and the Near East. Consequently, many Turks

    adopted the idea of Pan-Turkismaiming at cultural and polit-ical unification of the Turkic peoples (Turkish speaking) in the

    Caucasus and territorially spreading into central Asia. These ideas penetrated the Young Turks circle, and subsequently,

    they adopted a policy of discrimination against minorities in the imploding Empire. The Pan-Turkism (or Pan-Turanism)

    ideology offered a vision of a strong, central country, having

    solely Turkic components. The large Armenian population

    that lived in the Armenian Plateau in the east was, no doubt, an obstacle to the effectuation of this tendency.

    Moreover, the Young Turks regime turned into a government

    with characteristics of a military dictatorship, that of a small group of rulers which also has at its disposal a party apparatus. Beginning in 1913, only three individuals ruled Turkey (the Triumvirate)Enver Pasha (minister of war), Talaat Pasha

    (minister of internal affairs) and Djemal Pasha (minister of

    the navy who was also the commander of the 4th Corps and the ruler of Syria (which then also included Palestine); a vast

    bureaucracy tied closely with their party, spread throughout the Empire, assisted them in governing.The Armenian Genocide was the product of several factors and processes. One of these factors was the intensification of dis-parity and tension between two societies that coexisted in one

    state. One class was dominating and ruling, the other, stooped and subjugated. The first was Muslim, the other Christian. One

    formed the majority, the other was a minority. The amplifica-tion of the conflict was the outcome of divergent perspectives.

  • The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied

    44

    The Turks developed their country as an empire. For centuries,

    they ruled over lands and nations they had vanquished. The Ottomans, who were invincible till 1700, started experi-encing defeats in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a consequence of their failure to cope with novel military tactical conceptualizations and modern weaponry of the European

    countries. New empires began taking bites out of territories

    under their reignFrance, Britain, Austria, and Russia present-ing each in its turn, its demands to the waning Ottoman realm. During the second half of the nineteenth century the European powers, now joined by unified Germany, counterbalanced one

    another in their competition for influence; this contest among

    the surging powers assisted Turkey to withstand, for a while,

    the pressures it was being subjected to at that time.However, the stirring of national movements among the subjugated peoples of the Empire created a new and mighty obstacle. As an imperial country, Turkey conducted itself in the

    manner of other imperial nations and utilized cruel methods

    to suppress national liberation movements and other separat-ist factions. Such was the reaction in relation to the national awakening in Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and other places. These

    methods triggered intervention by the European countries. Consequently, at times, new small countries were created in order to satisfy nationalistic demands of the subjugated people (e.g., Serbia).

    Unlike the national awakening of the Greeks, Serbs, and Bul-garians, fulfilling the national aspirations of the Armenians

    was more complicated. The Armenian districts were, as said, remote, and the interests of the European nations rather narrow. The latter were also apprehensive about the possible

  • The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

    45

    strengthening of Russiawho was perceived as a competitoras a consequence of a solution favorable to the Armenians. In addition, in the nineteenth century, the Armenians were spread far and wide, and in historical Armenia, they were a major-ity only in certain regions, while in others, the Turkish and

    Kurdish populations were larger. When the Armenians started forming nationalistic expressions, the Ottomans responded

    more severely than in other such cases because of the distance from Europe, the proximity to Russia, and because they were

    apprehensive about the Armenians becoming a fifth column.

    There were two dimensions to the evolving inequality and tension between the Turks and Armenians. One, the classic

    tension that arises in relationships between an imperial master and the subjugated subjects; the other was tension arising due to religious and ethnic divergence, since the ruler was Turkish-Muslim and the ruled Armenian-Christian. This fact

    sharpened the sense of alienation, gaping distance, and hostil-ity; the Armenian is an outsider, possibly even an enemy. The intervention of the foreign powers, as hesitant and halting as it may have been, could have been interpreted as an attempt to bring about Christian domination over Muslims. It should be emphasized: the conflict was not between religions,

    yet the religious differences had an effect on how one group

    related to the other, especially when tensions mounted. The condition of the Jews throughout the Ottoman Empire, including in Palestine, was akin to that of the Armenians, yet

    their destiny was very much different. One should consider the

    differences between the fates of these two nationalities during

    the waning days of the Empire.