ARMENIANS SAVED ABDUL HAMID’S GRANDSON AND HIS FAMILY: HURRIYET

News.am
l
Jan 11 2010
Armenia

"Our family `owed their lives’ to French-Armenians after their exile
from Turkey. We were penniless. Our Armenian friends helped us. There
was an Armenian lady who welcomed us to her chateau and we lived there
for a long time. I cannot deny the good deeds Armenians have done for
my family," Beyzade Balent Osman, grandson of Ottoman Sultan Abdul
Hamid II stated in the interview with Turkish Hurriyet Daily.

After Young Turks suppressed counter-revolution on April 27, 1909 Abdul
Hamid was dethroned and arrested. He was conveyed into captivity in
Salonika till 1912, then returned to Constantinople, where he died
in the prison. The members of Ottoman dynasty were deported from
the country.

"I am on the side of the truth, but we need to look to the future now.

The French and the Germans had also slaughtered each other, came into
conflict but still managed to establish dialogue," the daily quotes
Osman’s words.

"I witnessed his grandmother crying many times when he was a child.

They thought Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (the founder of First Republic of
Turkey-NEWS.am’s note) would be unsuccessful in his cause and that
we would return to the old days. My grandmother and mother wanted us
to learn Turkish. My father, however, was a republican by all means
and was supportive of Ataturk’s principles," the source cites Osman.

In 1894-1896 massacres of Christian population, firstly Armenians
were perpetrated in Eastern Anatolia and other places of Ottoman
Empire by direct order of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.