Could AG Have Been Avoided?

[Anileve]

This is a question that has been pondering my mind lately and I posed it to some expecting an answer that would somewhat shed some clarity on the political approach of Armenians in the past. Though it will never change the outcome of the events followed, I dare to ask and curious to know what some of you think.

 

In 1914 Count Voronsov-Dashkov promised the Russian Armenians on behaf of hthe czar that if they should support Russia in the war then after the war Russia would grant autonomy to the six Turkish provinces. At the same time in Turkish Armenia officials of the Young Turk gov’t appeared at a Dashnak convention in Erzurum and promised that if they should support Turkey then after the war the Turkish gov’t would grant all Armenians autonomy to be made up of certain of the Russian – Armenian provinces as well as parts of the Turkish provinces of Erzurum , Van and Bitlis.

 

Now it is clear to me that Armenia was of no ones concern at that time, it was simply a battlefield to the 2 vicious enemies overcome by the taste of victory and vengeance. We were only geographically important and the thought of our poor civilians never entered the world's mind.

 

Dashnaks agreed to fight on the side of Turks but refused to recruit Russian Armenians. That was a deadly mistake since there was an instant separation of a vulnerable nation with a passionate longing for an independent gov’t and that tore the unity of our tiny nation and put us in the situation which resulted in our people fighting against each other. I can not imagine what could have been more irrational than that.

 

But what could have Armenians done?

 

1)Staying neutral would have resulted in the anger from both nations who would have considered us traitors since we were residing within their governments and benefiting from all that was offered to us and therefore they would have deported and massacred Armenians anyway.

 

2) If Armenians fought on the Russian side Turks would have done what they still did.

 

3) If Armenians fought on the Turkish side than Russians would have just as successfully wiped them out of fear of a threat. The Russians as it is, particularly Stalin, were responsible for the murders of many prominent Armenian aristocrats. And I still remember Russian tanks rolling down those deserted Armenian streets in the enforcement of the curfew which was horrifying for me to watch.

 

So what do you guys think could we have been done to avoid our historical scars left forever upon our minds? What choice did Armenia have after all to escape the Genocide? Or lets face it, in the event of those complex and painful times could Genocide have been avoided all together?

 

Either way I look at it we were screwed! It was simply inevitable occurrence of one of the cruelties of history.

[Accelerated]

Im not much of expert on the subject - I choose not to be as it angers me. But, first and foremost I think we should have seen it coming. It had happened before (on a smaller scale) to us and to other Ottoman subjects in the Balkans. We were gullible in believing Turkish (and Russian lies) or maybe we chose to be, seeing the futility of our circumstances. Nevertheless IMO if we (the leadership) were more farsighted and united I think we could have avoided the full extent of it....

 

my two cents.

[Anileve]

I absolutely agree! I think our situation could have been avoided. If only Armenians inspired by the movement of the Greeks, separated themselves from the Ottomans there could have a slight chance of avoiding both of the incidents. Armenians on the other hand comfortable with the governance of the foreign nation resorted to just staying put, since each one wanted to be the one to call the shots so you just rely on mediation of the third party which in this case was the Ottoman empire.

 

I know it sounds rough but it is the closet it comes to changing the course of history.

 

The destiny is similar to that of Pompeii, the residents of the city being put through a threatening turmoil of few eruptions of Mt. Vesuvius didn’t receive them as a sign for migration and a possibility of serious danger. They were comfortable being settled with their wealth, established businesses and property. I guess everyone somehow thinks it won’t happen to them. That is where Armenians misjudged, being placed in between two vicious conquerors in the history: Russia and Turkey who were separated by nothing but a little piece of land with peaceful people who were willing to go with the wave.

 

In conclusion, and I risk being ostracized here, I came to peaceful terms with Genocide. It no longer angers me or makes me burn with hate, I simply accept it as part of the inevitable in History. As far as feeling pain for my people, that shouldn’t not be the cause of my hate, since it doesn’t make Armenians any different than many other nations that fell victims to the same inhuman ethnic cleansing.

[MJ]

In 1914 Count Voronsov-Dashkov promised the Russian Armenians on behaf of hthe czar that if they should support Russia in the war then after the war Russia would grant autonomy to the six Turkish provinces. At the same time in Turkish Armenia officials of the Young Turk gov’t appeared at a Dashnak convention in Erzurum and promised that if they should support Turkey then after the war the Turkish gov’t would grant all Armenians autonomy to be made up of certain of the Russian – Armenian provinces as well as parts of the Turkish provinces of Erzurum , Van and Bitlis.

 

This is a very pertinent observation practically not known by Armenians. I would like to make only a couple of additional comments:

 

The promise of Voronsov-Dashkov was based on the 1914 Address of the Russian Czar to the Armenian nation. The text of the Address was unambiguously making clear that it was written primarily for the Armenians on the other side of the border. Clearly, it made the Turks very wary. The interesting thing was that the Czar was promising Armenians freedom from Ottoman Empire, while the issue of the freedom of Armenians from the Russian Empire was conveniently circumvented. It would have been natural from Armenians, assuming political wisdom, to respond to such a call only after the freedom was granted to [Eastern] Armenia. But with Armenians then (and to a large degree now) this would have been an exaggeration.

 

Now, the thing is that the attempts of mobilizing what would later be called “Western” Armenians (at the time they were called Turkish Armenians) against the Ottoman Empire resulted in total fiasco. However, such possibility itself was enough for the effective Turkish leadership to want to finalize her old plan of annihilation of Armenians.

 

However, for the sake of the record, one has to stress that the possibility of Armenians’ siding with the Russians does not relieve the Turks from the responsibility of what they have done to Armenians. With the same token, the potential siding of Armenians would have not implied violations of the “rules of loyalty” to the Ottoman Turkey – Armenians would have been well within their rights and would have put themselves on the high pedestal of liberation straggle. However, with rare exceptions (such as the resistance of Van, Mush, Sasun, etc), the conduct of [“Western”] Armenians was by in large one of cowardice (perhaps it is hard to put the blame for such cowardice on them because the resoluteness to step up to the plate could not have come overnight since the Armenian identity and self-consciousness were totally denigrated outside some isolated islands.) One has to note also that Armenians of Van, Mush, Sasun, etc, were the ones who saved themselves in large numbers.

 

In general, while the reality of the Armenian Genocide is a testimony of the brutality of the Turkish leadership and self-consciousness of the time (and perhaps not too much has changed since), it is also a testimony of lack of national consciousness and morality by the Armenian side. And speaking of morality, I think the style, manner and the scope of the pursuit for the “Recognition” of the Genocide is another testimony of lack of national morality – only this time in our days.

Edited December 6, 2003 by MJ

[Nikephoros_Phokas]

There is two big factors as to why the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire could not avoid the genocide by their own actions:

 

1)they did not understand their muslim neighbors and rulers

 

2)unlike the Balkan Christians, they, the Ottoman Armenians were in more of an existential fight for their existence and they hoped to secure safety within the Ottoman system asking for reforms(This overlaps also into the #1 category of not understanding their muslim neighbors.), this project of a struggle for existance ended in abject failure.

 

I am reading Bat Ye'or's work "The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam and one of her constant themes is that dhimmis asking for equality from muslim society is seen by muslims as breaking the dhimmi contract of toleration, inviting massacre and other such measures, in the case of the Armenians, a genocide. The Armenians and if you read this message board you will still see this is largely the case do not really understand their Turkic and Kurdish neighbors(you can see how in discussions with Turks many here emphasize that Armenians were loyal to the Ottoman Empire), if you want to be respected you have to use force with muslims, because no muslim nation today affords any non-muslim it has conquered to live in any other state than humiliation. So the Balkan Christians who fought for independence were massacred less then Armenians fighting for equality and dignity within the Ottoman despotism, and they have more to show for it than Ottoman Armenians, who have little other to show for it than a small community in Istanbul and a large diaspora of survivors. Balkan Christians with independence also have armies acquired through this independence making them a less vulnerable victim group and they have a state protecting their rights, so the route of independence is actually safer in my view.

 

Another factor is that after Russia's experience with Bulgaria which was hoped to be a Russian client state and to a lesser extent Greece, Russia saw Ottoman Armenians as another potential problem like Bulgaria, another people to liberate and only to have them become an obstacle and unresponsive to Russian imperialism.[1]

 

"Russia has no reason at all to desire the formation of a second Bulgaria. The emergence of an autonomous Armenian principality would then entail the danger for Russia that the Russian Armenians will aspire to become part of it."[2]

 

[1 and 2] Dadrian, Vahakn N., "The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus," (Providence, Rhode Island, and Oxford: Berghan Books, 1995), 72.

[MJ]

There is two big factors as to why the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire could not avoid the genocide by their own actions:

 

1)they did not understand their muslim neighbors and rulers

 

I think this is a very inadequate argument. Armenians had lived under the Ottomans for hundreds of years. Even a total idiot would have understood the environment one was in.

 

Your other argument is more descriptive of the situation. Armenian’s had just one goal – survival. That was the limit of it, especially if meanwhile they could make money. The rest didn’t matter.

 

This survival paradigm became a close-system philosophy for subsequent decades. Even a special term was coined – “goyabahbanutiun.” This term was maximally descriptive of the repugnant set of mind of the politically active segment of Armenian Diaspora, leading to a psychology of a parasite. It still has a large place in the Diasporan Armenian psyche. Some relatively small segments have started to reorient their psyche towards more noble goals in the last 10 years or so. One would only want to be optimistic about its pace.

Edited December 6, 2003 by MJ

[bellthecat]

I am reading Bat Ye'or's work "The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam and one of her constant themes is that dhimmis asking for equality from muslim society is seen by muslims as breaking the dhimmi contract of toleration, inviting massacre and other such measures, in the case of the Armenians, a genocide. The Armenians and if you read this message board you will still see this is largely the case do not really understand their Turkic and Kurdish neighbors(you can see how in discussions with Turks many here emphasize that Armenians were loyal to the Ottoman Empire), if you want to be respected you have to use force with muslims, because no muslim nation today affords any non-muslim it has conquered to live in any other state than humiliation. So the Balkan Christians who fought for independence were massacred less then Armenians fighting for equality and dignity within the Ottoman despotism, and they have more to show for it than Ottoman Armenians, who have little other to show for it than a small community in Istanbul and a large diaspora of survivors. Balkan Christians with independence also have armies acquired through this independence making them a less vulnerable victim group and they have a state protecting their rights, so the route of independence is actually safer in my view.

Please - who do you think you are kidding! This book is just the latest example of a long line of Zionist propaganda.

 

I wonder if words like "if you want to be respected you have to use force with muslims" were endlessly whispered in Bush's ear, or does his propensity towards casual violence come naturally?

 

Did "Balkan Christians with independence and armies" like the Serbs avoid genocide. Hardly! In terms of percentage of population Serbia lost more people per head of population in WW1 than any other nation except Armenia. And in WW2 Serbia lost more people per head of population than any other nation. After all that it's a wonder there were any Serbs left in Kossovo to be exterminated in 1998. And who did all that killing - apart from Albanians who were Muslim in name only, it was Catholic Croats and Austrians and Protestant Germans.

 

Steve

[Nikephoros_Phokas]

Listen, I wonder what planet you are from and how you have strayed from the topic so much. Did you even read Bat Ye'ors' work? How is it Zionist? Because it contradicts the myths of muslim tolerance to non-muslims? What does Yugoslavia in WWI and WWII have to do with this? Serbia in WWI and WWII was fighting against much more powerful militaries than the Ottoman or Turkish military. I am saying that for Christian nations under Ottoman domination, they may as well go and fight for independence, because a muslim nation will never grant them equality, it is against Islamic precepts and it will be seen as a breach of the dhimma contract and an invitation to slaughter the non-muslims. It did not take the Balkan Christians nations long from going to a point of having almost no military tradition for hundreds of years, to defeating their former oppressor the Ottoman military. The Serbian army can handle the Ottoman in the early 1900s but it could obviously and this is no secret handle a major European power in battle.

 

For Armenians they may as well have fought for independence because they were slaughtered more than any Balkan Christian group that did fight for independence. This shows that when you are ruled by tyrants that thrive on oppression and repression, you cannot rely on their scarce charity, it is better to fight back and give them less impunity and make it harder for them to do further victimization. Independence for Ottoman Armenians would be nigh impossible if Russia saw it is a threat capable of tranmission to Russian Armenians causing Moscow to support Turkey, in which case it would be better to settle for Russian domination and Russian annexation instead of Turkish.

[yalpa]

Breaking the Dimmi contract was probably responsible for some of the massacres or perhaps was one of the tools used by the perpetrators of such massacres to get what they really wanted. But, I hardly think that breaking the dimmi contract was the cause of the Armenian Genocide. First of all, the form of Turkish nationalism that was responsible for the genocide was not really interested in letting the Armenians stick around even if they had accepted the dimmi contract. Secondly, the dimmi contract was long gone; the ones in power were not trying to re-establish the dimmi contract at that time.

 

One could trace the whole thing back to the move that made all of the Ottoman subjects equals. The Muslims were certainly not happy with this change. The new arrangement meant losing the higher status they had been enjoying up until that time. The sentiments of the Muslims in regards to the issue of equality were probably used in pushing them towards the Christians, but the cause of the genocide was not planned by the Muslim mobs. We need to separate the massacres that emerged because of the spontaneous clashes between Muslim and Christian groups due to the rapidly changing social, economic and political conditions in the 19th century from those massacres and genocides that were done systematically by those groups that controlled the state apparatus and used it for their political aims. I believe that the Armenian genocide falls into the second category, and therefore it has very little to do anything with the Dimmi contract and the Muslims who were angry because of the equality.

 

In fact, I would claim that dimmi status was not the cause behind most, if not all, of the ethnic clashes during the 19th century. It seems to make more sense to try to see the whole picture in terms of a number of causes rather than one.

[THOTH]

I very much agree Yalpa. Very well said. And i'm glad that you posted such.

[Nikephoros_Phokas]

I am not saying breaking dhimma was the only cause, this is a thread about hypothetically how could the genocide have been prevented. The only way I see it could have been stopped is through force, either outside intervention, by for example Russia, or the Armenians themselves. From the point of view of Islam there is little difference between asking for equality or fighting for one's independence and liberation from the domain of Islam, the dar-al-islam, in fact it is better to fight for your independence because either option is breaking the contract of the toleration of dhimmi's existence. The difference is one path will produce for the dhimmi nation a national army with which to protect themselves, while asking the rulers for reforms of equality will result in paper reforms that are never properly propagated, because of Islamic prejudices, and will most likely result in massacres for offending these same Islamic prejudices. The fact that even today the modern Turks are so eager to rewrite history about the Armenian genocide shows that even in 2003, they are not ready for equality with dhimmis, assuming there were still large dhimmi communities in Turkey.

 

I concur with the historian Robert Melson that for the likes of Sultan Abdul Hamid, who was a traditionalist, a total genocide was probably too radical for him to implement. Hamid relied heavily on the concept of umma and he did not adopt the position of the Turkish nationalists like the Young Turks responsible for planning and executing genocide. The Young Turks used a concept of Turkish umma, and the Kemalists used much the same concept, proving with their actions that the Kurds were only useful for themselves in so far as they helped to deal with the Armenian problem, the Kurds themselves becoming a whole new Kurdish problem. This shows that the architects of the genocide changed their concept of umma to an even more intolerant one, discluding anyone not under the label of Turk or not willing to assume this label willingly. It is not just a community of believers in Islam today, but a community of Turkish believers that respect the Turkish military establishment(even if a Turk is a muslim or nominally one and he does not respect the military he will be in for it). The Armenians had a place in the old Islamic order but a very despised and unequal place, today they have no real place in modern Turkey.

 

... "After the Second World War, the situation of the religious minorities in Muslim states varied considerably from country to country. Their freedom and security increased to the extent that religious domination over politics (as well as Arab nationalism)[she recognizes this extreme Arab nationalism as a problem but not the Turkish and other extreme nationalism common in the Islamic world, probably because she did less research in these areas, as she is more interested in the situation of Jewish dhimmis] diminished. This happened in Turkey, particularly after Mustapha Kemal became president(1923), and in Persia under the Shah Reza Pahlavi and his son Muhammad Reza (1925-1978). In Egypt this process ocurred toward the end of Anwar Sadat's rule, as the country withdrew from the Arab orbit and adopted a more liberal policy, in keeping with Egypt's history, her interests and with modern concepts of peaceful co-existence." ...

 

Ye'or, Bat, "The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam", (Rutherford NJ, Fairleigh Dickenson University Press, London and Toronto, Associated University Presses, 1985) 121-122.

 

I must say I feel this section is very misleading from what I know. One thing Islamic rule did allow that the modern muslim nations like Turkey do not allow is self-government of dhimmi communities. Marriages and problems within the dhimmi community were dealt with by rabbis if the dhimmis in question were Jewish or the Christian Church if Christian. So as long as dhimmi had to deal with the law within his own community he was ok, but if he had a problem with a muslim like an accusation of insulting Islam, he was almost guranteed injustice, because in Islamic law justice is not for non-muslims, for them there is only injustice. It is like how I recently read "Midnight Express" and there was a conversation in the foreigner kogus with the prisoners lamenting that they wanted to be transfered to Imros, which was a Greek island the Greeks actually liberated. Imros and Tenedos were given back to Turkey on the premise that with control of these islands Greece could threaten the straits and traffic there, so it was given to Turkey and Turkey was suppossed to protect the Greek communities, but these communities are now as good as dead, the Turkish authorities concocting new repressions for them. They said in the conversation that Imros was an open prison, so you would have to be near the end of your sentence to get a transfer to there, and this is no surprise to Greeks as many of us know it was made into an open prison by the Turkish authorities while there were still Greeks on this island. So even in Turkey which Ye'or incorrectly states has gotten better without Islamic law, when in many ways it is much worse. The basis of Turkish law still carries Islamic prejudices and if the people are muslim, so are the judges, prosecutors, lawyers, etc. and the dhimmis do not have recourse to arbitrating disputes within their own community any longer without the concept of Islamic law. Even if they did their communities are so decimated that the chances their disputes could be solved in such a manner is much smaller, because the disputes will now probably involve a muslim, they cannot exist in the hermetic environment of their own communities anymore because these communities are so depleted. The non-muslims in Turkey probably wish they never see the Turkish government authorities because they are so infamously repressive, it is beyond words, and alot of these authorities are constantly conniving new schemes like making Imros an open prison, to make their lives harder.

 

Seemingly, I am very off-topic with this bit about dhimmis treatment in modern Islamic countries with militant laicism such as Turkey(yes, laicism because to say Turkey is secular is ignorance), but the fact that things are in many ways worse reinforces the point that force would have been needed to avoid the Armenian genocide, because the Turkish state and society, is showing it is as intractable as the Kemalists after WWI. So for a solution to prevent the genocide, assuming you could back in time, hypothetically, with what we know, I am saying for sure do not count on the muslims, the Armenians should have armed themselves as best they could with the prohibitions on them and study military tactics and prepare for liberation. Musa Dugh, the Zeitoun uprising, the defence of Van is what was needed more to prevent the genocide even today there is little reconciliation from the Turks, you would figure they would think that Armenians no longer present a threat.

Edited December 24, 2003 by Nikephoros_Phokas

[Vigil]

Nikephoros Phokas I respect you studying Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian mass murder and Genocide. I beleive that the Genocide was unavoidable also because the aim was the annilation of Armenians, who were the majority of Christians in that region and how could 2.5 million Armenians withstand the might of the Ottomman Empire (Even in crumbling state). Edited May 31, 2004 by Vigil

[gamavor]

The way the question is asked presupposes two different approaches. First, could AG have been avoided?....IF.....? From here on, if the factual situation is/was the same, or if it was different. Or no matter the factual situation, would it be possible to be avoided theoretically. That might be a very long writing so, I decided to shorten it to basically two answers. AG could have been avoided even under the existing circumstances theoretically, and I'm pretty sure it could have been avoided even under much more dreadful scenario, - theoretically.

 

I think the previous posts quite thoroughly explained why, it could not have been avoided.

 

Accel said some wise words, that if not anything else should always ring the bell. Never trust a turk.

 

 

The best turk is the dead turk!!!