Genocide

Recommended Reading

Week 3a

2
O
The Ottoman Empire
and the Armenian Question
O

The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

hree main reasons brought about the Armenian question at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of
the twentieth century. One was the national Armenian awakening 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 (vilayeti) of the Armenian Plateau: Erzurum, Sivas, Bitlis, Kharput
(Harput, Mamuret-ul-Aziz), Van, and Diarbekir, known collectively 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.
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The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied

About 250,000 Armenians resided in the capital, Istanbul.
Prominent among them were bankers, merchants, public servants, and architects. During the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries the Armenianslike the Jewsplayed important
parts in international commerce as real estate brokers, translators 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 peacefully coexisted (though previous eras were not incident-free
of anti-Armenian manifestations). Now, however, the Arme34

The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

nians became subjected to frequent attacks by their Muslim
neighbors. The tension was not occasioned by the religious dissimilarity, 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 Armenians 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.

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The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied

National Awakening
During the latter decades in the nineteenth century, with the
encouragement of the European powers, a national awakening 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 activity, based on ideas and hopes for autonomy and equal rights,
had cohered. This was not necessarily an independence movement. The strenuous condition and deteriorating status of the
Ottoman Empire, which was dubbed The Sick Man upon the
Bosphorus, enhanced these hopes. Likewise, the independence 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
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The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

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 corresponding 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 referent 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.

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The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied

The Armenians had hoped that the treaty would assist in improving 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 conclusions 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 intervention on their behalf, the Armenians engaged in a well-planned
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The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

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 populations. 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 Armenians 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.

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The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied

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 unidentified, 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 perpetrators 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 unequivocal 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.
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The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

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 culminated 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 Armenians
he 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 especially 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 establish 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

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The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied

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 minority 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.

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The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

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 political 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 disparity 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 amplification of the conflict was the outcome of divergent perspectives.
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The Armenian Genocide: Forgotten and Denied

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 experiencing 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 presenting 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 separatist 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 Bulgarians, 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
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The Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Question

strengthening of Russiawho was perceived as a competitor
as 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 majority 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 hostility; 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.

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