WHY DOES A CLOSE U.S. ALLY DENY ITS GENOCIDE?
By Adrian Morgan
Family Security Matters, NJ
?id=1385001
Oct 16 2007
(Part Two of Three)
The Atrocities of August 1894
"A number of able-bodied young Armenians were captured, bound,
covered with brushwood and burned alive. A number of Armenians,
variously estimated, but less than a hundred, surrendered themselves
and pled for mercy. Many of them were shot down on the spot and the
remainder were dispatched with sword and bayonet."
"A lot of women, variously estimated from 60 to 160 in number, were
shut up in a church, and the soldiers were ‘let loose’ among them.
Many of them were outraged to death and the remainder dispatched with
sword and bayonet. A lot of young women were collected as spoils
of war, Two stories are told. 1. That they were carried off to the
harems of their Moslem captors. 2. That they were offered Islam and
the harems of their Moslem captors; refusing, they were slaughtered.
Children were placed in a row, one behind another, and a bullet fired
down the line, apparently to see how many could be dispatched with
one bullet. Infants and small children were piled one on the other
and their heads struck off. Houses were surrounded by soldiers, set
on fire, and the inmates forced back into the flames at the point of
the bayonet as they tried to escape."
"In another village fifty choice women were set aside and urged to
change their faith and become hanums in Turkish harems, but they
indignantly refused to deny Christ, preferring the fate of their
fathers and husbands. People were crowded into houses which were
then set on fire. In one instance a little boy ran out of the flames,
but was caught on a bayonet and thrown back"
The above are accounts of massacres of Armenian villagers. These took
place in the district of Sassoun (Sassun) in southeastern Anatolia near
Lake Van, in August 1894. They had taken place following false rumors
of an uprising which developed in the spring. The Sassoun massacres
were duplicated in the neighboring districts of Bitlis and Mush.
In March 1895 an inquiry committee was held in London, with details
reported in the Daily Telegraph newspaper. An Armenian priest and his
son were ordered to sign a document, claiming that the massacre at
Sassoun had been carried out only by Kurds, and clearing the Turkish
authorities of all blame. When they refused, heated iron triangles
were placed around their necks. The pair was too ill to testify before
the committee.
Kurds had been involved in the Sassoun massacre, but the strategy
was concocted and put into effect by Turkish soldiers. In adjacent
Mush district, "a witness hiding in the oak scrub saw soldiers gouge
out the eyes of two priests, who in horrible agony implored their
tormentors to kill them. But the soldiers compelled them to dance
while screaming in pain, and presently bayoneted them."
An account of the Bitlis massacre, published in 1895, stated (page 63):
"As soon as the Pasha of Bitlis sent word to Constantinople that
the Armenians were in revolt, without waiting for proof, the Turkish
troops were sent to the scene with orders to suppress the revolt –
orders which they knew they must interpret as meaning the extermination
of whole villages if they would please the Sultan.
After wholesale butchery, Zeki Pasha reported that, ‘not finding any
rebellion, we cleared the country so that none should occur in the
future.’ This stroke of policy was afterward praised in the Court as
an act of patriotism."
The massacres of 1894 would be repeated, becoming more ferocious and
claiming the lives of more people, over the next two years.
The Ottomans
The regions within Turkey’s current borders have seen various cultures
and civilizations arise and become replaced by others. The "Turks"
are only the latest of a long line of invaders who moved into the
region. 9,000 years ago Neolithic farming peoples at Catal Huyuk
formed a complex community. Almost 3,000 years ago Assyrians entered
the region, and the Hittites developed a civilization in Anatolia
until around 900 BC. Later, Medes (probable ancestors of the Kurds),
Persians, Phrygians, Lydians, Armenians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines
flourished in the region.
The Turkish-speaking people (Western Turks) arrived in Anatolia
in large numbers in the 11th century AD, and their consolidation
of power would hasten the end of the Byzantine Empire based at
Constantinople. The language of the Western Turks gradually replaced
the indigenous Indo-European languages of the region. The nomadic
Turkic peoples originated in the Altai mountain regions in Central
Asia, but from the 5th century AD onwards they had engaged in mass
migrations. Turkic peoples are found in China (Uighirs) and and
Siberia (Yakut). The Western Turks founded the Ottoman dynasty at the
Western end of (modern) Turkey. From 1299 until its demise in 1924,
this dynasty was known as the Ottoman Empire.
In 301 AD, Armenia had been the first nation in the world to officially
adopt Christianity. As a distinct culture with an Indo-European
language, Armenia had thrived in the mountains of Asia Minor from the
6th century BC. In the 16th century, Armenia lost its independence
and was swallowed up by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman aims were
expansionist and warlike, and hostile to independent Christian
nations. Sultan Bayezid I, nicknamed Yilderim or "Lightning," who
ruled from 1389 to 1402, famously promised to feed his horse from
the altar of St. Peter’s in Rome.
At its height in 1683, the Ottoman Empire controlled territories
stretching to the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea in the East, the land
surrounding the Red Sea (including Mecca and Medina and Yemen) in the
south, and the North African coast as far as Algeria in the West. In
the north, it controlled the Crimea and all the land westwards nearly
as far as Vienna. An attempt to invade Vienna itself was defeated
by John Sobieski, king of Poland, on September 12, 1683. With more
conflicts Hungary was freed from Ottoman rule, confirmed in the treaty
of Karlowitz in 1699.
In the latter half of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was
a diminished force. European imperialism had broken its hold on
territories in North Africa, and European regions had declared their
independence. Under Sultan Mahmud II (ruled 1808 – 1839), reforms and
attempts to socially and economically modernize the Empire had been
made, but these did not stem the decline. Greece successfully fought
for and achieved independence in 1829, with its territorial borders
formalized in a treaty in 1832. Several Balkan regions declared their
independence in 1875, and on April 24, 1877, Alexander II of Russia
declared war on Turkey.
Abdul-Hamid II and the Hamidian Massacres
In 1876, 34-year-old Abdul-Hamid II became the Sultan. Soon after
taking power, he issued the first Imperial constitution on December
23, 1876. This constitution had been originally drafted by the
grand vizier, Midhat Pasha. It allowed equal judicial rights for all
citizens, and initiated a two-house parliament. Abdul-Hamid preferred
to rule as a despot and when the Russo-Turkish war started he dismissed
Pasha in February 1877, and in 1878 he abolished the constitution.
The Russian conflict ended with Turkey acknowledging defeat. As a
result, on March 3, 1878 the Empire officially lost the territories
of Serbia, Montenegro and Romania in the Treaty of San Stefano.
Bosnia-Herzegovina was granted autonomy and Bulgaria was placed under
Russian protection under this treaty. The Treaty of Berlin, signed on
July 13, 1878 by the Turks, Russians and European powers, lessened
the Turks’ financial debt to the victors and saw Bosnia-Herzegovina
given to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Immediately before Abdul-Hamid’s reign, the Armenians had lived
peaceably under Ottoman rule. As Christians, they were second-class
citizens and had to pay the "jizya" tax, but they were not regarded as
subject to persecutions. In 1856 an edict called the Hatti Humayoun,
issued by Sultan Abdul Medjid in 1856, guaranteed Christians rights
never seen before under the Ottomans. Armenians wanted to be granted
more freedoms under the Treaty of Berlin, which saw Batum (modern
Armenia and parts of Georgia) ceded to Russia.
Article 61 of the treaty guaranteed Armenians protection from attacks
by Kurds and Circassians (who lived in the south-east of Turkey).
Article 62 of the treaty demanded that people of all religions could
work and travel freely throughout Turkey.
With these conditions not fulfilled, a radical group known as the
Huntchagists emerged among the various Armenian populations, who lived
in scattered locations in Turkey, with its apparent headquarters
in Athens. In 1893 a U.S. missionary condemned this revolutionary
movement. Cyrus Hamlin quoted an Armenian who said of their motives
(p. 242): "These Huntchagist bands, organized all over the empire,
will watch their opportunities to kill Turks and Kurds, set fire to
their villages and then make their escape into the mountains. The
enraged Moslems will then rise and fall upon the defenseless Armenians
and slaughter them with such barbarities that Russia will enter in the
name of humanity and Christian civilization and take possession." The
Huntchagists aimed to attack U.S.
Protestant missionary centers in central Turkey.
The American missionaries were allowed in central Turkey since 1844,
and they were to prove reliable witnesses to the deteriorating
situation in Turkey, and also the first massacres of Armenians. The
Huntchagist movement disintegrated after 1896, but Hamlin’s testimony
was cited in a letter to the New York Times of August 23, 1895. This
letter tried to discredit the genuine massacre which took place
at Sassoun, even though Hamlin had specifically blamed the Ottoman
government for carrying out the Sassoun atrocities.
In 1896, Reverend Edwin Munsell Bliss published a book called
Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities. He acknowledged the destructive
elements of the Huntchagists, (page 336) and later noted that
some revolutionaries, whether Huntchagists or not, sought to draw
attention to their aims of a separate state. On January 5, 1893,
placards were erected in Marsovan and Yuzgat, and indiscriminate
arrests followed. Disturbances ensued in Yuzgat, Gemerek, Cesarea,
and elsewhere, and the Turkish authorities reacted punitively,
rounding up and torturing suspects. The polarization of communities
had begun in earnest.
Rumors of a Hutchagist presence led to the Sassoun massacre, the first
of the major atrocities against Armenian villagers. An investigative
report into these massacres claimed (page 14) that Armenian Christians
were being subjected to forcible conversions to Islam. In January,
1896 the local Ottoman authorities in Kharpout and Diarbekir told
"converted" villagers that they should not admit to being Muslim if
questioned. Conversions were happening in the provinces in Siras,
Kharpout, Diarbekir, Betlis and Van. Priests and pastors lived in
hiding, lest they be attacked for interfering with the forcible
conversion of villagers. In 28 villages in the district of Kharpout,
there had been no Christian worship since November of 1895.
"Another indirect method of destroying the Christian communities in the
provinces lay in the systematic debauching of Christian women as though
to destroy their self-respect and undermine their religious ethic. At
Tamzara in the district of Shaska Kara Hussar, in the province of
Livas, all the men were killed in the massacres early in November,
of a prosperous Armenian population of fifteen hundred only about
three hundred starving, half naked women and children remained.
Trustworthy information said that the most horrible feature of their
situation was that passing Mohammedan soldiery or civilian travelers
attacked them and outraged them in their homes without hesitation
or restraint."
On October 1, 1895 200 Armenians tried to make a protest in
Constantinople, and were ordered by police to disperse. Panic broke
out, and fearing an uprising, mosques encouraged reprisals. The
following night, at least 70 Armenians were killed in the capital. At
Trebizond (Trabzon) on the Black Sea coast in the east, a local Pasha
was attacked, and soldiers were sent on regular foot patrols around
the city. On October 8th, these soldiers began shooting Armenian men,
and shops were looted. On October 30, 1895 at Erzerum, soldiers and
Turkish civilians had started firing at Armenians. After attacks that
lasted two days, many of the bodies were mutilated and stripped. One
man’s forearms had been cut off, his upper arms and chest skinned. A
British consul wrote that 1,200 people had been killed, and 512
wounded. The bodies were buried en masse in trenches (pictured above).
On November 11, 1895 the village of Husenik near the eastern city of
Harput was attacked by soldiers, some of whom dressed as Kurds. 200
Armenian villagers were killed. These marched on the city where
around 100 Armenians were killed. Shortly after, the city of Arabkir
was attacked, with 2,000 Armenians killed. Attacks also took place
on numerous small villages. In many of these villages the women were
carried off. At the town of Diarbekir, 2,000 were killed, at Chunkush
680 Armenians were slaughtered.
British missionary Helen B. Harris wrote on April 24, 1896 from
the American College in Aintab: "There were about 300 killed here,
November 16, 1895, and numbers mutilated, hands and right arms cut off,
and eyes gouged out, to render the poor people helpless. Dr. Fuller
says when they first got among these, the day after, the massacre, it
was awful hearing them crying for death to end their sufferings." On
November 18, 1895, a massacre of thousands took place at Marash. On
December 28th, another massacre of Armenians took place at Urfa with
at least 3,000 lives lost.
There were more massacres at that time, and in many cases Armenian
men were forced to convert or die. In Birejik in January 1896, about
96 men converted to Islam, and an equal number were killed. When one
elderly man refused to convert to Islam, live coals were placed on his
body. As he lay in pain, a Bible was held over him, and his tormentors
asked him to read the passages of salvation that he had trusted in.
In the summer of 1896 one event took place which would instigate a
catastrophic crackdown on the Armenian population of Turkey. The main
office of the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople was raided by a group of
26 Armenian revolutionaries on August 26th. Nine members of the group
were killed in the initial raid, including their leader Babgien Siuni,
and guards were shot. The remaining raiders, members of the Dashtun
party, took 140 bank workers hostage.
The raiders intended to draw international attention to the plight of
Armenians in Turkey, but before the situation came to a resolution,
recriminations against Armenians began, with 7,000 people killed
by angry Turkish citizenry in Constantinople. The Patriarch of
Constantinople, Maghakia Ormanian, excommunicated the bank raiders, but
this did not quell general Turkish anger at the Armenian communities.
The massacres at the end of the 19th century, which were carried
out with the connivance and approval of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II, are
collectively known as the Hamidian massacres. In 1896, Abdul-Hamid
was chastened by international condemnations, and his orders to
attack and forcibly convert Armenians stopped. The attacks lessened,
but only for a while. Soon, another campaign of massacres would take
place. This campaign was instigated not by Abdul-Hamid but by a new
breed of Turkish political activists, who would go on to commit the
genocide of 1915. These activists were known as the Young Turks.
# #
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Adrian Morgan is a
British based writer and artist who has written for Western Resistance
since its inception. He also writes for Spero News. He has previously
contributed to various publications, including the Guardian and New
Scientist and is a former Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society.
read full author bio here
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