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NO GENOCIDE |
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QUESTION 2:
DID THE TURKS TAKE THE LANDS OF THE
ARMENIANS BY FORCE ?
The territory in which the Armenians lived
together for a time never was ruled by
them as an independent, sovereign
state. This territory was ruled by others
from the
earliest times from which there is evidence
that Armenians lived there. From 521 to
344 B.C. it was a province of Persia.
From 334 to 215 B.C. it was part of the
Macedonian Empire. From 215 to 190 B.C. it
was controlled by the Selephkites. From
190 until 220 A.D. it frequently
changed hands between the Roman Empire and
the Parthians.
From 220 until the start of the fifth
century it was a Sassanian province, and
from then until the seventh century
it belonged to Byzantium. From the seventh
to the tenth
centuries it was controlled by the Arabs. It
returned again to Byzantine rule in the
tenth century and, finally, it came
under the domination of the Turks starting
in the eleventh
century. The
Armenians living in this territory who
remained under the rule of these
various empires, could not
continuously maintain any sort of
independent or unified
Armenian state. At the most, a few
Armenian noble families dominated certain
districts as
feudal vassals of the neighboring imperial
suzerains, serving as buffers between the
powerful empires that surrounded
them. Most of these Armenian
"principalities" were,
thus, simply set up by local Armenian
nobles within their own feudal dominions, or
by the neighboring
empires, who in this way secured their
military services against their
enemies. The best example of this was
the Baghratid family, long brought forward
by Armenian
nationalist historians as an example of
their historic independent existence,
which was in fact put in charge of
its territory by the Arab Caliphs. Some of
the "Armenian"
families which assumed the title of
principality at this time were, moreover,
really Persian rather than
Armenian in origin. That they did not
constitute any sort of
independent nation is shown in the
statement of the Armenian historian Kevork
Asian: "The
Armenians lived as local notables. They had
no feeling of national unity. There were no
political bonds or ties among them.
Their only attachments were to the
neighboring notables. Thus
whatever national feelings they had
were local. "
These Armenian principalities existed for
centuries under the control of various
great empires and states, often
changing sides to secure maximum advantage,
and thus earning for Armenians often caustic
and critical remarks from contemporary
historians, as for
example the Roman historian Tacitus, who in
his Annalium liber wrote:
"The Armenians change their position
relating to Rome and the Persian Empire,
sometimes
supporting one and sometimes the other",
concluding that they are "a strange people."
It was as a result of these
conditions, and then, the Armenians' lack of
unity and
strength, their very failure to create a
real state, their weakness in relation to
their neighbors,
the fact that the territory in which they
lived was the scene of constant
conflict among their more powerful
suzerains from all sides, that they often
were
deported, or moved voluntarily, from the
lands where they first lived when they
appeared in
history. Thus when they fled from the
Persians they settled in the area of
Kayseri, in
Central Anatolia. They were deported by the
Sassanians into central Iran, by the Arabs
into Syria and the Arabian Peninsula,
by the Byzantines into Central Anatolia and
to Istanbul,
Thrace, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Rumania,
Hungary, Transylvania and the Crimea.
During the Crusades, they went to
Cyprus, Crete and Italy. In flight from the
Mongols they
settled in Kazan and Astrakhan in Central
Asia, and, finally, they were
subsequently deported by the Russians
from the Crimea and the Caucasus into the
interior of Russia. As a result of
these centuries-long deportations and
migrations, then,
the Armenians were widely scattered from
Sicily to India and from the Crimea to
Arabia, thus
forming what they call "the Armenian
diaspora" centuries before they were
deported by the
Ottomans in 1915.
The Armenians broke away from the Byzantine
church in 451,150 years after
they accepted Christianity, leading
to long centuries of Armenian-Byzantine
clashes which went
on until the Turks settled in Anatolia
starting in the late 11th century, with the
Byzantines working to wipe out the
Armenians and eliminate the Armenian
principalities
in order to maintain Greek Orthodoxy
throughout their dominions. Contemporary
Armenian historians report in great
detail how the Byzantines deported Armenians
as
well as using them against enemy forces in
the vanguard of the Byzantine armies. As a
result of this, when the Seljuk Turks
started flooding into Anatolia starting in
the late 11th
century, they did not encounter any Armenian
principalities; the only force
remaining to resist them was that of
Byzantium. The Seljuk ruler Alparslan
captured the lands
of the Armenian Principality of Ani in 1064,
but it had previously been brought to
an end by the Byzantine in 1045,
nineteen years earlier, with Greeks being
brought in to
replace the Armenians who had been deported.
It is therefore false to claim that the
Seljuk Turks destroyed any Armenian
principality, let alone a state. This
already had been
done by the Byzantines, and it was in fact
the social and economic ferment that
resulted which
greatly facilitated the subsequent Turkish
settlement. Contemporary Armenian
historians interpret this Turkish
conquest of Anatolia to have constituted
their liberation
from the long centuries of Byzantine misrule
and oppression. The Armenian historian
Asoghik thus reports that "Because of
the Armenians' enmity toward Byzantium, they
welcomed the Turkish entry into Anatolia and
even helped them." The Armenian historian
Mathias of Edessa
likewise relates that the Armenians rejoiced
and celebrated publicly when the
Turks conquered his city, Edessa
(today's Urfa). An
Armenian principality did arise in Cilicia
starting in 1080 but it was the result,
not of the Turkish settlement in
Anatolia, as has been claimed, but, rather,
of the Byzantine
destruction of the last Armenian
principalities in eastern Anatolia, which
caused a flood of Armenians fleeing
into Cilicia. This principality maintained
good relations
with the Turks even as it provided
assistance to the Crusaders who passed
through its territory on their way to
the Holy Land, while accepting the
suzerainty, first
of Byzantium, and then after it declined, of
the Crusader Kingdoms, the Mongols, and,
finally, the Catholic Lusignan family
which gained control of Cyprus. This sort of
relationship with "unbelievers",
however, displeased the Gregorian Armenian
church, with the
resulting internal divisions playing a
significant role in the Principality's
conquest by the Mamluks of Syria and
Egypt in 1375. In the end, the most
significant
consequence of this last Armenian
principality was the establishment of a
separate Armenian
church from the one centered at Echmiadzin,
which added to the internal
divisions within Armenian Orthodoxy
which remain important to the present day.
Thus when eastern Anatolia was
conquered by Fatih Mehmet II and Yavuz
Sultan Selim I, it
was taken from the White Sheep Turkomans and
from the Safavids of Iran,
who had occupied it after the
Byzantines had retired; while Yavuz Selim
took Cilicia fromthe Mamluks. In no case,
therefore, did the Ottoman Turks conquer or
occupy an existing
Armenian state or principality. In every
case, these Armenians had previously
been conquered by peoples other than
the Turks.
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