Armenian Nationalism Against Ottoman Turkification

The following article is the first part of a collection of writings by Kayvan Hosseini about the Armenian Genocide during World War I. These writings are based on a special three-part program titled "Death March," broadcasted by Radio Farda to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide victims. The year 1915, the second year of World War I, may not seem like a unique year in the history of war. It was a time when the flames of war were intensifying day by day, casualties were rising as always, and new fronts were being added to this bloody conflict. At this time, the United States had not yet entered the war, and Tsarist Russia had not withdrawn from the war due to the Bolshevik Revolution. The empires were still firmly in place: Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. However, in this year, when news of the war occupied all aspects of life for a large group of people on Earth, on July 10, Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, wrote in a confidential correspondence to Robert Lansing, the then U.S. Secretary of State: "The trial of Armenians has reached an unprecedented level. Reports from very scattered areas indicate a systematic extermination of the peaceful Armenian population. Arbitrary arrests, horrific tortures, mass deportations, and expulsion from one end of the empire to the other, along with rape, looting of property, and mass murder, are methods for their destruction." What Morgenthau detailed in his numerous correspondences with Washington is part of the events that began during World War I, during which, according to Armenian sources, up to one and a half million Armenians were killed. Armenians claim this event was a genocide, and as a result of this genocide, they were permanently driven from their homeland in Anatolia. Before the 19th century, the history of Armenians in Asia Minor or Anatolia, since the 14th century and the fall of the last Armenian kingdom, was intertwined with the fate of three empires: Iran, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian-inhabited areas that today form parts of the territories of Armenia and Turkey were divided between Iran and the Ottoman Empire from the 16th century, and what was known as Eastern Armenia was separated from Iran at the beginning of the 19th century after the Treaty of Turkmenchay and annexed to Tsarist Russia. However, the remaining Armenian-inhabited areas remained under the control of the Ottoman Empire; vast regions in eastern Anatolia that were bordered to the north by the Black Sea, extended from the east to Lake Sevan, reached the south to Lake Van, and connected to Eastern Armenia. Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were second-class citizens and faced restrictions because they were Christians, such as paying special taxes. However, the experience of Armenians under Ottoman rule was very different. Some Armenians at times became close to the court and even served in the group of advisors or personal physicians to the Sultan. Richard Hovannisian, a professor at UCLA in the United States and founder of the National Armenian Institute in the country, believes that the life of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during the long years of Turkish sultans' power in these areas was not a uniform and singular experience. He states: "Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were second-class citizens and faced restrictions because they were Christians, such as paying special taxes. However, the experience of Armenians under Ottoman rule was very different. Some Armenians at times became close to the court and even served in the group of advisors or personal physicians to the Sultan. For this reason, some of these Armenians were very wealthy and influential and lived in Istanbul. However, the majority of the Armenian population were rural farmers." Despite the fact that a large group of the two million Armenian population lived in villages, they were able to establish a unique written culture with the alphabet they inherited from the 5th century. The first Armenian newspapers were printed in the early 17th century in Venice and India. This ancient alphabet also helped some Turkish writers and intellectuals to publish their texts uniquely in the 19th century. They wrote Turkish using the Armenian alphabet, and in 1851, the first novel of the Ottoman era titled "The Tales of Akabi" was published in this way. However, the peaceful cultural interaction between Turks and Armenians gradually faded in the late 19th century and was replaced by increasing tension; a tension that, to understand its roots, shows traces of modern ideas such as nationalism as well as the declining status of the Ottoman Empire both internally and externally; a country that in the middle of this century was labeled by Tsar Nicholas I as "the sick man of Europe." Barlow Magardchian, a professor at Fresno State University in California and president of the Armenian Studies Society in America, discusses the reasons for the onset of tension between Turks and Armenians: "The problem began when the Ottoman Empire was losing its territories in the 19th century and had suffered defeats in major wars with Russia and European powers. With the loss of land in the west, they were terrified that they might lose their territory in the east as well. For this reason, even before the genocide in the 20th century, in the 19th century, Armenians were killed in groups. There were many reasons for the mistreatment of Armenians, but generally, the root of the problems can be said to be the inefficiency of the Ottoman Empire." At this juncture, alongside the rise of modern European nationalism in the Balkans and the popularity of the new state-nation system in the formation and administration of countries, new discussions were emerging among both Turks and other ethnic groups of the Ottoman Empire to find answers to the fundamental question of national identity in the Ottoman Empire. According to Jay Winter, an American historian and professor at Yale University, the final answer was, in fact, a new source of division because against the Ottoman multi-national identity, some supported a single ethnic identity centered on Turks in this vast country. This professor states: "At this time, there was a disagreement between those who saw the Ottoman Empire as a multi-national and multi-cultural system, of which Armenians were also a part, and those who believed that the future lay in a single ethnic Turkish identity. Ultimately, this Turkification in the Ottoman Empire not only narrowed the space for Armenians but also left no place for Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. Thus, from the late 19th century until the beginning of World War I, the nature of the dispute changed, and a situation arose in which the tolerance of the powerful towards Armenians became much less. In this new situation, they no longer saw Armenians as a healthy minority for the future of the nation but considered them a cancer that needed to be eradicated for the future of a Turkified nation." In the meantime, Armenians were not a passive ethnic group either. They, like their Turkish compatriots, became acquainted with new ideas and, in line with the Turks, who were increasing in number among the constitutionalists, became citizens with specific demands and resorted to modern political activities to achieve their goals. At this time, there was a disagreement between those who saw the Ottoman Empire as a multi-national and multi-cultural system, of which Armenians were also a part, and those who believed that the future lay in a single ethnic Turkish identity. One of the most important of these methods was the establishment of political parties; parties that perhaps did not resemble today's parties and were more like political clubs, but alongside Ottoman developments, they played an increasingly important role in relations between Armenians and Turkish rulers. Barlow Magardchian describes this political transformation: "Until 1885, there were no Armenian parties either in the Ottoman Empire or in Tsarist Russia. In fact, the phenomenon of the Armenian party at the end of the 19th century was a new phenomenon. The establishment of these parties was, in fact, a reaction to the failure of the reforms that had been promised to Armenians and which the Ottomans had accepted to implement based on the agreement at the Berlin Congress. When Armenians saw that there was no news of reforms, they established the first party in the Ottoman Empire in 1885. The second party, called the Social Democrat Hunchak, was established in 1887 in Geneva, Switzerland, and then the Armenian Revolutionary Federation was founded in 1890 in Tbilisi, which was under Russian control." These parties, generally with leftist tendencies, had great appeal for intellectuals at that time and began their activities while both in Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire, Russian and Turkish intellectuals were establishing larger and more comprehensive parties with similar ideologies. In both of these countries, the main opposition parties were rapidly moving towards gaining increasing power. In this context, what did Armenians want, and why did some of their political elites prefer political activity in a small but Armenian party over political struggle in the main opposition parties? Michael Babylian, a legal journalist for Forbes magazine and author of the book "Children of Armenia," which is dedicated to the events of 1915, discusses the political demands of Armenians during this historical period: "Armenians were not, for the most part, nationalists seeking their own country. This happened later. At that time, they were seeking political participation and representation in the government. They wanted equality, civil rights, and religious freedoms. In these demands, they were not alone, and more or less all groups living under Ottoman rule had similar demands. However, the difference between Armenians and others was that they lived in the center of the empire. Other ethnic groups lived in areas that were not Turkish, and for them, achieving their demands was much easier, but Armenians lived in the heart of the empire, where Turks were also present, and because of this geographical position, it was more difficult for Armenians to achieve their demands." However, before reaching a final confrontation with their Turkish rivals, Armenian parties participated in an important coalition with Turks at the beginning of the 20th century and played a role in a historic revolution, although the lifespan of this coalition was very short. In the next part of this series of articles, the confrontation of Sultan Abdulhamid II with Armenians and the details of the "Young Turks" revolution and the internal developments of this revolutionary coalition will be examined.