Book Review: The Armenians in the Late Ottoman Period

ISBN: 975-7479-81-0.

The Armenians in the Late Ottoman Period provides a fresh look at the Ottoman-Armenian relations in the period of the World War I and its immediate aifiermath. The present study shows the view of the Armenians being the victims to a war-time genocide in the Ottoman Empire is unfounded in the light of objective scholarship.

The chapters in this edited book provide the reader with information and arguments on the relations between the Turks and the Armenians. The book had a three member advisory board consisting of ?lber Ortayl?, Stanford J. Shaw and Türkkaya Ataöv. The latter also assumed the functions of editor preparing this volume for publication.

A group of academics and other interested researches contributed to this volume. The articles are listed to conform to a chronological order of historical relations beginning with the contribution of the speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, Ömer Izgi. In his introductory article of ‘Turks and Armenians: The Ottoman Experience, ?zgi summarizes the overall Turkish-Armenian relations under the Ottoman system. lie reminds the reader the religious tolerance of the Ottomans, allowing many different beliefs to co-exist under the same governmental rule. He also notes that the policy of toleration had its costs. As observed by ?zgi, many Christian churches, including those of the Armenians, served as the vehicles for nationalist and separatist movements. ?zgi briefly gives some background information on the history of the relations of Turks with Armenians. According to the author the faithful Armenians, millet-i sad?ka, were unaffected by the rising tide of nationalism during the decline of the Ottomans, as other Christian nations sought their independence with the help of western powers, for three main reasons: I. the Armenians existed in almost every region and they did not constitute a homogenous majority in any area, II. the urban Armenians were better off and they shared a common culture and language with the Muslim Turks, III. they integrated into the ruling class of the Empire. Soon after the Christian nations of the Ottoman Empire were granted their independence, nationalist revolutionary movements found support among the young Armenians. In the late 1880s Armenian revolutionary Ninchag and Dashnag Committees were set up to ‘liberate’ the Armenian ‘homeland’. But they were unable to comprehend the demographic reality, i.e. the absolute majority of Armenian ‘homeland’ did not happen to be the Armenians. The Armenian revolutionaries, like some of the ethnic groups in the Balkans, adopted terror as a primary tactic to the ethnically cleansing of Eastern provinces where they claim their historical homeland. This coincided with the emergence of the Turkish nationalism which was especially popular among the Turkish refugee groups of Balkan origin. Izgi correctly points out that with the outbreak of the World War I the Ottomans had no alternative but to relocate the Armenians, who collaborated with Russian forces in order to conquer the Ottoman territory, he acknowledges that many Armenians as well as Muslims suffered from consequences of the war conditions. ?zgi is right in observing that the founders of the modern republic of Turkey, which emerged from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the World War I put the past rest and, therefore, the Turkish side allowed the one-sided story to be passed from generation to generation. ?zgi quotes Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in saying “Peace at home, peace in the world” stressing the future, rather than past, of the Turkish people. However, this was seen as a weakness by many and they find a chance to increase the toll of victims to hundreds of thousands and eventually millions. As noted by ?zgi, every story has two sides and it is the time to tell the other side’s story, based on real facts and evidence.

Professor Nejat Göyünç makes a contribution to an under¬studied aspect of the relations between the Turks and Armenians in his article entitled “Turkish-Armenian Cultural Relations”. He observes that the Turks and Armenians were linked involved with each other in language, literature, music and almost every branch of arts. He supports this view by many examples. To cite öne, Qöyünç mentions the opinions of the well-known Turkologist Andreas Tietze who reportedly said that Turkish they spoke seemed to be more convenient and easier to the Armenians. He correctly concludes that the understanding of the deep cultural ties between the two nations would help the construction of more friendly and peaceful relations.

Y?lmaz Öztuna who has published extensively on history contributes to the book by giving the reader an adequate understanding of ‘the Armenian Question’. His work starts with the 1877-78 Russo-Ottoman War as the origin of the Armenian question. As a result of the war, the Ottomans had to accept the peace terms dictated by the great powers. Consequently the Treaty of Berlin was signed. As pointed out by Öztuna, Article 61 of the treaty under which the Ottoman Empire was to enact reforms for the Armenian minority in the eastern provinces gave free hand to great powers to intervene the internal affairs of the Ottomans. Öztuna also makes it clear that great powers had conflicting interests over the Ottoman territories. To take an advantageous position Russia tried to use the Armenians by making undeliverable promises. To this end Russians armed the Armenians, living in the east, with weapons. This seemed attractive to some revolutionary Armenians as they wanted to establish an independent state in eastern Anatolia where, however, they formed a minority. With the outbreak of the World War I the Ottoman army had to fight against Britain, France, and Russia. Furthermore mainly Russian sponsored Armenians were fighting against the Ottoman army both internally and externally. Against this background information the Armenian relocation of 1915 can be properly understood. According to Öztuna the relocation of the Armenians was a military and security necessity. Obviously the relocation claimed many lives of innocent people. When the war ended and the Ottomans were defeated, Armenians engaged in revenge attacks against the Muslim population of Anatolia. The issue was settled by the Kars, Gümrü and Lausanne agreements and the current boundaries of the Republic of Turkey were drawn. Öztuna’s article finishes with an observation that since there is still involvement of foreign factors, as there was in the past, the Armenian issue will remain in the international political agenda for a time yet.

Justin McCarthy looks at the population of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. lie underlines a reality that the only way to know a population is to actually count it. Therefore, to find the actual Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire one must rely on the type of governmental population statistics that are the staple of demographic studies throughout the world. He observes that, although nineteenth and early twentieth century European and American commentators had no idea how many Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire, they made estimations in which they necessarily failed. Some estimators used the Armenian Fatriarchate statistics. However, its statistics were pure invention since no record of births and marriages were kept in the Armenian churches unlike the western European churches. He points out that the Patriarchate figures were used for propaganda, while the Ottoman population figures were used for internal governmental purposes such as tax collection. His finding that there are great differences between the official Ottoman figures and the Patriarchate’s proves this point. Even the Patriarchate’s figures does not refuse that the Armenians did not form a majority anywhere in the Ottoman territory including eastern provinces. He gives figures of mortality of the Armenians and Muslims and those of immigrants. He concludes that the massive mortality in Anatolia was the product of total war. All shared starvation and disease, each side killed the other and a correct assessment of the facts of the times must be made by taking into account the mortality of both sides not of one side only.

Hüseyin Çelik’s article is on the 1915 Armenian Revolt in Van. Van is a city in Eastern Anotalia, situated on the shores of the lake bearing its name, where Muslims and Armenians lived together in peace. Çelik offers extensive quotations from recorded statements of the eyewitnesses of that province, interviewed some years ago. A quotation from Mehmet Deliba? who worked as an apprentice for an Armenian shoemaker is particularly significant in describing the peaceful and friendly relations between the Turkish and Armenian communities. Deliba? summarizes developments following the proclamation of the Second Constitution in 1908 this way: “... (My Armenian master) said ‘Now there is freedom. Freedom has been announced. We are going to celebrate it’... Our Muslims and Armenians celebrated freedom together. In town the drums and flutes began to play... Our religious teachers and their priests embraced one another.” Armenian revolutionary committees worked with the Young Turks together for bringing a constitutional administration. With the proclamation of the constitution all revolutionary and separatist activities occurred more freely. According to eyewitnesses’ statements initially local Van Armenians, especially those who lived in urban areas, had no intention of rebelling. However as a result of the activities of revolutionary committees with the help of Russians, Armenians were armed in anticipation of a widespread rebellion. In early April 1915 the Armenian uprising began. Coupled with the Russian advance, the government ordered their own Muslim population to evacuate the city. Many Muslims suffered and lost their lives during the process of evacuation. Çelik’s work makes it clear that it was the bloody Armenian rebellion in Van that left no alternative to the Ottoman government but relocate those citizens deemed disloyal and rebellious in other parts of the Ottoman territory.

Yusuf Halaço?lu lays down the realities behind the relocation of the Armenians in 1915. First the author explains the reasons for the relocation as a military necessity. It is the rebellious activities of the Armenians that led the relocation law to be promulgated on 27 May 1915. As the author points out the objective sought by the government in relocating the Armenians of certain provinces in eastern Anatolia was preventing their anti-governmental activities and the annihilation of them was not only out of question but also the authorities were to ensure their safety. In support of this argument Nalaço?lu throughout his essay uses only authentic documents such as circulars, coded telegrams, secret dispatches and, of course, the relocation law itself. He is confident in saying that 450,000, or more, reached their destinations. According to the evidence Halaço?lu provided, the Ottoman authorities took every means to caring for the emigrated and their property. As the author persuasively argues this is not the way a government with the intention to realize genocide would behave, he also accepts that the relocation was painful because displacing thousands of people and resettling them is not an easy task.

Enver Konukçu looks at another, often neglected, aspect of the Turkish Armenian relations, he focuses on the mass graves of the Turks killed by the Armenians in eastern Anatolia. Konukçu participated as counselor in the excavations on such mass graves. As a result of the Bolshevik revolution that took place in Russia the occupying army was not able to sustain its position and the Turkish army swept back the Russians to the former frontiers. his findings clearly show that during and after the Russian occupation of eastern Anatolia the Armenian militants carried out mass killings of the Muslim population. The author regrets that the western media and academic circles are silent about the massacre of the Turks by the Armenians. He also claims that there are hundreds more mass graves remain to be excavated.

Stanford Shaw writes about the French Armenian Legion and its activities in Cilicia. The Armenian Legion had been organized starting in 1916 in Cyprus. Many of these troops were poorly organized. The Armenians came to Cyprus from all over the areas to become the members of the Legion in French uniform. They started their landing at ?skenderun. According to Shaw wherever the Armenians went, they terrorized the Turkish and Arab civilian population even the Muslim French Algerian soldiers. The author referred to Ottoman and French army archives and concludes that the French army confirmed the Ottoman military reports, with even more details than provided by the local Ottoman officials. He also points out that it was not only the Muslims but also the Jews of the Ottoman Empire who suffered the atrocities of Greek and Armenian occupation forces.

Ömer Turan deals with the Armenian question at the Lausanne Peace talks. In order to represent the Armenians at Lausanne, the delegation from the Armenian Republic and the Armenian National Delegation joined to form the United Armenian Delegation. The author notes that the delegation claimed that the Armenians had taken the side of the Allies during the World War I and declared that an Armenian homeland on Turkish territory in Asia should be granted to resolve the Armenian question. he observes as reported by the American representative that the Allies had no intention of giving genuine backing to the Armenian demands but continued to use the Armenians to achieve their own military and political objectives. At the end of the Lausanne talks the existing boundaries of the Republic of Turkey were recognized. The author concludes that the Armenians were abandoned by those states which deceived them by promises into being exploited against the Turks. Turan’s work is based on the author’s research in the foreign office archives in London.

Süleyman Seyfi Ö?ün makes an in depth analysis of the Ottoman system of government with the aim of finding what enabled the two nations to live in peace for a long time. Within the millet system, each community was given the right to maintain its own cultural, professional, religious and even judicial traditions. Political power would not interfere with these matters. In short, the Ottomans applied the doctrine of “separate but equal”. Ö?ün quotes a term used by a leading scholar on the Ottoman history, ?lber Ortayl?, “compartmentalization” to call this co-existence. In the millet system the Armenians were in an advantageous position since they were millet-i sad?ka (the loyal nation). Many Armenians were quite easily appointed to high ranking government posts. This reality, according to the author, turns the argument that the Armenians were treated as second class citizens to a gross exaggeration. The author also compares the Ottoman administration system with the western ones. He concludes that the Ottoman style of government self-evidently makes it impossible to draw a parallel between the holocaust-like genocide and the Armenian relocations in 1915, because there is no historical hatred, as a constituting element of genocide, between the two communities.

Gündüz Aktan begins his article on the Armenian problem and international law by warning that the academics without a proper legal education and experience cannot asses whether or not any massacre amounted to genocide since genocide, as an international crime, can be determined only by jurists on the basis of the prescribed legal criteria. What Aktan does is explaining the term genocide and its elements from a point of view of law and assesses whether the Armenian issue is qualified to be called genocide under international law. Having analyzed in detail the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention where the term was described first in the legal sense in terms of what it entails and of what it excludes and the facts of the Armenian relocation, Aktan reaches to the conclusion that the relocation did not constitute a genocide, let alone a crime against humanity for various reasons. He points out that the Armenians who were relocated constituted a political group, which was denied the status of protected group by the Convention. The Catholic and Protestant Armenians all over the country as well as the Gregorian Armenians, living in the western provinces, were not subjected to relocations. From this fact he concludes that the Armenians living in the war zones and those posing security threats were relocated and this fact clearly shows the military rationale behind the relocation. In order to qualify as a genocide there must be a racial hatred towards a certain group. This is, too, absent in the Armenian case. Moreover the Genocide Convention requires the persecutors intention to destroy the protected group. As clearly observed by Aktan such an intention did not exist in the relocation of the Armenians. All the documents available envisage the protection of Armenian convoys in the course of relocation and their safe resettlement, like other authors Aktan accepts that there were isolated individual attacks towards the Armenians. He further adds that even before the end of the World War I the Ottoman government brought the responsibles of such crimes before the courts of law.

Türkkaya Ataöv, the editor of the book, turns on the Jewish holocaust and the Ottoman Armenians. Ataöv’s article is a response to the effort of some Armenian authors to link the relocation of Armenians in 1915 with the Jewish holocaust. His article completes what Gündüz Aktan writes. Ataöv clearly underlines the differences between the anti-Semitism in the Nazi period and the way the Armenians lived in the Ottoman period. The reader can conclude from this paper that that if the one is genocide the other one has nothing to do with genocide. It is a well known fact that the Jews of Germany were discriminated first. The process of annihilation of the Jews by Nazis followed a certain path: They were marked with certain symbols to identify their differences from the rest of the community, they were required to live in certain places (ghettos), they were denied civil rights, they were forcibly gathered in concentration camps where they were killed with intent to destroy the Jews as a religious and racial group. The author convincingly argues that none of those existed in the Armenian case and the Armenians were an important part of the Ottoman society. Even in the crucial years, like 1915, many Armenians served the Ottoman states as being high ranking bureaucrats and ministers of state. Therefore, Ataöv agrees with those who argued in some other parts of the book, the relocation of the Armenians was a military necessity\ not an act of extermination.

To add a few important points on the book, it is a great gesture to dedicate such a work to the memory of all who lost their lives during the clashes in the late Ottoman period and also to the Turkish Diplomats assassinated by the terrorists. A good command of English is used in the book. It is evident that the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, unlike its counterparts in some countries, lets the historians decide on the issue and not politicians who are after their electorate support. Although the book is sponsored by the legislature of Turkey, the reader will find a balanced view of the relations between the Turks and Armenians throughout the book. No single work has the right to claim to be the conclusive on the issue and other studies based on the academic standards, not on propaganda tactics, would contribute to the more understanding of the subject as counter arguments clashes.