During the Armenian Genocide hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people died. We’ve
mentioned the progress of the Armenian genocide several times in our regular episodes, but
what we haven’t talked about is the region of Armenia itself, and the cultural and political
background that led to the slaughter, and that’s what I’m going to talk about today.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War special episode about the background to the
Armenian Genocide.
The First Republic of Armenia was formed in 1918 in the later stages of the First World
War, but the historic homeland of the Armenian people had been fought over and disputed for
centuries.
From the 16th to 18th centuries this was between the Ottomans and the Persians, and Yerevan,
the capital of today’s Armenia, changed hands no less than 14 times. Eventually, Greater
Armenia, which was mostly Eastern Armenia, was annexed by the Persians while Western
Armenia went to the Ottoman Empire. By the 19th century, though, a new player joined
the game, the Russian Empire. Although Russia had fought Persia several times before, two
Russo-Persian Wars in the first few decades of the 1800s changed the situation, with Russia
gaining new territory. By the 1830s, Persia had ceded most of its territory in the Caucasus
and Eastern Armenia to Russia. Meanwhile in the Ottoman Empire, the Armenians- who were
Christians- were living under the Millet system, under which faith-based communities, Muslim,
Christian, and Jewish, had a large degree of autonomy within the Empire. The Armenians
were primarily in six provinces in eastern Anatolia where they had their own communities
and churches.
A period of revolutionary awakening led to, an Armenian National Constitution, ratified
in 1863, which provided for an Armenian General Assembly, which was granted certain powers
concerning Armenian religious and cultural life within the Empire.
Political parties and organized resistance groups formed: Armenakan, Henchak, the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation. Now, the next few decades had some real flashpoints in the deterioration
of relations between the Ottoman Empire and the Armenian people. For one thing, the Muslim
Empire was getting smaller and weaker, and was losing wars to Christian European powers,
and losing its territory in the Balkans to predominantly Christian emerging nations and
nationalism. This provoked anti-Christian sentiment in general, but the Russo-Turkish
war of 1877-78 made a lot of that sentiment specifically anti-Armenian, since Armenian
Corps were fighting against the Turks on the Russian side in the Caucasus.
In the mid 1890s, Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, in an attempt to reassert Islam as the
state ideology of his empire and strengthen its territorial integrity, called for the
massacre of Armenian citizens, although the killing did end up being more anti-Christian
at times and tens of thousands of Assyrians were killed as well. The number of Armenians
killed during those years- of all ages and sexes- has been variously estimated between
70,000 and 300,000.
In 1909, the Young Turks came to power and did something similar. In Adana Vilayet- province-
pogroms against Armenians resulted in 20-30,000 deaths.
BUT a few years later, an Armenian reform package was written. Now, this was the brainchild
of several European powers and would create two big provinces from the six vilayets of
the Empire where the Armenians mostly lived that would be under control of two European
Inspectors General, and they would oversee all Armenian-related issues. This was even
signed by the Ottoman Empire in February 1914, but it went out the window later that year
when the Ottoman Empire joined the war.
So... the war years.
The Empire tried to convince Armenian leaders to provoke a rebellion of Russian Armenians
against the Tsar to facilitate Ottoman conquest of Trans-Caucasia, right? But the Tsar promised
autonomy for Russian Armenia and the six Armenian vilayets in the Ottoman Empire in return for
loyalty and support. And he got a lot of it. I mean, Armenians were religiously and often
culturally closer to Russians than Turks anyhow, but nearly 200,000 Armenians in total ended
up fighting for Russia as volunteers.
So the Russian Armenian Volunteer Corps, about four battalions strong, was formed; a military
fighting unit within the Russian army comprised mostly of Russian Armenians but also Ottoman
Armenians. Andranik Ozanian, commander of the First Armenian Battalion, led the Caucasus
Campaign. Now, he was a key figure in the Armenian National Liberation movement and
an active member in the armed struggle against the Ottomans, and a national Armenian hero
of almost legendary status- apparently the Kurds called him a ghost and said that bullets
fell to the ground when he took off his jacket. Armenian soldiers took part in that first
Russian offensive of the Caucasus campaign, the Bergmann Offensive, but more importantly
in the Battle of Sarikamish from late December 1914 to mid January 1915. This battle was
a spectacular disaster for the Ottoman Empire and specifically Minister of War Enver Pasha,
who screwed it up on a colossal scale. The Ottoman Third Army was nearly totally destroyed,
partly by the enemy and partly by incompetence, with thousands of Turks freezing to death
in summer uniforms in -30 temperatures, with some estimates claiming that as little as
10% of the Turks made it back to their base.
Enver Pasha was very quick to lay blame for the defeat on the Armenians, whom he called
traitors, including those that lived in Russia, not just those that defected to the Russians,
and things began to explode.
On April 24th, which is known as the Armenian Day of Mourning, Armenian intellectuals, politicians,
and other well-known figures in Constantinople were arrested and sentenced to death. This
was the official beginning of the Armenian Genocide.
Soon, the order would go out to deport and exterminate Armenian civilians in villages
all across Ottoman Armenia. As you may know, this was depressingly successful, despite
wholesale condemnation from the rest of the world. There were exceptions, though.
At Musa Dagh, a mountain near the Eastern Mediterranean Coast, local citizens held out
against repeated assaults for 53 days until they were rescued and evacuated by Allied
warships to Egypt. 4,200 of them were saved. This inspired the internationally famous novel
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.
The Armenians also held out at the siege of Van until Russian relief could arrive. Van
was an important cultural, social, and economic center for the Armenians and Aram Manukian
was the community leader. He led the rebellion against the Ottomans and was joined in the
siege by Andranik. The Ottomans retired to the west and eventually the Republic of Van
was established with Aram Manukian as governor.
Andranik continued his series of victories that summer with the Battle of Bitlis. This
was the last Ottoman stronghold in the region and was a major Russian victory. Also at this
time, the French-Armenian agreement was signed, which called for a Legion that would help
with the liberation of Cilicia from the Ottoman Empire and for this legion to one day become
the Army of Armenia.
However, the Russian Revolution several months later drastically changed the situation.
This caused a breakdown of the Russian Caucasus campaign and eventually the Russians and Ottomans
signed the Armistice of Erzincan, which ended hostilities between them. In May 1918, Armenians
proclaimed the first Republic of Armenia with Yerevan as its capital. As the Republic was
getting going, Ottoman forces reached Alexandropol and threatened Yerevan, and after the Bolshevik
Revolution Armenia found itself without Russian support. They managed to hold off the Ottoman
forces, however, though they lost a lot of territory, and that’s the way things stood
at the end of the war.
Postwar, the Republic soon fell to the Soviets and became part of the Soviet Union and many
of Armenia’s leaders were forced into exile. Territorial disputes between Turkey and the
Soviet Union over Armenian land were concluded without the voice of the Armenians.
So there you have it, a very brief overview of the Armenians, their situation with Russia
and the Ottoman Empire, and the events that led up the Armenian Genocide. I think it’s
very important to note that when people write about the genocide, one often gets the impression
that the Armenians were unfortunate sheep just meekly submitting to their fate, but
the reality is anything but that. They were and are a strong people with deep cultural
and religious traditions who certainly weren’t afraid to try to assert their independence,
and the Armenian Genocide remains one of the great catastrophes of the 20th century.
We want to thank Dikran, William Bairamian and Vardan for helping us out with the research
for this episode.
If you want to find out more about the Battle of Sarikamish which was a complete disaster
for the Ottomans, click right here.
Don’t forget to subscribe, see you next time.