As we approach the centenary commemorations of the Battle of Gallipoli another event is being remembered, that of the Armenian Massacres – or genocide. The movement calling for the massacres to be recognized as Genocide seems to be gaining significant media attention for several factors.
One is the overt anti-AKP stance western media outlets have purposely taken particularly since the Gezi-park protests. Furthermore several Western governments have come out in support of the term ‘Genocide’, as President Erdogan shows increasing ambilvence towards the West. And of course, finally we have several high profile celebrities are also cheerleading a cause, they have pathetically little substantiative knowledge of.
It is ironic that the lobbyists are pushing for recognition now, particularly as the AKP has been the first Turkish Government to acknowledge the pain and suffering of the Armenians. Prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu conveyed a message of shared pain and reconciliation just last week, while President Erdogan expressed his condolences to children and grandchildren of descendants a year ago. One cannot help feeling that the renewed focus on the Armenian Massacres – and an attempt to redefine them as genocide – smacks of European hypocrisy, distortion of facts and inconsistency in dealing with the Histiography of the region.
An Aberration not the Norm
The current media narrative, ignores the historic context in which the Ottoman state existed. Co-existence was the norm, not an aberration in the almost 650 year history of the Ottoman Empire. Anatolia itself was a mixed milieu of peoples with significant populations of Armenians, Kurds, Turks, Greeks and latterly Circassians. It is testament to the political structure and safeguards created by the State which allowed minorities to flourish – where contemporary Europe was increasingly being defined by unipolar ethnic states – something which Continental governments struggling with ‘multi-culturalism’ would do well to learn from. However, the beginning of the 19th Century saw The Ottoman State fall victim to increased nationalist tendencies, initially by its Christian majority – and later by Muslim populations such as the Arabs and Albanians – which was at times covertly but was very often overtly supported by European powers. This support not only was extended by the state but also was also popular amongst nobility and mercantile elites, The Greek revolt of 1821-1830 being a prime example.
By far the biggest stirrer of discontent was the Russian Empire, which saw itself as the protector of Orthodox Christendom and inheritor of the Byzantine legacy. As the Russian Empire expanded into the Black Sea regions and the Caucasus at the expense of The Ottoman Empire, by the middle of the 19th Century it was actively wooing the significant Armenian minority in the Eastern provinces with the promise of an Independent state. The sentiments of the Armenians in the Eastern provinces often differed with those of the business community in the Coastal entrepots such as Istanbul, Smyrna and Salonika who were happy with the status quo.
This turned into rebellion, as on several occasions the Armenians openly supported the Russian Enemy, such as during the 1877-78 Russian-Ottoman war, resulting in the Ottomans being drawn on two fronts. History repeated itself, during the First World War, with the Russian attack on the Eastern frontiers of Turkey, and the collaboration of Armenian Tashnak units, which resulted in the fall of several cities including Van near the Russian border. The Turkish state at the time viewed such behaviour as treason and rightly so. Thus in order to prevent collapse on the Eastern Front the Committee of Union and Progress – which formed the Government at the time, and not the Ottoman Sovereign – decided to relocate large numbers of Armenians as a measure of counterinsurgency. This decision combined with a lack of resources, organisational ineptitude led to an unfortunate period of chaos, unruliness and death. Turks, Kurds and Armenians killed each other in great numbers and the fact that Armenians suffered greatly cannot be denied.
Furthermore it differs substantially from the Jewish Holocaust, which set up a long-term programme of extermination of a race as state policy, using all resources of the State. Had it been State policy, the Ottomans could have wiped out with chilling efficiency all minorities under their rule in much the same way as the Spanish ethnically cleansed South America and the Iberian Peninsula. However even in the final days of the State, this was not the case.
Contextualisation
Which leads us onto contextualising the events which led to 1915. In particular the brutal ethnic cleansing which was perpetrated by Slavic and Russian forces during the greater part of the 19th Century in the Balkans and Caucasus – as the Ottoman Empire retreated from those areas – which seems to not even register a heartbeat in Western consciousness.
The massacre of Bulgarian Muslims during the 1878 Russian-Ottoman War, seems to barely register on the pulses of those who rage against the Ottoman State. According conservative estimates by historians, almost 250,000 Muslims were killed during the war, while a significant proportion fled the killing, in all reducing the Muslim population to a mere 40% of what is was prior to the outbreak of the war. Repression led to continued Muslim migration into what is now Turkey, cumulative effect of which, a territory which was around 50% Muslim in 1876, today has a Muslim minority of barely 9%. Atrocities were reported by several foreign consuls and European newspapers, including the Harmanli Massacre, in which around 2,000 Muslim refugees were slaughtered by Russian force.
Sochi which last year hosted the Winter Olympics, was the scene of the final defeat of the Ubykh people – indigenous to The Caucasus Region – by The Russian Empire, the result of which many were slaughtered, with the survivors forced to flee to Anatolia or resettled en-masse – many of whom didn’t survive the journey. Whole peoples such as the Ubykh, Abhaz, Abaza and other Circassians ceased to exist in their former homeland. Estimates are hard to come by, however some suggest that 90% of the Circassian people were deported, killed or purposely starved to death. In 2011, Georgia passed a resolution stating the “pre-planned” mass killing of Circassians by Russia, accompanied by “deliberate famine and epidemics” should be recognized as genocide, unfortunately no other Western government has seriously considered looking into the matter. These are just two of the more prominent examples, there are numerous instances of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans by newly independent states, as well as by Russia in the Crimea.
Taking aside the Ottoman Muslim experience, the shameless exploitation of Europeans powers in Africa, Asia, and The Americas, read like a roll call that would perhaps make Stalin shudder: Leopold in Congo, British mis-governance in Bengal resulting in two mega-famine – the first in 1770 during which 10 million people perished (25% of the population) and then again 1943, the purposeful annihilation of whole peoples and civilisations in the Americas from the 16th to 19th Century.
Way Forward
While no-one is denying the suffering of Armenians at the Hands of Turkish nationalists – it would be incorrect to define the Empire post 1908 as Ottoman, as the sovereign simply has no power and was reduced to a symbolic monarchial system – there needs to be an open and honest debate about the events of 1915, along with the causes and aftermath. Numerous historians such as Stanford Shaw, Bernard Lewis, Geunter Lewy, Justin McCarthy, Edward Erickson, Norman Stone, Jeremy Salt as well as numerous Turkish And Arab historians, have not found ground for the charge of an intentional-systematic killing of Armenians or other groups that can substantiate the charges of genocide.
Erdogan’s reconciliatory message last year was flatly rejected by Yerevan. Yerevan has also refused to respond to Erdogan’s call, first made in 2005, to form an independent commission of international historians to investigate the events of 1915.
Finally, it is a pity – and irony – that the successive Armenian Governments have refused to end the occupation of Azeri lands, which would have allowed the implementation of the 2009 Zurich protocols to normalise relations between Turkey and Armenia, and squandered numerous opportunities to have good relations with Turkey.
As we bring the events of 1915 to the fore, perhaps we can also bring into consciousness to the Western mind, the genocides and tribulations heaped upon non-white Christians over the past 200 years, as pain, loss and suffering crosses all boundaries.
