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NO GENOCIDE |
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QUESTION 4:
DID THE TURKS REALLY TRY TO MASSACRE THE
ARMENIANS STARTING IN THE 1890's ?
The so-called "Armenian Question" is
generally thought of as having begun in the
second half of the nineteenth
century. One can easily point to the
Russo-Turkish war
(1877 -78) and the Congress of Berlin (1878)
which concluded the war as marking the
emergence of this question as a
problem in Europe. In fact, however, one
must really go
back to Russian activities in the East
starting in the 1820's to uncover its
origins. Czarist
Russia at the time was beginning a major new
imperial expansion across Central Asia, in
the process overrunning major Turkish
Khanates in its push toward the borders of
China and the Pacific Ocean. At the
same time, Russian imperial ambitions turned
southward as the Czars sought to gain
control of Ottoman territory to extend their
landlocked empire to the
Mediterranean and the open seas. As an
essential element of
this ambition, Russia sought to
undermine Ottoman strength from within by
stirring the
national ambitions of the Sultan's subject
Christian peoples, in particular those with
whom it shared a common Orthodox
religious heritage, the Greeks and the Slavs
in the Balkans and
the Armenians. At the same time that Russian
agents fanned the fires of the
Greek Revolution and stirred the
beginnings of Pan-Slavism in Serbia and
Bulgaria, others
moved into the Caucasus and worked to secure
Russian influence over the
Catholicos of the Armenian Gregorian
Church of Echmiadzin, to which most Ottoman
Gregorians had strong emotional
attachments. The Russians used the
Catholicos'
jealousy of the Istanbul Patriarch to gain
his support to such an extent that
Catholicos Nerses
Aratarakes himself led a force of 60,000
Armenians in support of the Russian
army that fought Iran in the Caucasus
in 1827 -1828, in the process capturing most
of Iran's Caucasus
possessions, including those areas
where the Armenians lived. This new
Russian presence along the borders of
eastern Anatolia, combined with the support
of the Catholicos,
enabled them to extend their influence among
Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire. Russian pressure in Istanbul
finally got the Patriarch to add the
Catholicos' name
to his daily prayers starting in 1844,
furthering the latter's ability to influence
Ottoman Armenians
in Russia's favor in the years that
followed. Most Ottoman Armenians were
still too content with their lot in
the Ottoman lands to be seriously influenced
by this Russian
propaganda, but those who immigrated to
Russian Caucasus to join the Russian
effort against Ottoman stability and
power. The lands that they abandoned were
turned over to
Muslim refugees flooding into the Empire
from persecution in Russia and
Eastern Europe. This led to serious
land disputes when many of the Armenian
emigrants, or their descendants,
unhappy with life in Russia, sought to
return to the Ottoman Empire in the 1880's
and 1890's. The
Russians were not the only foreign power
seeking to exploit the
Ottoman Christians. England and
France sponsored missionary activities that
converted many Armenians to
Protestantism and Catholicism respectively,
leading to the
creation of the Armenian Catholic Church in
Istanbul in 1830 and the Protestant
Church in 1847. However these
developments were not directly related to
the development of
the "Armenian Question", except perhaps as
indications of the rising
discontent within the Gregorian
church which the Russians were seeking to
take advantage of
in their own way.
On the other hand, the Reform Proclamation
of 1856 was of major importance.
While not abolishing the separate
millets and churches and the institutions
that they
supported, the Ottoman government now
provided equal rights for all subjects
regardless of their religion, in the
process seeking to eliminate all special
privileges and
distinctions based on religion, and
requiring the millets to reconstitute their
internal
regulations in order to achieve these goals.
Insofar as the Armenians were concerned,
the result was the Armenian Millet
Regulation, drawn up by the Patriarchate and
put into force by
the Ottoman government on 29 March 1862. Of
particular importance the
new regulation placed the Armenian
millet under the government of a council of
140 members,
including only 20 churchmen from the
Istanbul Patriarchate, while 80
secular representatives were to be
chosen from the Istanbul community and 40
members from the provinces. The
Reform Proclamation of 1856 led England and
France to be more interested in
Armenians which in return intensified the
interests of
Russia in the same ethnic group. Their
concern was based on their own imperialist
interests rather than their affection
for Armenians. Russia now sought to gain
Armenian support for undermining and
destroying the Ottoman state by promising to
create a "Greater Armenia" in eastern
Anatolia, which would include substantially
more territory
between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean
than the Armenians ever had
ruled or even occupied at any time in
their history. It
was against this background that the
Ottoman-Russian war (1877 - 78)
awakened Armenian dreams for
independence with Russian help and under
Russian guidance.
Toward the end of the war, the Armenian
Patriarch of Istanbul, Nerses
Varjabedian, got in
touch with the Russian Czar with the
help of the Catholicos of
Echmiadzin, asking Russia not to
return to the Ottomans the east Anatolian
lands occupied by
Russian forces. Immediately after the war,
the Patriarch went to the Russian
camp, which by then was at San
Stephano, immediately outside Istanbul, and
in his meeting
with the Russian Commander, Grand Duke
Nicholas, asked that all of Eastern
Anatolia be annexed to Russia and
established as an autonomous Armenian state,
very
much like the regime then being established
for Bulgaria, but that if this was not
possible, and the
lands in question had to be returned to the
Ottomans, at least Russian forces should not
be withdrawn until changes favoring the
Armenians were introduced into
thegovernmental and administrative
organization and regulations of these
provinces.7 The
Russians agreed to the latter proposal,
which was incorporated as Article 16 of the
Treaty of San Stephano. Even as the
negotiations were going on at San Stephano,
moreover, the Armenian officers in
the Russian army worked frantically to stir
discontent among the Ottoman
Armenians, urging them to work to gain "the
same sort of
independence for themselves as that secured
by the Christians of the Balkans." This
appeal gained
considerable influence among the Armenians
of Eastern Anatolia long after the Russian
forces were withdrawn.
The Treaty of San Stephano did not,
however, constitute the final settlement of
the Russo-Turkish war. Britain
rightly feared that its provisions for a
Greater Armenia inthe East would inevitably
not only establish Russian hegemony in those
areas but also,
and even more dangerous, in the Ottoman
Empire, and through "Greater Armenia" to
the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean,
where they could easily threaten the British
possessions in India. In return for
an Ottoman agreement for British occupation
of Cyprus,
therefore, to enable it to counter any
Russian threats in Eastern Anatolia,
Britain agreed to use its influence
in Europe to upset the provisions of San
Stephano,
arranging the Congress of Berlin to this
end. As a result of its deliberations,
Russia was
compelled to evacuate all of Eastern
Anatolia with the exception of the districts
of Kars, Ardahan
and Batum, with the Ottomans agreeing to
institute "reforms" in the eastern
provinces where Armenians lived under the
guarantee of the five signatory
European powers. From this time
onward, England in particular came to
consider the
"Armenian Question" as a useful tool, and to
regularly intervene to secure its solution
according to its own interests.
A delegation sent by the Armenian
Patriarchate of Istanbul attended the
Congress of Berlin, but it was so
unhappy at the final treaty and the Powers'
failure to accept
its demands that it returned to Istanbul
with the feeling that "nothing will be
achieved except by
means of struggle and revolution"8 Russia
also emerged from the Congress without
having achieved its major objectives,
and with both Greece, and Bulgaria being
left under British
influence. It therefore renewed with
increased vigor its effort to secure
control of Eastern Anatolia, again
seeking to use the Armenians as a major
instrument of its
policy. Now, however, it was resisted in
this effort by the British, who also sought
to influence and
use the Armenians by stirring their national
ambitions, though in this
respect, in the words of the French
writer Rene Pinon, who is in fact known with
his pro-Armenian
views, "Armenia in British hands would
become a police station against Russian
expansion." Whether under Russian or
British influence, however, the Armenians
became pawns to advance imperial
ambitions at Ottoman expense.
It had been British Prime Minister
Benjamin Disraeli and the Tories who had
defended Ottoman integrity against
Russian expansion at the Congress of Berlin.
But with the assumption of power by
William E. Gladstone and the Liberals in
1880, British
policy toward the Ottomans changed
drastically to one which sought to protect
British interests by breaking up the
Ottoman Empire and creating friendly small
states under
British influence in its place, one of which
was to be Armenia. In pursuit of this
policy, the British press now was
encouraged to refer to eastern Anatolia as
"Armenia";
British consulates were opened in every
corner of the area to provide opportunities
for contact with
the local Christian population; the numbers
of Protestant missionaries sent
to the East was substantially
increased; and in London an Anglo-Armenian
Friendship
Committee was created to influence public
opinion in support of this new endeavour.
The way how Russia and Great Britain
used Armenians as a tool for their own
ambitions has been adequately
documented by numerous Armenian and other
foreign sources.
Thus, the French Ambassador in Istanbul Paul
Cambon reported to the Quai
d'Orsay in 1894 that "Gladstone is
organizing the dissatisfied Armenians,
putting them under
discipline and promising them assistance,
settling many of them in London with the
inspiration of the
propaganda committee." Edgar Granville
commented that "There was no Armenian
movement in
Ottoman territory before the Russians
stirred them up. Innocent people are going
to be hurt because of
this dream of a Greater Armenia under the
protection of the Czar," and "the Armenian
movements intend
to attach Eastern Anatolia to Russia." The
Armenian writer Kaprielian declared
proudly in his book The Armenian
Crisis and Rebirth that "the revolutionary
promises and
inspirations were owed to Russia." The
Dashnak newspaper Hairenik in its issue of
28 June 1918
stated that "The awakening of a
revolutionary spirit among the Armenians in
Turkey was the
result of Russian stimulation." The Armenian
Patriarch Horen Ashikian wrote in his
History of Armenia "The protestant
missionaries distributed in large numbers to
various places in
Turkey made propaganda in favor of England
and stirred the Armenians to desire autonomy
under British
protection. The schools that they
established were the nurseries of their
secret plans." And the
Armenian religious leader Hrant
Vartabed wrote that "The establishment of
protestant
communities in Ottoman territory and their
protection by England and the United States
shows that they
did not shrink from exploiting even the most
sacred feelings of the West, religious
feelings, in seeking
civilization", going on to state that
the Catholicos of Echmiadzin Kevork V was a
tool of Czarist
Russia and that he betrayed the Armenians of
Anatolia..9 In
pursuit of these policies, starting in 1880
a number of Armenian
revolutionary societies were
established in Eastern Anatolia, the Black
Cross andArmenian societies in Van and the
National Guards in Erzurum. However these
societies had
little influence, since the Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire still lived in peace
and prosperity and had no real
complaints against Ottoman administration.
With the passage
of time, therefore, these and other such
Armenian societies within the Empire
fell into inactivity and largely
ceased operations. The Armenian nationalists
therefore moved to center their
organizations outside Ottoman territory,
establishing the Hunchak
Committee at Geneva in 1887 and the
Dashnak Committee at Tiflis in 1890, both of
which declared to be their basic goal
the "liberation" from Ottoman rule of the
territories of
Eastern Anatolia and the Ottoman Armenians.
According to Louise Nalbandian, a
leading Armenian researcher into Armenian
propaganda, the Hunchak program
stated that:
"Agitation and terror were needed to
"elevate the spirit" of the people. The
people were also to
be incited against their enemies and
were to "profit" from retaliatory actions of
these same enemies.
Terror was to be used as a method of
protecting the people and winning their
confidence in the Hunchak
program. The party aimed at
terrorizing the Ottoman government, thus
contributing toward lowering the
prestige of that regime and working
toward its
complete disintegration. The government
itself was not to
be the only focus of terrorist tactics. The
Hunchaks wanted to annihilate the most
dangerous of the
Armenian and Turkish individuals who were
then working for the government as well as
to destroy all
spies and informers. To assist them in
carrying out all of these terror acts, the
party was to organize an
exclusive branch specifically devoted
to performing acts of terrorism. The most
opportune time to institute
the general rebellion for carrying
out immediate objectives was when Turkey was
engaged in war. "10
K. S. Papazian wrote of the Dashnak
Society: "The
purpose of the A. R. Federation (Dashnak) is
to achieve political and economic freedom
in Turkish Armenia, by means of
rebellion ... terrorism has, from the first,
been adopted by the
Dashnak Committee of the Caucasus, as
a policy or a method for achieving its ends.
Under the heading
"means" in their program adopted in 1892, we
read as follows: The Armenian Revolutionary
Federation (Dashnak), in order to
achieve its purpose through rebellion,
organizes revolutionary groups.
Method no. 8 is as follows: To wage
fight, and to subject to terrorism the
Government officials, the
traitors, ... Method no. 11 is: To
subject the government institutions to
destruction and pillage ."11
One of the Dashnak founders and
ideologists, Dr. Jean Loris-Melikoff wrote
that: "The
truth is that the party (Dashnak Committee)
was ruled by an oligarchy, for whom the
particular interests of the party came
before the interests of the people and
nation.. They (the Dashnaks)
made collections among the
bourgeoisie and the great
merchants. At the end, when these
means were
exhausted, they resorted to terrorism, after
the teachings of the Russian revolutionaries
that the end
justifies the means"
The same policy was described by the Dashnak
ideologist Varandian, in History
of the Dashnakzoutune (Paris, 1932).
Thus as Armenian writers themselves
have freely admitted, the goal of their
revolutionary societies was to stir
revolution, and their method was terror.
They lost no time
in putting their programs into operation,
stirring a number of revolt efforts within
a short time, with the Hunches taking
the lead at first, and then the Dashnaks
following, planning and organizing
their efforts outside the Ottoman Empire
before carrying
them out within the boundaries of the
Ottoman lands.The first revolt came at
Erzurum in 1890. It was followed by the
Kumkapi riots
in Istanbul the same year, and then risings
in Kayseri, Yozgat, Corum and Merzifon in
1892 -1893, in Sasun in 1894, the
Zeytun revolt and the Armenian raid on the
Sublime Porte in
1895, the Van revolt and occupation of the
Ottoman Bank in Istanbul in 1896,
the Second Sasun revolt in 1903, the
attempted assassination of Sultan Abdulhamid
II in 1905, and
the Adana revolt in 1909. All these revolts
and riots were presented by
the Armenian revolutionary societies
in Europe and America as the killing of
Armenians by
Turks, and with this sort of propaganda
message they stirred considerable emotion
among Christian peoples. The
missionaries and consular representatives
sent by the Powers
to Anatolia played major roles in spreading
this propaganda in the western
press, thus carrying out the aims of
the western powers to turn public opinion
against Muslims
and Turks to gain the necessary support to
break up the Ottoman Empire.
There were many honest western
diplomatic and consular representatives who
reported what actually was happening,
that it was the Armenian revolutionary
societies that
were doing the revolting and slaughtering
and massacring to secure European
intervention in their behalf.
In 1876, the British Ambassador in
Istanbul reported that the Armenian
Patriarch had said to him:
"If revolution is necessary to attract the
attention and intervention of Europe, it
would not be hard
to do so. "13 On
28 March 1894 the British Ambassador in
Istanbul, Currie reported to the
Foreign Office:
"The aim of the Armenian
revolutionaries is to stir disturbances, to
get the Ottomans to react to
violence, and thus get the foreign
Powers to intervene."
On 28 January 1895 the British Consul in
Erzurum, Graves reported to the
British Ambassador in Istanbul:
"The aims of the revolutionary committees
are to stir up general discontent and to get
the Turkish government and people to react
with violence, thus attracting the attention
of the foreign powers
to the imagined sufferings of the
Armenian people, and getting them to act to
correct the situation.''
Graves also told New York Herald reporter
Sydney Whitman that:
"If no Armenian revolutionary had
come to this country, if they had not
stirred Armenian
revolution, would these clashes have
occurred ", answering "Of course not. I
doubt if a single Armenianwould have been
killed.”
The British Vice-Consul Williams wrote from
Van on 4 March 1896:
"The Dashnaks and Hunchaks have
terrorized their own countrymen, they have
stirred up the
Muslim people with their thefts and
insanities, and have paralyzed all efforts
made to carry out
reforms; all the events that have taken
place in Anatolia are the responsibility of
the crimes committed by
the Armenian revolutionary
committees.”
British Consul General in Adana, Doughty
Wily, wrote in 1909:
"The Armenians are working to secure
foreign intervention.”
Russian Consul General in Bitlis and Van,
General Mayewski, reported in 1912:
"In 1895 and 1896 the Armenian
revolutionary committees created such
suspicion between
the Armenians and the native population that
it became impossible to implement any sort
of reform in these
districts. The Armenian priests paid no
attention to religious education, but
instead
concentrated on spreading nationalist ideas,
which were affixed to the walls of
monasteries, and in
place of performing their religious
duties they concentrated on stirring
Christian enmity against
Muslims. The revolts that took place
in many provinces of Turkey during 1895 and
1896 were caused
neither by any great poverty among the
Armenian villages nor because of Muslim
attacks against them.
In fact these villagers were
considerably richer and more prosperous than
their neighbors. Rather, the
Armenian revolts came from three
causes:
1. Their increasing maturity in political
subjects;
2. The spread of ideas of nationality,
liberation, and independence within the
Armeniancommunity;
3. Support of these ideas by the western
governments, and their encouragement through
the efforts of the
Armenian priests."19 In another report in
December 1912, Mayewski wrote that:
"The Dashnak revolutionary society is
working to stir up a situation in which
Muslims and
Armenians will attack each other, and to
thus pave the way for Russian intervention.
"
Finally, the Dashnak ideologue Varandian
admits that the society "wanted to assure
European intervention," while
Papazian stated that "the aims of their
revolts was to assure that the
European powers would mix into
Ottoman internal affairs" At each of their
armed revolts the
Armenian terrorist committees have always
propagated that European intervention
would immediately follow. Even some
of the committee members believed in this
propaganda. In fact, during the
occupation of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul
the Armenian
terrorist Armen Aknomi committed suicide
after having waited in desperation
the arrival of the British fleet. It
can be seen thus that the basis for the
Armenian revolts
was not poverty, nor was it oppression or
the desire for reform; rather, it was
simply the result of a joint effort
on the part of the Armenian revolutionary
committees and the
Armenian church, in conjunction with the
Western Powers and Russia, to
provide the basis to break up the
Ottoman Empire. In
reaction to these revolts, the Ottomans did
what other states did in such
circumstances, sending armed forces
against the rebels to restore order, and for
the
most part succeeding quickly since very few
of the Armenian populace supported or
helped the rebels or the
revolutionary societies. However for the
press and public of
Europe, stirred by tales spread by
the missionaries and the revolutionary
societies
themselves, every Ottoman restoration of
order was automatically considered a
"massacre" of Christians, with the
thousands of slaughtered Muslims being
ignored and
Christian claims against Muslims
automatically accepted. In many cases, the
European states not only intervened to
prevent the Ottomans from restoring order,
but also secured
the release of many captured terrorists,
including those involved in the
Zeytun revolt, the occupation of the
Ottoman Bank, and the attempted
assassination of
Sultan Abdulhamid. While most of these were
expelled from the Ottoman Empire,
with the cooperation of their
European sponsors, it did not take long for
them to secure
forged passports and other documents and to
return to Ottoman territory to
resume their terrorist activities.
Whatever were the claims of the Armenian
revolutionary societies and whatever
the ambitions of the imperial powers of
Europe, there was
one major fact which they simply could not
ignore. The Armenians comprised
a very small minority of the
population in the territories being claimed
in their name,
namely the six eastern districts claimed as
"historic Armenia" (Erzurum, Bitlis, Van,
Elaziz, Diyarbakir
and Sivas), the two provinces claimed to
comprise "Armenian Cilicia" (Aleppo
and Adana) and finally Trabzon which
was later claimed to have an outlet to the
Black Sea coast. Even the French Yellow
Book, which among western sources made the
largest Armenian
population claims, still showed them in a
sizeable minority:
Total Gregorian
Armenian Armenian Percent
Population
Population of Total Population
tablo
Erzurum 645,702
134,967 20.90
Bitlis 398,625
131,390 32.96
Van 430,000 80,798 18.79
Elaziz 578,814
69,718 12.04
Diyarbakir 471,462 79,129 16.78
Sivas 1,086,015 170,433 15.68
Adana 403,539 97,450 24.14
Aleppo 995,758 37,999 3.81
Trabzon 1,047,700 47,200 4.50
Thus even by these extreme claims, the
Armenians still constituted no more than
one third of the provinces'
population. According to the Encyclopedia
Britannica of
1910, the Armenians were only 15 percent of
the area's population as a whole, making it
very unlikely that they could in fact
achieve independence in any part of the
Ottoman Empire
without the massive foreign assistance that
would have been required to push
out the Turkish majorities and
replace them with Armenian emigrants.
Russia in fact was only using the Armenians
for its own ends. It had no real
intention of establishing Armenian
independence, either within its own
dominions or
in Ottoman territory. Almost as soon as the
Russians took over the Caucasus, they
adopted a policy of Russifying the
Armenians as well as establishing their own
control over the
Armenian Gregorian church in their
territory. By virtue of the Polijenia Law
of 1836, the powers and duties of the
Catholicos of Etchmiadzin were restricted,
while his
appointment was to be made by the Czar. In
1882 all Armenian newspapers and
schools in the Russian Empire were
closed, and in 1903 the state took direct
control of all the
financial resources of the Armenian Church
as well as Armenian establishments
and schools. At the same time Russian
Foreign Minister
Lobanov-Rostowsky adopted his famous goal of
"An Armenia without Armenians",
a slogan which has been deliberately
attributed to the Ottoman administration by
some Armenian
propagandists and writers in recent years.
Whatever the reason, Russian
oppression of the Armenians was
severe. The Armenian historian Vartanian
relates in his
History of the Armenian Movement that
"Ottoman Armenia was completely free in its
traditions, religion, culture and language
in comparison to Russian Armenia under the
Czars." Edgar
Granville writes, "The Ottoman Empire was
the Armenians' only shelter against Russian
oppression." That
Russian intentions were to use the Armenians
to annex Eastern Anatolia
and not to create an independent
Armenia is shown by what happened during
World War I. In
the secret agreements made among the Entente
powers to divide the Ottoman
Empire, the territory which the
Russians had promised to the Armenians as an
autonomous or independent territory
was summarily divided between Russia and
France without any mention of the
Armenians, while the Czar replied to the
protests of the
Catholicos of Etchmiadzin only that "Russia
has no Armenian problem." The Armenian
writer Borian thus concludes:
"Czarist Russia at no time wanted to
assure Armenian autonomy. For this reason
one must consider
the Armenians who were working for Armenian
autonomy as no more than agents of the
Czar to attach Eastern Anatolia to Russia."
The Russians thus have deceived the
Armenians for years; and as a result
the Armenians have been left with
nothing more than an empty dream.
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