Western Queens Gazette, NY
March 12 2011
The Armenian Genocide – Next Edition!
By Miljan Peter Ilich
In the 1870s the rulers of the Ottoman Empire embarked on a policy
designed to ruthlessly eliminate the bulk of its Armenian population.
For over 40 years they and their successors sought with great
determination to achieve that goal whenever possible. In doing so,
they carried out periodic genocidal killings that dwarfed all
ethnically based exterminations up to that time. This was a series of
genocides rather than just the one more widely known genocide.
The genocidal policy of Turkish leaders towards Armenians inspired
Adolf Hitler to plan his own holocaust. In a 1931 interview only
published in 1968, Hitler said:
“Everywhere people are awaiting a new world order. We intend to
introduce a great resettlement policy… Think of the biblical
deportations and the massacres of the Middle Ages… and remember the
exterminations of the Armenians.” Hitler stated that he had to
protect “German blood from contamination, not only of the Jewish but
also of the Armenian blood.”
In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Adolf Hitler urged his leading
generals to be ruthless in the coming conflict just like the Turks
were in their Armenian genocides, saying famously, “Who, after all, is
today speaking of the destruction of the Armenians?” Hitler believed
that the world does not care about the brutality of means used as long
as they are successful in the end. This also is a lesson he drew from
the Armenian tragedy.
We must remember history to learn a different lesson than Hitler did.
We have to ardently work to use history as a learning experience to
avoid the mistakes and terrors of the past. If we do not, we will
experience unthinkable horrors again and again. Perhaps the Copts of
Egypt or other such minorities may then be the Armenian victims of the
future.
Of course, historical memory is also needed to honor the victims. Let
us memorialize those who suffered rather than those who destroyed the
innocent. However, this recollection should not lead us to revenge,
but rather to learning and greater understanding.
Who are the Armenians?
Armenians are an ancient people whose history goes back about 3,000
years. Their first rise to historical importance was in the Kingdom
of Urartu in the ninth and eighth centuries before Christ. Urartu
stretched from the Caucasus to the Euphrates River, covering a vast
expanse.
Under King Tigranes from 95 to 55 B.C., Armenia was a huge empire that
dominated much of the Middle East from the Caucasus to the borders of
Egypt and east to Syria and Persia. It became a center of Hellenistic
culture and a major challenger to the Roman Empire.
Though the Romans eventually conquered Armenia, they had such respect
for it that for centuries they allowed self-rule under its own kings
as a Roman ally. About 300 A.D. Armenia was the first country to
officially adopt Christianity. Emperor Constantine, the first
Christian ruler of Rome, became its staunch friend.
Armenians became a crucial part of the Byzantine Empire. As such,
they contributed greatly to iconography and religious architecture.
They also continued to develop a strong literary and poetic tradition.
By the early 1400s, the Ottoman Turks conquered most of Armenia.
Armenians were placed in the conquered Christian category subordinate
to Muslim rulers. They had religious rights as long as they paid the
special infidel tax, but they had no political rights. Despite major
discrimination, many of the people prospered in commerce and industry.
They held fast to their Christian Armenian identity and would not
become Muslim Turks. By the 1870s there were at least three or four
million Armenians divided between Russia and Turkey.
In modern times Armenians outside of Turkey have excelled in the arts.
Composers like Khachaturian in Russia and Hovhaness in America became
famous by using some Armenian traditional musical motifs in their
compositions. William Saroyan became one of the greatest American
dramatists. Many other Armenians in the Diaspora prospered in a
variety of fields. What happened to Armenians in Turkey was very
different. It is the subject of these articles.
The Forgotten Genocide – Part I
The first phases of the Armenian genocides took place in the second
half of the nineteenth century. Though shockingly brutal in their
execution, they have been largely forgotten even by some Armenians.
What took place in this period was not only horrifying in itself, but
set the stage for the even greater horrors that followed.
The martyrdom of Armenians was largely the result of the policies
promoted by a new ruler. In 1876 Sultan Abdul Hamid II ascended the
throne of the Ottoman Empire. He was young and energetic, but the
empire he ruled was old and collapsing with many of its nationalities
like the Greeks, Serbs and others obtaining independence for a large
portion of their ethnic groups. The most populous Christian
ethnicity left within the Ottoman Empire proper were the Armenians
with an estimated population of about 2,000,000. They were an ancient
people with a civilization that had flourished for thousands of years.
In contrast, the Ottoman Turks had only arrived in what is now Turkey
in the thirteenth century.
Sultan Abdul Hamid came to believe that his predecessors had been too
generous in allowing the continued existence of major Christian
populations in their realm. That is why the Greeks, Serbs and others
had been able to gather enough strength to successfully revolt. He
was certain that, in due course, Armenians would follow their example.
Most Armenians had, until the 1870s desired nothing more than fair
treatment as Ottoman citizens. However, that did not dissuade the
Sultan from perceiving them as the enemy within. Though there was no
evidence of major revolutionary Armenian movements, there were
isolated instances of anti-Ottoman violence and several Armenian
political groups advocated greater autonomy. The Sultan decided to
preempt an Armenian uprising by increasing the hardships of their
lives in his realm. Abdul Hamid’s long time friend Arminius Varnberry
wrote that the ruler “had decided that the only way to eliminate the
Armenian question was to eliminate the Armenians themselves.”
Varnberry’s conclusion was shared by United States Ambassador to
Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, who was extremely knowledgeable with regard
to the Sultan’s policies. He wrote that “Abdul Hamid apparently
thought that there was only one way of ridding Turkey of the Armenian
problem and that was to rid her of the Armenians. The physical
destruction of 2,000,000 men, women and children by massacres
organized and directed by the state, seemed to be the one sure way of
forestalling the further disruption of the Turkish Empire.” This was
by definition a plan for the first modern genocide.
For the first time in the modern age, an entire people were marked for
destruction only due to their faith and ethnicity. Once that goal was
set, its implementation was not long in coming. The Ottoman state
attempted to generally eliminate the Armenian people from Turkey
either by persuading them to leave or by an ultimate policy of
extermination. The fact that the hard working and commercially
inclined Armenians were generally more prosperous than the Turks made
it easier for the Sultan to get considerable popular support for his
anti-Armenian jihad. Greed and jealously have often motivated ethnic
hatreds and they were strongly inflamed by the despotic ruler soon
after taking the Turkish throne.
A first step taken to persecute Armenians took place when Abdul Hamid
greatly raised the tax burden specifically on them. Those who could
or would not pay were savagely punished. More violent measures soon
followed. In 1876 and 1877, while Turkey was engaged in war with
Russia, the Armenian quarter of Constantinople was burned and looted
by the police and imperial soldiers. Many Armenians were slaughtered
in the imperial capital.
Large scale killings of Armenians also took place near the city of
Erzurum. Massacres spread to other areas. The German newspaper
National Zeitung wrote: “It is clear that had the war continued in
this fashion under these conditions, the Christian population of
Turkish Armenia would have been exterminated in less than a year.”
Captain Stokvitch, a Russian officer, reported that “children and
adults were being thrown into flames and the cries of these unhappy
victims, especially women, were heartrending. The streets of Beyazid
were strewn with decapitated and mutilated corpses.” Men were often
smeared with wax and naphtha and set on fire.
Western powers, hearing of the atrocities, protested and threatened
intervention. Consequently the Sultan, who had both promoted and
allowed the atrocities, backed down after many thousands of Armenians
had been killed. He promised reforms. The attacks on Armenians
decreased dramatically for a number of years. However, harassment and
killings did continue at a low intensity.
By the final decade of the nineteenth century, Armenians, encouraged
by the liberation of other Ottoman subject nationalities, were more
vigorously organizing for greater rights and political protections.
Sultan Hamid’s promises for reforms had proven to a large degree
illusory and Armenians sought to make them real.
In 1894, the region of Sasun, which had a large Armenian population,
but was dominated by Kurds, exploded into extreme violence when the
Armenians were forced to pay tribute to local Kurdish chiefs as well
as Ottoman taxes. They were unable to pay this double taxation.
Turkish troops were called in and together with Kurdish militias
engaged in an orgy of massive killings. British historian, Lord
Kinross, described what was done to local Armenians: “The soldiers
pursued them throughout the length and breadth of the region, hunting
them like wild beasts up the valleys and into the mountains,
respecting no surrender, bayoneting the men to death, raping the
women, dashing their children against the rocks, burning to ashes the
villages from which they had fled.”
An 1895 demonstration of Armenians in Istanbul to petition the Sultan
for their rights was crushed by police. Many demonstrators were
clubbed to death on the spot. Fanatical Muslims were allowed to
rampage through the city, slaughtering Armenians like animals. The
terror spread though the empire. Armenians were often given the
choice of converting to Islam or death and many did choose to become
Muslim to save the lives of their families.
British Ambassador Currie reported that due to “forced conversions…
there are absolutely no Christians left” in Aleppo province in Ottoman
Syria. Many thousands were forcibly converted in other areas. 645
churches and monasteries were destroyed and 328 churches were turned
into mosques.
Large numbers of Armenians would not convert but died for their faith.
Though the killings spread throughout Armenian populated sections of
the empire, the worst massacres took place in the city of Urfa, which
had been known as the ancient capital of Edessa.
In December, 1895, Armenians made up about one third of the
population. Turkish troops and mobs rampaged through the Armenian
quarter, plundered their homes, killing all males over a certain age.
A large group of young Armenian men were brought before a Sheikh who
recited verses from the Koran while he slit the throats of the bound
men like sheep. The Turks were not finished however.
Thousands had taken refuge in the local Cathedral. On a Sunday,
Islamic mobs stormed the Church. Some cried out to the frightened
Armenians to call on Christ to prove that he is greater than Mohammed.
Then they set the Cathedral on fire. About 3,000 women and children
were burned alive. Lord Kinross wrote that the total of Armenian dead
in Urfa was 8,000.
Some Armenians resisted out of utter desperation. At Zeitoun,
insurgents killed thousands of Turkish troops in bitter clashes.
Though rare and isolated, the armed resistance was used by the
Ottomans as an excuse for even greater massacres of innocents.
News of the genocidal slaughter spread to the West and the United
States. The New York Times carried headline stories calling this an
“Armenian Holocaust.” However, public opinion in America was mainly
galvanized by the energy and devotion to the Armenian cause of two
women in their seventies. Julia Ward Howe, author of the Battle Hymn
of the Republic, was perhaps the most eloquent American voice
condemning the Turkish atrocities, and trying to obtain help for
Armenians. Though seventy six years old, she was full of energy for
the Armenian cause. On November 26, 1894 at Boston’s historic Faneuil
Hall, the first major American protest meeting regarding the issue
took place and she gave an impassioned speech on the victimization of
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. In stirring words she declared:
“I throw down the glove which challenges the Turkish Government to its
dread account. What have we for us in this contest? The spirit of
civilization, the sense of Christendom, the heart of humanity. All of
these plead for justice, all cry out against barbarous warfare of
which the victims are helpless men, tender women and children. We
invoke here the higher power of humanity against the rude instincts in
which the brute element survives and rules.”
Julia Ward Howe made many more appearances in the Armenian cause.
Being a national icon, her influence was incalculable. She played a
critical role in orchestrating American support for Armenians.
Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, was particularly
prominent in the effort to help Armenians. At seventy four years of
age, she led the relief effort for Armenia and addressed mass meetings
protesting the massacres. In January 1896 she personally escorted an
American Red Cross aid mission to Istanbul. Clara Barton faced down
the Turkish foreign minister Tewfik Pasha to obtain permission for the
Red Cross to assist the suffering Armenians. Then she remained there
to supervise the start of the relief effort.
Western powers, affected deeply by the horrified public opinion in
their countries, were moved to take steps to try to stop the
slaughter. Diplomatic measures to persuade the Turkish government to
cease and desist were tried first. Former British Prime Minister
Gladstone pushed for British military intervention. European and even
some American naval forces sailed towards the Ottoman Empire.
Intervention by strong military forces was threatening unless Turkey’s
rulers stopped the massacres. As U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau
wrote, faced with this threat, Istanbul halted the slaughter.
Meanwhile, some 200,000 Armenians had been brutally exterminated.
Turkey gave new guarantees for the protection of Armenians. These
promises were partly kept at first, but not many years later were
shown to be totally worthless. The Armenian national nightmare had
only just begun. Even worse horrors were yet to be inflicted on the
long suffering Armenian people.
About Miljan Peter Ilich
Historian and filmmaker, Miljan Peter Ilich has eight feature length
films, many documentaries and a number of short subjects to his credit
as Producer. Among them is the controversial ArtWatch, a
collaboration with the late Professor James Beck of Columbia
University, Frank Mason of the Art Students League of New York and
director James Aviles Martin and TCI: the First Hundred Years
commissioned by Technical Career Institutes.
Other documentary film credits include Chios 1822: Martyrdom and
Resurrection of a People and Cyprus: the Glory and the Tragedy.
Feature film credits include the cult film classic, I Was a Teenage
Zombie, Mothers; Unsavory Characters; What Really Frightens You, Soft
Money and the New York 3-D sensation, Run For Cover in 3-D.
Peter Ilich has also produced for theater and television in New York,
most notably the acclaimed play Struck Down, about the 1994 Baseball
season. He is the co-host, writer and co-producer of Orthodox
Christian Television’s Chios: the Island of Saints; Cyprus: the Glory
and the Tragedy; The Sacred Land of Kosovo and frequent panelist on
Democracy in Crisis.
Dr. Ilich is a Juris Doctor, New York University and PhD. City
University of New York and is a Professor of Law at Technical Career
Institutes in New York City.
From: A. Papazian