The Armenians : The Struggle To Survive
Maral Der Ohanesian's Response To Dr. Laciner
Dear Dr. Laciner,
When someone believes in a “Just Cause,” he won’t spare anything to advocate that “Just Cause.” So, when you say that “Holdwater” aka Mickey Mouse, whoever he is, “… kindly asked us not to mention his original name due to the threats from Armenian radicals,” proves my point that he is a “Coward” and leaves us to doubt his faithfulness and true belief in the cause that he’s advocating!
"An advocate is not supposed to be a coward."
[Allen Ruhangataremwa]
As you said, it’s your call to decide what you publish. The JTW readers now know how badly you need help, when you said that you would be willing to “… publish even Micky Mouse’s letters, if his/her letters says something serious about Armenian Issue or any others issues” as a commentary, not even as a letter to the editor.
I do appreciate your good will and hopes toward reconciliation as you said “… I have great hopes, and I know there are some Armenians there who will appreciate my goodwill and works in future,” but I will need to remind you that there can not be any reconciliation on the basis of denial; Turkey needs to reconcile with its past before aiming at reconciliation with the Armenians.
Coming to your letter, I just wanted to quickly comment on a few things before I proceed with my response.
* I want to point out the fact that, the alternate use of the words Ottoman/Turkish and Ottoman Empire/Turkey is not something that I or any other Armenian had started. If you return to almost all the sources, whether they were official archival documentation, or historians’ research of the 19th century and later, you’ll find that this alternate use of words was very common. In fact, you yourself had used it in the same letter you wrote to me saying that “But millions of Turkish citizens were killed or wounded during the First World War.” Anyway, I appreciate your honesty in declaring that you “do not try to escape any responsibility for the Ottoman past.”
* Your insistence on using the word “Relocation” instead of “Deportation” is really pointless, especially when you consider the Turkish equivalent of it “tehcir” that you mentioned. “tehcir” is an Arabic originated word, which EXACTLY means deportation, or forced immigration “Hicra,” which exactly means as you said “The word ‘deportation’ is described by the Cambridge Dictionary as “ forcing (a person) to leave a country because they have no legal right to be there or because they have broken the law”. Elsewhere in the same letter your accepted that it was kind of immigration, saying “most of them [the Armenians] safely immigrated from the war region.” Although it was a forced one! In addition, the word “Deportation” is used by international historians and Genocide scholars in describing the law according to which Ottoman Armenians were driven through the desert in “Caravans of death.” [i] even used by many Turkish writers [ii] well as some notable Armenian Genocide denialists such as, for example, Justin McCarthy [iii] Stanford Shaw [iv] . So I don’t see any point in arguing about that, unless you are reiterating the Turkish Official Version of History ( Resmi Tarih)!
* You tried to justify the deportation of the Ottoman Armenians by considering it as a defensive measure, saying that “ The Government took an administrative measurement to protect its armies against the Russian-Armenian attacks,” adding, “They [Ittihad Government] had do something and they decided to relocate the Armenians near the war theatre.” You claimed that Ottoman Armenians were deported from “War Theater” ONLY, to protect the Ottoman armies from the attacks (!) of Armenians in that area, although that would not justify the deportation of harmless, innocent children, women and old men which make no sense in light of what you are claiming.
Then you wrote “Of course there were loyal Armenians too. Armenians in Istanbul and in many other Western provinces mainly did not join the uprisings.” And finally, affected by the Turkish propaganda “Myths” you came up with the conclusion that “That’s why not all of the Armenian population was included to the Relocation Campaign.”
-Your claim is not true and is a fabrication. There are hundreds of official archival documents and eyewitness accounts refuting that myth. In addition, even the Turkish State Archives refute those tall stories in a book published in Ankara in 1995 [v] , which declassified several Ottoman documents. The Turkish government had to admit the fact that Ottoman Armenians were deported not only from War Theater, but from all over the Ottoman Empire. These recently declassified Ottoman documents showed that, Armenians were deported from Adana, Ankara, Aydin, Bolu, Bitlis, Bursa, Canik, Canakkale, Diyarbakir, Edirne, Eskishehir, Erzurum, Izmit, Kastamonu, Kayseri, Karahisar, Konya, Kütahya, Elazig, Maras, Nigde, Samsun, Sivas and Trabzon.
These towns were hardly in the east, and nowhere near the “War Theater,” as you claimed. This clearly shows that deportation was carried out on the whole territory of Anatolia, not only from the War Theater, and not because of a defensive measure! So the question is: why did the government “really” deport the entire Ottoman Armenian population?
* You repeatedly base your claims on the supposed actions of the Ottoman Armenians “after the First World War.”
-Excuse me, but what does anything having happened “After The First World War” (whether true or not) has to do with your attempt to justify the Armenian Genocide? Mind you that the perpetrators had successfully reached their goal in exterminating and uprooting the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire two years before the end of The First World War. How does that justify their crime?
* If you had carefully read my previous letter, to which you were responding, you would’ve seen that I had carefully pointed out that:
“Genocide deniers and revisionists, intentionally handle this issue with ambiguity, taking advantage of most people’s ignorance about historical and geographical facts, by just saying that Armenians joined the Russian army, but which Armenians? It was the Russian citizen Armenians. That’s what they don’t say." [vi]
Yet you repeated for at least four times, that 200,000 Armenians joined the Russian army or the Allies, without supporting this ambiguous statement by any evidence other than the so-called “secret” documents that the charlatan Ata?v had somehow found recently, and again, exactly as I said, without mentioning which Armenians they were! I challenge Ata?v to prove his claims and show us a copy of that so-called document (if it really exists), that proves (?) that 200,000 “Ottoman Armenians” had joined the Russian army. And please don’t make the hilarious excuse for not showing the document (as the one that Ata?v was offering for not showing it), saying that if he shows the document, Armenians might destroy it. If there really is such a document, there has to be a “replica,” and the “Original” of which will have to be found in the official archive of the country he found it in, therefore, it will be perfectly safe from destruction. Unless Ata?v was suggesting that the Armenians will invade that State Archive building to destroy the so-called document! It seems that your Dr. is too affected by adventure movies. Until Ata?v publishes that so-called document, no one can base his argument on it. If you are seeking to find the truth really, you will want to see it for yourself too!
* It’s ironic, that the one and ONLY reference you gave me throughout our entire discussions during the past few months, was a reference for a “picture” and it was from an Armenian book!
A picture of armed Armenians you said! Well, why is that so strange for you? Didn’t you know that Armenians had joined the Ottoman army fighting in the Balkan Wars 1912-1913? Didn’t you know that the Armenians had joined the Ottoman army in the First World War? How did you think that Armenian soldiers will look like? Did you think that they were fighting those wars for the Ottoman fatherland with wooden sticks?! Please, make sense!
Last time anyone have used a picture like that as an evidence for anything, as the Turkish media had reported, was a lady who identified herself as a Turkish Lobbyist in America [her name I won’t mention to save her the embarrassment] in the Istanbul conference “Ottoman Armenians during the Demise of the Empire” last September, dismissing her claims the chairman of the session Ahmet Insel simply answered her: “Hanimefendi, stop ridiculing yourself”!
And if you still insist on using pictures as evidence, let me share with you the phototypographic collections that were took by WWI officers who witnessed the Armenian Genocide, and tried to record a few aspects of that calamity. Here you’ll find some of them,
- Well first, how dare you accuse my orphaned children grandparents, who lost their entire families in the Genocide of the Armenians during WWI, with disloyalty!! And again, the intact Armenian population of Istanbul and other Western provinces is nothing but propaganda fabrication Myth.
* Last but not least, I want to show my appreciation for your grandmother’s honest testimony, which you enclosed in your letter saying “Most of the Armenians were protected by their Muslim neighbors from such attacks. These gangs not only attacked the Armenians but also the Muslim families. My grandma clearly calls that period, and she said many Turkish were also murdered by these criminals and the Government could do nothing,” although it would be more accurate to say that “the government did do nothing to stop them.”
If that testimony mean anything, it would only show how desperately the Turkish government wanted to get rid of all Armenians of the Ottoman Empire even if that required the order of terrifying, killing and burning down houses of righteous Muslims who hided their Armenian neighbors and friends. Such orders were verified during the proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunals 1919-1920; page 7 of the Indictment reads:
The telegram bearing the signature of Third Army Commander Mahmut Kamil proclaims]: 'any Muslim who protects an Armenian will be hanged in front of his house which will also be burned down. If the culprit is an official he will be dismissed and court-martialed. If those who deem it worthwhile to provide protection are military officials they will be severed from the military and will be handed over to the above mentioned Court Martial to be tried before it'.” [vii]
The Armenians: The Struggle to Survive
It seems to me that you have no idea on what you are talking about! Or if you actually do, I would have to say that you are today in the 21st century still living with the mentality of the 19th century, and the mentality of Abdul Hamit still prevails in Turkey. Taking issues out of their context, and affected by some of the Turkish denialist propaganda websites, you told us a totally reference and evidence lacking tall tails about different issues including the interesting, baseless story about Patriarch Nerses Varjabedian, and supposedly the Russian Tsar meeting in the latter’s “tent” (!), and based on that, you decided that “3 March 1878 was turning point in Armenians’ loyalty to the Ottomans…”
But what had happened in 3 March 1878?
Allow me, to put you and the JTW readers, back in context, and let’s all together examine, with historical well documented facts, the circumstances and the complications of that era.
The Abortive Reforms and the so-called ‘Tanzimat’ Era.
According to the Islamic Legal Pact that’s originated from the Islam’s Holy Book (The Koran), the Armenians, as well as all other non-Muslim minorities of the Ottoman Empire, were considered to be subjugated Zimmis. According to Islamic Legal Pact, the zimmis should be guaranteed protection and clemency, when they are willing to pay tributes “djizah”, and “they be reduced low” (chapter 9, verse 29). According to that the zimmis were treated with social degradations. Two well known Islamic scholars Gibb and Bowen gave some examples of those social degradations:
“The zimmis are expected to wear distinctive clothes so that they may be differentiated from the Muslims, the “true believers.” They are forbidden to ride horses or to bear arms. Their churches may be converted into mosques and they are not allowed to build new ones. At best they may be permitted to undertake repairs of those churches that have fallen into disrepair. A zimmi may not marry a Muslim woman but conversely, a Muslim man may marry a zimmi woman. A Muslim murderer of a zimmi is exempt from the death penalty.” [viii]
So, Armenians were considered worthless second-class citizens in the Ottoman Empire, James Creagh, a former captain of the First Royals in his book published 1880, provided additional and more specific examples about the social degradations in the Ottoman Empire, and their impact on the affected people; for example, the non-Muslim of the Ottoman Empire had to wear “a very peculiar costume, resembling that of females.” Since they were not permitted to ride horses, they were “forced to ride about on mules or donkeys, which they were even compelled to mount in the attitude of women.” They were not allowed to use bells. “The size of their houses or churches was regulated by law to diminutive standard.” They were forced to “treat the poorest or meanest Mussulman whom they might chance to meet, with every demonstration of deference and respect.” The net result of this kind of treatment involved a level of coerciveness that “soon made Christians servile, cowardly, deceitful, contemptible and even ridiculous.” [ix]
In addition to all above discriminative aspect, the two more grave ones were, first, the denial of the right to carry arms and join the military; which made the Armenians vulnerable to the Kurdish and Turkish tribal attacks, and the consequence of which was assessed by James Creagh in 1880, who noted that as a result of this deliberate denial of the right to bear arms and to be trained militarily in the armed forces as citizens of the Ottoman state, the Armenians became “cowardly and wretched,” and inept to resist or to mount countermeasures against the Kurds. [x]
The second grave discriminating aspect involved legal issues, in particular the inadmissibility of Christian evidence against that of Muslims in the court of law; even after the introduction of 1839 and 1856 Tanzimat reforms, which were intended to equalize justice in civil courts, the old practice remained intact with one of British counsels characterizing those reforms as “nominal.” The following report in 1864 by a British vice-counsel gives a summarized idea about the situation:
“The great test of equality of Christian and Mussulman before the law, the admission of Christian evidence, signally fails before the experience of the last ten years. Christian evidence is utterly rejected in the lower criminal courts, and only received in the higher when corroborated by a Mussulman … A Mussulman’s simple allegation, unbacked by evidence, will upset the best founded and most incontrovertible claim.” [xi]
Thus, any claims against any Christian, that mainly meant that it is to be considered as the complete truth, the latter was to be locked up in jail, and tortured until he confess the crime whether he did it or not. In a massive volume, Turkish author Taner Akcam examined the religious-cultural context within which the propensity for cruelty and torture developed to be as an integral part of the Turkish justice system in general, and justice with respect to non-Muslims, especially the Armenians. [xii]
In light of all above circumstances, the Armenians, as well as all other ethnic and non-Muslim minorities in the Empire sought administrative reforms. With so many European diplomats, it was not possible for the Ottoman authorities to hide those entire grievances and petitions, and as the Ottoman authorities wished to join the Concert of Europe, they tried to look innovated and developed in the eyes of the European Powers, knowing that the equality of all subjects in front of the law was the touchstone for that development as far as those Powers concerned, they began an era of reforms or Tanzimat (1830 – 1876).
Compelled by the Great Powers (European Powers) in 1839 (in Rose Bower [Gulkhane]) and again in 1856 declarations of the equality of all the Sultan’s subjects were made. However, in practice, these reforms were obstructed. [xiii]
England and France, supported by Austrian diplomatic pressure, fought the “Crimean War” supporting Turkey (Ottoman Empire), to deny Russia a victory against the Turks who “enthusiastically” had declared war against Russia in October 1853, bust subsequently were facing the danger of defeat, and all that was implied by it. As the Allies managed to subdue Russia, they wrested from the Turks the February 1856 Reform Edict, “repeating” the 1839 guarantees to Christian subjects of “security of life, honor and property.”
With those Reform Edicts (of 1839, 1856) and up to the 1876 First Ottoman Constitution declaration and beyond, came repeatedly the promise of equality of all subjects of the Sultan, yet the fact remained that “No genuine equality was ever attained.” [xiv]
In the almost similar circumstances, came the declaration of the 1876 Constitution, after the 1876 massacres against the Bulgarians, and Russia’s threat of war. After the failure of the December 1876 Constantinople Conference, and the Ottoman government’s resistance to the European Powers’ suggestions, the Constitution promulgated (with repeated promise of equality) to mollify the European Powers, and the public opinion, and to avoid the war that was apparently approaching.
French Orientalist, and Armenian Genocide denialist Bernard Lewis epitomizes those repeated Reform Edicts, and how they were used as a ploy to gain European Powers’ quiescence as follows:
“ … Rose Bower, of 1839, came soon after the disastrous defeat of the Ottoman army at Nezib, when European support was needed against the victorious Muhammad Ali of Egypt; the Imperial Rescript of 1856 had followed immediately on the Crimean War, when Western goodwill was required in securing a peace treaty favorable to Turkey; and now … the proclamation of a liberal constitution [of 1876] were perfectly timed to circumvent plans for intervention and protection, and to rally Western support in the war with Russia that was looming ahead….The timing of the reforms, and the dramatic manner of their presentation, were no doubt influenced by the desire to secure political advantage from them.” [xv]
The Futility of Armenian Efforts for Administrative Remedies.
In a period of twenty years up to 1870, Armenian Patriarchs, in their capacity as recognized heads of the Armenian millet, had submitted to the Ottoman government 537 memoranda (takrir) detailing the depredations in the provinces involving fraud by officials, abductions, forcible conversions, brigandage, murder, denial of religious practices, including funeral and burial rites, and confiscatory taxes. This aggregated effort culminated in a major report in the form of a Memorandum of Grievances that was prepared by an eight-member Special Commission of Inquiry in 1870. The Memorandum was debated in Armenian National Assembly in 22 October 1871, and it was intended to be sent to the Sultan and his government. Before that report was compiled, however, Khrimian (the Armenian Patriarch of Turkey at that time) sent a circular in 4 June 1871, along with questions to the Dioceses in the provinces seeking specific data on depredations and governmental corruption, with the following key instruction: “Leave out anything and everything which is false or inaccurate. You are to report to us only those facts the certainty and authenticity of which you personally examined and have verified.” [xvi]
The Memorandum of Grievances that finally emerged had four parts and addressed such issues as (1) tax abuses; (2) corruption of governmental officials; (3) the venality of Judiciary, primarily arising out of the inadmissibility of Armenian testimony in courts; and (4) special types of depredations.
The patriarchate, for two years, repeatedly tried to get the Porte (the seat of the Ottoman Government) to act upon the Memorandum, and when the Constantinople Conference of the Ambassadors of the Powers had convened in December 1876, still no action had been forthcoming. By 17 September 1876 a new memorandum was submitted, which was but a continuation of the first in terms of complaints received from the provinces since April 1872. In 24 August 1876 the new patriarch, Nerses Varjabedian, sent a special memorandum to the Porte focusing exclusively on large-scale expropriations of agricultural land tracts belonging to Armenian peasants who “comprise the overwhelming part of the Armenian people.” Dismissing it as non-specific and vague, the Porte directed the patriarch to name names, places, and concrete facts. The ensuing statistical tables promoted the Porte to create a commission to inquire into the problem. Having done so, the commission submitted its report and disbanded itself without achieving any concrete results. [xvii] In consequence life continued to harden each day, for the rural Armenian peasants who formed the vast majority of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire, and those were described as “the mass of Ottoman Armenians remained loyal subjects” [xviii] to the Sultan and the Empire.
The abortiveness and insincerity of the so-called Reform Edicts were evident, and they were described by the academics of that time as “pseudo-reforms,”[xix] also described by Ottoman officials, as Koca Mustafa Re?id who was a Grand Vizier for six times in the period of 1846-1858, described those reform edicts as containing “misleading definitions of meanings,” and the purpose of which was “to fool” the Europeans (igfal için konulmu?), and he reportedly cast aspersions on the ideas of “complete emancipation” and “total equality” to be granted to non-Muslim subjects [xx] .
Despite reforms on paper, most institutions which could mediate between the Sultan and his subjects “had been abrogated or enfeebled, leaving the sovereign power with nothing but the paper shackles of its own edicts to restrain it.” [xxi] And ultimately the abolishment of the Ottoman newly proclaimed Constitution, which didn’t last more than two years, in 1878 by Sultan Abdul Hamit II.
In The Aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War 1877-78
After the massacre of the Bulgarians 1876, and the failure of the Constantinople Conference in December 1876, The Russo-Turkish War broke in 24 April 1877. Upon a request from Sultan Abdul Hamit (who had became the Sultan only six months earlier) who urged the Armenians to form volunteer units to fight against Russia, in complying with this request Patriarch Nerses Varjabedian, had his circular read in all Armenian churches, inviting young Armenians to enroll in such units so that “Muslims and Christians could jointly defend the common fatherland.” For this support, the Patriarch was decorated by Sultan Abdul Hamit with the “Osmaniya” Medal First Class.[xxii] Yet at the very same time, the Turkish soldiers, Kurdish and Circassian brigands were devastating the heavily populated Armenian towns and villages in an around the theater of military operations.
In 1878 the victorious Russian armies had advanced into the territory of the Ottoman Empire and seized control or most of the Turkish Armenia, so the Ottomans, affected by this defeat, sought a peace treaty and started negotiating the six European Powers, the Armenian community (millet) leaders sent a delegation to ask for the reforms in the Armenian provinces, and no the Patriarch Nerses did not attend its sessions of neither San Stefano treaty nor the Treaty of Berlin, he evidently didn’t participate himself, and boldly refused to comply with Sultan Abdul Hamit II request to recall the Armenian delegation from the peace conference, and he told the Sultan’s emissaries: “Go and tell the Sultan that I myself sent these delegates to the Congress to secure remedies for the woes of my communities, and I will not recall them even if he means to hang me at the door of the patriarchate as the Greek Patriarch was hanged half a century ago.” [xxiii]
By March 3rd 1878 the Treaty of San Stefano was concluded[xxiv] and already signed, granting “Independence” to Serbia, Montenegro, and Rumania and autonomy to a Bulgarian state. No such provision was either sought or executed for Armenians. On the contrary, the Russians agreed to their armies from almost all Turkish Armenia, while annexing the boarder districts of Batum, Ardahan, Kars, Alashkert, and Bayazid (which were taken from her in 1856). [xxv] Article 16 of the Treaty of San Stefano reads as follows:
“As the evacuation by the Russian troops of the territory which they ocupy in Armenia, and which is to resorted to Turkey, might give rise to conflicts and complications detrimental to the maintenance of good relations between the two countries, the Sublime Porte [Ottoman government] undertakes to carry out into effect, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by the local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security from Kurds and Circassians.” [xxvi]
Many facts can be concluded from the text of the Article 16 of the Treaty of San Stefano above:
1) That the Armenians were demanding reforms not separation nor independence, those reforms would have improved the life of Armenians as well as the Turks and Kurds in the Armenian provinces.
2) “Without any further delay” points out the stalling of the Ottoman government in carrying out the reforms that was promised repeatedly since 1839, and yet to be accomplished.
3) That the Armenians were living in an insecure environment, and constantly attacked by the Kurds and the Circassians, and they had no ability to defend themselves against it.
4) That Russian General M.T. Loris-Melikov was to stand firm in Erzerum until this condition was met.
Not satisfied with the situation, Great Britain’s Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and specially Foreign Secretary Robert Salisbury believed that the interests of the British Empire were jeopardized by the treaty, they started pushing and intimidating Russia. The outcome was the convening of a European Congress in Berlin.
During the negotiations, special meetings were held, one of them, was “the Convention of 4th June 1878, Between England and Turkey, stipulates that in return of the engagement undertaken by the former [England] of these Powers to defend the Asiatic territories of the Sultan, the latter [the Ottoman Empire] … consents to England occupying and administering the island of Cyprus.” [xxvii]
So, Lord Salisbury proposed an article, stipulating that the immediate withdrawal of the Russian armies from Turkish Armenia [Armenian provinces], and that the Sultan Abdul Hamit would simply pledge to take it upon himself to implement the necessary reforms and to report to the European Powers collectively about the progress, that article was accepted, without any discussion, by the Congress of Berlin[xxviii] , and in July 1878 the Ottoman Empire and the European Powers, signed the Treaty of Berlin, and the Article 61 (that was supplanting Article 16 of San Stefano) reads as follows:
“The Sublime Porte engages to carry out into effect, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by the local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security from Kurds and Circassians. It will make known periodically the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, who will superintend their application.”[xxix]
So, the security of the Armenians and the implication of the reforms were depended on the goodwill of Abdul Hamit II, and he was only to report the progress to the Powers!! As a payment for this services rendered to the Sultan, Great Britain was granted the strategic island of Cyprus, and Austria-Hungary gained the right to administer Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been taken back from now independent Serbia[xxx].
In the eastern provinces, meanwhile, horrified Armenian peasants witnessed the evacuation of the Russian army. In spite of that, the Armenian community leaders didn’t loose hope and declared that they still had faith in the Ottoman government and its introduction of the necessary reforms. Armenian Patriarch Nerses Varjabedian swore fidelity to the Sultan and emphasized that efforts to overcome misfortunes would be made within the established legal framework of the Ottoman homeland. At a time when several of the Balkan nationalities had won independence, the Armenians still shunned talk of separatism. [xxxi]
Nearly twelve years after that, in 1891, a legist and an International law expert Rolin-Jaquemeyns, notice the naivety of the Patriarch Nerses’s high hopes and his faith in the Ottoman government’s implementations of the necessary reforms, he wrote
“Thus spoke the Patriarch Nerses upwards twelve years ago. Have events justified the enthusiastic hopes of the venerable priest? Are the lives, honor, and property of the Armenian populations safer now than before 1878? Are the unarmed peasants less exposed to the depredations of the hordes which surround them? Is justice better administered or government less tyrannical?” [xxxii]
After signing the peace treaties, and as he secured the best deal he can make, and pledged to carry out the necessary reforms in the Armenian provinces, despotic Abdul Hamit II, not only didn’t live up to his promise, but started showing his real intentions; he adopted a fiercer policy of a collective punishment rejecting outright even any lip-service to the reform programs of his predecessors (which he crushed by abolishing the constitution), and reforms that he promised Great Powers that he will install all over the empire and for all it’s peoples, declaring: “I made a mistake when I wished to imitate my father, abdulmecit, who sought to reform by persuasion and by liberal institutions. I shall follow the footsteps of my grandfather, Sultan Mahmut. Like him, I now understand that it is only by force that one can move people with whose protection God has entrusted me.” [xxxiii]
Thus Abdul Hamit II (1876-1909) implemented a highly centralized, autocratic and tyrannical form of control of the Ottoman Empire, that was despised by all Muslim and non-Muslim people of the empire. With this reactionary mentality, Abdul Hamit regarded the mere demand of Armenian community (millet) that the promised reforms (to which he pledged in the peace treaties) be implemented as a sign that the Armenians were traitors, to the tyrant the very presence of Armenian delegation in the peace conference to ask from administrative reforms was an act of treason, at a time several other nationalities of the Ottoman subjects gained their independence!
As a result, the Ottoman treatment of Armenians, became harsher , and instead of implication of the reforms that he had promised, Abdul Hamit II with the Kurdish tribesmen that he had organized and armed, spread havoc over the eastern provinces, especially the in the districts from which the Russian army had recently withdraw. Neither the petitions by the Armenian patriarch, nor the establishment of more European consular posts in the eastern provinces helped to improve the situation. For two years the European Powers, outwardly was cooperating under the joint responsibility of the Article 61, issued collective and identic notes reminding the Sublime Porte of its treaty obligation. After few years, the European Powers became too involved in the scramble for the empire elsewhere to worry further about the Armenians. They silently shelved the Armenian Question and turned away from Armenian afflictions, [xxxiv] leaving the Armenian people to their fate facing another calamity that Abdul Hamit II was planning for them, which lead them into another phase of their struggle to survive, which is The Hamidian Massacres 1894-96.
How “Loyal” Turks were To the Ottomans!!
The tyrannical and oppressive regime of Abdul Hamit II, incite not only Armenians to form a secret opposition groups, but all the other nationalities of the Ottoman Empire including the Turks themselves. In 1902 the First congress of Ottoman liberals, attended by Turkish, Armenian, Arab, Greek, Kurdish, Albanian, Circassian and Jewish intellectuals, convened in Paris and joined in demands for equal rights for all Ottoman subjects, local self-administration, and restoration of the Constitution, which had been suspended since 1877-78. [xxxv]
Even within the Ottoman Empire itself, Turkish opposition elements, especially among the junior military officers and the faculty of technical institutions, and the Military Medical Academy, merged into the secret Committee of Union and Progress (Ittihad ve Terakki Teshkilati), popularly referred to as the “Young Turks.” When the Young Turk army officers in Macedonia were about to be exposed by the sultan’s agents in 1908, they led their regiments toward Constantinople, and as the mutiny spread, demanded restoration of the constitution. Lacking loyal units to crush the coup, Abdul Hamit bowed to the ultimatum in 23 July 1908 and acquiesced in the formation of a constitutional monarchy[xxxvi].
In the immediate aftermath of the Young Turk revolution, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria asserted Full independence, Crete declared union with Greece, and Italy forcibly pursued claims to Tripoli and the Libyan hinterland, yet the Armenians remained loyal to the newly formed government and did not claim separatism like the other nationalities. Although some of the Turkish conservative elements tried to stage a countercoup, against the Young Turks, to restore the Sultan’s authority, that movement was suppressed and “in April 1909, the Third Army [which] was the home of a number of Unionists officers, including Enver, then military attaché in Berlin, and Mustafa Kemal, who founded the Turkish Republic in 1923. These men marched on the Capital and crushed the insurrection,” [xxxvii] and Abdul Hamit II was deposed and exiled. The abortive countercoup prompted the Young Turk cabinet to declare a state of siege and to suspend the normal constitutional rights, again!
I am really surprised with the level of your biases and prejudice. You accuse Armenians with disloyalty or even high treason because they asked for administrative reforms and you say “3 March 1878 was turning point in Armenians’ loyalty to the Ottomans…,” yet you applaud the Turkish officers who lead their rebelled armies to the Ottoman Empire’s Capital and overthrew the Sultan and seized control over the empire and lost her more land!!! Mind you that even the Modern Turkish Republic was formed in 1923 by some of those very same Young Turk rebels and revolutionaries. How can the Young Turk revolution and coup be a Heroic act, while an Armenian demand for reforms was ‘disloyalty’ in your consideration?!
Today, you one of the highly educated Turks, a holder of M.A. and Ph.D. Degrees in International Politics, Director of the ISRO, and JTW Chief Editor, speak to me with that very same mentality that Abdul Hamit II had “Two Centuries” ago!!
What did you leave to people with modest education, or no education at all? How can Turkey hope to join the rank of European nations with leaders, like you, still live in the mentality of the tyrannical, oppressive Sultan of the 19th century?! Haven’t you study anything about the simplest “Human Rights” in life, security and honor? How do you allow yourself with all this education that you have to decide that “
3 March 1878 was turning point in Armenians’ loyalty to the Ottomans”? I only hope that you didn’t know what you were talking about, or it would be so sad if someone as educated as yourself keeps living in this mentality today!
Regards,
Maral Der-OhanesianDer Ohaniesian’s Response To Dr. Laciner ‘s Armenian Letters 5
http://www.turkishweekly.net/comments.php?id=1838For me, your response in whole is out of our discussion subject, that is whether the event of 1915 was Genocide or not, I don’t want to deviate from our original discussion, so let’s stay focused here. Although you are yet to provide the evidences that I asked for to support whatever you have claimed in your previous letter.
There are only few points, I wanted to comment on, and they are as follows:
** The list of churches which, alone, constituted over 50% of your response to my letter, which was really unneeded as the link you provided was enough to make your point, contains not only churches, but schools, cemeteries and other institutions, which None of them except few are in the region of Eastern Turkey (The Historical Six Armenian Vilayets) the area in question, and if you had read my letter carefully you’d know that, it was the area about which I was speaking, and that list only concurred with what I was saying!!
In point “5. Blge - Anadolu Ermeni Kiliseleri (Churches in Anatolia),” you listed only 8 churches in the region where over 2000 Armenian churches and monasteries situated before 1914, according to the list made by Maghakia Ormanian by the order of the Ottoman Interior Ministry.
Well, even if you find that keeping 8 churches out of 2000 is a sign of “Turkish kindness,” I kindly ask you to publish the attached pictures of one of your listed churches (one of the 5 listed to contain a phone number), Surp Giragos Ermeni Kilisesi.
Surp Giragos was one of the largest cathedrals of the Christian world. Today, the ruins of the church serve the “Armenian community” of Diyarbakir, which consists of 10 families (less than 1% that was before 1915). I have attached the picture of Surp Giragos’ bell tower taken before 1914, and a more recent one. Do you know that this is violation of the Versailles treaty, according to which Turkey pledged to protect the Christian monuments?!
** While talking about Cemal, Enver and their friends, you wrote “
They made great mistakes, yet I know that they did not make genocide, because they were Turkish.”
What does that supposed to mean? Excuse me, but are you actually saying that they can’t commit Genocide “just because they are Turks”?!! Are Turks some sort of impeccable or divine race, that doesn’t make mistakes? Please, make sense!!
** One last thing, you kept repeating that “Armenians hate …” Allow me to ensure you, that Armenians do not hate you or any other individual Turk, Armenians have a “Cause,” and this is a Cause for Justice. Justice is what Armenians want, and seeking Justice is Armenians motivator, not hate. it is a grave error and underestimation to simply blame it on hate, and thus you can comfort your conscience for not at least giving the benefit of doubt to the Armenians' demands of Justice, and justify to yourself not trying to find the truth about what had happened, and so simply dismiss the case in whole and continue your life with clear conscience.
Regards,
Maral Der Ohanesian.
Notes :[i] Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh’s Memoirs, titled as such when he himself encountered a caravan of fleeing Armenians
[ii] M. Sukru Hanioglu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001). See For Example p.77; Feroz Ahmad, The Making Of Modern Turkey. (London: Routledge Publication , 1993). See for example p.46; Aykut Kansu. The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey. 1997. See for example p.77; Sukran Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. 2005. See for example p.116 ; Sukran Vahide, Islam In Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. 2005. See for example p.116; Resit Ergener. About Turkey. 2002. See for example p.99.
[iii] Justine McCarthy, The Ottoman People and the End of the Empire. Oxford University Press 2001. See for example pp. 111, 139.
[iv] Stanford J. Shaw Ezel Kural Shaw , History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Volume 2, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). See for example p 316.
[v] Armenian In Ottoman Documents (1915-1920), Ankara 1995, BOA. DH. EUM, 2. Sb. 68/88 ; BOA. DH. EUM, 2. Sb. 68/90 ; BOA. DH. EUM, 2.Sb. 68/79 ; BOA. DH. EUM, 2. Sb. 68/100 ; BOA. DH. EUM, 2. Sb. 68/66 ; BOA. DH. EUM, 2. Sb. 69/9 are only few examples.
[vi] Armenian Letters, Milleti Sadika 'The Loyal Nation': Part II answer to Letter 3 .
[vii] Indictment of the Turkish Military Tribunal 1919; p. 7, quoted in Vahakn N. Dadrian, "A Textual Analysis of the Key Indictment of the Turkish Military Tribunal Investigating the Armenian Genocide,"Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 22 (1994, 1), pp. 133-172.
[viii] H.A.R. Gibb and Harold Bowen , Islamic Society and the West. I. part 2 (London: Oxford university Press 1962), pp.208.
[ix] James Creagh, Armenians, Koords, and Turks, vol. 1, (London: S. Tinsley, 1880). p.139.
[x] Ibid, vol.2, p.178.
[xi] Report from Her Majesty’s Counsels Relating to the Condition of the Christians in Turkey, 1867 volume, pp.5, 29. See also related other reports by various British counsels and vice-counsels, in ibid., vol. 1860, p. 58; vol. 1867, pp. 4, 5, 6, 14, 15; and vol. 1867, part 2, p. 3.
[xii] Taner Akçam, Siyasi Kültürümüzde Zulüm ve I?kence (Atrocity and torture in our political culture), (Istanbul: Ileti?im Publications, 1992), pp. 90, 159, 163, 192.
[xiii] Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turke., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 3rd ed. 2002. pp. 73-126.
[xiv] Roderic H. Davison, Turkish Attitudes Concerning Christian-Muslim Equality in the Nineteenth Century. American Historical Review 59 (July 1954), p.848.
[xv] Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 ,3rd ed.). p. 166.
[xvi] Nor Giank 3, no.11 ( 1 June 1900), pp. 164-5.
[xvii] Vahakn N. Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide, (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ 1999), pp. 39-41.
[xviii] Stanford J. Shaw Ezel Kural Shaw , History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Volume 2, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). p 202.
[xix] Albert Vandal, Les Armeniens el la Reforme de la Turquie, (Paris: Plon, 1897), pp.22-23.
[xx] Cevdet pa?a, Tezakir (Memories), vol. 1, C Baysun, ed. (Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, 1953), p.79. Cited in Dadrian, Warrant, 45.
[xxi] Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 ,3rd ed.). pp. 134-35.
[xxii] Lilian Etmekjian, The Armenian National Assembly of Turkey, Armenian Review 29, no. 1-113 (Spring 1976), p. 48.
[xxiii] Quoted in A.O. Sarkissian, History of the Armenian Question to 1885, University of Illinois Bulletin 35, no. 80 (3 June 1938). P.88.
[xxiv] Richard Davey, The Sultan and His Subjects, (London: Chatto & Windus 1907) p. 191.
[xxv] Ibid.
[xxvi] Great Britain, Sessional Papers, 1878, vol. 83, c 1973, Turkey no. 22, Preliminary Treaty of Peace Between Russia and Turkey signed at San Stefano 19th February/2nd March, 1878, and c. 1975, Turkey no. 23, Maps showing the new Boundaries under the Preliminary Treaty between Russia and Turkey Signed at San Stefano. See also M.G. Rolin-Jaquemeyns, Armenia, the Armenians and the Treaties, (London: John Heywood, 1891), p. 34.
[xxvii] M.G. Rolin-Jaquemeyns, Armenia, the Armenians and the Treaties, (London: John Heywood, 1891), p. 36.
[xxviii] Ibid. pp.37, 39.
[xxix] Ibid.
[xxx] Richard Davey, The Sultan and His Subjects, (London: Chatto & Windus 1907) p. 191
[xxxi] A.O. Sarkissian, History of the Armenian Question to 1885, University of Illinois Bulletin 35, no. 80 (3 June 1938). P.89-90.
[xxxii] M.G. Rolin-Jaquemeyns, Armenia, the Armenians and the Treaties, (London: John Heywood, 1891), p. 41.
[xxxiii] Quoted in Heather Rae, States, Identities and the Homogenisation of People, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002), p.139.
[xxxiv] For documents relating to the conditions after the Treaty of Berlin and the diplomatic notes and correspondence about the introduction of reforms in the Armenian provinces, see for example, Great Britain Sessional Papers, 1878, vol.81, c. 1905, Turkey no.1: 1878-79, vol. 79, c. 2204, Turkey no. 53 and c. 2205, Turkey no. 54, vol. 80, c. 2432, Turkey no. 10; 1880, vol. 80, c. 2537, Turkey no. 4, vol. 81, c. 2574, Turkey no. 7, and c. 2611, Turkey no. 9, vol. 82, c. 2712, Turkey no. 23; 1881, vol. 100, c. 2986, Turkey no.6. See also British and Foreign State Papers, 1877-78, vol. 69, 1313-47, and 1880-81, vol. 72, 1196-1207.
[xxxv] Ernest E. Ramsaur, Jr., The Young Turks ( Princeton: Princeton University Press 1957), pp. 65-76, 124-29.
[xxxvi] Ibid, pp. 130-39; Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp.1-13.
[xxxvii] Feroz Ahmad, The Making Of Modern Turkey. (London: Routledge Publication , 1993), pp.36-7.
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