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=> A Historian Takes a Look at The Armenian "Genocide"

A Historian Takes a Look at The Armenian "Genocide"
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Tuesday, August 31 2010, 21:32:15 (UTC)
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Prof. Justin McCarthy provides a background look at the conflict



The history of the Armenian-Turkish conflict is complicated and contentious, impossible to describe accurately in statements of one-sided guilt such as that presently before Congress.


Ethnic conflict between Turks and Armenians actually began more than 100 years before World War I. Actions of the Russian Empire precipitated the conflict. In 1800, Armenians were scattered within and beyond a region that now encompasses Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Eastern Turkey. In all but small districts, Armenians were a minority which had been under Muslim, primarily Turkish, rule for 700 years. The Russian Empire had begun the imperial conquests of the Muslim lands south of the Caucasus Mountains. One of their main weapons was the transfer of populations — deportation. They ruthlessly expelled whole Muslim populations, replacing them with Christians whom they felt would be loyal to a Christian government. Armenians were a major instrument of this policy. Like others in the Middle East, the primary loyalty of Armenians was religious. Many Armenians resented being under Muslim rule, and they were drawn to a Christian State and to offers of free land (land which had been seized from Turks and other Muslims). A major population exchange began. In Erivan Province (today the Armenian Republic) a Turkish majority was replaced by Armenians. In other regions such as coastal Georgia, Circassia, and the Crimea, other Christian groups were brought in to replace expelled Muslims. There was massive Muslim mortality—in some cases up to one-third of the Muslims died.


The Russians expelled 1.3 million Muslims from 1827 to 1878. One result of this migration, serving the purposes of the Russians, was the development of ethnic hatred and ethnic conflict between Armenians and Muslims. Evicted Muslims who had seen their families die in the Russian Wars felt animosity toward Armenians. Armenians who hated Muslim rule looked to the Russians as liberators. Armenians cooperated with Russian invaders of Eastern Anatolia in wars in 1828, 1854, and 1877. When the Russians retreated, Armenians feared Muslim retaliation and fled. Hatred grew on both sides.


The situation was exacerbated by rebellions of Armenian revolutionaries in the 1890s in which cities in Eastern Anatolia were seized and many Muslims and Armenians were killed. Intercommunal warfare between Turks and Armenians in Azerbaijan during the Russian Revolution of 1905 added to the peoples’ distrust of each other. Muslims and Armenians were now divided into sides, antagonists. Each group believed that in a war they would be killed if they did not kill first, a classic self-fulfilling prophecy. Most Muslims and most Armenians had no wish to be a part of this, but they were caught in the awful consequences of their expectations and their history.


Intercommunal war erupted when the Ottoman Empire entered World War I. Armenian revolutionaries, many trained in Russia, attempted to seize main Ottoman cities in Eastern Anatolia. They took the city of Van and held it until Russia invaders arrived, killing all but a few of the Muslims of the city and surrounding villages. In the countryside, Muslim tribesmen killed the Armenians who fell into their hands. Armenian and Kurdish bands killed throughout the East, and massacre was the rule of the time. Russian and Ottoman regular troops were less murderous, but they too gave little quarter to those viewed as the enemy. Some of the worst civilian deaths of Turks and Armenians came at the end of the war. The killing went on until 1920. Many more died of starvation and disease than from bullets.


The results were among the worst seen in warfare. More than forty per cent of the Anatolian Armenians died; similar mortality was the fate of the Muslims of the war zone. In the province of Van, for example, 60% of the Muslims were lost by war’s end.


During the war, each side engaged in de facto deportations of the other. When the Russians and Armenians triumphed, all the Muslims were exiled, as were all the Armenians when the Ottomans triumphed. The Ottoman government also organized an official deportation of Armenians in areas under their control. None of these deportations was wholly justified by wartime necessity, but the deportations were not acts of one-sided genocide on the part of either Turks or Armenians.




A One-Sided Accusation

It is the Muslim actions against Armenians that have been called genocide, an accusation that is primarily based on counting only the Armenian dead, not the Muslim dead. I do not believe the Ottoman government ever intended a genocide of Armenians. This conclusion is based on both evidence and logic:


• Of the masses of secret deportation orders seen to date, not one orders murder. Instead, they order Ottoman officials to protect deported Armenians. It has been argued that the Ottomans must have sent out another set of secret orders, contradicting the first set of secret orders, which were a subterfuge. This assumes that the Ottomans deliberately confused their own officials in wartime so that future historians would be fooled—a more than unlikely proposition.


• Large Armenian populations, such as those of Istanbul and other major cities, remained throughout the war. These were areas where Ottoman power was greatest and genocide would have been easiest. To decide whether genocide was intended, it is instructive to compare this to the Nazi genocide of the Jews. The Jews of Berlin were killed, their synagogues defiled. The Armenians of Istanbul lived through the war, their churches open.


• Another telling argument against genocide is that hundreds of thousands of Armenians survived deportation to the Arab World. If genocide were intended, it must be believed that the Ottomans could not manage to kill them, even though these Armenians were completely under Ottoman control for three years. This is not believable.


It was in fact in the regions where Ottoman control was weakest that columns of Armenian deportees suffered most. The stories of the time give many examples of columns of hundreds of Armenians guarded by perhaps two government guards. When the columns were attacked by tribesmen or bandits Armenians were robbed and killed. It must be remembered that these tribes were those who had themselves suffered greatly at the hands of Armenians and Russians. Were the Ottomans guilty? They were guilty of not properly protecting their citizens. Given the situation of the time, with Turks and Kurds fighting for their lives against Russians and Armenians, this is understandable, although it is never excusable for a government not to protect its people. Conditions are best illustrated in the Van province, where Muslim mortality was greatest. The central government ordered the Van governor to send gendarmes, rural policemen, to guard columns of Armenian deportees. He responded that he had 40 gendarmes at his disposal—all the others were fighting at the Russian Front. The 40 gendarmes were protecting Muslim villages against Armenian attacks. He refused to let the Muslims be killed by Armenians so that Armenians could be protected from Muslims.


While Ottoman weakness should be censured, should we not also ask how well Armenians and Russians protected the Turks and Kurds who fell under their control? The answer is that in provinces such as Van, where intercommunal fighting was fiercest, Muslims who could not escape from Armenian bands were killed. Virtually the entire Muslim population of southeast and far eastern Anatolia either became refugees or died. Like the deportation of Armenians, this too was a deportation with great mortality. It should also be recorded when the evils of deportation are considered.


Few of the historical questions raised by the Muslim-Armenian conflict can be answered in a short description such as the above, nor can they be answered by Congressional votes. Why then has the Congress sometimes in the past voted condemnation of one side in the conflict?



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