206-633: The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I . Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of others, primarily women and children. Before World War I, Armenians occupied
412-403: A millet being a confessional community under Ottoman protection which was allowed to govern itself using its own religious laws . Ottoman legal theory understood two separate "establishments" to share state power, one responsible for governing a nation's citizens and the other its military. In addition, Islam did not separate religious and secular matters. Armenians were administered by
618-563: A millet system of this form existed since early Ottoman times. Recent scholarship has cast doubt on this idea, showing that it was rather a later political innovation, which was introduced in the rhetorical garb of an ancient tradition. The Ottoman state used religion rather than ethnicity to define each millet , and people who study the Ottoman Empire do not define the Muslims as being in a millet . The Ottoman Turkish version of
824-672: A Christian administration is demanded in Turkish Armenia, as in Lebanon. Today a version of religion-based legal pluralism resembling the millet system still persists in varying forms in some post-Ottoman countries like Iraq , Syria , Jordan , Lebanon , Israel , the Palestinian Authority , Egypt , and Greece (for religious minorities), which observe the principle of separate personal courts and/or laws for every recognized religious community and reserved seats in
1030-491: A Muslim fell under their sharia -based law. Later, the perception of the millet concept was altered in the 19th century by the rise of nationalism within the Ottoman Empire. Although the Ottoman administration of non-Muslim subjects was not uniform until the 19th century and varied according to region and group, it is possible to identify some common patterns for earlier epochs. Christian and Jewish communities were granted
1236-461: A Turkish and Muslim middle class and build a statist national economy controlled by Muslim Turks. The campaign to Turkify the economy began in June 1914 with a law that obliged many non-Muslim merchants to hire Muslims. Following the deportations, the businesses of the victims were taken over by Muslims who were often incompetent, leading to economic difficulties. The genocide had catastrophic effects on
1442-600: A Turkish blockade of food supplies and the deliberate destruction of crops in eastern Armenia by Turkish troops, both before and after the armistice. Armenians organized a coordinated effort known as vorpahavak ( lit. ' the gathering of orphans ' ) that reclaimed thousands of kidnapped and Islamized Armenian women and children. Armenian leaders abandoned traditional patrilineality to classify children born to Armenian women and their Muslim captors as Armenian. An orphanage in Alexandropol held 25,000 orphans,
1648-831: A bride, accompanying her, with musical instruments and clapping of hands, to their own village. Armenians preserved their culture, history, and language through the course of time, largely thanks to their distinct religious identity among the neighboring Turks and Kurds . Like the Greek Orthodox and Jewish minorities of the Ottoman Empire , they constituted a distinct millet . Under this system, non-Muslims were considered second-class citizens ; they were subjected to elevated taxation, but in return they were granted autonomy within their own religious communities and were exempted from military service. Growing religious and political influence from neighboring communities necessitated implementation of security measures that often required
1854-560: A cheap and efficient method, but it caused widespread pollution downstream. So many bodies floated down the Tigris and Euphrates that they sometimes blocked the rivers and needed to be cleared with explosives. Other rotting corpses became stuck to the riverbanks, and still others traveled as far as the Persian Gulf . The rivers remained polluted long after the massacres, causing epidemics downstream. Tens of thousands of Armenians died along
2060-430: A consequence of the separation by Church affiliation, as was required by 19th century Ottoman law. Syriac Catholics The Syriac Catholic community was recognized as its own millet in 1829. Chaldeans The Chaldean Catholic community was recognized as its own millet in 1844. Syriac Orthodox The Syriac Orthodox community in the Ottoman Empire was for long not recognized as its own millet , but part of
2266-803: A constitutional committee which, taken together, make up the Basic Laws of the Greek Orthodox Millet . Until the 19th century, there was a single Armenian millet which served all ethnic Armenians irrespective of whether they belonged to the Armenian Apostolic Church , the Armenian Catholic Church , or the Armenian Protestant Church (which was formed in the 19th century). Besides a religious role, this millet also played
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#17327986914632472-553: A crucial role in Ottoman industry and commerce, and Armenian communities existed in almost every major city of the empire. The majority of the Armenian population made up a reaya , or peasant, class, in Eastern Anatolia . The Tanzimat reforms in the nineteenth century sought to manifest the doctrine of equality before the law . Despite their importance, Armenians were persecuted by the Ottoman authorities, especially from
2678-636: A dilemma: If they obeyed, the Armenians expected to be killed, but if they refused, it would provide a pretext for massacres. Armenians fortified themselves in Van and repelled the Ottoman attack that began on 20 April. During the siege, Armenians in surrounding villages were massacred at Djevdet's orders. Russian forces captured Van on 18 May, finding 55,000 corpses in the province—about half its prewar Armenian population. Djevdet's forces proceeded to Bitlis and attacked Armenian and Assyrian/Syriac villages;
2884-729: A distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [To do so] was impossible. Because of the nature of things, one who was still innocent today could be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other concerns. — Talaat Pasha in Berliner Tageblatt , 4 May 1916 During World War I, the CUP—whose central goal was to preserve the Ottoman Empire—came to identify Armenian civilians as an existential threat. CUP leaders held Armenians—including women and children—collectively guilty for betraying
3090-401: A few weeks, until there were very few survivors. This strategy physically weakened the Armenians and spread disease, so much that some camps were shut down in late 1915 due to the threat of disease spreading to the Ottoman military. In late 1915, the camps around Aleppo were liquidated and the survivors were forced to march to Ras al-Ayn ; the camps around Ras al-Ayn were closed in early 1916 and
3296-864: A growing, exclusionary Turkish nationalism in the Young Turk movement, the ARF decided to ally with the CUP in December 1907. In 1908, the CUP came to power in the Young Turk Revolution , which began with a string of CUP assassinations of leading officials in Macedonia . Abdul Hamid was forced to reinstate the 1876 constitution and restore the Ottoman parliament , which was celebrated by Ottomans of all ethnicities and religions. Security improved in parts of
3502-531: A large degree of autonomy. Tax collection, education, legal and religious affairs of these communities were administered by their own leaders. This enabled the Ottomans to rule over diverse peoples with "a minimum of resistance". The Jewish community, in particular, prospered under Ottoman rule, and its ranks were swelled with the arrival of Jews who were expelled from Spain. At the same time, non-Muslims were subject to several forms of discrimination and excluded from
3708-572: A longer waiting period for minorities to seek legal recourse in the courts. Under Ottoman rule, Armenians formed three distinct millet s: Armenian Orthodox Gregorians , Armenian Catholics , and Armenian Protestants (in the 19th century). After many centuries of Turkish rule in Anatolia and Armenia (at first by the Seljuks , then a variety of Anatolian beyliks and finally the Ottomans),
3914-610: A person's private business in which the state should not interfere. However, all such proposals have been defeated. Greece recognizes only a Muslim minority, and no ethnic or national minorities, such as Turks , Pomaks , or Bulgarians . This is the result of several international treaties as the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations of 1923 and of the Treaty of Lausanne of 1924, when
4120-496: A philanthropist and active member of the Armenian General Benevolent Union was from Smyrna ( İzmir ), and Arthur Edmund Carewe , born Trebizond, become an actor in the silent film era . The Eastern Question (normally dated to 1774) refers to the diplomatic and political problems posed by the decline of the Ottoman Empire during the 18th century; including instability in the territories ruled by
4326-620: A political and cultural role. Namely, it bundled together all Armenian and some other groups, showcasing a shift from religious identity towards national identity. As a result of this, a type of hegemony emerged in which all groups that were under this millet had to conform to the norms imposed by the leader of the millet , who was appointed by the Sultan. This had a cultural, political, linguistic, and religious effect on all of these groups. Only later did separate Catholic millets emerge. Non-Armenians from churches which were theologically linked to
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#17327986914634532-512: A power struggle to safeguard their strategic and commercial interests in the Empire, this gave motivation to the powers to help people in need. The rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire was a direct result of enlightenment of Christian millets through education. Armenians, for the most part, remained passive during these years, earning them the title of millet-i sadıka or the "loyal millet". The Eastern Question gained even more traction by
4738-790: A protector at the Porte in the person of the French ambassador. In this way the Roman Catholic millet was established at the start of the Tanzimat reforms. In a 1910 book William Ainger Wigram used the term melet in application to the Persian Sasanian Empire , arguing that the situation there was similar to the Ottoman millet system and no other term was readily available to describe it. Some other authors have also adopted this usage. The early Christians there formed
4944-455: A reason for the elimination of the Armenian population in 1915. The 1912 First Balkan War resulted in the loss of almost all of the empire's European territory and the mass expulsion of Muslims from the Balkans. Ottoman Muslim society was incensed by the atrocities committed against Balkan Muslims, intensifying anti-Christian sentiment and leading to a desire for revenge. Blame for the loss
5150-579: A result of state policy and stated that "humanity, civilizations are shuddering, and forever will shudder, in face of this tragedy". The postwar Ottoman government held the Ottoman Special Military Tribunal , by which it sought to pin the Armenian genocide onto the CUP leadership while exonerating the Ottoman Empire as a whole, therefore avoiding partition by the Allies . The court ruled that "the crime of mass murder" of Armenians
5356-498: A sanction from the religious leader of the person's faith. Armenians became religious leaders and bureaucrats under the Ottoman Empire, allowing them to become more influential than just their own community. Certain elite Armenian families in the Ottoman Empire gained the trust of the Sultans and were able to achieve important positions in the Ottoman government and the Ottoman economy. Even though their numbers were small compared to
5562-465: A series of transit camps were set up to control the flow of victims to the killing site at the nearby Kemah gorge. Thousands of Armenians were killed near Lake Hazar , pushed by paramilitaries off the cliffs. More than 500,000 Armenians passed through the Firincilar plain south of Malatya , one of the deadliest areas during the genocide. Arriving convoys, having passed through the plain to approach
5768-543: A somewhat protected, but subordinate, place in Ottoman society. Large-scale massacres of Armenians had occurred in the 1890s and 1909 . The Ottoman Empire suffered a series of military defeats and territorial losses—especially during the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars —leading to fear among CUP leaders that the Armenians would seek independence. During their invasion of Russian and Persian territory in 1914, Ottoman paramilitaries massacred local Armenians. Ottoman leaders took isolated instances of Armenian resistance as evidence of
5974-620: A subordinate but protected place in society. Sharia law encoded Islamic superiority but guaranteed property rights and freedom of worship to non-Muslims ( dhimmis ) in exchange for a special tax . On the eve of World War I in 1914, around two million Armenians lived in Ottoman territory, mostly in Anatolia, a region with a total population of 15–17.5 million. According to the Armenian Patriarchate 's estimates for 1913–1914, there were 2,925 Armenian towns and villages in
6180-750: A symbol of factual Armenian autonomy, Zeitoun (Ulnia) was located between the Six Vilayets and Cilicia , which also had a strong Armenian presence since the creation of the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia . However, the destruction of the Kingdom by the Ramadanids and the subsequent rule by Muslim powers such as the Dulkadirids , the Mamluks , and the Ottomans led to ever increasing numbers of Muslims in
6386-554: A system based on the Ottoman millet , in which personal status is based on a person's belonging to a religious community. The state of Israel – on the basis of laws inherited from Ottoman times and retained both under British rule and by independent Israel – reserves the right to recognise some communities but not others. Thus, Orthodox Judaism is officially recognised in Israel, while Reform Rabbis and Conservative Rabbis are not recognised and cannot perform marriages. Israel recognised
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6592-548: A systematic policy to reduce the Armenian population of these areas. This policy lasted until World War I. These conditions led to a substantial decline in the population of the Armenian highlands; 300,000 Armenians left the empire, and others moved to towns. Some Armenians joined revolutionary political parties , of which the most influential was the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), founded in 1890. These parties primarily sought reform within
6798-408: A systematic state policy involving the bureaucracy, police, judiciary, and clergy, was a major structural component of the genocide. An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Armenians were Islamized, and it is estimated that as many as two million Turkish citizens in the early 21st century may have at least one Armenian grandparent . Some Armenians were allowed to convert to Islam and evade deportation, but
7004-423: A widespread rebellion, though no such rebellion existed. Mass deportation was intended to permanently forestall the possibility of Armenian autonomy or independence. On 24 April 1915, the Ottoman authorities arrested and deported hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and leaders from Constantinople . At the orders of Talaat Pasha , an estimated 800,000 to 1.2 million Armenians were sent on death marches to
7210-528: Is closely linked to Islamic rules on the treatment of non−Muslim minorities living under Islamic dominion ( dhimmi ). The Ottoman term specifically refers to the separate legal courts pertaining to personal law under which minorities were allowed to rule themselves (in cases not involving any Muslim) with fairly little interference from the Ottoman government . People were bound to their millets by their religious affiliations (or their confessional communities ), rather than their ethnic origins, according to
7416-533: Is theorized that no Armenian churches existed in Constantinople before the Ottoman conquest, but after 1453, 55 Armenian churches were built. Until the promulgation of the Edict of Gülhane in 1839, the patriarch, within limits, possessed penal authority over the Armenian people. At the capital, the patriarchate had its own jail and maintained a small police force. Its authority over the clergy being absolute,
7622-575: The Aegean coast were forcibly deported in May and June 1914 by Muslim bandits , who were secretly backed by the CUP and sometimes joined by the regular army . Historian Matthias Bjørnlund states that the perceived success of the Greek deportations allowed CUP leaders to envision even more radical policies "as yet another extension of a policy of social engineering through Turkification ". A few days after
7828-753: The Arabic milla , had three basic meanings in Ottoman Turkish: religion, religious community and nation. The first sense derives from Quranic usage and is attested in Ottoman administrative documents into the 19th century. Benjamin Braude has argued that before the Tanzimat reforms, the word millet in the sense of religious community denoted the Muslim religious community or the Christians outside of
8034-675: The Archbishopric of Ohrid , autonomous Orthodox Churches under the tutelage of the Ecumenical Patriarch, were taken over by the Greek Phanariots during the 18th century, in 1766 and 1767 respectively. By the 19th century the Orthodox Christian millet was dominated by Greeks, which were worried of Bulgarian and Romanian autocephalism. Over the course of 1860–1862, a series of laws were produced by
8240-651: The Armenian millet under the Armenian Patriarch. This meant that the Syriac Orthodox were subject to the hegemony of the Armenians linguistically, culturally, politically, and religiously. During the Tanzimat reforms (1839–78), the Syriac Orthodox were granted independent status with the recognition of their own millet in 1873. Under the millet system the Jews were organized as a community on
8446-657: The Armenian Patriarchate was established to govern the Apostolic faithful living in the Ottoman Empire. Hovagim I was brought to Constantinople by Sultan Mehmed II and established the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople . As the influence of the Constantinople Patriarchate surpassed that of the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin , this shifted the center of Armenian ecclesiastical and national life from Etchmiadzin (and Sis ) to Constantinople. It
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8652-646: The Armenian nobles by development of the political strata in the society. The Armenian Question , a derivative of the Eastern Question, became a common place among diplomatic circles and in the popular press after the Congress of Berlin (1878). In 1863, the Armenian National Constitution was promulgated. It was a form of a "Code of Regulations," composed of 150 articles drafted by the Armenian intelligentsia, which defined
8858-744: The British Army advanced in 1917 and 1918 northwards through the Levant , they liberated around 100,000 to 150,000 Armenians working for the Ottoman military under abysmal conditions, not including those held by Arab tribes. As a result of the Bolshevik Revolution and the subsequent separate peace with the Central Powers , the Russian army withdrew and Ottoman forces advanced into eastern Anatolia. The First Republic of Armenia
9064-654: The British Foreign Secretary , Lord Salisbury on 13 April 1878. It is no longer possible for the Armenians and the Turks to live together. Only a Christian administration can provide the equality, justice and the freedom of conscience. A Christian administration should replace the Muslim administration. Armenia (Eastern Anatolia) and Kilikya, are the regions where the Christian administration should be founded... The Turkish Armenians want this... That is,
9270-827: The Church of the East (later known as the Nestorian Church after the Nestorian schism ). The Church of the East's leader, the Catholicos or Patriarch of the East , was responsible to the Persian king for the Christians within the Empire. This system of maintaining the Christians as a protected religious community continued after the Islamic conquest of the Sassanids, and the community of Nestorian Christians flourished and
9476-424: The Druze and Baháʼí as separate communities, which the Ottomans and British had not – due mainly to political considerations. Also, the state of Israel reserves the right to determine to which community a person belongs, and officially register him or her accordingly – even when the person concerned objects to being part of a religious community (e.g., staunch atheists of Jewish origin are registered as members of
9682-514: The French Revolution had extended to the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. Each millet became increasingly independent with the establishment of its own schools, churches, hospitals and other facilities. These activities effectively moved the Christian population outside the framework of the Ottoman political system. The Ottoman millet system (citizenship) began to degrade with increasing identification of religious creed with ethnic nationality. The interaction of ideas of French revolution with
9888-435: The Kahta highlands, would have found gorges already filled with corpses from previous convoys. Many others were held in tributary valleys of the Tigris , Euphrates , or Murat and systematically executed by the Special Organization. Armenian men were often drowned by being tied together back-to-back before being thrown in the water, a method that was not used on women. Authorities viewed disposal of bodies through rivers as
10094-444: The Ottoman Constitution of 1876 uses the word " millet ", as do the Arabic and Persian versions; despite this, at the time the usage of the Arabic word " milla " was declining in favour of the word " ummah ". The Armenian, Greek, and Jewish residents did not use the word " millet " and instead described themselves as "nations" ( French : nation , Armenian: ազգ (azg), Greek: Έθνος (ethnos), and Ladino: nasyon ). The lack of use of
10300-569: The Soviet occupation of Armenia prevented another genocide. The victorious nationalists subsequently declared the Republic of Turkey in 1923. CUP war criminals were granted immunity and later that year, the Treaty of Lausanne established Turkey's current borders and provided for the Greek population's expulsion . Its protection provisions for non-Muslim minorities had no enforcement mechanism and were disregarded in practice. Armenian survivors were left mainly in three locations. About 295,000 Armenians had fled to Russian-controlled territory during
10506-525: The Tehcir Law (29 May 1915), eventually a large proportion of Armenians living in Western Armenia perished in what has become known as the Armenian genocide . There was local Armenian resistance in the region, developed against the activities of the Ottoman Empire. The events of 1915 to 1917 are regarded by Armenians, Western historians, and some Turkish writers and historians like Taner Akçam and Orhan Pamuk , to have been state-sponsored and planned mass killings, or genocide . The Armenian Genocide laid
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#173279869146310712-429: The Turkish War of Independence after World War I, carried out by Turkish nationalists . This genocide put an end to more than two thousand years of Armenian civilization in eastern Anatolia . Together with the mass murder and expulsion of Assyrian/Syriac and Greek Orthodox Christians, it enabled the creation of an ethnonationalist Turkish state, the Republic of Turkey . The Turkish government maintains that
10918-437: The civil administration . In the Ottoman Empire, townspeople, villagers, and farmers formed a class called the reaya , including Armenians. Civil and judicial administration was carried out under a separate parallel system of small municipal or rural units called kazas . The civil system was considered a check on the military system, since beys , who represented executive authority on reaya, could not carry out justice without
11124-434: The fourth century CE , establishing the Armenian Apostolic Church . Following the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, two Islamic empires—the Ottoman Empire and the Iranian Safavid Empire —contested Western Armenia , which was permanently separated from Eastern Armenia (held by the Safavids) by the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab . The Ottoman Empire was multiethnic and multireligious, and its millet system offered non-Muslims
11330-422: The millet concept (excepting the Armenian case, until the modern era). The millets had a great deal of power – they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. All that was required was loyalty to the Empire. When a member of one millet committed a crime against a member of another, the law of the injured party applied, but the ruling Islamic majority being paramount, any dispute involving
11536-406: The millet system created a strain of thought (a new form of personal identification) which made nationality synonymous with religion under the Ottoman flag. It was impossible to hold the system or prevent Clash of Civilizations when the Armenian national liberation movement expressed itself within the Armenian church. Patriarch Nerses Varjabedyan expressed his position on Ottoman Armenians to
11742-454: The " Regulation of the Armenian Nation " (Turkish: Nizâmnâme−i Millet−i Ermeniyân ): a constitution for the Armenian Orthodox Gregorian nation ( millet ) of that time. This document was drawn up by Armenian intelligentsia, which sought to curb the powers of the Armenian Patriarch and nobility. It created an Armenian National Assembly. These two reforms, which were theoretically perfect examples of social change by law, caused serious stress on
11948-427: The 1856 Imperial Reform edict, the Armenian Protestant Millet was the first millet to have a constitution sanctioned by the government, which was based on the principle of representative and lay control. Debate for a constitution among the Gregorian Armenians would be influenced by the Protestant Armenians'. The Armenian Gregorian Millet received a constitution on March 29, 1863, after several years of tensions within
12154-454: The 19th century, having disastrous effects for the native inhabitants of these regions, including the Armenians of Western Armenia. Owing to these events, Armenians constituted, over the whole extent of their ancient homeland, no more than a quarter of the total inhabitants. Despite this they kept and defended factual autonomy in certain isolated areas like Sasun , Shatakh (Çatak), and parts of Dersim (Tunceli). An Armenian stronghold and
12360-454: The 19th century, the millets had a great deal of power – they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. The Tanzimat reforms aimed to encourage Ottomanism among the subject nations and stop the rise of secessionist nationalist movements. within the Ottoman Empire. The reforms tried to integrate non-Muslims and non-Turks more thoroughly into the Ottoman society with new laws and regulations, but failed. In 1856, during
12566-409: The Armenian Church (by virtue of being non-Chalcedonians ) were under the authority of the Armenian Patriarchate, although they maintained a separate hierarchy with their own Patriarchs; these groups included the Syriac Orthodox and the Copts . Armenian Catholics and Armenian Protestants in 1850 (with British backing) separated from the Armenian Gregorian Millet to become their own millets. After
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#173279869146312772-425: The Armenian National Assembly. Beginning in 1863, education was available to all subjects, as far as funds permitted it. Such education was under the direction of lay committees. During this period in Russian Armenia , the association of the schools with the Church was close, but the same principle obtains. This became a problem for the Russian administration, which peaked during 1897 when Tsar Nicholas II appointed
12978-455: The Armenian community between Loussavorial and Khavarials and with the Porte . Assyrian or Eastern Syriacs Assyrians are referred to as 'Asuri' in the Turkish vernacular. Assyrians split by Christian sect were thus treated as separate ethnic groups for the Ottoman government. The Church of the East largely identifies as Assyrian, but the liturgical language is called Syriac, hence multiple 'millets' for Syriac speaking Assyrians arose as
13184-410: The Armenian leadership and anyone capable of organizing resistance, eventually resulted in the murder of most of those arrested. The same day, Talaat banned all Armenian political organizations and ordered that the Armenians who had previously been removed from Cilicia be deported again, from central Anatolia—where they would likely have survived—to the Syrian Desert . We have been blamed for not making
13390-424: The Armenian quarter of Kumkapı , the seat of the Armenian Patriarch, who was spared through the prompt action of the commandant, Hassan Aga. On 27 July 1890, Harutiun Jangülian , Mihran Damadian and Hambartsum Boyajian interrupted the Divine Liturgy to read a manifesto and denounce the indifference of the Armenian patriarch and Armenian National Assembly to national liberation. Jangülian then tried to assassinate
13596-408: The Armenians had to be eliminated to save the empire. Massacres of Armenian men were occurring in the vicinity of Bashkale in Van vilayet from December 1914. ARF leaders attempted to keep the situation calm, warning that even justifiable self-defense could lead to escalation of killing. The governor, Djevdet Bey , ordered the Armenians of Van to hand over their arms on 18 April 1915, creating
13802-452: The Armenians with their Russian oppressors. Nomadic Kurds committed many atrocities during the genocide, but settled Kurds only rarely did so. Perpetrators had several motives, including ideology, revenge, desire for Armenian property, and careerism . To motivate perpetrators, state-appointed imams encouraged the killing of Armenians and killers were entitled to a third of Armenian movable property (another third went to local authorities and
14008-411: The Armenians; the Eastern Orthodox perceived American Protestants, who had over 100 missionaries established in Anatolia by World War I , as weakening their own teaching. These religious activities, subsidized by the governments of western nations, were not devoid of political goals, such in the case of candlestick wars of 1847, which eventually led in 1854 to the Crimean War . Tension began among
14214-447: The Armenophobic Grigory Sergeyevich Golitsin as governor of Transcaucasia, and Armenian schools, cultural associations, newspapers and libraries were closed. The Armenian charitable works, hospitals, and provident institutions were organized along the explained perspective. The Armenians, in addition to paying taxes to the state, voluntarily imposed extra burdens on themselves in order to support these philanthropic agencies. The taxes to
14420-466: The Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians), and Bulgarians (Bulgar). The Ecumenical Patriarch was recognized as the highest religious and political leader ( millet-bashi , or ethnarch ) of all Eastern Orthodox subjects of the Sultan, though in certain periods some major powers, such as Russia (under the 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca ), or Britain claimed the rights of protection over the Ottoman Empire's Orthodox subjects. The Serbian Patriarchate of Peć and
14626-406: The Balkans, overrunning the Catholic populations of Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, and Hungary. The Melkite Catholics gained their autonomy as a religious community in 1848 by Sultan Abdulmecid . Bruce Masters claims that Melkite Catholics insisted that they had a millet of their own, that would grant them "sense of distinctiveness". In the Orient, the 16th century saw the Maronites of Lebanon,
14832-793: The Bilu, a group of young Russian Jews who were pioneers in the Zionist movement, proposed negotiating with the Sultan to allow a millet like settlement which would allow them greater independence in Palestine. After the Fall of Constantinople , the only Latin Catholic group in the Sultan's domain were the Genoese who lived in the Byzantine capital. Over the next decades, Turkish armies pushed into
15038-523: The Book , in the Ottoman legal system . At first, the Sultan was the highest power in the land and had control over almost everything. However, a state organization began to take a more definite shape in the first half of the sixteenth century under Suleyman I . The Ottomans allowed the establishment of an Armenian Patriarchate to govern the Armenian people. This meant the beginning of the Armenian millet ;
15244-688: The CUP in the perpetration of genocide. The Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants (IAMM) coordinated the deportation and the resettlement of Muslim immigrants in the vacant houses and lands. The IAMM, under the control of Talaat's Ministry of the Interior , and the Special Organization, which took orders directly from the CUP Central Committee, all closely coordinated their activities. A dual-track system
15450-582: The CUP's increasingly repressive governance. When news of the countercoup reached Adana , armed Muslims attacked the Armenian quarter and Armenians returned fire. Ottoman soldiers did not protect Armenians and instead armed the rioters. Between 20,000 and 25,000 people, mostly Armenians, were killed in Adana and nearby towns. Unlike the 1890s massacres, the events were not organized by the central government but instigated by local officials, intellectuals, and Islamic clerics, including CUP supporters in Adana. Although
15656-505: The Catholic and Orthodox monks in Palestine with France channeling resources to increase its influence in the region from 1840. Repairs to shrines were important for the sects as they were linked to the possession of keys to the shrines. Notes were given by the protectorates, including the French, to the Ottoman capital about the governor; he was condemned as he had to defend the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by placing soldiers inside
15862-617: The Dashnak Party also played a significant role in arming the people of the region. The Armenians of Sasun confronted the Ottoman army and Kurdish irregulars , succumbing to superior numbers. This was followed by the Zeitun Rebellion , in which Hunchak activists toured various regions of Cilicia and Zeitun to encourage resistance, and established new branches of the Hunchak Party. The 1896 Ottoman Bank takeover
16068-517: The Dashnaks to plan an assassination attempt on the sultan to enact vengeance. Dashnak members, led by ARF founder Christapor Mikaelian , secretly started producing explosives and planning the operation in Sofia , Bulgaria . The assassination attempt was unsuccessful in killing Abdul Hamid II, although it resulted in the death of 26 people and a further 58 wounded. The Second Constitutional Era of
16274-476: The Empire , ruling from 31 August 1876 until he was deposed on 27 April 1909. He was the last Ottoman Sultan to rule with absolute power. The Bashkaleh clash was the bloody encounter between the Armenakan Party and the Ottoman Empire in May 1889. Its name comes from Başkale , a border town of Van Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. The event was important, as it was reflected in main Armenian newspapers as
16480-501: The Empire began shortly after Sultan Abdul Hamid II restored the constitutional monarchy after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution . The period established many political groups . A series of elections during this period resulted in the gradual ascendance of the Committee of Union and Progress 's (CUP) domination in politics. This period also marked the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire . On 24 July 1908, Armenians' hopes for equality in
16686-516: The Great Powers, and the Ottoman Empire. It aimed to introduce reforms to the Armenian citizens of the empire. This agreement, which was solidified in February 1914 was based on the arrangements nominally made in 1878. According to this arrangement the inspectors general, whose powers and duties constituted the key to the question, were to be named for a period of ten years, and their engagement
16892-524: The Jewish religious community, a practice derived ultimately from the fact that the millet ultimately designated a person's ethnicity more than a person's beliefs). Israeli secularists such as Shulamit Aloni and Uri Avnery often protested and called for abolition of this Ottoman remnant, and its replacement by a system modeled on that of the United States where religious affiliation is considered
17098-651: The Latins of Palestine, and most of the Greek islands, which once held Latin Catholic communities, come under Turkish rule. Papal response to the loss of these communities was initially a call to the crusade, but the response from the European Catholic monarchs was weak: French interest, moreover, lay in an alliance with the Turks against the Habsburgs . Furthermore, the Catholics of the Ottoman world received
17304-547: The Muslim population. The Softas took no part in it, and many Armenians found refuge in the Muslim sections of the city. The first notable battle in the Armenian resistance movement took place in Sasun, where nationalist ideals were proliferated by activists of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party , or Hunchak , activists, such as Damadian and Boyajian. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation , or
17510-620: The Ottoman Empire's treatment of its Christian minorities and increasingly pressured the Sublime Porte to extend equal rights to all its citizens. Beginning in 1839, the Ottoman government implemented the Tanzimat reforms, among its many goals to improve the situation of non-Muslim minorities, although these would prove largely ineffective. In 1856, the Imperial Reform Edict promised equality for all Ottoman citizens irrespective of their ethnicity and confession, widening
17716-620: The Ottoman Empire, despite being Muslim, mainly kept to themselves and maintained their separate identity, even having their own courts, in which they would tolerate no outside influence. The Orthodox Christians were included in the Rum Millet ( millet-i Rûm ) or the " Roman nation ", and enjoyed a certain autonomy. It was named after Roman ("Byzantine") subjects of the Ottoman Empire, but Orthodox Greeks , Bulgarians , Albanians , Georgians , Arabs , Aromanians , Megleno-Romanians , Romanians , and Serbs were all considered part of
17922-569: The Ottoman Empire, of which 2,084 were in the Armenian highlands adjacent to the Russian border. Armenians were a minority in most places where they lived, alongside Turkish and Kurdish Muslim and Greek Orthodox Christian neighbors. According to the Patriarchate's figure, 215,131 Armenians lived in urban areas, especially Constantinople , Smyrna , and Eastern Thrace . Although most Ottoman Armenians were peasant farmers, they were overrepresented in commerce. As middleman minorities , despite
18128-488: The Ottoman Empire. Intentional, state-sponsored killing of Armenians mostly ceased by the end of January 1917, although sporadic massacres and starvation continued. Both contemporaries and later historians have estimated that around 1 million Armenians died during the genocide , with figures ranging from 600,000 to 1.5 million deaths. Between 800,000 and 1.2 million Armenians were deported, and contemporaries estimated that by late 1916 only 200,000 were still alive. As
18334-421: The Ottoman Empire. This view is supported by Donald Quataert . In contrast, Michael Ursinus writes that the word was used to refer to non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire even before that time. The term was used inconsistently prior to the 19th century. The systematic use of millet as designation for non-Muslim Ottoman communities dates from the reign of Sultan Mahmud II ( r. 1808–1839 ) in
18540-421: The Ottoman Empire. Norman Stillman explains that the prosperity of medieval Jews was closely tied to that of their Muslim governors. Stillman notes that during the time between the 9th and 13th centuries when Jewish culture blossomed, "medieval Islamic civilization was at its apogee". Given their rampant persecution in medieval Europe, many Jews looked favorably upon millet . In the late 19th century such groups as
18746-462: The Ottoman Empire. The position of educated and privileged Christians within the Ottoman Empire improved in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the Ottomans increasingly recognized the missing skills which the larger Ottoman population lacked, and as the empire became more settled it began to feel its increasing backwardness in relation to the European powers. European powers on the other side, engaged in
18952-663: The Ottoman armies for the invasion of Russian territory, and tried to encircle the Russian Caucasus Army at the Battle of Sarikamish , fought from December 1914 to January 1915. Unprepared for the harsh winter conditions, his forces were routed, losing more than 60,000 men. The retreating Ottoman army destroyed dozens of Ottoman Armenian villages in Bitlis vilayet, massacring their inhabitants. Enver publicly blamed his defeat on Armenians who he claimed had actively sided with
19158-411: The Ottoman economy; Muslims were disadvantaged by the deportation of skilled professionals and entire districts fell into famine following their farmers' deportation. The Ottoman and Turkish governments passed a series of Abandoned Properties Laws to manage and redistribute property confiscated from Armenians. Although the laws maintained that the state was simply administering the properties on behalf of
19364-577: The Ottoman government recruited thousands of prisoners to join the paramilitary Special Organization , which initially focused on stirring up revolts among Muslims behind Russian lines beginning before the empire officially entered the war. On 29 October 1914, the empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers by launching a surprise attack on Russian ports in the Black Sea . Many Russian Armenians were enthusiastic about
19570-467: The Ottoman government; a public declaration of the Western Bureau printed in the official announcement was directed to "Ottoman Citizens". The June issue of Droshak ran an editorial about it. There were overwhelming numbers of Armenians who served the Empire units with distinction during Balkan wars. The Armenian reform package was an arrangement negotiated with Russia, acting on behalf of
19776-552: The Ottoman political and administrative structure. The Ottoman System lost important domestic powers under the Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire . Many foreigners resident in the Empire were not subject to its laws, but rather those of their homelands. In addition, European powers became formal Protectors of certain groups in the empire: Russia of Eastern Orthodox groups, France of Roman Catholics, and Great Britain of Jews and other groups. Russia and Britain competed for
19982-458: The Ottoman ruling elite. Armenians formed three millets under the Ottoman rule. A wide array of other groups such as Catholics , Karaites , and Samaritans was also represented. The large number of Circassians in the Ottoman Empire was mainly due to the Crimean War . During the war and following years, many Circassians fled the conquest of their homeland by Russia . Circassians in
20188-526: The Patriarch. The goal was to persuade the Armenian clerics to bring their policies into alignment with the national politics. They soon forced the patriarch to join a procession heading to the Yildiz Palace to demand implementation of Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin . It is significant that this massacre, in which 6000 Armenians are said to have perished, was not the result of a general rising of
20394-476: The Russians, a theory that became a consensus among CUP leaders. Reports of local incidents such as weapons caches, severed telegraph lines, and occasional killings confirmed preexisting beliefs about Armenian treachery and fueled paranoia among CUP leaders that a coordinated Armenian conspiracy was plotting against the empire. Discounting contrary reports that most Armenians were loyal, the CUP leaders decided that
20600-514: The Special Organization, and those farther away also involved local militias, bandits, gendarmes, or Kurdish tribes depending on the area. Within the area controlled by the Third Army , which held eastern Anatolia, the army was only involved in genocidal atrocities in the vilayets of Van, Erzerum, and Bitlis. Many perpetrators came from the Caucasus ( Chechens and Circassians), who identified
20806-607: The State did not have direct return to Armenians in such cases. The national liberation movement of the Balkan peoples (see: national awakenings in Balkans ) and the immediate involvement of the European powers in the Eastern question had a powerful effect on the hitherto suppressed national movement among the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire – on the development of a national liberation ideology. The Armenian national liberation movement
21012-621: The Syrian Desert in 1915 and 1916. Driven forward by paramilitary escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to robbery, rape , and massacres. In the Syrian Desert, the survivors were dispersed into concentration camps . In 1916, another wave of massacres was ordered, leaving about 200,000 deportees alive by the end of the year. Around 100,000 to 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly converted to Islam and integrated into Muslim households. Massacres and ethnic cleansing of Armenian survivors continued through
21218-514: The Tanzimat era, Sultan Abdulmejid I enacted the Hatt-ı Hümayun (modern Turkish Islahat Fermânı ; "Firman of the Reforms"), which proclaimed freedom of religion and civil equality of all religious communities. It further granted the authorities in each millet greater privileges and self-governing powers, but also required oaths of allegiance to the Sultan. In March 1863, the Sultan enacted
21424-522: The Tanzimat reforms had given Armenians more rights, the ARF hoped to gain autonomy to govern Armenian populated areas of the Ottoman Empire as a "state within a state". The "Second Congress of the Ottoman opposition" took place in Paris, France, in 1907. Opposition leaders including Ahmed Riza (CUP), Sabahheddin Bey (Liberal), and Khachatur Maloumian (Dashnak) attended. During the meeting, an alliance between
21630-553: The Turkish authorities eliminated surviving Armenians from southern Turkey, expelling thousands to French-mandate Syria . Armenians in the Ottoman Empire Armenians were a significant minority in the Ottoman Empire . They belonged to either the Armenian Apostolic Church , the Armenian Catholic Church , or the Armenian Protestant Church , each church serving as the basis of a millet . They played
21836-406: The absent Armenians, there was no provision to return them to the owners—it was presumed that they had ceased to exist. Historians Taner Akçam and Ümit Kurt argue that "The Republic of Turkey and its legal system were built, in a sense, on the seizure of Armenian cultural, social, and economic wealth, and on the removal of the Armenian presence." The proceeds from the sale of confiscated property
22042-579: The age range of conscription. Unlike the earlier massacres of Ottoman Armenians, in 1915 Armenians were not usually killed in their villages, to avoid destruction of property or unauthorized looting. Instead, the men were usually separated from the rest of the deportees during the first few days and executed. Few resisted, believing it would put their families in greater danger. Boys above the age of twelve (sometimes fifteen) were treated as adult men. Execution sites were chosen for proximity to major roads and for rugged terrain, lakes, wells, or cisterns to facilitate
22248-481: The area around Konya in central Anatolia. In late March or early April, the CUP Central Committee decided on the large-scale removal of Armenians from areas near the front lines. During the night of 23–24 April 1915 hundreds of Armenian political activists, intellectuals, and community leaders were rounded up in Constantinople and across the empire . This order from Talaat, intended to eliminate
22454-629: The army , but many soldiers of all ethnicities and religions deserted due to difficult conditions and concern for their families. At least 10 percent of Ottoman Armenians were mobilized, leaving their communities bereft of fighting-age men and therefore largely unable to organize armed resistance to deportation in 1915. During the Ottoman invasion of Russian and Persian territory , the Special Organization massacred local Armenians and Assyrian/Syriac Christians . Beginning in November 1914, provincial governors of Van, Bitlis, and Erzerum sent many telegrams to
22660-540: The basis of religion, alongside the other millets ( e.g. Eastern Orthodox millet , Armenian millet , etc.). They were the most geographically spread group within the empire. Ottoman Jews enjoyed privileges similar to Christians in the Ottoman Empire. In the framework of the millet they had a considerable amount of administrative autonomy and were represented by the Hakham Bashi ( Turkish : Hahambaşı حاخامباشی), who held broad powers to enact, judge, and enforce
22866-548: The camp system. The Ottoman Empire tried to prevent journalists and photographers from documenting the atrocities, threatening them with arrest. Nevertheless, substantiated reports of mass killings were widely covered in Western newspapers . On 24 May 1915, the Triple Entente (Russia, Britain, and France) formally condemned the Ottoman Empire for " crimes against humanity and civilization", and threatened to hold
23072-492: The campaigns of Tamerlane . In addition, there were the century-long Ottoman-Persian Wars between the rival empires, the battlegrounds of which ranged over Western Armenia (therefore large parts of the native lands of the Armenians), causing the region and its peoples to be passed between the Ottomans and Persians numerous times. The wars between the arch-rivals started from the early 16th century and lasted till well into
23278-487: The camps at night for looting and rape; some women were forced into marriage. Thousands of Armenian children were sold to childless Turks, Arabs, and Jews, who would come to the camps to buy them from their parents. In the western Levant , governed by the Ottoman Fourth Army under Djemal Pasha, there were no concentration camps or large-scale massacres, rather Armenians were resettled and recruited to work for
23484-402: The central government and to keep their power in check. Many clerics in the millet system pushed back against these reforms as they believed it was meant to weaken the millets and the power these clerics had built for themselves. These millets , refusing to give up any autonomy, slowed down the attempted reforms and their impact on the equality of religious communities. Before the turn of
23690-583: The central government pressing for more severe measures against the Armenians, both regionally and throughout the empire. These requests were endorsed by the central government already before 1915. Armenian civil servants were dismissed from their posts in late 1914 and early 1915. In February 1915, the CUP leaders decided to disarm Armenians serving in the army and transfer them to labor battalions . The Armenian soldiers in labor battalions were systematically executed, although many skilled workers were spared until 1916. Minister of War Enver Pasha took over command of
23896-473: The centres with a high concentration of Armenians lost their geographic continuity (parts of Van , Bitlis , and Kharput vilayets ). Over the centuries, tribes of Turks and Kurds settled into Anatolia and Armenia, which was left severely depopulated by a slew of devastating events such as the Byzantine-Persian Wars , Byzantine-Arab Wars , Turkish migration , Mongol Invasions and finally
24102-577: The centuries. Armenian involvement on the international stage would have to wait until the Armenian national awakening , which the Armenian Question , as used in European history, became commonplace among diplomatic circles and in the popular press after the Congress of Berlin (1878). While Armenian nationalism developed later than Greek nationalism , the two movements share more similarities than those of other ethnic groups. The Great Powers Great Britain, France and Russia took issue with
24308-424: The concealment or disposal of corpses. The convoys would stop at a nearby transit camp, where the escorts would demand a ransom from the Armenians. Those unable to pay were murdered. Units of the Special Organization, often wearing gendarme uniforms, were stationed at the killing sites; escorting gendarmes often did not participate in killing. At least 150,000 Armenians passed through Erzindjan from June 1915, where
24514-518: The coup, the CUP shifted the demography of border areas by resettling Balkan Muslim refugees while coercing Christians to emigrate; immigrants were promised property that had belonged to Christians. When parts of Eastern Thrace were reoccupied by the Ottoman Empire during the Second Balkan War in mid-1913, there was a campaign of looting and intimidation against Greeks and Armenians, forcing many to emigrate. Around 150,000 Greek Orthodox from
24720-486: The currency reserves and the reserves of gold and silver, including customs duty. Sixteen of the eighteen most important bankers in the Ottoman Empire were Armenian". Ottoman Armenians were overrepresented in commerce. As middleman minorities , despite the wealth of some Armenians, their overall political power was low, making them especially vulnerable. After Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453,
24926-592: The dead ranging from 80,000 to 300,000. The Hamidian massacres are named for Sultan Abdul Hamid II, whose efforts to reinforce the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire resulted in the massacres. Ottoman officials involved in the Sasun uprising , who were previously defeated in the First Zeitoun Rebellion , did not want the formation of another semi-autonomous Armenian region in the Eastern vilayets. In Sasun, Armenian activists were working to arm
25132-710: The demographics of Anatolia. Armenian homes, businesses, and land were preferentially allocated to Muslims from outside the empire, nomads, and the estimated 800,000 (largely Kurdish) Ottoman subjects displaced because of the war with Russia. Resettled Muslims were spread out (typically limited to 10 percent in any area) among larger Turkish populations so that they would lose their distinctive characteristics, such as non-Turkish languages or nomadism. These migrants were exposed to harsh conditions and, in some cases, violence or restriction from leaving their new villages. The ethnic cleansing of Anatolia—the Armenian genocide, Assyrian genocide , and expulsion of Greeks after World War I—paved
25338-501: The deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action that cannot be described as genocide . As of 2023, 34 countries have recognized the events as genocide , concurring with the academic consensus. The presence of Armenians in Anatolia has been documented since the sixth century BCE , about 1,500 years before the arrival of Turkmens under the Seljuk dynasty . The Kingdom of Armenia adopted Christianity as its national religion in
25544-552: The deportation of all Armenians throughout the empire, even Adrianople , 2,000 kilometers (1,200 mi) from the Russian front. Following the elimination of the Armenian population in eastern Anatolia, in August 1915, the Armenians of western Anatolia and European Turkey were targeted for deportation. Some areas with a very low Armenian population and some cities, including Constantinople, were partially spared. Overall, national, regional, and local levels of governance cooperated with
25750-406: The early 19th century, when official documentation came to reiterate that non-Muslim subjects were organized into three officially sanctioned millets : Greek Orthodox , Armenian , and Jewish . The bureaucrats of this era asserted that the millet system was a tradition dating back to the reign of Sultan Mehmed I ( r. 1413–1421 ). Many historians have accepted this claim and assumed that
25956-408: The eastern provinces after 1908 and the CUP took steps to reform the local gendarmerie , although tensions remained high. Despite an agreement to reverse the land usurpation of the previous decades in the 1910 Salonica Accord between the ARF and the CUP, the latter made no efforts to carry this out. In early 1909 an unsuccessful countercoup was launched by conservatives and some liberals who opposed
26162-627: The emergence of the Armenian question in international diplomacy as Armenians were for the first time used by the Great Powers to interfere in Ottoman politics. Although Armenians had been called the "loyal millet" in contrast to Greeks and others who had previously challenged Ottoman rule, the authorities began to perceive Armenians as a threat after 1878. In 1891, Abdul Hamid created the Hamidiye regiments from Kurdish tribes, allowing them to act with impunity against Armenians. From 1895 to 1896
26368-540: The empire and found only limited support from Ottoman Armenians. Russia's decisive victory in the 1877–1878 war forced the Ottoman Empire to cede parts of eastern Anatolia, the Balkans , and Cyprus . Under international pressure at the 1878 Congress of Berlin , the Ottoman government agreed to carry out reforms and guarantee the physical safety of its Armenian subjects, but there was no enforcement mechanism; conditions continued to worsen. The Congress of Berlin marked
26574-520: The empire brightened when the country returned to constitutional monarchy. Two of the largest revolutionary groups trying to overthrow Sultan Abdul Hamid II had been the Dashnak and the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) a group part of the Young Turks movement. In a general assembly meeting in 1907, the ARF acknowledged that the Armenian and Turkish revolutionaries had the same goals. Although
26780-503: The empire saw widespread massacres ; at least 100,000 Armenians were killed primarily by Ottoman soldiers and mobs let loose by the authorities. Many Armenian villages were forcibly converted to Islam. The Ottoman state bore ultimate responsibility for the killings, whose purpose was violently restoring the previous social order in which Christians would unquestioningly accept Muslim supremacy, and forcing Armenians to emigrate, thereby decreasing their numbers. Abdul Hamid's despotism prompted
26986-415: The empire's eastern provinces. Ottoman records show the government aimed to reduce Armenians to no more than five percent of the local population in the sources of deportation and ten percent in the destination areas. This goal could not be accomplished without mass murder. The deportation of Armenians and resettlement of Muslims in their lands was part of a broader project intended to permanently restructure
27192-527: The empire's problems, concluding by mid-1914 that they were internal tumors to be excised. Of these, Ottoman Armenians were considered the most dangerous, because CUP leaders feared that their homeland in Anatolia—claimed as the last refuge of the Turkish nation—would break away from the empire as the Balkans had. In January 1913, the CUP launched another coup , installed a one-party state , and strictly repressed all real or perceived internal enemies. After
27398-613: The empire, a belief that was crucial to deciding on genocide in early 1915. At the same time, the war provided an opportunity to enact what Talaat called the "definitive solution to the Armenian Question". The CUP wrongly believed that the Russian Empire sought to annex eastern Anatolia, and ordered the genocide in large part to prevent this eventuality. The genocide was intended to permanently eliminate any possibility that Armenians could achieve autonomy or independence in
27604-437: The entire building itself. However, intervention on part of the European diplomats in the city managed to persuade the government to give safe passage to the survivors to France. Despite the level of violence the incident had wrought, the takeover was reported positively in the European press, praising the men for their courage and the objectives they attempted to accomplish. The years between 1894 and 1896 ended, with estimates of
27810-506: The folk and to recruit young men by motivating them to the Armenian cause. 50,000 Turkish and Kurdish troops started the offensive in Sasun, where 500 fedayees had to defend 20,000 unarmed people. The Armenians were headed by Andranik Ozanian along with Kevork Chavoush , Sepasdatsi Mourad , Keri, Hrayr Tjokhk , and others. The events of the Hamidian massacres and Sultan Abdul Hamid II's continued anti-Armenian policies gave way for
28016-548: The formation of an opposition movement, the Young Turks , which sought to overthrow him and restore the 1876 Constitution of the Ottoman Empire , which he had suspended in 1877. One faction of the Young Turks was the secret and revolutionary Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), based in Salonica , from which the charismatic conspirator Mehmed Talaat (later Talaat Pasha) emerged as a leading member. Although skeptical of
28222-826: The genocide and ended up mostly in Soviet Armenia . An estimated 200,000 Armenian refugees settled in the Middle East, forming a new wave of the Armenian diaspora . In the Republic of Turkey, about 100,000 Armenians lived in Constantinople and another 200,000 lived in the provinces, largely women and children who had been forcibly converted. Though Armenians in Constantinople faced discrimination, they were allowed to maintain their cultural identity, unlike those elsewhere in Turkey who continued to face forced Islamization and kidnapping of girls after 1923. Between 1922 and 1929,
28428-475: The genocide endured exploitation, hard labor without pay, forced conversion to Islam, and physical and sexual abuse . Armenian women captured during the journey ended up in Turkish or Kurdish households; those who were Islamized during the second phase of the genocide found themselves in an Arab or Bedouin environment. The rape , sexual abuse, and prostitution of Armenian women were all very common. Although Armenian women tried to avoid sexual violence, suicide
28634-442: The genocide, which has been a source of controversy. Relief efforts were organized in dozens of countries to raise money for Armenian survivors. By 1925, people in 49 countries were organizing "Golden Rule Sundays" during which they consumed the diet of Armenian refugees, to raise money for humanitarian efforts. Between 1915 and 1930, Near East Relief raised $ 110 million ($ 2 billion adjusted for inflation) for refugees from
28840-450: The groundwork for the Turkish nation-state to become more homogeneous. By the end of World War I, over 90 percent of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were gone with most traces of their existence erased. The women and children who survived were frequently forced to convert to Islam and give up their Armenian identities. Millet system In the Ottoman Empire , a millet ( Turkish: [millet] ; Ottoman Turkish : ملت )
29046-474: The largest number in the world. In 1920, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople reported it was caring for 100,000 orphans, estimating that another 100,000 remained captive. Following the armistice, Allied governments championed the prosecution of Armenian genocide perpetrators. Grand Vizier Damat Ferid Pasha publicly recognized that 800,000 Ottoman citizens of Armenian origin had died as
29252-462: The last to the CUP). Embezzling beyond that was punished. Ottoman politicians and officials who opposed the genocide were dismissed or assassinated. The government decreed that any Muslim who harbored an Armenian against the will of the authorities would be executed. Although the majority of able-bodied Armenian men had been conscripted into the army, others deserted, paid the exemption tax, or fell outside
29458-533: The late 1820s, due to the Greek Enlightenment and Greek War of Independence setting an example of non-Muslims gaining independence against the Ottoman Empire. Russia stood to benefit from the decline of the Ottoman Empire; on the other hand, Austria and the United Kingdom deemed the preservation of Empire to be in their best interests. The position of France changed several times over
29664-859: The latter half of the 19th century, culminating in the Armenian Genocide . In the Byzantine Empire , the Armenian Church was not allowed to operate in Constantinople ( Istanbul ), because the Greek Orthodox Church regarded the Armenian Church as heretical . The Ottoman Turks early on encountered Armenians , and their conquest of Constantinople gave them legitimacy in ruling over them. Armenians were thus governed as dhimmis , or People of
29870-438: The laws among the Jews in the Ottoman Empire and often sat on the Sultan's divan . The Jewish millet received a constitution in 1865. The Jews, like the other millet communities of the Ottoman Empire, were still considered "People of the book" and protected by the Sharia Law of Islam. However, while the Jews were not viewed in the eyes of the law as equals of Muslims, they were still treated relatively well at points during
30076-667: The learned professions taught at the schools that had opened throughout the Ottoman Empire , the chief occupations of Armenian Ottomans were trade and commerce, industry, and agriculture. In the empire, Armenians were raised to higher occupations, like Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian was a businessman and philanthropist. He played a major role in making the petroleum reserves of the Middle East available to Western development. The Armenian Press and literature during this period established institutions that were critical; this attitude has been invaluable in reforming abuses and introducing improvements in Armenian communities. Thus their critical instinct
30282-477: The logistics of the Ottoman Army. By late 1915, the CUP had extinguished Armenian existence from eastern Anatolia. On 23 May 1915, Talaat ordered the deportation of all Armenians in Van, Bitlis, and Erzerum. To grant a cover of legality to the deportation, already well underway in the eastern provinces and Cilicia, the Council of Ministers approved the Temporary Law of Deportation , which allowed authorities to deport anyone deemed suspect. On 21 June, Talaat ordered
30488-446: The main advisors of the National Bank of Turkey and the Turkish Petroleum Corporation, which later became the Iraqi Oil Corporation. Historian A. Tchamkerten writes "Armenian achievements in the Empire was not only in trade, however. They were involved in almost all economic sectors and held the highest levels of responsibility. In the 19th century, various Armenian families became the Sultan's goldsmiths, Sultan's architects and took over
30694-542: The massacres went unpunished, the ARF continued to hope that reforms to improve security and restore lands were forthcoming, until late 1912, when they broke with the CUP and appealed to the European powers. On 8 February 1914, the CUP reluctantly agreed to reforms brokered by Germany that provided for the appointment of two European inspectors for the entire Ottoman east and putting the Hamidiye regiments in reserve. CUP leaders feared that these reforms, which were never implemented, could lead to partition and cited them as
30900-462: The men were killed immediately, many women and children were kidnapped by local Kurds, and others marched away to be killed later. By the end of June, there were only a dozen Armenians in the vilayet. The first deportations of Armenians were proposed by Djemal Pasha , the commander of the Fourth Army , in February 1915 and targeted Armenians in Cilicia (specifically Alexandretta , Dörtyol , Adana, Hadjin , Zeytun , and Sis ) who were relocated to
31106-423: The mid-nineteenth century, Armenians faced large-scale land usurpation as a consequence of the sedentarization of Kurdish tribes and the arrival of Muslim refugees and immigrants (mainly Circassians ) following the Russo-Circassian War . In 1876, when Sultan Abdul Hamid II came to power, the state began to confiscate Armenian-owned land in the eastern provinces and give it to Muslim immigrants as part of
31312-444: The middle class. Confiscation of Armenian assets continued into the second half of the twentieth century, and in 2006 the National Security Council ruled that property records from 1915 must be kept closed to protect national security. Outside Istanbul, the traces of Armenian existence in Turkey, including churches and monasteries, libraries, khachkars , and animal and place names , have been systematically erased, beginning during
31518-425: The millet system as an example of pre-modern religious pluralism , as the state recognized multiple different religious groups in exchange for some control over religious identification and the enforcement of orthodoxy. Notably, Ethnarchs principally conversed with the Foreign Ministry , as if they represented foreign nations, but after 1878 it was through the Justice Ministry . Historian Johann Strauss wrote that
31724-429: The old millet categories were used for the exchange between Greece and Turkey of the Greek Orthodox population in Turkey and Moslems in Greece. The categories were also used to establish the protection of the two remaining recognized minorities, the "Muslims of Western Thrace" (Turks, Pomaks, and Roms) and the "Greek Orthodox of Istanbul". In 1924, upon the League of Nations ' demand, a bilateral Bulgarian-Greek agreement
31930-406: The oppressed peoples of Armenia and Macedonia. Andranik participated in the First Balkan War alongside Nzhdeh as a Chief Commander of 12th Battalion of Lozengrad Third Brigade of the Macedonian-Adrianopolitan militia under the command of Colonel Aleksandar Protogerov . His detachment consisted of 273 Armenian volunteers. On 5 May 1912, the Dashnak Party officially severed the relations with
32136-405: The outbreak of World War I, the CUP concluded an alliance with Germany on 2 August 1914. The same month, CUP representatives went to an ARF conference demanding that, in the event of war with Russia , the ARF incite Russian Armenians to intervene on the Ottoman side. Instead, the delegates resolved that Armenians should fight for the countries of their citizenships. During its war preparations,
32342-419: The parliament. Some legal systems which developed outside the Ottoman Empire, such as those in India , Iran , Pakistan , and Bangladesh , display similar characteristics. In Egypt for instance, the application of family law – including marriage, divorce, alimony , child custody, inheritance, and burial – is based on an individual's religious beliefs. In the practice of family law, the State recognizes only
32548-422: The patriarch could imprison or exile Armenians at will; and while they were compelled to secure the consent of the Sultan to imprison or exile laymen of their community, the necessary firman was easily obtained. The patriarchal system of government, in placing civil powers in the hands of high ecclesiastics, was an outcome of the fact that the Sultan made no distinction between church and community, and often lent
32754-415: The perpetrators accountable. Witness testimony was published in books such as The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (1916) and Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (1918), raising public awareness of the genocide. The German Empire was a military ally of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. German diplomats approved limited removals of Armenians in early 1915, and took no action against
32960-411: The powers of the Patriarch, the newly formed Armenian National Assembly , and the rights and privileges of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Patriarch Mikrtich issued a decree permitting women to have equal votes with men and asking them to take part in all elections. The Armenian National Assembly had wide-ranging functions. Muslim officials were not employed to collect taxes in Armenian villages, but
33166-809: The process also required the eradication of Armenian names , language , and culture , and for women, immediate marriage to a Muslim. Although Islamization was the most feasible opportunity for survival, it also transgressed Armenian moral and social norms. The CUP allowed Armenian women to marry into Muslim households, as these women would lose their Armenian identity. Young women and girls were often appropriated as house servants or sex slaves . Some boys were abducted to work as forced laborers for Muslim individuals. Some children were forcibly seized, while others were sold or given up by their parents to save their lives. Special state-run orphanages were also set up with strict procedures intending to deprive their charges of an Armenian identity. Most Armenian children who survived
33372-470: The recovered documents on the Armenakans showed an extensive plot for a national movement. Ottoman officials believed that the men were members of a large revolutionary apparatus and the discussion was reflected on newspapers, ( Eastern Express , Oriental Advertiser , Saadet , and Tarik ) and the responses were on the Armenian papers. In some Armenian circles, this event was considered as a martyrdom and brought other armed conflicts. The Bashkaleh Resistance
33578-399: The regime insisted on their destruction wherever their numbers exceeded the five to ten percent threshold, or there was a risk of them being able to preserve their nationality and culture. Talaat Pasha personally authorized conversion of Armenians and carefully tracked the loyalty of converted Armenians until the end of the war. Although the first and most important step was conversion to Islam,
33784-538: The region. After the Ottoman conquests many Armenians also moved west and settled in Anatolia, in large and prosperous Ottoman cities like Constantinople and Smyrna ( İzmir ). The remaining Ottoman Armenia, composed of the Six vilayets ( Erzurum , Van , Bitlis , Diyarbekir , Kharput , and Sivas ) up to World War I, under Ottoman rule, was also referred to as Western Armenia . There were also significant communities in parts of Trebizond and Ankara vilayets bordering Six Vilayets (such as in Kayseri ). Aside from
33990-439: The right to establish their own prisons for the incarceration of offending Armenians, and in no case should an Armenian be imprisoned in an Ottoman prison. The Armenian National Assembly also had the power to elect the Armenian Governor by a local Armenian legislative council. The councils later will be part of elections during Second Constitutional Era . Local Armenian legislative councils were composed of six Armenians elected by
34196-605: The roads and their bodies were buried hastily or, more often, simply left beside the roads. The Ottoman government ordered the corpses to be cleared as soon as possible to prevent both photographic documentation and disease epidemics, but these orders were not uniformly followed. Women and children, who made up the great majority of deportees, were usually not executed immediately, but subjected to hard marches through mountainous terrain without food and water. Those who could not keep up were left to die or shot. During 1915, some were forced to walk as far as 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) in
34402-429: The same millet despite their differences in ethnicity and language and despite the fact that the religious hierarchy was dominated by the Greeks. Nevertheless, ethnonyms never disappeared and some form of ethnic identity was preserved as evident from a Sultan's Firman from 1680, that lists the ethnic groups in the Balkans as follows: Greeks ( Rum ), Albanians ( Arnaut ), Serbs ( Sirf ), "Vlachs" ( Eflak , referring to
34608-407: The scope of the 1839 Edict of Gülhane . The reformist period peaked with a Constitution written by members of the Young Ottomans , which was promulgated on 23 November 1876. It established freedom of belief and equality of all citizens before the law. "Firman of the Reforms" gave immense privileges to the Armenians, which formed a "governance in governance" to eliminate the aristocratic dominance of
34814-458: The status of Ottoman subjects regardless of religion. The reforms to equalize the status of non-Muslims were strongly opposed by Islamic clergy and Muslims in general, and remained mostly theoretical. Because of the abolition of the Kurdish emirates in the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman government began to directly tax Armenian peasants who had previously paid taxes only to Kurdish landlords. The latter continued to exact levies illegally. From
35020-432: The summer heat. Some deportees from western Anatolia were allowed to travel by rail . There was a distinction between the convoys from eastern Anatolia, which were eliminated almost in their entirety, and those from farther west, which made up most of those surviving to reach Syria. For example, around 99 percent of Armenians deported from Erzerum did not reach their destination. The Islamization of Armenians, carried out as
35226-633: The survivors sent to Deir ez-Zor. In general, Armenians were denied food and water during and after their forced march to the Syrian desert; many died of starvation, exhaustion, or disease, especially dysentery , typhus , and pneumonia . Some local officials gave Armenians food; others took bribes to provide food and water. Aid organizations were officially barred from providing food to the deportees, although some circumvented these prohibitions. Survivors testified that some Armenians refused aid as they believed it would only prolong their suffering. The guards raped female prisoners and also allowed Bedouins to raid
35432-426: The taxes in all the Armenian villages were to be collected by Armenian tax-collectors appointed by the Armenian National Assembly. Armenians were allowed to establish their own courts of justice for the purpose of administering justice and conducting litigation between Armenians, and for deciding all questions relating to marriage, divorce, estate, inheritance, etc., appertaining to themselves. Also Armenians were allowed
35638-410: The temple because of the "candlestick wars", eliminating the change of keys. Successive Ottoman governments had issued edicts granting primacy of access to different Christian groups which vied for control of Jerusalem's holy sites. Under the original design, the multi-faced structure of the millet system was unified under the House of Osman . The rise of nationalism in Europe under the influence of
35844-578: The term "seems to be so essential for the understanding of the Ottoman system and especially the status of non-Muslims". Other authors interpret the millet system as one form of non-territorial autonomy and consider it as such a potentially universal solution to the modern issues of ethnic and religious diversity. According to Taner Akçam , the Ottoman state was "... based on the principle of heterogeneity and difference rather than homogeneity and sameness, [which] functioned in an opposite way to modern nation-states." The term millet , which originates from
36050-469: The term was used for legally protected ethno-linguistic minority groups , similar to the way other countries use the word nation . During this era, the status of these groups, their relation to the central government, and their self-governance, were codified into constitutions , elevating the power of the laity at the expense of clergy. The word millet comes from the Arabic word millah (ملة) and literally means "nation". Abdulaziz Sachedina regards
36256-407: The three " heavenly religions ": Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Muslim families are subject to the Personal Status Law , which draws on Sharia . Christian families are subject to canon law , and Jewish families are subject to Jewish law . In cases of family law disputes involving a marriage between a Christian woman and a Muslim man, the courts apply the Personal Status Law. Israel, too, keeps
36462-413: The three parties was officially declared. The Dashnaks decided to cooperate with the CUP, hoping that if the Young Turks came to power, autonomy would be granted to the Armenians. Andranik Ozanian participated in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 alongside general Garegin Nzhdeh as a commander of Armenian auxiliary troops. Andranik met revolutionist Boris Sarafov and the two pledged to work jointly for
36668-424: The time of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (r. 1451–81), although it is now understood that no such system existed in the fifteenth century. Heads of millets, or milletbaşı ( Ethnarch ), usually had absolute secular and ecclesiastical power over their communities, being answerable only to the Sultan. During the 19th century rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire , as a result of the Tanzimat reforms (1839–76),
36874-636: The war and continuing for decades afterward. The first arrivals in mid-1915 were accommodated in Aleppo . From mid-November, the convoys were denied access to the city and redirected along the Baghdad Railway or the Euphrates towards Mosul . The first transit camp was established at Sibil, east of Aleppo; one convoy would arrive each day while another would depart for Meskene or Deir ez-Zor . Dozens of concentration camps were set up in Syria and Upper Mesopotamia . By October 1915, some 870,000 deportees had reached Syria and Upper Mesopotamia. Most were repeatedly transferred between camps, being held in each camp for
37080-447: The war effort. They had to convert to Islam or face deportation to another area. The ability of the Armenians to adapt and survive was greater than the perpetrators expected. A loosely organized, Armenian-led resistance network based in Aleppo succeeded in helping many deportees, saving Armenian lives. At the beginning of 1916 some 500,000 deportees were alive in Syria and Mesopotamia. Afraid that surviving Armenians might return home after
37286-432: The war of independence was "intended to complete the genocide by finally eradicating Armenian, Greek, and Syriac survivors". In 1920 Kâzım Karabekir , a Turkish general, invaded Armenia with orders "to eliminate Armenia physically and politically". Nearly 100,000 Armenians were massacred in Transcaucasia by the Turkish army and another 100,000 fled from Cilicia during the French withdrawal . According to Kévorkian, only
37492-413: The war, Talaat Pasha ordered a second wave of massacres in February 1916. Another wave of deportations targeted Armenians remaining in Anatolia. More than 200,000 Armenians were killed between March and October 1916, often in remote areas near Deir ez-Zor and on parts of the Khabur valley, where their bodies would not create a public health hazard. The massacres killed most of the Armenians who had survived
37698-466: The war, but Ottoman Armenians were more ambivalent, afraid that supporting Russia would bring retaliation. Organization of Armenian volunteer units by Russian Armenians, later joined by some Ottoman Armenian deserters, further increased Ottoman suspicions against their Armenian population. Wartime requisitions were often corrupt and arbitrary, and disproportionately targeted Greeks and Armenians. Armenian leaders urged young men to accept conscription into
37904-415: The way for the formation of an ethno-national Turkish state. In September 1918, Talaat emphasized that regardless of losing the war, he had succeeded at "transforming Turkey to a nation-state in Anatolia". Deportation amounted to a death sentence; the authorities planned for and intended the death of the deportees. Deportation was only carried out behind the front lines, where no active rebellion existed, and
38110-425: The wealth of some Armenians, their overall political power was low, making them especially vulnerable. Armenians in the eastern provinces lived in semi- feudal conditions and commonly encountered forced labor , illegal taxation , and unpunished crimes against them including robberies, murders, and sexual assaults. Beginning in 1839, the Ottoman government issued a series of reforms to centralize power and equalize
38316-416: The weight of its authority to maintain the integrity of the church. The Bey or elder was something of a leader for the village, and their house was typically the most luxurious dwelling in a village. It was not uncommon to have three priests for thirty-five families. Most Armenians traveled on horseback to neighbouring villages, sometimes for religious ceremonies (like the Van festival), sometimes to fetch
38522-447: The whole Ottoman Armenian population, this caused some resentment among Ottoman nationalists. Those elite Armenians that did achieve great success were individuals such as Abraham Pasha , and Gabriel Noradunkyan who became Minister of Foreign Affairs . The Dadian family were granted a monopoly over gunpowder production, putting them in a key position in the munitions industry of the Ottoman Empire. Calouste Gulbenkian became one of
38728-486: The word " millet " among the Christian and Jewish minorities reflected in versions of the Ottoman Constitution in their respective languages: The French version of the Ottoman Constitution used the word " communauté " in the place of " millet ", and so the others used words modeled after or based on the French: հասարակութիւն ( hasarakut'iwn ) in Armenian, общност/община ( obstina ) in Bulgarian, κοινότης ( koinotēs ) in Greek, and komunita in Judaeo-Spanish. The millet system
38934-412: Was "organized and carried out by the top leaders of CUP". Eighteen perpetrators (including Talaat, Enver, and Djemal) were sentenced to death, of whom only three were ultimately executed as the remainder had fled and were tried in absentia . The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres , which awarded Armenia a large area in eastern Anatolia , eliminated the Ottoman government's purpose for holding the trials. Prosecution
39140-452: Was able to send missionaries far past the Empire's borders, reaching as far as China and India . In 1839 and 1856, reforms were attempted with the goal of creating equality between the religious communities of the Ottoman Empire. In the course of these reforms, new millets emerged, notably for Eastern Catholic and Protestant Christian communities. The heads of each millet and clerics in them were also to have their internal rule reviewed by
39346-523: Was acquitted by a German jury. The CUP regrouped as the Turkish nationalist movement to fight the Turkish War of Independence , relying on the support of perpetrators of the genocide and those who had profited from it. This movement saw the return of Armenian survivors as a mortal threat to its nationalist ambitions and the interests of its supporters. The return of survivors was therefore impossible in most of Anatolia and thousands of Armenians who tried were murdered. Historian Raymond Kévorkian states that
39552-413: Was an independent court of law pertaining to "personal law" under which a confessional community (a group abiding by the laws of Muslim sharia , Christian canon law , or Jewish halakha ) was allowed to rule itself under its own laws. Despite frequently being referred to as a " system ", before the nineteenth century the organization of what are now retrospectively called millets in the Ottoman Empire
39758-418: Was assigned to all Christians, including the Ottoman Armenians, many of whom had fought on the Ottoman side. The Balkan Wars put an end to the Ottomanist movement for pluralism and coexistence; instead, the CUP turned to an increasingly radical Turkish nationalism to preserve the empire. CUP leaders such as Talaat and Enver Pasha came to blame non-Muslim population concentrations in strategic areas for many of
39964-497: Was hampered by a widespread belief among Turkish Muslims that the actions against the Armenians were not punishable crimes. Increasingly, the genocide was considered necessary and justified to establish a Turkish nation-state. On 15 March 1921, Talaat was assassinated in Berlin as part of a covert operation of the ARF to kill the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. The trial of his admitted killer, Soghomon Tehlirian , focused on Talaat's responsibility for genocide. Tehlirian
40170-436: Was not at all systematic. Rather, non-Muslims were simply given a significant degree of autonomy within their own community, without an overarching structure for the millet as a whole. The notion of distinct millets corresponding to different religious communities within the empire would not emerge until the eighteenth century. Subsequently, the millet system was justified through numerous foundation myths linking it back to
40376-421: Was not to be revocable during that period. During World War I, the Ottoman Empire and Russian Empire engaged each other in Caucasus and Persian Campaigns , and the CUP began to look on the Armenians with distrust and suspicion. This was due to the fact that the Russian army contained a contingent of Armenian volunteers . On 24 April 1915, Armenian intellectuals were arrested by Ottoman authorities and, with
40582-406: Was often the only alternative. Deportees were displayed naked in Damascus and sold as sex slaves in some areas, constituting an important source of income for accompanying gendarmes. Some were sold in Arabian slave markets to Muslim Hajj pilgrims and ended up as far away as Tunisia or Algeria . A secondary motivation for genocide was the destruction of the Armenian bourgeoisie to make room for
40788-400: Was often used to fund the deportation of Armenians and resettlement of Muslims, as well as for army, militia, and other government spending. Ultimately this formed much of the basis of the industry and economy of the post-1923 republic, endowing it with capital . The dispossession and exile of Armenian competitors enabled many lower-class Turks (i.e. peasantry, soldiers, and laborers) to rise to
40994-415: Was on the Persian border, which the Armenakans were in communication with Armenians in the Persian Empire . The Gugunian Expedition , which followed within the couple months, was an attempt by a small group of Armenian nationalists from the Russian Armenia to launch an armed expedition across the border into the Ottoman Empire in 1890 in support of local Armenians. The Kum Kapu demonstration occurred at
41200-542: Was only possible in the absence of widespread resistance. Armenians who lived in the war zone were instead killed in massacres. Although ostensibly undertaken for security reasons, the deportation and murder of Armenians did not grant the empire any military advantage and actually undermined the Ottoman war effort. The empire faced a dilemma between its goal of eliminating Armenians and its practical need for their labor; those Armenians retained for their skills, in particular for manufacturing in war industries, were indispensable to
41406-424: Was perpetrated by Dashnaks armed with pistols, grenades, dynamite and hand-held bombs against the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople. The seizure of the bank lasted 14 hours, resulting in the deaths of 10 of the Armenian men and Ottoman soldiers. The Porte's reaction to the takeover saw further massacres and pogroms of the several thousand Armenians living in Constantinople and Sultan Abdul Hamid II threatening to level
41612-608: Was positive, rather than negative. Armenians organized themselves into civil society organizations, including clubs and political parties. Hovsep Pushman was a painter who became very famous in the Empire. During this period Armenians would establish churches, schools, libraries, and newspapers. Sargis Mubayeajian was a prolific and multifarious writer educated in Constantinople. Many of his works are still scattered in Armenian periodicals. Many Armenians, who after having emigrated to foreign countries and becoming prosperous there, returned to their native land. Alex Manoogian , who became
41818-502: Was proclaimed in May 1918, at which time 50 percent of its population were refugees and 60 percent of its territory was under Ottoman occupation. Ottoman troops withdrew from parts of Armenia following the October 1918 Armistice of Mudros . From 1918 to 1920, Armenian militants committed revenge killings of thousands of Muslims, which have been cited as a retroactive excuse for genocide. In 1918, at least 200,000 people in Armenia, mostly refugees, died from starvation or disease, in part due to
42024-418: Was signed, known as the Politis–Kalfov Protocol , recognizing the " Greek Slavophones " as Bulgarians and guaranteeing their protection. On 2 February 1925, the Greek parliament, claiming pressure from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , which threatened to renounce the Greek–Serbian Alliance of 1913 , refused to ratify the agreement; the refusal lasted until 10 June 1925. Under the 1927 Mollov-Kafantaris Agreement ,
42230-408: Was the Armenian national effort to free the historic Armenian homeland of eastern Asia Minor and Transcaucasus from Russian and Ottoman rule and re-establish the independent Armenian state . Those Armenians who did not support national liberation aspirations or who were neutral were called chezoks . Abdul Hamid II was the 34th Sultan and oversaw a period of decline in the power and extent of
42436-406: Was used to communicate orders; those for the deportation of Armenians were communicated to the provincial governors through official channels, but orders of a criminal character, such as those calling for annihilation, were sent through party channels and destroyed upon receipt. Deportation convoys were mostly escorted by gendarmes or local militia. The killings near the front lines were carried out by
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