Armenians have lived in Lebanon for centuries. According to Minority Rights Group International , there are 156,000 Armenians in Lebanon, around 4% of the population. Prior to the Lebanese Civil War , the number was higher, but the community lost a portion of its population to emigration.
219-525: Lebanon experienced a significant migration of Armenian refugees primarily between 1918 and 1920, seeking sanctuary from the Armenian genocide carried out by Ottoman authorities . These refugees established Bourj Hammoud , a suburb east of Beirut , in the site of what was then a swampy marshland. Another wave of migration occurred in 1939, as refugees fleeing the Turkish annexation of Alexandretta founded
438-741: A new Lebanese government was formed where ARF party members were appointed to two ministerial positions, including Ministry of Industry, as part of the March 8 alliance . The ARF Lebanon branch is headquartered in Bourj Hammoud in the Shaghzoian Centre, along with the ARF Lebanon Central Committee's Aztag Daily newspaper and "Voice Of Van" 24-hour radio station. During the French Mandate and under
657-615: A " state within a state ". The "Second congress of the Ottoman opposition" took place in Paris, France , in 1907. Opposition leaders including Ahmed Riza (liberal), Sabahheddin Bey , and ARF member Khachatur Maloumian attended. During the meeting, an alliance between the two parties was officially declared. The ARF decided to cooperate with the Committee of Union and Progress, hoping that if
876-465: 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
1095-498: A broadcasting licence according to the new laws organizing the airwaves. Al Mustaqbal Television (also known as Future Television ) and OTV broadcast daily 30-minutes news and comments in Armenian in their regular programming schedule. Officially, there are three Armenian denominations recognized by the government. The Armenians have Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholic, or Armenian Evangelical mentioned in their identity cards, in
1314-561: 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
1533-639: 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;
1752-526: A dislocated economy, hundreds of thousands of refugees, and a mostly starving population. The ARF, led by General Andranik , tried several times to seize Shusha (known as Shushi by Armenians), a city in Karabakh. Just before the Armistice of Mudros was signed, Andranik was on the way from Zangezur to Shusha, to control the main city of Karabakh. Andranik's forces got within 42 km (26 mi) of
1971-734: 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
2190-404: 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
2409-608: A full member of the Socialist International since 2003; it joined the Second International in 1907. It has the largest membership of the political parties present in the Armenian diaspora, having established affiliates in more than 20 countries. Compared to other diasporan Armenian parties which tend to primarily focus on educational or humanitarian projects, the ARF is the most politically oriented of
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#17327733259322628-821: 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
2847-454: A larger anti-Armenian policy. On 11 May 1905, Dashnak revolutionary Drastamat Kanayan assassinated Russian governor general Mikhail Nakashidze [ ru ] , who was considered by the Armenian population as the main instigator of hate and confrontation between the Armenians and the Tatars. Unable to rely on the state for protection, the Armenian bourgeoisie turned to the ARF. Against
3066-612: A major role in the Second Sasun Uprising . The ARF sent arms and fedayi to defend the region for the second time. Among the 500 fedayees participating in the resistance were famed figures such as Kevork Chavush , Sepasdatsi Murad and Hrayr Djoghk . Although they managed to hold off the Ottoman army for several months, despite their lack of fighters and firepower, Ottoman forces captured Sasun and massacred thousands of Armenians. In 1904, during an annual congress bringing together Armenian and Bulgarian representatives,
3285-629: A majority Armenian population but also has a notable number of other Lebanese Christians, a considerable Shi'a Muslim population, a Kurdish population, and some Palestinian and newcomer Christian refugees from Iraq . Most streets in Bourj Hammoud are named after various Armenian cities such as Yerevan , mountains such as Aragats , and rivers such as Araks . A lot of streets are also named after cities and regions in modern-day-Turkey which were heavily populated by Armenians such as Cilicia , Marash , Sis , Adana , etc. Mzher (or Dzaghgatzor in Armenian)
3504-511: A purge by Ottoman officials against the leaders of the empire's Armenian communities. The ARF, maintaining its ideological commitment to a "Free, Independent, and United Armenia", led the defense of the Armenian people during the Armenian genocide, becoming leaders of the successful Van Resistance . Jevdet Bey , the Ottoman administrator of Van, tried to suppress the resistance by killing two Armenian leaders (Ishkhan and Vramian) and trying to imprison Aram Manukian, who had risen to fame and gained
3723-552: A purported secret terrorist cell within the ARF known as the "Dro Group" (named after the Dro Committee, the group that was allegedly behind the plot), which was allegedly led by ARF member Hrant Markarian . Another group of thirty-one ARF members, including ARF Bureau member Vahan Hovhannisyan , were also arrested and charged with attempting to stage an armed coup, among other crimes. Gerard Libaridian , an historian and close adviser of Ter-Petrosyan, collected and presented
3942-428: A relatively large Armenian community, the repatriation campaign impacted the economy and destabilized the community. As Armenians emigrated from Beirut, property values deflated and lower income Arabs (some of them Shi'a ) began to move into the Armenian quarters of the city. Hovannisian has written that "This unwelcome infiltration of culturally less developed and rapidly multiplying Muslim elements has been bemoaned by
4161-646: 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
4380-652: 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 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
4599-450: 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 a widespread rebellion, though no such rebellion existed. Mass deportation
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#17327733259324818-467: 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
5037-518: A source of controversy due to the shared Ottoman past they represented in the post-genocide era. A combination of factors in Lebanon, including political independence and the strength of various Armenian institutions, created conditions that were permissive of the rise of an Armenian nationalism that was similar to the Turkish nationalism that emerged in the Ottoman Empire in the years leading up to
5256-504: A strong presence in the DRA government. Most of the important government posts, such as prime minister, defence minister and interior minister were controlled by its members. The DRA wanted to recover the country's economy, and create new rules and regulations, but the situation required it to focus on overcoming widespread hunger in the country. The situation was complicated externally, provoked by Turkish and Azerbaijani Muslim riots. In 1920
5475-623: 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
5694-552: 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
5913-412: 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
6132-474: A total of 7 Armenian deputies in the Lebanese Parliament. Lebanese Armenians have been represented in government by at least one government minister in the formations of Lebanese governments. In case of larger governments (with 24 ministers and above) Armenians are traditionally given two government ministry positions. Lebanese-Armenians also have their quota in top-level public positions. Unlike
6351-500: Is a small town located between Antelias and Bsalim, in Matn district. It is a new town, where most of the population is Armenian, along with other Christians. In Mzher the Armenian community has one of the top Armenian schools, Melankton and Haig Arslanian College (Jemaran) and a socio-cultural sport club, Aghpalian. The headquarters of SAHALCO are also situated nearby. Most of the Armenians of Mzher come from Bourj Hamoud, Ashrafieh, Anjar and
6570-695: Is an Armenian nationalist and socialist political party founded in 1890 in Tiflis , Russian Empire by Christapor Mikaelian , Stepan Zorian , and Simon Zavarian . As of 2023 , the party operates in Armenia , Lebanon , Iran and in countries where the Armenian diaspora is present. The party was also active in Artsakh until the Azerbaijani offensive in September 2023. Although it has long been
6789-620: Is predominant. There are Armenian religious centers in Antelias and Bikfaya ( Armenian Apostolic Church ) and Beirut and Bzommar ( Armenian Catholic Church ). There is an Armenian orphanage in historic sites in Byblos. In the Bekaa, there are Armenians living in Zahlé and most notably Anjar. Bourj Hammoud ( Armenian : Պուրճ Համուտ , Arabic : برج حموﺪ ) is a suburb in east Beirut, Lebanon in
Armenians in Lebanon - Misplaced Pages Continue
7008-462: Is venerated. The monastery is now acknowledged as the oldest extant Armenian monastery in Lebanon. Alongside it was built the patriarchal see for the entire Armenian Catholic Church. In 1890's the Hamidian massacres had produced a trickle of Armenian refugees into Lebanon. The Armenian presence in Lebanon during the Ottoman period was minimal; however, there was a large influx of Armenians after
7227-680: The Administration for Western Armenia and worked to ease the sufferings of Armenians. At the end of World War I , members of the Young Turks movement, considered executors of the Armenian genocide by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, were assassinated during Operation Nemesis . As a result of the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, the Armenian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani leaders of
7446-471: The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (also Dashnak or Tashnag), Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (Hunchag) and Armenian Democratic Liberal Party (Ramgavar Party). They play significant influence in all facets of Armenian life. During the civil war militant organizations, such as ASALA , became active in Lebanon, and used it as a launching pad for their operations. ASALA was founded in 1975 in Beirut, during
7665-572: The Armenian genocide of 1915. Other Armenians inhabited the area of Karantina (literally "Quarantine", a port-side district in the Lebanese capital of Beirut ). Later on, a thriving Armenian community was formed in the neighbouring district of Bourj Hammoud . In 1939, after the French ceded the Syrian territory of Alexandretta to Turkey, Armenians and other Christians from the area moved to
7884-537: The Armenian genocide . The Armenian bloc of the Lebanese Parliament put forth a resolution, calling for the commemoration of the anniversary of the Armenian genocide ; the legislature unanimously approved the resolution on 4 April 1997 In May 2000, the Lebanese Parliament approved a resolution calling for the commemoration of the Genocide’s 82nd anniversary and called on all Lebanese citizens to unite with
8103-594: The Armenian-Tatar massacres broke out during which the ARF became involved in armed activities. Some sources claim that the Russian government incited the massacres in order to reinforce its authority during the revolutionary turmoil of 1905. The first outbreak of violence occurred in Baku , in February 1905. The ARF held the Russian authorities responsible for inaction and instigation of massacres that were part of
8322-623: The Bekaa Valley . The Armenians were grouped in Anjar , where a community exists to this day. Some of these Armenian refugees had been settled by the French mandate authorities in camps in the South of Lebanon: El Buss and Rashidieh camps in Tyre would later make way for Palestinian refugees . Prior to 1975, Beirut was a thriving center of Armenian culture with varied media production, which
8541-504: The Iranian Constitutional Revolution . They established that the movement was one that had political, ideological and economic components and was thus aimed at establishing law and order, human rights and the interests of all working people. They also felt that it would work for the benefit and interest of Armenian-Iranians . The final vote was 25 votes in favour and one absentia. From 1907 to 1908, during
8760-614: 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
8979-521: The Khabur valley, where their bodies would not create a public health hazard. The massacres killed most of the Armenians who had survived 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,
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9198-662: The Maronite Church and other religious groups in Lebanon , the Armenian Apostolic Church is not a political actor in its own right. Armenians do, however, enjoy political representation in Lebanon's multiconfessional government. Since the Cold War era, the Armenian Apostolic Church has participated in politics as a proxy for the nationalist Dashnak party. Lebanon is the location of the only Armenian university outside Armenia. Haigazian University
9417-449: The Metn district, which includes the predominantly Armenian area of Bourj Hammoud, ARF decided to support Camille Khoury , the candidate backed by opposition leader Michel Aoun 's Free Patriotic Movement against Phalangist leader Amine Gemayel and subsequently won the seat. In the 2009 Lebanese general elections , the ARF won 2 seats in parliament which it holds presently. In June 2011,
9636-690: The National Assembly . During the 2020–2021 Armenian protests , the party confirmed it would participate in the 2021 Armenian parliamentary election as part of a political alliance - the Armenia Alliance - with Reborn Armenia . In the 2021 election, the Armenia Alliance, led by the second President of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan , won 21% of the popular vote and gained 29 seats in the National Assembly. In
9855-493: The Pan-Armenian National Movement . Subsequently, on 28 December 1994, President Levon Ter-Petrosyan in a famous television speech banned the ARF, which was the nation's leading opposition party, along with Yerkir , the country's largest daily newspaper. The party's leader, Hrayr Maroukhian , was expelled from Armenia. Ter-Petrosyan introduced evidence that supposedly detailed a plot hatched by
10074-702: The Phalangist Party of Pierre Gemayel and generally ran joint tickets with the Phalangists, especially in Beirut constituencies with large Armenian populations. The refusal of the ARF, along with most Armenian groups, to play an active role in the civil war, however, soured relations between the two parties, and the Lebanese Forces (a militia dominated by Phalangists and commanded by Bachir Gemayel , Pierre Gemayel's son), responded by attacking
10293-656: The Soviet communists in 1920. After the communists exiled its leadership, the ARF established itself within Armenian-diaspora communities, where it helped Armenians to preserve their cultural identity. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the ARF reestablished its presence in Armenia. Prior to Serzh Sargsyan 's election as President of Armenia in February 2008 and for a short time thereafter,
10512-574: 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
10731-413: The Triple Entente (Russia, Britain, and France) formally condemned the Ottoman Empire for " crimes against humanity and civilization", and threatened to hold 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
10950-429: 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
11169-492: The USA , where a large number of Armenians had settled. With political and geographic division came religious division. One part of the Armenian Church claimed it wanted to be separate from the head, whose seat was in Echmiadzin , Armenian SSR . Some Armenians in the US thought Moscow tried to use the Armenian Church to promote Communists' ideas outside the country. The Armenian Church thus separated into two branches, Echmiadzin and Cilician, and started to operate separately. In
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#173277332593211388-441: The Velvet Revolution . By the evening of 25 April 2018, ARF-Dashnaktsutyun had withdrawn from the coalition. Following the Velvet Revolution, the party lost support from the general public in Armenia and is now being polled at 1–2%. The party lost political representation in the 2018 Armenian parliamentary election after receiving only 3.89% of the votes, which is lower than the 5% minimum threshold required for representation in
11607-437: 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
11826-465: The "Armenian Revolutionary Federation" or "Dashnaktsutiun" in 1890. The Social Democrat Hunchakian Party , an existing Armenian socialist and revolutionary party, initially agreed to join the "Federation of Armenian Revolutionaries." However, the Hunchaks soon withdrew due to disputes over ideological and organizational questions, such as the role of socialism in the party's program. Another faction of non-socialists led by Konstantin Khatisian split from
12045-424: The "economic vivacity" of the Armenian community in Lebanon in terms of the hundreds of Armenian owned shops in Beirut. The city's business quarter closes down on April 24, on the anniversary of the Armenian genocide. In the years after World War II , between 1946 and 1948, the Soviet Union sponsored a repatriation campaign encouraging Armenians living in diaspora to move to Soviet Armenia . In Beirut, which had
12264-438: The 1890s the party used terrorism against the Ottoman Empire and Russia with the goal of gaining an independent nation, more well known attacks occurred against Bedros Kapamajian , the mayor of Van who was assassinated in December 1912, and the assassination of archbishop Leon Tourian in New York City on December 24, 1933. Together with the Committee of Union and Progress , a group of mostly European-educated Turks,
12483-456: The 1915 genocide. Music in the Lebanese diaspora became another means to separate "us" and "them", but also provided a space where Lebanese Armenians could connect with a concept of "home" in place of the Ottoman past and Soviet present. Community choirs that formed in Lebanon during the 1930s, led by former students of Komitas , utilized the imagery of Komitas as the saint and martyr of Armenian music . These choirs proved to be critical in
12702-434: The ARF bore a major portion of responsibilities for perpetrating the massacres. The ARF, however, argued that it helped to organize the defence of the Armenian population against Muslim attacks. The blows suffered at the hands of the Dashnakist fighting squads proved a catalyst for the consolidation of the Muslim community of the Caucasus. During that period, the ARF regarded armed activity, including terror , as necessary for
12921-437: The ARF could not operate in the Armenian SSR and the political party remained banned until 1991. In the leadup to the reestablishment of independent Armenia, the ARF was opposed to Armenia's immediate independence from the Soviet Union, considering the threat of neighboring Turkey to be too great. When independence was achieved in 1991, the ARF soon became one of the major and most active political parties , rivaled mainly by
13140-533: The ARF cut relations with the Young Turks in 1912. Between December 1912 and 1914 ARF politicians held negotiations with the CUP about political reforms in the eastern provinces. The Armenians had the support of the Russians and the CUP accused the Armenians that their actions caused further division between Turks and Armenians. The CUP and ARF continued a close cooperation throughout the Second Constitutional Era up until 1914. In 1915, Dashnak leaders were deported and killed alongside other Armenian intellectuals during
13359-412: The ARF had been one of the largest revolutionary groups trying to overthrow Sultan Abdul Hamid II. In a general assembly meeting in 1907, the ARF acknowledged that the Armenian and Turkish revolutionaries had the same goals. Although the Tanzimat reforms had given Armenians more rights and seats in the parliament, the ARF hoped to gain autonomy to govern Armenian populated areas of the Ottoman Empire as
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#173277332593213578-478: The ARF has usually controlled a majority of the Armenian vote and won most of the ethnic Armenian seats in the National Assembly. A major change occurred in the parliamentary election of 2000. With a rift between ARF and the Mustaqbal (Future) party of Rafik Hariri and the ARF was left with only one parliamentary seat, its worst result in many decades. The ARF called for a boycott of the 2005 Beirut elections. Relations soured further when on 5 August 2007 by-election in
13797-404: 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, 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
14016-489: The ARF to engage in terrorism against his administration, endanger Armenia's national security and overthrow the government. Throughout the evening, government security forces arrested leading ARF figures, and police seized computers, fax machines, files and printing equipment from ARF offices. In addition to Yerkir , government forces also closed several literary, women's, cultural, and youth publications. A group of eleven ARF members were arrested and accused of being members of
14235-411: The ARF took part in the Sasun Resistance , supplying arms to the local population to help the people of Sasun defend themselves against the Hamidian purges. In June 1896, the Armenakan Party organized the Van Rebellion in the province of Van . The Armenakans, assisted by members of the Hunchakian and ARF parties, supplied all able-bodied men of Van with weapons. They rose to defend the civilians from
14454-557: The ARF was a member of the governing coalition, even though it nominated its own candidate in the 2008 presidential elections . ARF reentered Sargsyan's cabinet in February 2016 in what was defined as a "long-term political cooperation" agreement with the Republican Party by means of which the ARF would share responsibility for all government policies. The ARF then approved of Sargsyan's nomination in April 2018 as Prime Minister , from which post he resigned six days later (23 April 2018) amid large-scale protests in what came to be known as
14673-406: The ARF's stance towards the Ottoman Empire, the party enjoyed the support of the central Russian administration, as tsarist and ARF foreign policy had the same alignment until 1903. On 12 June 1903, the tsarist authorities passed an edict to bring all Armenian Church property under imperial control. This was faced by strong ARF opposition, because the ARF perceived the tsarist edict as a threat to
14892-506: The ARF, supported the newly established Soviet rule in Armenia. From 1923 to 1958, conflicts erupted among Armenian political parties struggling to dominate and organize the diaspora. The ARF and Hunchakian parties struggled in 1926 for control of the newly established shanty-town of Bourj Hammoud in Lebanon; ARF member Vahan Vartabedian was assassinated. The assassination of Hunchakian members Mihran Aghazarian and S. Dekhrouhi followed in 1929 and 1931 respectively. In 1956, when Bishop Zareh
15111-401: The Armenian Apostolic Church is also on site at Bikfaya. The affairs of the Lebanese Armenian Orthodox population however are run by an independent body, the Armenian Prelacy of Lebanon (Aratchnortaran Hayots Lipanani) with its own Armenian Primate of Lebanon Bishop Shahé Panossian as head. The Armenian Apostolic churches in Lebanon include: Armenian Catholic Church, has its patriarchate in
15330-406: The Armenian Revolutionary Federation decided to assassinate Sultan Abdul Hamid II in response to the Hamidian massacres . Pierre Quillard , a French anarchist linked with the ARF attended and reported to his anarchist colleagues that the Armenians intended to use "extreme methods." One of Dashnaksutiun's founders Kristapor Mikaelian was killed by an accidental explosion during the planning of
15549-439: The Armenian community has the Armenian Community Center ( ՃԻՊԷՅԼԻ ՀԱՅ ԿԵԴՐՈՆ ) including : A.R.F Hohita Keri Gomide, Armenian Relief Cross Sosse chapter, Lebanese Armenian Youth Federation Ararad chapter, Serop Aghpuir Badanegan Miyoutioun, Birds Nest Orphanage, Sourp gayane Church. an additional 40 Armenian families live in the neighboring city of Batroun. According to the traditional Lebanese confessional representation in
15768-478: 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
15987-551: The Armenian national existence. As a result, the ARF leadership decided to defend Armenian churches by dispatching militiamen who acted as guards and by holding mass demonstrations. In 1904, the party broke with its old policy of non-struggle against the Tsarist authorities, engaging in acts of terrorism against the imperial bureaucracy and establishing separate schools, courts, and prisons in Russian Armenia. In 1905–06,
16206-511: The Armenian people every April 24 to commemorate it. On 4 August 2020, during the 2020 Beirut explosions , 15 Armenians were killed, more than 250 injured, the Armenian Catholicosate in Antelias suffered great material damage, Armenian churches and the building of Haigazian University have been damaged. Armenians live in many parts of Lebanon. Historically most Armenians have lived in Beirut and Matn District and Anjar in
16425-647: The Armenian quarters of many Lebanese towns, including Bourj Hammoud. Many Armenians affiliated with the ARF took up arms voluntarily to defend their quarters. In the midst of the Lebanese civil war, the shadowy guerrilla organization Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide emerged and carried out assassinations from 1975 to 1983. The guerrilla organization has sometimes been linked to the Dashnaks. Ethnic Armenians are allocated six seats in Lebanon's 128-member National Assembly . The Lebanese branch of
16644-411: 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
16863-455: 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
17082-596: The Beirut suburbs, there are big concentrations in Matn District, particularly Bourj Hammoud, Dora-Amanos, Fanar, Rawda, Jdeide, Zalka, Jal El Dib, Antelias , Mezher (Dzaghgatzor), Naccash, Dbayeh, Awkar and in the regions situated from Antelias to Bikfaya. To the north, there are further Armenian populations scattered in Jounieh, Byblos and Tripoli (particularly the Mina area). Anjar is a place where Armenian populations
17301-524: The Bekaa Region. From Beirut proper we can mention grander Ashrafieh: Hadjen (Corniche Nahr), Khalil Badawi, Karm el Zeytoun (Հայաշէն), Rmeil, Gemmayze, Mar Mikhael, Sursock, and Geitawi. Armenians have had strong presence also in other Beirut regions such as Khandaq Ghamik, Zuqaq al-Blat , Zarif, Bab Idris, Sanayeh (Kantari), Clemenceau and Hamra, among others. During the civil war many of these Armenians emigrated or fled to safer regions in Lebanon. From
17520-618: 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
17739-586: 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
17958-670: The Caucasus united to create the Transcaucasian Federation in the winter of 1918. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had drastic consequences for the Armenians: Turkish forces reoccupied Western Armenia. The federation lasted for only three months, eventually leading to the proclamation of the Republics of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. The negotiators for Armenia were from the ARF. With the collapse of
18177-537: The Dashnak members and concluded that he was insane. Ninety-four of the accused were acquitted, while the rest were either imprisoned or exiled for varying periods, the most severe being six years. The Dashnaktsutiun held a meeting on 26 April 1907, dubbed the Fourth General Congress, at which ARF leaders such as Aram Manukian , Hamo Ohanjanyan and Stepan Stepanian discussed their engagement in
18396-766: The French language Le Soir . Special mention should also be made for the Armenian leftist daily newspaper Joghovourti Tsayn ( Armenian : Ժողովուրդի Ձայն meaning Voice of the People) which had a short span of publication but remained influential during its span of publication. Lebanon has a history of periodicals and weekly newspapers in the Armenian language. Notable long-running publications include: The Lebanese state radio established very early on daily radio broadcasts in Armenian through its second channel consecrated to broadcasting in languages (mainly French and English). That programming goes on to date on Radio Liban . During
18615-610: The German-occupied areas and to protect Armenia from a potential Turkish invasion in the event of a German victory over the Soviet Union. During the 1950s, tensions arose between the ARF and the Armenian SSR. The death of Catholicos Garegin of the Holy See of Cilicia prompted a struggle for succession. The National Ecclesiastic Assembly, which was largely influenced by the ARF, elected Zareh of Aleppo . This decision
18834-519: The Hamidiye regiments in reserve. CUP leaders feared that these reforms, which were never implemented, could lead to partition and cited them as 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
19053-491: The Lebanese Civil War by Hagop Hagopian , pastor Reverend James Karnusian and Kevork Ajemian , a prominent contemporary writer, with the help of sympathetic Palestinians . More than 150,000 Lebanese-Armenians have political representation in 6 seats in the Lebanese Parliament, in addition to one ministerial position. Lebanon was one of the region’s first nations and the first Arab League member to recognize
19272-534: The Lebanese Parliament, a certain number of seats have been reserved for Armenian candidates according to their confession. Presently the Lebanese-Armenians are represented in the 128-seat Lebanese Parliament with 6 guaranteed seats (5 Armenian Orthodox and 1 Armenian Catholic) as follows: As many Protestants in Lebanon are ethnic Armenians, the sole parliamentary slot for Evangelical (Protestant) community has at times been filled by an Armenian, making for
19491-541: The Lebanese capital Beirut, and represents Armenian Catholics around the world. Armenian Catholic Church also has its summer residence and its convent in Bzoummar , Lebanon. Armenian genocide 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
19710-514: The Metn district. The suburb is heavily populated by Armenians as it is where most survivors of the Armenian genocide settled. Bourj Hammoud is an industrious area and is one of the most densely populated cities in the Middle East. It is divided into seven major regions, namely Dora, Sader, Nahr Beirut, Anbari, Mar Doumet, Naba'a and Gheilan. It is sometimes called "Little Armenia". Bourj Hamoud has
19929-588: The Nazi government recognized the Armenian National Council ( Armenisches Nationales Gremium ), a collaborationist body directed against the Soviet Union whose vice-president was ARF member Abraham Gyulkhandanyan and whose members included ARF member Vahan Papazian and former ARF member Garegin Nzhdeh . The main motivation for this collaboration was likely a desire to protect Armenians living in
20148-494: 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 a Turkish blockade of food supplies and the deliberate destruction of crops in eastern Armenia by Turkish troops, both before and after
20367-534: 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 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
20586-573: 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
20805-666: 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
21024-414: 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
21243-638: The Russian Colonel Vladimir Liakhov , Yeprem Khan rallied with Sattar Khan and other revolutionary leaders in the Constitutional Revolution of Iran against Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar . Relations between Sattar Khan and the ARF oscillated between amity and resentment. Sometimes he was viewed as being ignorant, while at other times he was dubbed a great hero. Nonetheless, the ARF came to collaborate with him and alongside Yeprem Khan posted many victories including
21462-491: The Russian Empire until the decision of the Russian authorities to confiscate Armenian Church property in 1903. Initially restricting its demands to the establishment of autonomy and democratic rights for Armenians in the two empires, the party adopted an independent and united Armenia as part of its program in 1919. In 1918, the party was instrumental in the formation of the First Republic of Armenia , which fell to
21681-480: 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
21900-460: 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
22119-622: The Transcaucasian Federation, the Armenians were left to fend for themselves as the Turkish army approached the capital of Yerevan . At first, fearing a major military defeat and massacre of the population of Armenia, the Dashnaks wanted to evacuate the city of Yerevan. Instead, the Military Council headed by Colonel Pirumian decided that they would not surrender and would confront the Turkish army. The opposing armies met on 28 May 1918, near Sardarapat . The battle
22338-439: The Turkish authorities eliminated surviving Armenians from southern Turkey, expelling thousands to French-mandate Syria . Armenian Revolutionary Federation The Armenian Revolutionary Federation ( Armenian : Հայ Յեղափոխական Դաշնակցութիւն , romanized : Hay Heghapokhakan Dashnaktsutyun , abbr. ARF (ՀՅԴ) or ARF-D ), also known as Dashnaktsutyun ( Armenian : Դաշնակցություն, lit. "Federation" ),
22557-680: The US, Echmiadzin branch churches of the Armenian Apostolic Church would not admit members of the ARF. This was one of the reasons why the ARF discouraged people from attending these churches and brought the representatives from a different wing of the church, the Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia , from Lebanon to the US. In 1933, members of ARF were convicted in the assassination of Armenian archbishop Levon Tourian with large butcher knives in New York City. Prior to his murder,
22776-583: The Vahram Papazian group and that was Hamazkayin 's Kasbar Ipegian theater company. Ipegian, who had settled in Beirut in 1930, was one of Hamazkayin's founders. Hamazkayin was the cultural arm of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) or Dashnak party. The Hamazkayin Theater Association, which Ipegian founded in 1941, performed plays created by Armenian writers like Levon Shant and Papken Papazian . Their self-stated mission
22995-565: The Young Turks came to power, autonomy would be granted to the Armenians. In 1908, Abdul Hamid II was overthrown during the Young Turk Revolution , which launched the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire . Dashnaktsutiun became a legal political party and Armenians gained more seats in the 1908 parliament, but the reforms fell short of the greater autonomy that the ARF had hoped for. The Adana massacre in 1909 also created antipathy between Armenians and Turks, and
23214-408: 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
23433-434: The achievement of political goals. In January 1912, 159 ARF members, being lawyers, bankers, merchants and other intellectuals, were tried before the Russian senate for their participation in the party. They were defended by then-lawyer Alexander Kerensky , who challenged much of the evidence used against them as the "original investigators had been encouraged by the local administration to use any available means" to convict
23652-456: The affected Armenians for a quarter of a century." "Pyunik" ( Armenian : Փիւնիկ ) was the first Armenian newspaper in Lebanon renamed Nor Pyunik ( Armenian : Նոռ Փիւնիկ ). In 1924, the newspaper Lipanan ( Armenian : Լիբանան ) was published. In 1927, Aztag replaced Nor Punik . There are three Armenian daily newspapers published in Beirut all mouthpieces of the traditional Armenian political parties (Tashnag, Hunchag and Ramgavar). From
23871-581: 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
24090-506: The archbishop had been accused of being exclusively pro-Soviet by the ARF. The ARF was legally exonerated of any direct involvement in the assassination, but the incident weakened the party in the United States and led to its members being ostracized by the other Armenian political parties. During World War II , some ARF members, specifically those living in areas under German occupation, collaborated with Nazi Germany. However, this
24309-547: 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
24528-467: 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,
24747-634: 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
24966-552: The atrocities committed against Balkan Muslims, intensifying anti-Christian sentiment and leading to a desire for revenge. Blame for the loss 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
25185-581: The attack and subsequent massacre. To raise awareness of the massacres of 1895–96 , members of the Dashnaktsutiun led by Papken Siuni , occupied the Ottoman Bank on 26 August 1896. The purpose of the raid was to dictate the ARF's demands of reform in the Armenian populated areas of the Ottoman Empire and to attract European attention to their cause since the Europeans had many assets in
25404-503: The bank. The operation caught European attention but at the cost of more massacres by Sultan Abdul Hamid II . During this period, many famous intellectuals joined the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, including Harutiun Shahrigian , Avetik Isahakyan , Hakob Zavriev , Levon Shant , Karekin Khajag , Vartkes Serengülian , Abraham Gyulkhandanyan , Vahan Papazian , Siamanto , Nikol Aghbalian and many others. The Khanasor Expedition
25623-465: The beginning of 1916 some 500,000 deportees were alive in Syria and Mesopotamia. Afraid that surviving Armenians might return home after 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
25842-481: The borders of Armenia recognized by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and outlined in the Treaty of Sèvres . After Armenia fell under Soviet control in 1920, the ARF within the Armenian diaspora opposed Soviet rule over Armenia and rallied in support of Armenian independence. It contributed to organizing a social and cultural framework aimed at preserving the Armenian identity. However, because of tight communist control,
26061-680: 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 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
26280-651: The capture of Rasht in February 1909. At the end of June 1909, the fighters arrived in Tehran and after several battles, took over the Majles building and the Sepahsalar Mosque . Yeprem Khan was then appointed chief of Tehran police. This caused tensions between the Dashnaks and Khan. The ARF became a major political force in Armenian life. It was especially active in the Ottoman Empire, where it organized or participated in many revolutionary activities. The ARF
26499-588: 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
26718-400: The chapters in different countries were allowed to plan and implement policies in tune with their local political atmosphere. The party set its goal of a society based on the democratic principles of freedom of assembly , freedom of speech , freedom of religion and agrarian reform . The ARF gradually acquired significant strength and sympathy among Russian Armenians . Mainly because of
26937-423: The children; even the poorest Armenian families tried to enroll their children in private Armenian schools and they often needed NGO assistance to pay for the schoolbooks. Life in the Armenian community of Bourj Hammoud was largely effected by gender . Non-Armenian men, even those who married Armenian women , rarely carried significant influence ( wasta ) in the community's social networks. For example, access to
27156-651: The city when the First World War ended, and Turkey, along with Germany and Austria-Hungary , surrendered to the Allies . British forces ordered Andranik to stop all military advances, assuring him that the conflict would be solved with the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 . Andranik, not wanting to antagonize the British, retreated to Goris, Zangezur . The Armenian Revolutionary Federation had
27375-580: The civil war, the Lebanese Armenians established a great number of unlicensed radio stations (some non-stop for 24 hours a day). The pioneer was the popular radio station "Radio Paradise" and later on "Vana Tsayn" (Voice of Van). However, with the Lebanese Parliament enacting laws organizing the airwaves, all the unlicensed stations (alongside the other Lebanese stations) had to close. They were replaced by two operating and fully licensed radio stations operating in Armenian in Lebanon in accordance with
27594-1098: The coastal area northeast of Beirut, they maintain Armenian-language media and political parties. While most adhere to the Armenian Apostolic Church , there are also Armenian Protestants and Catholics . Armenians first established contact with Lebanon when Tigranes the Great conquered Phoenicia from the Seleucids and made it part of his short-lived Armenian Empire. When the Roman Empire established its rule over both Armenia and ancient Lebanon, some Roman troops of Armenian origin went there in order to accomplish their duties as Romans. After Armenia converted to Christianity in 301, Armenian pilgrims established contact with Lebanon and its people on their way to Jerusalem ; some of whom would settle there. The Catholic Armenians who fled to Lebanon in
27813-552: The communists took over the short-lived First Republic of Armenia and ARF leaders were exiled, the Dashnaks moved their base of operations to where the Armenian diaspora had settled. With the large influx of Armenian refugees in the Levant , the ARF established a strong political structure in Lebanon and to a lesser extent, Syria . From 1921 to 1990, the Dashnaktsutiun established political structures in more than 200 states, including
28032-429: 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
28251-525: The criticisms of their rivals to the left (the Hunchaks, Bolsheviks and Specifists ), the Dashnak leaders argued that, given employment discrimination against Armenian workers in non-Armenian concerns, the defence provided to the Armenian bourgeoisie was essential to the safekeeping of employment opportunities for Armenian laborers. The Russian Tsar's envoy in the Caucasus , Vorontsov-Dashkov, reported that
28470-606: The declared goal of achieving "the political and economic freedom of Turkish Armenia " by means of armed rebellion. In the 1890s, the party sought to unify the various small groups in the Ottoman Empire that were advocating reform and defending Armenian villages from the massacres and banditry that were widespread in some of the Armenian-populated areas of the empire. ARF members formed groups of partisans ( fedayi ) that defended Armenian civilians through armed resistance. The party refrained from revolutionary activity in
28689-659: The declining years of the 17th century may be credited with establishing the first enduring Armenian community in the land. The Maronites further acted on the Armenians' behalf in 1742, when they interceded with the Vatican to win Papal recognition for the patriarch of the Armenian Catholics. In 1749, the Armenian Catholic Church built a monastery in Bzoummar , where the image of Our Lady of Bzommar
28908-449: The defunct Armenian political newspapers besides Pyunik in the 1920s, one should mention the independent non-partisan newspaper Ayk ( Armenian : Այգ ) (after decades of publishing in Armenian, the licence owner Lucie Tosbat sold it to Monday Morning Publishing Group and Ayk started publishing as an English-language daily renamed Ike before folding.) Ayk daily's Lebanese-Armenian publishers Dikran and Lucie Tosbat also published
29127-715: 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
29346-474: The denomination field. Sometimes, however, there are variations particularly in case of the Armenian Evangelicals, sometimes registered as just Evangelicals or Protestants without mention of Armenian. There are also some Armenian Catholics who are registered under the denomination Latin, sometimes Armenian Latin. The Holy See of Cilicia is located in Antelias (a northern suburb of Beirut). It
29565-558: 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
29784-555: 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
30003-545: 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
30222-416: 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 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
30441-543: The development of collective identity amongst Lebanese Armenians. According to Sylvia Angelique Alajaji, a professor of music who has studied music in the Armenian diaspora, "in a literal and symbolic sense, the songs sung by the choirs articulated home and articulated belonging." Armenian pop music thrived in 1970s Lebanon, until the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War. Many artists fled Lebanon during those years including pop singer Adiss Harmandian and classical soprano singer Arpine Pehlivanian . Songs were released about
30660-476: 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 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
30879-412: 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
31098-509: The elections, most of the men were found not guilty with the exception of several defendants charged for engaging in corrupt business practices. Three men from the "Dro Group" case (Arsen Artsruni, Armenak Mnjoyan, Armen Grigoryan) and one man from the group of 31 (Tigran Avetisyan) were sentenced to death for murder. Their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in 2003. Mnjoyan died while in prison in early 2019, while Artsruni and Avetisyan continue to serve their sentences. The ban on
31317-631: 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
31536-491: 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
31755-437: 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 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
31974-725: 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 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
32193-511: 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
32412-419: 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
32631-486: 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
32850-426: The empire. CUP leaders such as Talaat and Enver Pasha came to blame non-Muslim population concentrations in strategic areas for many of 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
33069-446: The evidence against the defendants. He later stated in an interview that he was unsure if the evidence was true, inviting the notion that the party was banned because of its increasing chances of winning seats in the July 1995 parliamentary elections. The trials were marked by accusations of misconduct, including forced confessions, and were regarded as politically motivated by the opposition and human rights groups. Several months after
33288-432: The federation early on. Despite this, the party began to organize itself in the Ottoman Empire and convened its First General Congress in 1892, where a program containing socialist principles was adopted. The original aim of the ARF was to gain autonomy for the Armenian-populated areas in the Ottoman Empire by means of armed rebellion. At the First Congress, the party adopted a decentralized modus operandi according to which
33507-542: The first feminist literary review for women in Lebanon called The Young Armenian Woman ( Armenian : Երիտասարդ Հայուհի , romanized : Yeritasard Hayuhi ). Seza was born in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) in 1903. Seza had translated Goethe 's The Sorrows of Young Werther into Armenian when she was 15; her talent was recognized by Armenian poets of the era, such as Vahan Tekeyan , which led to her work being published in important literary journals of that time. The final issue of The Young Armenian Women
33726-436: 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
33945-455: 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 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
34164-600: 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,
34383-478: 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
34602-659: The government coalition , the Republican Party and Prosperous Armenia Party. The Country of Law party was also a member of the governing coalition until it pulled out in May 2006. With 16 of the 131 seats in the National Assembly of Armenia , the Armenian Revolutionary Federation became the third-largest party in parliament. In addition to its parliamentary seats, the following governmental ministries were also headed by ARF members: Ministry of Agriculture, Davit Lokian; Ministry of Education and Science, Levon Mkrtchian; Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Aghvan Vardanian ; Ministry of Healthcare, Norair Davidian. On 13 July 2007,
34821-404: 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
35040-420: 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
35259-482: The late 19th century, the Russian Empire became the hub of small groups advocating reform in Armenian-populated areas in the Ottoman Empire . In 1890, recognizing the need to unify these groups in order to be more efficient, Christapor Mikaelian , Simon Zavarian and Stepan Zorian created a new political party called the "Federation of Armenian Revolutionaries" ( Հայ Յեղափոխականների Դաշնակցութիւն , Hay Heghapokhakanneri Dashnaktsutyun), which would eventually be called
35478-401: The leader of the resistance, and lasted for two months. In May, the Armenian battalions and Russian regulars entered the city and successfully drove the Ottoman army out of Van. The Dashnaktsutiun was also involved in other less-successful resistance movements in Zeitun , Shabin-Karahisar , Urfa , and Musa Dagh . After the end of the Van resistance, ARF leader Aram Manukian became governor of
35697-485: 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
35916-399: 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
36135-463: 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
36354-403: The men. Kerensky succeeded in having the evidence reexamined for one of the defendants. He and several other lawyers "made openly contemptuous declarations" about this discrepancy to the Russian press, which was forbidden to attend the trials, and this in turn greatly embarrassed the senators. The Senate eventually opened an inquiry against the chief magistrate who had brought the charges against
36573-426: 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
36792-447: 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
37011-433: The most influential political party in the Armenian diaspora, it has a comparatively smaller proportional presence in modern-day Armenia . As of October 2023 , the party was represented in two national parliaments, with ten seats in the National Assembly of Armenia and three seats in the Parliament of Lebanon as part of the March 8 Alliance . The ARF has traditionally advocated socialist democracy and has been
37230-471: The new broadcast laws – "Voice of Van" and "Radio Sevan". Lebanese private stations and state-owned Tele-Liban have consecrated occasionally television programming in Armenian on certain occasions. During the Lebanese civil war, an Armenian television station "Paradise Television" co-operated with "Radio Paradise" was established through a broadcast tower in Bourj Hammoud. But "Paradise Television" Armenian television station had to close after it failed to get
37449-411: The nickname "Aram of Van". Moreover, on 19 April, he issued an order to exterminate all Armenians, and threatened to kill all Muslims who helped them. About 185,000 Armenians lived in Vaspurakan . In the city of Van itself, there were around 30,000 Armenians, but more Armenians from surrounding villages joined them during the Ottoman offensive. The battle started on 20 April 1915, with Aram Manukian as
37668-413: The only low-income housing for Armenians was governed by a set of "unofficial rules"; in practice, this meant that Armenian men married to non-Armenian women could rent or purchase an apartment in the housing project, but Armenian women married to non-Armenian men would face significant hurdles to secure this type of housing. Armenian American historian Richard G. Hovannisian has described what he calls
37887-556: The operation. In 1905, members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation organized the failed Yıldız Attempt , an assassination plot on Sultan Abdul Hamid II in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople (modern day Istanbul ); the explosion missed its target by a few minutes and was helped by Belgian anarchist Edward Joris . He was arrested and sentenced to death, prompting Pierre Quillard to use his journal, Pro Armenia , to advocate for his release —a stance shared by his colleague Jean Grave in Les Temps nouveaux . In
38106-422: The organizations and traditionally has been one of the staunchest supporters of Armenian nationalism . The party campaigns for the recognition of the Armenian genocide and the right to reparations . It also advocates the establishment of United Armenia , partially based on the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920. The ARF originated as a merger of various Armenian political groups, mainly from the Russian Empire , with
38325-399: The other old Armenian quarters. Anjar ( عنجر , Այնճար ), also known as Haoush Mousa ( حوش موسى ), is a town of Lebanon located in the Bekaa Valley . The population is about 2,400 consisting almost entirely of Armenians. Jbeil-Byblos ( جبيل , Ժիպէյլ ), is a town of Lebanon located in the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate . Armenians in Jbeil count around 200 Armenian family. In Jbeil
38544-448: The parliamentary régime in Syria , there were reserved seats for the various religious communities, like in Lebanon, including for Armenians. This system is unofficially still living. Even when they didn't take part as such in elections, Armenian parties such as Dashnak exerted an influence on them. The ARF has always maintained its ideological commitment to "a Free, Independent, and United Armenia". The term United Armenia refers to
38763-445: The party was lifted less than a week after Ter-Petrosyan fell from power in February 1998 and was replaced by Robert Kocharyan , who was backed by the Dashnaks. Most of the ARF members convicted in relation to the "Dro Group" and "Group of 31" cases were released after the relegalization of the party. In 2007, the ARF was not part of but had a cooperation agreement in place with the governing coalition, which consisted of two parties in
38982-422: 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 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 ,
39201-817: 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
39420-401: The recognition of large territorial losses to Turkey. The Armenia military-revolutionary committee formed in Soviet Azerbaijan . Despite their tight grip on power, the ARF ceded power to the Communist Red Army troops invading from the north, which culminated with a Soviet takeover. The ARF was banned, its leaders exiled, and many of its members dispersed to other parts of the world. After
39639-401: 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,
39858-608: 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
40077-432: The situation in the country became worse, with apparent rapprochement between Soviet Russia and Kemal's Turkey. When the Turkish-Armenian war started in autumn 1920, Armenia was isolated and abandoned by Western allies. The newly formed League of Nations did not provide any help. Soviet Russia intensified its pressure on Armenia. Losing the war, Armenia signed the Treaty of Alexandropol on 2 December 1920, which resulted in
40296-463: 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
40515-436: 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
40734-401: 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
40953-408: The time when the Young Turks came to power in the Ottoman Empire, Armenians from the Caucasus , Western Armenia , and Iran started to collaborate with Iranian constitutionalists and revolutionaries. Political parties, notably the Dashnaktsutiun, wanted to influence the direction of the revolution towards greater democracy and to safeguard gains already achieved. The Dashnak contribution to the fight
41172-434: The town of Anjar in the Beqaa region . The Armenian population gradually grew and expanded until Beirut (and Lebanese towns like Anjar) became a center of Armenian culture . The Armenians became one of Lebanon’s most prominent and productive communities. Armenians in Lebanon strive to balance their Lebanese identity with ties to their homeland , keeping a distance from sectarian divisions. In areas like Bourj Hammoud and
41391-413: The two groups. Before Fazlian's group the only plays available were partisan plays presented by members of the ARF and their sympathesizers, who would perform in the Hamazkayin plays. On the other hand, Fazlian's Vahram Papazian group performed a variety of plays that included Western Armenian , Eastern Armenian and even non-Armenian plays. In 1932 Siran Seza, a Lebanese-Armenian writer, began publishing
41610-641: 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
41829-420: The war including one by Manuel Menengichian with the lyrics "Brothers turned into lions against each other/ Tearing up your heart, Lebanon". Like other cultural institutions of the Lebanese Armenian community, Armenian theater suffered during the years of the Lebanese Civil War. Many prominent figures decided to leave Lebanon; Berge Fazlian, founder of the Vahram Papazian group, was among those who fled during
42048-436: 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
42267-414: The wartime violence. Though theater experience a decline during the war years, it does not disappear entirely; the groups that remained in Lebanon were able to put on productions that filled the two theraters of Bourj Hammoud. Fazlian is considered one of the most important figures in Lebanese theater; his theater projects were covered in Armenian, Arabic and French-language newspapers of the period. Fazlian
42486-422: 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
42705-428: 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
42924-416: 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
43143-399: Was a major military success for the Armenian army as it was able to halt the invading Turkish forces. The Armenians also stood their ground at the Battle of Kara Killisse and at the Battle of Bash Abaran . The creation of the First Republic of Armenia was proclaimed on the same day of the Battle of Sardarapat, and the ARF became the ruling party. However, the new state was devastated, with
43362-416: 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 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
43581-533: 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
43800-572: Was born in Istanbul in 1926; after obtaining his education in Turkey and directing several plays, a friendly colleague advised him to seek his fortune outside Turkey, imploring Fazlian to "never leave the theater", but also reminding him that an Armenian was not likely to land a leading role in Turkey. Fazlian left Istanbul in 1951 and settled in Beirut where he founded the Nor Pem (“New Stage”) theater group in 1956, Vahram Papazian in 1959, and Azad Pem (“Free Stage”) in 1971. Lebanon had only one theater group in Beirut prior to Fazlian's creation of
44019-418: Was consecrated Catholicos of Cilicia, the Catholicos of Echmiadzin refused to recognize his authority. This controversy polarized the Armenian community of Lebanon. As a result, in the context of the Lebanese civil strife of 1958 , an armed conflict erupted between supporters (the ARF) and opponents (Hunchakians, Ramgavars) of Zareh. Prior to the Lebanese Civil War of 1975–90, the party was closely allied to
44238-473: Was especially influential due to their ability to educate the population through a system of "educating, explaining,and encouraging". This was a tactic used to disseminate information to gain support in terms of political elections, campaigns, or alliances to strengthen the ARF's social relations. When they weren't educating their youth and preparing the new generation for revolution, they themselves were taking part in revolutionary activities. For example, in 1894,
44457-560: Was established in Beirut by the Armenian Missionary Association of America and the Union of the Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East . Founded in 1955, Haigazian is a liberal arts Armenian institution of higher learning, which uses English as the language of instruction. Most Armenian schools are run by the three Armenian Christian denominations (Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical). Others are run by cultural associations like Hamazkayin and Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU). Notable schools include: Anatolian and kef music were
44676-450: Was exported to the Armenian diaspora . During the Lebanese Civil War, Armenians, grouped in Bourj Hammoud and Anjar, have been known for their neutrality in the civil war. And while the insecurity and economic dislocation of the war caused Lebanese Armenians to lose much of their number to emigration, the distinctive features and manifold successes of the community yet remain. There are three prominent Armenian political parties in Lebanon:
44895-502: 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
45114-407: 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 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
45333-424: 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 the Syrian Desert in 1915 and 1916. Driven forward by paramilitary escorts,
45552-408: Was mostly military, as it sent some of its well-known fedayees to Iran after the guerrilla campaign in the Ottoman Empire ended with the rise of the Young Turks. A notable ARF member already in Iran was Yeprem Khan , who had established a branch of the party in the country. Yeprem Khan was highly instrumental in the Constitutional revolution of Iran. After the Persian national parliament was shelled by
45771-409: Was not the position of the entire party, and the party bureau in Cairo declared its loyalty to the Allies. The Armenian Legion , composed largely of former Soviet Red Army POWs, was led by Drastamat Kanayan. It participated in the occupation of the Crimean Peninsula and the North Caucasus. but was later based in the Netherlands and France a result of Adolf Hitler's distrust of their loyalty. In 1942,
45990-409: 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
46209-403: 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
46428-545: 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
46647-406: Was part of a greater conflict that raged between the two "camps" of the Armenian diaspora. The ARF still resented the fact that they were ousted from Armenia after the Red Army took control, and the ARF leaders supported the creation of a "Free, Independent, and United Armenia", free from both Soviet and Turkish hegemony. The Social Democrat Hunchakian Party and Ramgavar Party , the main rivals of
46866-405: Was performed by the Armenian militia against the Kurdish Mazrik tribe on 25 July 1897. During the Defense of Van, the Mazrik tribe had ambushed a squad of Armenian defenders and massacred them. The Khanasor Expedition was the ARF's retaliation. Some Armenians consider this their first victory over the Ottoman Empire and celebrate each year in its remembrance. On 30 March 1904, the ARF played
47085-546: Was published in 1968. The Armenian community in Lebanon developed educational institutions and organizations to address issues like poverty , which were exacerbated by the violent conflict and crisis in Lebanon. The focus of these institutions was on women's role as mothers, which is not uncommon in times of war or violent conflict. They sought to kept Armenian children connected to the community by offering cultural activities like traditional Armenian dance and music. The three main Armenian churches ran private Armenian schools for
47304-456: Was rejected by the Echmiadzin-based Catholicos of All Armenians , the anti-ARF coalition, and Soviet Armenian authorities. Zareh extended his administrative authority over a large part of the Armenian diaspora, furthering the rift that had already been created by his election. This event split the large Armenian community of Lebanon , creating sporadic clashes between the supporters of Zareh and those who opposed his election. Religious conflict
47523-416: Was relocated there in 1930 from Sis (historical Cilicia, now in Turkey) after the Armenian genocide. Alongside the Mother See of Holy Echmiadzin located in Armenia , it is one of the two sees of the Armenian Apostolic Church (the national church of Armenians). The Catholicos, the leader of the Holy See of Cilicia, has his summer residence in Bikfaya in the Matn District also north of Beirut. The seminary of
47742-412: Was to "reestablish and spread the art of theater in the diaspora". This included enhancing "Armenian theater’s educational role in the preservation of national identity". Fazlian himself was a leftist and his group was associated the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), while Ipegian's group was associated with Hamazkayin and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). There was a rivalry between
47961-408: 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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