WHAT HAPPENED IN 1915: GENOCIDE OR FATE?

Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
Nov 23 2006

Turkish researchers argue that most of the Armenians died during
the First World War years due to the bad war conditions. According
to the Turkish sources most of the Ottoman Armenians died in famine,
bad weather conditions and epidemic diseases. The Ottoman documents
and modern Turkish exports accept that many Armenians were killed
in communal clashes. Kurds and Circassians in particular attacked
the Armenian villages in order to get valuables. Mostly the Kurdish
tribes also organized counter attacks against the Armenian civilians
to take revenge. However most of the loses were due to the bad
war circumstances. The Armenian historians generally do not accept
‘bad war circumstances’ and they argue that "epidemic diseases cannot
remove hundred and thousands of Armenian people. They tend to believe
in that Turks massacred all the Armenian population. However the
scholarly articles prove the reverse. For instance researcher Ellen
Marie Lust-Okar describe the circumstances the Armenians faced when
they arrived in Syria, one of the Ottoman provinces at that time:

"Diseases spread rapidly. In Aleppo, more than 35,000 persons were
said to have died from typhus between August 1916 and August 1917
alone. In almost all villages between Aleppo and Mosul 50 percent
of the population is believed to have died, and in the district of
Ra’sal-‘Ayn, this was to have reached 88 per cent. That thousands
of Armenians and Arabs alike perished during the first years of
immigration…" (Ellen Marie Lust-Okar, ‘Failure of Collaboration:
Armenian Refugees in Syria’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1,
January 1996, pp. 53-68, p. 57).

Not only the Armenians and Arabs but also the Turks and the Kurds
were also deeply affected by the bad weather, epidemics and famine.

The Ottoman documents clearly show that more Muslim people died that
the Armenian people due to these reasons during these years. Of course
the Ottoman Government was responsible for all these loses, yet we
have to accept that they were not able to provide the basic needs
under the military attacks from almost all directions. The Armenian
collaboration with the occupying Russians in the Eastern Anatolia
and with the French armies in the Cilicia and the south worsened
the security of the state. Thus the Istanbul Government decided to
relocate the Armenian population to the remote part of the Empire. As
a result, most of the Armenians from the Eastern and south eastern
part of the State were forced to locate in the Syrian province in
order to cut the link between the Armenians and the Russians. The
decision obviously made the immigrating Armenians more vulnerable to
the diseases, famine and weather conditions. However all these cannot
be classified as systematic slaughter or genocide.

Istanbul Armenians continued their normal life and many Armenians
were among the richest and most powerful Ottoman citizens in Istanbul
and some other parts of the State. Ten thousands of the Armenians
continued to live in Turkey even the Ottoman Empire was collapsed and
modern Turkey was established. Even some of the relocated Armenians
in 1915 returned later to their own towns.

Another reason made the life worse for the ordinary Armenian people in
the Ottoman Empire was the Armenian nationalist fanatics. The extremist
Armenian nationalist fist hit the Armenian population. The armed
Armenians killed more Armenian than the Turks between 1900-1911. They
terrorized the relations between the Muslims and the Armenians. The
extremist attacks against the Turkish, Kurdish and Circassian
villages caused counter attacks. Many Muslim women were raped,
killed and tortured. The conservative Kurdish villages were provoked
by these Armenian attacks, and the security forces were not able
to stop the communal attacks under the world war conditions. The
clashes reached its peak when the Armenian extremists occupied the
Van province. The Armenians were uniformed and armed. They had an
independent Armenia flag and they handled the city to the occupying
Russian forces. Though most of the Armenian population were not
extremist and not in co-operation with the occupying forces, the
irregular Kurdish gang counter-attacks, defense attacks and revenge
campaigns badly affected the ordinary Armenians as well. At the end
of the day more than 520,000 Muslims were slaughtered by the armed
Armenian groups and many Armenians were killed by the Kurdish and
Circassian tribes (asirets).

Today there are more than 100,000 Armenians in Istanbul. They have
their own churches, schools and newspapers. They can freely educate
their people in Armenian language, and the Armenian Patriarch provide
many services special to the Armenians. Of course the Turkey Armenians
also have problems like any other Turkish citizen, yet the European
Union membership process has helped a lot in improving the rights. Even
the Armenia citizens now prefer Turkey to live and work instead of
Republic of Armenia. More than 70.000 Armenia citizens work in Turkey,
mostly in Istanbul city with no serious problem.