The Armenian Genocide in Perspective

Stephen R. Graubard, Richard G. Hovannisian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351485821
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: History

Seven decades after the destruction of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian genocide remains largely ignored by governments and forgotten by the world public, even though the annihilation of Armenians was headlined around the world in 1915. Scholarly investigation of the Armenian genocide is just beginning, made more difficult by the tendency of many establishment figures to rationalize the past and the attempt of perpetrator governments and their successors to deny the past.This volume is a pioneering collective attempt to assess and analyze the Armenian genocide from differing perspectives, including history, political science, ethics, religion, literature, and psychiatry. Focusing on the general implications of denial, rationalization, and responsibility, it is particularly important as a precursor to the study of the Holocaust and other genocides.

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The Historical Dimensions of the Armenian Question, 1878–1923

Richard G. Hovannisian

The genocide of the Armenian minority in the Ottoman Empire during World War I may be viewed in the context of the broader Armenian Question, which had both internal and international aspects. Indeed, it was to rid themselves of this question and to create a new, homogeneous order that the Turkish dictators organized the deportations and massacres of the Armenian population. Through death and destruction they eliminated the Armenians from most of the Ottoman Empire, including all of the historic Armenian homelands, and radically altered the racial and religious character of the region. An overview of the Armenian Question in the Ottoman Empire should help to place the presentations in the following chapters into perspective.

Although tracing their lineage, according to epical-biblical traditions, to Noah, whose ark was said to have rested on Mount Ararat, the Armenians actually passed through a long era of formation and emerged as an identifiable people sometime around the sixth century before Christ. Their lands lay between the Black, Caspian, and Mediterranean seas, in an area now referred to as Eastern Anatolia and Transcaucasia, on both sides of the current Soviet-Turkish frontier. For the next two thousand years, they were led by their kings, nobles, and patriarchs, sometimes independently and often under the sway of powerful, neighboring empires of the East and West. Located on perhaps the most strategic crossroads of the ancient and medieval worlds, the Armenians managed not only to survive but also to develop a rich, distinctive culture by maintaining a delicate balance between Orient and Occident. Adopting Christianity as the state religion at the turn of the fourth century A.D., however, the Armenians were often persecuted because of their faith by invaders and alien overlords. By the end of the fourteenth century, the last Armenian kingdom had collapsed, the nobility had been decimated in constant warfare, and the Armenian plateau had fallen under foreign subjugation. Most of the country ultimately came under Turkish rule, except for the eastern sector, which came first under Persian and then in the nineteenth century under Russian dominion.

In the Ottoman Empire, which by the seventeenth century pressed to the gates of Vienna, the Armenians were included in a multinational and multireligious realm, but as a Christian minority they had to endure official discrimination and second-class citizenship. Inequality, including special taxes, the inadmissibility of legal testimony, and the prohibition on bearing arms, was the price paid to maintain their religion and sense of community. Down through the centuries, many thousands eventually converted in order to be relieved of these disabilities as well as the sporadic violence that fell most heavily upon the defenseless Armenian peasantry. The devshirme or child levy was occasionally imposed, and in many districts in Western Anatolia the Armenians were not allowed to speak their own language except in the recitation of prayers. This is not to say that there were not prosperous merchants, traders, artisans, and professional persons throughout the empire, for it is well known that the minority populations played a most important role in international commerce, as interpreters and intermediaries, and in the highly skilled professions. Nonetheless, most of the Armenian population remained rooted in its historic homeland, becoming, in large part, tenant farmers or sharecroppers under the dominant Muslim feudal-military elite.

Despite their second-class status, most Armenians lived in relative peace so long as the Ottoman Empire was strong and expanding. But as the empire’s administrative, financial, and military structure crumbled under the weight of internal corruption and external challenges in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, intolerance and exploitation increased. The breakdown of order was accelerated by Ottoman inability to compete with the growing capitalistic system in the West and to modernize and reform. The legal and practical superiority of one element over the other groups continued, and the lavish and uncontrolled spending of the Ottoman court led to even more oppressive taxation, including the infamous method of tax farming, that is, the sale of the privilege to exact as much tax as possible from a particular district in return for an advance lump-sum payment. The wasteful ways of the ruling elite drew the empire into bankruptcy in the 1870s and opened the way for direct European financial supervision, beginning in 1881.

The decay of the Ottoman Empire was paralleled by cultural and political revival among many of the subject nationalities, which were swept by the European winds of romanticism and revolt. The national liberation struggles, supported at times by certain European powers, contributed to Ottoman loss of most Balkan provinces in the nineteenth century and constituted one aspect of the Eastern Question, namely, what was to become of the decrepit empire. The rivalry among the European powers and their economic exploitation of the Ottoman Empire led to efforts to preserve it as a weak buffer state and a lucrative marketplace. The British, in particular, fearing that dissolution of the empire would threaten their mastery of the seas, came to the conclusion that it could be saved only if the worst abuses of government were eliminated and fundamental administrative changes implemented. A growing circle of Ottoman liberals was also persuaded that survival depended on reform. These men became the movers behind the several major reform edicts issued during the so-called tanzimat period from 1839 to 1876.¹ Yet time and again the supporters of reform became disappointed and disillusioned in the face of the entrenched vested interests that resisted change. The tanzimat era, for all its fanfare, brought virtually no improvement in the daily life of the common person.

Of the various subject peoples, the Armenians perhaps sought the least. Unlike the Balkan Christians, they were dispersed throughout the empire and no longer constituted a majority in much of their historic homelands. Hence, Armenian leaders did not think in terms of separation or independence, but, professing loyalty to the sultan and renouncing any separatist aspirations, they petitioned for the protection of their people and property from corrupt officials and from marauding bands often linked with those officials. It was not inappropriate, therefore, that the Ottoman sultans should have referred to the Armenians as their “faithful community.” The Armenians nonetheless also passed through a long period of cultural revival. Thousands of youngsters enrolled in schools established in the nineteenth century by U.S. and European missionaries and hundreds of middle-class youth traveled to Europe for higher education. Many of these men returned home, imbued with the social and political philosophies of contemporary Europe, to engage in teaching, journalism, and literary criticism. Gradually a network of Armenian schools and newspapers spread from Constantinople (Istanbul) and Smyrna (Izmir) to Cilicia, and eventually to many towns in the primitive eastern provinces, that is, Turkish Armenia. As it happened, however, this Armenian self-discovery was paralleled by heightened administrative corruption, economic exploitation, and physical insecurity. It was this dual development—the conscious demand for security of life and property on the one hand, and the growing insecurity of both life and property on the other—that gave rise to the Armenian Question as a part of the larger Eastern Question.

Widespread dissatisfaction with inadequate implementation of the several reform edicts of the tanzimat period, the aggravated plight of the Asiatic Christians, and, above all, the severe Turkish reprisals against a rebellious Balkan Christian population brought renewed European pressure on the Sublime Porte [Ottoman government] in 1876. In a maneuver to undermine the international conference summoned to deal with the crisis, Sultan Abdul-Hamid II (1876-1909) promulgated a liberal constitution drafted by sincere advocates of reform.² Had the sultan been as sincere in implementing the constitution, it could have removed the major grievances of the subject peoples, the Armenians included. But having warded off the European diplomats, Abdul-Hamid soon suspended the constitution and the parliament for which it had provided. Instead of abating, the tribulations of the Armenians multiplied. Robbery, murder, and kidnapping became commonplace in a land where even the traditional feudal protective system had broken down.

In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78, the leaders of the Armenian community, or millet, put aside their customary caution and conservatism and appealed to the victorious Russian commander-in-chief to include provisions for the protection of the Armenians in the forthcoming peace treaty.³ That treaty, which was signed at San Stefano in March 1878, granted independence to Serbia, Montenegro, and Rumania, and autonomy to a large Bulgarian state. No such provision was either sought or executed for the Armenians. On the contrary, the Russians agreed to withdraw their armies from most of Turkish Armenia, while annexing the border districts of Batum, Ardahan, Kars, Alashkert, and Bayazid. The Armenian leaders were not entirely disappointed, however, because Article 16 of the treaty stipulated that Russian withdrawal would be contingent upon the implementation of effective reforms in Turkish Armenia:

As the evacuation by the Russian troops of the territory which they occupy in Armenia, and which is to be restored to Turkey, might give rise to conflicts and complications detrimental to the maintenance of good relations between the two countries, the Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out into effect, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security from Kurds and Circassians.⁴

General M. T. Loris-Melikov was to stand firm in Erzerum until this condition was met.

The aftermath of the Treaty of San Stefano is familiar to students of European history. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and especially Foreign Secretary Robert Salisbury believed that the interests of the British Empire were jeopardized by the treaty. Enlisting the support of other European powers, they intimidated Russia with threats of joint action, not excluding war. The outcome was the convening of a European congress in Berlin in mid-1878 to review and revise the treaty. An Armenian delegation also traveled to Berlin with the goal of persuading the six European powers to arrange for a specific Armenian reform program, rather than simply general reforms, past instances of which had proved most disappointing. Using the administrative statute for Lebanon as a model, the Armenians asked that Turkish Armenia be granted a Christian governor, local self-government, civil courts of law, mixed Christian-Muslim militias, voting privileges for all tax-paying adult males, and the allocation of most local tax revenues for local improvements.⁵

The sympathetic expressions of the European diplomats aside, the Berlin congress revised the Treaty of San Stefano in conformity with the guidelines of the British negotiators. Several provinces were taken back from the newly independent and autonomous states in the Balkans, and on the Caucasus frontier the districts of Alashkert and Bayazid were restored to Ottoman rule. Moreover, insofar as Armenian reforms were concerned, the coercive aspect of Article 16 in the Treaty of San Stefano was superseded by the stipulation in Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin that the Russian armies should withdraw immediately, and that the sultan would simply pledge to take it upon himself to implement the necessary reforms and to report to the European powers collectively about the progress.⁶ The effect of the inversion of Article 16 at San Stefano to Article 61 at Berlin was trenchantly caught in the Duke of Argyll’s cryptic observation, “What was everybody’s business was nobody’s business.”⁷

As payment for services rendered to the sultan, Great Britain exacted, through secret agreement, control over the strategic island of Cyprus, and Austria-Hungary gained the right to administer Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been taken back from Serbia. In the eastern provinces, meanwhile, horrified Armenian peasants witnessed the evacuation of Loris-Melikov’s army. As had been the case during the Russian withdrawal from Erzerum in 1829, thousands of Armenians departed with the Russian troops to resettle in the Caucasus. Yet, despite the setback, the Armenian religious leaders did not lose hope and declared that they still had faith in the Ottoman government and in its introduction of the necessary reforms. Armenian patriarch Nerses Varzhapetian swore fidelity to the sultan and emphasized that efforts to overcome Armenian 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.⁸

The Treaty of Berlin elevated the Armenian Question to the level of international diplomacy, but the Armenians gained no advantage from that status. On the contrary, Kurdish tribesmen, organized and armed by the sultan’s government, spread havoc over the eastern provinces, particularly in the districts from which the Russian army had recently withdrawn. Neither the petitions of the Armenian patriarch nor the establishment of more European consular posts in Turkish Armenia helped to improve the situation. European consuls at Kharput, Erzerum, Van, and other interior centers could do little more than relay frequent dispatches describing the rapacious acts to which the Armenians were subjected. For two years the European powers, outwardly cooperating under the joint responsibility of Article 61, issued collective and identic notes reminding the Sublime Porte of its treaty obligations. But by 1881, these powers had become too involved in the scramble for empire elsewhere to worry further about the Armenians. They silently shelved the Armenian Question and turned away from Armenian troubles.⁹

Feeling abandoned and betrayed, a growing number of Armenians began to espouse extralegal means to achieve what they now regarded as the right and moral duty to resist tyrannical rule. Instead of meeting its obligation to protect its subjects, the Ottoman government had become the instrument of exploitation and suppression. Some Armenians came to believe that, like the Balkan Christians, they too would have to organize, perhaps even take arms. Local self-defense groups that had coalesced in the 1880s gradually gave way to several broadly based secret political societies in the 1890s. Still, few among those who called themselves revolutionaries were prepared to expound...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 The Historical Dimensions of the Armenian Question, 1878–1923
• 2 The Turkish Genocide of Armenians, 1915-1917
• 3 Provocation or Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry into the Armenian Genocide of 1915
• 4 Determinants of Genocide: Armenians and Jews as Case Studies
• 5 What Genocide? What Holocaust? News from Turkey, 1915-1923: A Case Study
• 6 The Armenian Genoeide and Patterns of Denial
• 7 Collective Responsibility and Official Excuse Making: The Case of the Turkish Genocide of the Armenians
• 8 The Armenian Genocide and the Literary Imagination
• 9 The Impact of the Genocide on West Armenian Letters
• 10 Psychosocial Sequelae of the Armenian Genocide
• 11 An Oral History Perspective on Responses to the Armenian Genocide
• About the Contributors
• Index