The Banality of Indifference

Zionism and the Armenian Genocide

Yair Auron

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351305389
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The genocide of Armenians by Turks during the First World War was one of the most horrendous deeds of modern times and a precursor of the genocidal acts that have marked the rest of the twentieth century. Despite the worldwide attention the atrocities received at the time, the massacre has not remained a part of the world's historical consciousness. The parallels between the Jewish and Armenian situations and the reactions of the Jewish community in Palestine (the Yishuv) to the Armenian genocide, which was muted and largely self-interested, are explored by Yair Auron. In attempting to assess and interpret these disparate reactions, Auron maintains a fairminded balance in assessing claims of altruism and self-interest, expressed in universal, not merely Jewish, terms.

While not denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust, Auron carefully distinguishes it from the Armenian genocide reviewing existing theories and relating Armenian and Jewish experience to ongoing issues of politics and identity. As a groundbreaking work of comparative history, this volume will be read by Armenian area specialists, historians of Zionism and Israel, and students of genocide. Yair Auron is senior lecturer at The Open University of Israel and the Kibbutzim College of Education. He is the author, in Hebrew, of Jewish-Israeli Identity, Sensitivity to World Suffering: Genocide in the Twentieth Century, We Are All German Jews, and Jewish Radicals in France during the Sixties and Seventies (published in French as well)

1

The Armenians—The Struggle for Survival¹

Background: History and Geography

The history of the Armenian People is the history of an ongoing straggle for self-preservation, survival, and the maintenance of a coherent Armenian identity and culture.

The Armenians attribute their origins to the ancient tribes that dwelled in Asia Minor in the prehistoric period. Armenian settlement in the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea (particularly around the Van Peninsula) began around 1000 B.C. The city of Van began to develop at about the same time, followed by the development of Yerevan (the present capital city of Armenia, the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia). Greek and Persian sources from the sixth century B.C. contain clear evidence of sizable Armenian settlement in the plateau of Armenia.

The Armenian Plateau lies between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea to the east, and between the mountains of the Caucasus, the Taurus Mountains, and Mesopotamia (present day Iraq) to the south. The plateau rises to an average height of over 1,800 meters and is considered, together with the surrounding mountains (3,000–4,000 meters), to be “historic Armenia.” Mount Ararat, rising from the plateau to the height of 5, 156 meters, has become the symbol of Armenia. The area of historic Armenia is approximately 380,000 square kilometers, 90 percent of which is today empty of Armenian population.

In the second century B.C., an Armenian dynasty, whose official language was Armenian, came to power. During the succeeding two centuries Armenia achieved economic prosperity, territorial expansion, and a developed urban society.

The period between the first and seventh centuries A.D. was characterized by a straggle for domination over the Armenian plateau between Rome (later the Byzantine Empire) and the Persian Empire. The straggle between these two great powers permitted the establishment of Armenian kingdoms as buffer states between the adversaries. The kingdoms even managed at times to achieve complete independence. At other times, they were forced to pay taxes to the neighboring powers in order to preserve internal autonomy, and at other times they were under direct foreign rale.

Christianity became the official religion of Armenia in A.D. 301, making the Armenians the first people to officially adopt Christianity. Acceptance of Christianity and the development of an Armenian alphabet, which led to a literary flowering at the beginning of the fifth century, enabled the Armenians to create a distinct culture. In the century following the loss of their independence, this culture helped the Armenians to identify themselves as a separate ethnic-religious group, and to prevent their assimilation into the neighboring populations and powers.

The relative stability in the region was disturbed at the beginning of the seventh century following the Arab conquests and the founding of the Arab-Islamic Empire. Armenia was under Arab rule from 645 to 850, and the decline of the empire at the end of the ninth century made possible the revival of the Armenian kingdom for a short time. The Byzantine Empire annexed Armenia in 1045. Shortly thereafter, in 1064, central Asia and the Armenian plateau were invaded by Turkish-Seljuki tribes, and for the next three hundred years Armenia was subjected to repeated invasions by the Turks and the Mongols, followed in the fourteenth century by the Tatars.

Despite the circumstances, various attempts were made to reestablish autonomous Armenian political entities. At the end of the eleventh century, a large number of Armenians immigrated to the Cilicia region of southwest Turkey, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, In 1080, an Armenian kingdom was established in Cilicia which survived until 1375. The kingdom developed connections with Europe and Asia, and the new center enjoyed a period of cultural prosperity.

In the mid-fifteenth century, the Ottomans became the major power in Asia Minor and captured the last vestiges of the Byzantine Empire, making Constantinople their capital. (Kushta, or Constantinople in European languages, was first called Byzantine and is known today as Istanbul. It was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire for more than eleven hundred years. Afterwards, for four hundred years, it was the capital of the Ottoman Empire.) During that period most of historic Armenia was controlled by the Turks, with small sections in the hands of the Persians. As a result of the foreign rule, numbers of Armenians immigrated to other countries and reached positions of influence in commerce and finance. The Ottoman State quickly became the dominant power in the Balkans, most of the Middle East, and North Africa. The Armenians, like the Jews and the Greeks, comprised an ethnic-religious minority within the Ottoman Empire. As non-Islamic communities, these minorities had second-class standing, often subject to official discrimination. They were obligated to pay special taxes, prevented from bearing witness in religious courts of law, and forbidden to carry arms. This administrative system was known as millet (denoting a religious community).

Each of the three major non-Islamic minorities—the Armenians, the Jews, and the Greeks—enjoyed a measure of administrative autonomy in its internal affairs: culture, religion, education, internal adjudication. The Turkish authorities recognized the head of the religious establishment of each community as its leader. Under this arrangement, the Armenians enjoyed considerable cultural autonomy, with the Armenian Church playing an important role. The Patriarch, head of the Armenian Church, was personally responsible for the religious, educational, and legal activities of the Armenian community, as well as for tax collection. The church, the language, and the distinct ethnic identity worked to preserve a unique Armenian identity within the Ottoman Empire.

The Jewish religious leadership, headed by the Chief Rabbi of Turkish Jewry (Hachara Bashi), occupied a position in the Ottoman Empire similar to that of the Patriarch of the Armenian Church, and the Chief Rabbi was considered the representative of all the Jews in the Ottoman Empire. It is fair to note that Ottoman Turkey generally treated its minorities with tolerance. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the Armenians were also treated with tolerance and were considered, like the Jews, a “loyal community.”

The Nineteenth Century

In the nineteenth century, historic Armenia was divided between the Ottoman Empire, which controlled most of its territory, and Russia. The Armenians under Russian rule achieved economic and cultural prosperity. The majority of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire lived as farmers, mostly in the six eastern districts of the empire in the Armenian plateau: Erzuram, Sivas, Bitlis, Harput, Van, and Diyarbakir, which were also known as the “six Armenian provinces.” The Armenians comprised a significant percentage of the population in these regions.

Some 250,000 Armenians lived in the capital city, Constantinople, and were prominent as bankers, merchants, public servants, and architects. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Armenians, like the Jews, held important positions in the capital, as middlemen and translators in international commerce. Beginning in the seventeenth century, an “Armenian diaspora” developed, together with centers of Armenian cultural activity, in Europe.

Nevertheless, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Turkish administrative, financial, and military structure began to crumble due to internal corruption and external pressure. By the nineteenth century, the Empire was in danger of economic collapse and the ethnic-religious minorities began to make increasing demands for equality, democracy, and independence. Some of them, like the Greeks, attained their independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The Ottoman rulers felt threatened by what appeared to be the disintegration of the Empire. The European powers followed the events with interest, coveting the territories and spheres of influence in what would become, in their estimation, the former Ottoman Empire. These developments increased intolerance and oppression.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, after generations of relatively peaceful relations, hostility grew between the Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks and Kurds. Armenians were frequently attacked by their Muslim neighbors. Following the Crimean War between Russia and Turkey ( 1853-56), the European powers demanded that the Sultan improve the conditions of his Christian subjects, including the Armenians, and, in 1863, the Armenians, through a special constitutional decree, were again recognized as a special ethnic-religious community, like the Greeks and the Jews, with much improved legal rights.

National Awakening

The last two decades of the nineteenth century witnessed a national awakening among the Armenian population. In the 1880s, Armenian political activity, based on the ideas and hopes of nationalism and freedom, began to take shape. The weakening Ottoman Empire, “the sick man of Europe,” fueled these hopes. The independence of Bulgaria and Serbia in the 1370s, as well as the achievements of other national movements in the Balkans, fired the imagination of the Armenians. But unlike other Balkan peoples, the nationalist activity of the Armenians, located in eastern Anatolia, did not serve the geopolitical interests of the European powers.

In 1877-78, during the Russian-Turkish War, Armenian revolutionaries from Russia joined the Russian military forces, which invaded eastern Anatolia, and established contact with their brethren in the Ottoman Empire, encouraging them to rebel against the Sultan. Most of the Armenian population remained loyal to the Sultan and the war ended relatively quickly. In March 1878, Russia and Turkey signed the San Stefano Treaty which guaranteed protection for the Armenians. The Great Powers, concerned with events on the eastern front, convened in Berlin to draft the Berlin Treaty which guaranteed, in clause 61, among other rights, those of life and property in the Armenian provinces of Anatolia, and promised reforms.

The Sublime Porte [the formal term for the seat of the Turkish government] undertakes to carry out, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds.

It will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the powers, who will superintend their application.

In fact, nothing was done.

Unrest throughout the Empire brought severe reprisals from the authorities, most harshly in April 1876 when the Turks committed mass slaughter in Bulgaria, killing 12,000-15,000 Bulgarians. The massacre aroused horror in Europe.²

The Armenians feared the repeat of such atrocities against them as well. At the end of the 1880s, two revolutionary Armenian political organizations were formed, “Hunchak” (Bell), and Dashnak (Association), together with other political organizations. Their centers operated in several European cities and in Tiflis (Tbilisi in the Caucasus). They incited the Armenian population in the eastern provinces against the Ottoman authorities and in August 1894 a “rebellion” broke out near the town of Sassen, causing the Turks to react with great brutality, murdering much of the Armenian community, Reports that spread through Europe on the massacre of twenty thousand people seem to have been exaggerated. Localized conflicts between the Armenians, the Turks, and the Kurds continued from 1894 to 1896. In August and September of 1896 events escalated and reached Constantinople. In September 1895, the Armenians had held a mass demonstration to protest the findings of a governmental investigative commission, appointed to look into the earlier events. The Muslim population of Constantinople attacked the demonstrators, committing yet another massacre, which was accompanied by violent outbursts against the Armenians in numerous cities in Anatolia. These acts of murder and brutality against the Armenians continued throughout the Empire during 1896. Diplomatic representatives of Great Britain, France, and Russia protested vigorously against the situation and the Sultan renewed his promise to institute reforms (October 17, 1895), again, never to be implemented.

In a renewed attempt to bring the Great Powers to their aid, the Armenians instigated a carefully planned program of terror against the Ottoman government. On August 26, 1896, an armed Armenian group took control of the main branch of the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople, The Armenians, who had barricaded themselves in the bank building, demanded implementation of the promised reforms. The Sultan, Abd al-Hamid II, refused to meet the demands. In the days that followed, thousands of Armenians in Constantinople were massacred. In order to ease the situation (i.e., to appease Western public opinion), the Sultan declared mass amnesty and appointed Christian officials in the Armenian provinces. At this point, Britain proposed military intervention to aid the Armenians in eastern Anatolia, but the Russian Czar, fearing a British military presence in the heart of the Ottoman Empire, opposed the idea, as did France. When it became clear that the Great Powers did not intend to come to the aid of the Armenians, the tensions abated and for a while it seemed that life in Anatolia would return to normal. But the relative harmony that had characterized relations between the Armenians and the Muslims for hundreds of years evaporated, and a mutual hostility grew, reaching new heights in 1915, worse than anything that had occurred before.

Armenian estimates of the number of Armenian victims during the period 1894-96 reach 150,000 and even 200,000, with a similar number of refugees. The response of the Great Powers, although divided and ambivalent, was apparently one of the factors which ultimately brought the atrocities to a halt.

The long rule of Sultan Abd al-Hamid II over Turkey (1876-1908) was harsh not only for the Armenians. Criticism of his corrupt and oppressive regime was particularly strong among European and Western-educated Turks in Turkey itself. The Sultan was, in the eyes of his critics, a model of the narrow-minded and autocratic ruler. Small groups from among his critics established the “Committee for Union and Progress.”

The group, known also as the “Young Turks,” sought to renew the Medhat Pasha’s Constitution of 1876 and to establish a centralized parliamentary government which could unite the disparate elements of the Empire. In July 1908, they instigated a military revolt, took power, revived the constitution and held elections for the Parliament.

When the Young Turks overthrew the Sultan’s regime, Armenian leaders, including the Dashnak Party, hoped that they would be able to realize their aspirations for autonomy. The rise to power of the Young Turks brought the Armenians equal rights—including the right to serve in the army, which had previously been reserved for Muslims only—and sent Armenian representatives to the new Parliament. Nonetheless, bloody riots against the Armenians broke out in March 1909 in Cilicia, near the sea. Some 20,000 Armenians lost their lives and Armenian neighborhoods and villages were looted and burned. The Armenian expectations quickly faded and after a brief spring of warm relations with the minorities, the Young Turks turned out to be even less amenable to the idea of Armenian autonomy than Sultan Abd al-Hamid II.

The Young Turks found themselves under heavy pressure, domestically from the conservatives and supporters of the Sultan, and externally from foreign forces that hoped to gain from political instability. In the 1912 Balkan War, the Ottoman army was routed. In the 1911-13 period, after losing most of its European and North African territories, the defeated Empire shrank into the boundaries of Asia Minor and the Asian part of the Middle East.

In response to the defeat, nationalist Turks developed the idea of Pan-Turkism—unity with Turkish speakers in the east and expansion into central Asia. Their ideas affected the Young Turks who adopted a policy of discrimination against the minority groups within the disintegrating empire. The pro-Isiamic-Turkish ideology, known as Pan-Turanism, envisioned a strong centralized state with purely Turkish components. The Armenian plateau in the east, with its large Armenian population, was an obstacle to realizing this vision. Thus, the Young Turk government degenerated into a regime characterized by a military dictatorship ruled by a small leadership group.

After 1913, Turkey was ruled by a triumvirate of Enver Pasha (Minister of War), Talât Pasha (Minister of the Interior), and Jamal Pasha (Minister of the Navy, who was also the commander of the Fourth Army in the Levant).

The Longest Decade: 1913-1923

The second decade of the twentieth century seemed, at first, to hold promise for the Armenians. The Young Turks and the Union and Progress Party, which had come to power, and established a government which seemed to be more liberal than its predecessor. Furthermore, the Armenians hoped that the Young Turks had learned from their crushing defeat in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, and from their mishandling of the Empire’s nationality problems. Additionally, the tensions and rivalry between the Great Powers seemed to have subsided, making them more disposed, perhaps, to support the Armenian cause.

The assassination of the Serbian crown prince in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, was the opening shot of the First World War. A month after the assassination, on July 28, 1914, Austro-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Germany, hoping the war would serve its great power interests, attacked Russia, and two days later declared war on England and France.

The war between Russia and Turkey would prove to be disastrous ...