The Armenian Genocide

The basic question preoccupying not only the local authorities but also the sedentary populations and the local Dashnak and Ittihadist Committees was the Kurdish tribal chieftains’ attitude toward the new government and its policies. Thus, the Committee of Union and Progress found itself confronted with a complex equation: it wished to develop in the area, but could do so only if it successfully wooed local tribal forces, even while cultivating “privileged” relations with the Armenian Committees. These local constraints no doubt explain why the CUP was unable to apply a uniform policy of collaboration with the ARF. Hence, it is not surprising that the Dashnak Committees of the eastern provinces did not have close relations with the local Young Turk clubs, “whose members were all ağas.”⁴ It is no more surprising that whenever a high-ranking official tried to resolve problems such as restoring property seized by the Kurdish begs, as did Tahir Pasha, the vali of the vilayet of Bitlis,⁵ which included Mush, the local CUP club put pressure on Salonika to have him recalled. It is probable that the resolution of land disputes, constantly postponed by the authorities, was thwarted by the political influence or barely veiled threats of the tribal chieftains. The control commissions that Istanbul dispatched to study the land question accordingly returned to the capital without having accomplished serious work.⁶

As far as security went, the situation was not the same everywhere. Generally speaking, the areas on the plains were less exposed to danger than the mountain districts. Thus, the Sasun district, especially the kaza of Khut, was almost constantly threatened by attacks from Kurdish tribes, who committed a number of murders there in summer 1911 and stole hundreds of sheep.⁷ These were anything but isolated cases. Before the July 1908 revolution, one of the activities of the Armenian fedayis had consisted precisely in struggling against nomadic tribes who attacked villagers. Once the fedayi commandos were disarmed, however, this task devolved, in theory, on the gendarmerie or even the army, both of which were sometimes hard put to control the nomads and usually arrived too late. After discussing these problems, Zavarian concluded that the only way to put an end to these exactions would be to disarm the Kurdish tribes, such as the Şeko tribe, “since it is impossible to arm the Armenians.”⁸

Indeed, the question of self-defense and the disparity between the situations of the armed Kurds and the defenseless sedentary population recurred again and again. A year never went by in which the Armenians, and particularly the ARF, did not raise the problem with the government or the Committee of Union and Progress. They did so, for example, in November 1812, when the Western Bureau demanded that the Council of Ministers agree to the stationing of guards in the villages, although they hardly had illusions about the kind of answer they would receive: “I doubt that they will accept,” Zavarian wrote.⁹ The ARF knew only too well that its activities under the Hamidian regime had left a lasting mark on the minds of the Young Turks, who did not want to hear about the legalization of village militias, over which the Dashnaks would inevitably gain control. The Dashnaks, for their part, had no other choice than to continue to work legally for the progress of the empire, from which a good part of the Armenian population was already profiting, especially in urban areas.

The social progress and the development of intellectual life and the educational system toward which many reconverted ex-revolutionaries were working did not go unnoticed by the Central Committee of Salonika. According to the parliamentary deputy from Van, Vartkes Seringiulian, the Committee found this alarming, and after its October 1911 congress adopted a more radical policy.¹⁰ Seringiulian detected proof of this change in the fact that, after the congress, the Young Turk clubs in the provinces were more overtly hostile to Armenian circles.¹¹ He mentions a confidential circular sent to these local clubs by the Ittihad’s Central Committee late in 1911, which asked them to work discreetly toward limiting Armenian activity in the educational, cultural, and economic fields.¹² Papazian also observed an unmistakable rapprochement with Kurdish circles that had until then maintained a sullen opposition to the CUP: the party drew closer even to notorious bandits, who now began persecuting the sedentary populations even more intensely than before, without intervention by the authorities. Moreover, alarming information from the provinces impelled the Armenian deputies to demand that the grand vizier, Ferid Pasha, send a commission of inquiry there. The proposition was, however, rejected by a majority of parliament.¹³

Still other signs pointed to the shift in CUP strategy for the provinces. Two important ARF cadres, Carmen¹⁴ in Mush and Marzbed¹⁵ in Bitlis, were subjected to outright administrative harassment, which prevented them from engaging in political activity of any kind in their respective regions. Further to the east, to the south of Lake Van, the young school inspector of Moks was murdered under atrocious circumstances: the party’s press condemned the act, complaining above all about the fact that there was no real investigation of the crime.¹⁶ Seringiulian was even imprisoned for two days in his capacity as director of the Istanbul daily Azadamard, which the authorities attacked for its critical tone. The CUP did not react in any way, ignoring the interventions of its official allies.¹⁷

The situation in the western Anatolian provinces, which had a more varied ethnic make-up and a large Turkish-speaking majority, seems to have been quite different. The interpenetration of the various historical groups there endowed these regions with a cultural cohesion that was clearly superior to that of the tribal zones in the east. Thanks to the account of the Hnchak leader Stepanos Sapah-Giulian,¹⁸ who traveled through the regions of Samsun, Merzifun/Marzevan, Amasi, and Sıvas from May to August 1911, we understand better how the local Committees of the SDHP and the Ittihad clubs worked, and how the Turkish, Greek, and Armenian populations perceived both the changes that had taken place in the country since 1908 and also the activity of the “gentlemen” who came from the capital to preach the good word.

Hardly had he got off the boat on 10 May 1911 when Sapah-Giulian was invited to visit Samsun’s Ittihadist club. He and the parliamentary deputy Murad (Hampartsum Boyajian) were welcomed to Samsun by the local Unionist leadership, made up of Muslim clergymen, a few military men, and above all the CUP inspector for the regions of Samsun, Sıvas, and Canik, Mustafa Necib. Necib “decided everything” there, and he was particularly concerned with replacing government officials with Ittihadists.¹⁹ That very evening, the city’s Hnchak club organized a meeting in a room in the elementary school where not long before the Young Turk propagandist Ömer Naci – a member of the Central Committee – had given a talk that had had some influence on Armenian circles, especially among Armenian merchants. Among the audience, Sapah-Giulian noticed many Turks, often civil servants and Ittihadists, sitting in the first rows, as well as Armenian-speaking Greeks. On the lecturer’s own account of his talk, he unsparingly denounced the nationalism that was developing in the empire and conducing to its ruin. The Ittihadists listened in silence, taking notes.²⁰

On Sunday, 11 May, in the same room, Sapah-Giulian gave a second lecture on “economic questions.” There were again Young Turks in the audience, accompanied by interpreters. Faithful to his habits, the Hnchak leader condemned the Young Turks’ policies in his lecture: they were calculated, he said, to bring about the economic ruin of non-Turks and put the economy in the hands of the dominant nation.²¹ Obviously, these virulent attacks did not leave the Young Turk circles indifferent; they were worried about the impact that Sapah-Giulian’s words would have on the local population. The occasion for an exchange on these questions arose naturally because it was the custom in these societies to pay a visit to one’s “guests.” An Ittihadist delegation, with Mustafa Necib at its head, went to Samsun’s Hnchak club and began a conversation on the subject of Armenian-Turkish relations, “which are no longer as warm as they were in the first months of the Constitutional revolution.” The reason, Sapah-Giulian writes, was that the Adana massacres had dampened the ardor of the most enthusiastic, as had the government’s and the CUP’s policy, especially its “narrowly nationalistic” position. There was no lack of arguments in defense of the Committee’s centralizing policies, which according to Mustafa Necib were the sole means of maintaining the country’s unity. Necib even contended that “the least step toward decentralization [would] spell the destruction of this country.”²² Even while criticizing the Hnchaks for their decentralization plan, the Ittihadist inspector conceded that the Hnchak clubs were carrying out work of considerable importance for the education of the people, whatever their nationality, and stimulating them to take initiatives to develop the country.²³

On Tuesday, 16 May, Sapah-Giulian arrived in Merzifun, where he was welcomed by a representative of the kaymakam and a crowd of 3,000 people, including Turks, before receiving, that evening, a courtesy visit from the local Ittihadists, both Turkish and Armenian. On the morning of Wednesday, 17 May, he took part in a meeting of the city’s Hnchaks; the local branch of the party had 450 male and 30 female members.²⁴ All the problems of daily existence were discussed there. Thus, we learn that, in setting local tax rates, Armenian houses were systematically over-evaluated and Turkish houses under-evaluated. In passing, Sapah-Giulian mentions that after the constitution was restored, mayoral elections were organized in Merzifun. An Armenian won the election against another candidate, but his victory was contested in a complaint lodged with the mutesarif of Amasia, on the pretext that people who were ineligible to vote had participated in the balloting. A commission of inquiry confirmed the Armenian’s election, yet the vali of Sıvas invalidated it. According to information obtained locally, the vali had acted on instructions from the Central Committee of Salonika, which is supposed to have said that “posts of this kind should not be given to Armenians for the time being, since the Muslim population might find that somewhat irritating.”²⁵

Let us note, finally, that a boycott of Armenian companies and stores had been launched in Merzifun in 1911 and that Armenian tailors and shoemakers had been obliged to take on Turkish apprentices.²⁶ This indicates that the groundwork for the Young Turk project to “nationalize” the economy was already being laid in this period.

The theme of the meeting held in Samsun on 17 May 1911 in a room in the Sahagian school was “the national question and the social-democracy,” one of the Hnchaks’ favorite subjects. No fewer than 1,500 people were in attendance, including the local Turkish and Armenian Ittihadists. To buttress his attack on the CUP’s Turkism, Sapah-Giulian pointed out in his talk that the empire was made up of several nations, not just one.²⁷ The Hnchaks’ relations with the leader of Merzifun’s Young Turks, Osman Effendi, were no more than courteous. Effendi, who supervised everything that went on in the city, followed the instructions he received from the Ittihadist Central Committee to the effect that all decisions “involving vital state interests” should be the sole province of members of the club.²⁸ The Hnchaks’ meeting with the kaymakam, a Greek by the name of Constantine, was distinctly warmer: the kaymakam did not hesitate to evoke the problems he had been having ever since he had refused to join the CUP.²⁹ At a second meeting, which was attended by the police chief, Mahir Effendi, an Armenian from Van who had been kidnapped as a young child and raised in a Turkish family in Merzifun, people’s tongues were untied: the kaymakam revealed to Sapah-Giulian that the Ittihadists were secretly striving to whet the Muslim population’s hostility to non-Turks, adding that the clubs were arming their members. He warned him that he should be very careful and not be lulled by the Young Turk militants’ demonstrations of courtesy and respect.³⁰

The Hnchak revolutionary’s next stop was the village of Sim Haciköy, where he was welcomed on 25 May 1911 by a large crowd of Greeks, Turks, and Armenians. Shortly thereafter, Mustafa Necib, who seemed to be keeping tabs on Sapah-Giulian, paid him an impromptu visit at the village’s Hnchak club, accompanied by the mayor and municipal physician.³¹ At the banquet that the Greeks and Armenians of the village gave in honor of their Armenian guest, the Young Turks and Hnchaks found themselves in a veritable face-off. The local Young Turk club had been working to create Committee schools in which “everyone was educated the same way, since all were Ottomans,” whereas the Armenian and Greek social-democrats ran their own school. In this confrontation over the school system, two different conceptions of Ottoman society clashed. Apparently, only the mufti, who was also a rich landowner, was in a position to oppose the Young Turks without fear of reprisals.³² When Sapah-Giulian met with him, the Muslim clergyman unsparingly criticized the Unionists, whom he considered to be usurpers “concerned about their personal interests before all else” and always intent on divesting people of their money on various pretexts: for example, to buy battleships, open a school, or support the army.³³ The mufti also pointed out that the public schools were being neglected because they had been replaced by Committee schools “where children are taught to say that they are Turks.” Finally, he reported that Mustafa Necib and his supporters had come to see him to suggest that he not lease his land to Armenian farmers but instead to Muslim peasants.³⁴ All this incidental information, gleaned in passing, makes it possible to paint, touch by touch, a picture of everyday Ittihadism and the way the CUP’s nationalist ideology was translated into practice in the provinces.

In late May, Sapah-Giulian arrived in Amasia, where he was welcomed by the city’s parliamentary deputy, İsmail Pasha, members of the local Young Turk club and a group of Hnchak militants (the party had 350 members in the city) headed by Minas Ipekjian and Dr. Haigazun Tabibian.³⁵ This stay in a city that was reputed to be prosperous made it possible to get a sense of the climate prevailing in the provinces after the revolution. The traditional meeting that was held at the Hnchak clubhouse and attended again by many Young Turks had as its subject “the SDHP and the parliamentary system.” It attracted big crowds and provided an occasion for sharp debates. But Sapah-Giulian’s 31 May visit to the Ittihadist club was still more instructive. There he encountered people playing backgammon and smoking water pipes, all of them Turkish notables from the city.³⁶ Tabibian explained to his guest from Constantinople that most of the Armenians had joined the CUP at the time of the July 1908 revolution, the better to forget the horrors of the past. That, however, had lasted a scant two or three months. Their ardor had cooled when delegates dispatched from Salonika arrived, for the Armenian militants had not been invited to the meetings and were excluded from the leadership. A circular is even supposed to have been sent from the Ittihadist Central Committee demanding that local leadership bodies be limited to Muslims. The upshot was that the Armenians had left the CUP and since then were “less generous” toward it.

Yet another of Tabibian’s revelations is worth pausing over. He affirmed that, in 1909, a friend and the president of Amasia’s Young Turk club, Halim Effendi, had reported that during the Adana massacres the Central Committee of Salonika had sent the club a wire that it had also sent to other eşrafs, demanding that they attack the Armenians. It was, in any case, an established fact that the Muslim population had poured into the marketplace and that Halim and Tabibian had immediately gone to see the mutesarif, Çerkez Bekir Sâmi Bey³⁷ (who claimed he was of Armenian origin), to ask that he intervene. Sâmi had gone to the market and made a declaration: “If you want to attack the Armenians, you will have to pass over my dead body; if you dare to attack the Armenians, I will appeal to my Çerkez compatriots in Tokat and they will massacre all of you.” After two tension-fraught days, calm was restored. Halim was relieved of his functions as president of the local CUP. It should also be noted that the parliamentary deputy İsmail and his entire family opposed the planned attack. Many suspected Mustafa Necib, who had already brought all the CUP clubs in the region under his control, of having instigated these “disorders.”³⁸ Among other facts reported by Sapah-Giulian, one notes that the policy of “nationalizing” the economy was at work here as well, reinforced by systematic interventions of the Ittihadist club in local industrial and commercial affairs. Thus, people posted at the entry to the city advised arriving merchants not to sell their goods to Armenians while others at the market suggested to customers that they not buy from Armenians. There were also reports that orchards and vegetable gardens had been subject to repeated attacks.³⁹ While it is not possible to verify all this information, it nevertheless attests to a certain hostility to the Armenian population and great uneasiness, apparently warranted, among the Armenians.

Sapah-Giulian’s stay in Tokat, the next stop on his journey, showed that here, as in the towns he had already visited, the SDHP held the dominant position among the Armenians and wielded indisputable political influence even if the party was opposed to the conservatism of local society. At the lecture organized in the public meeting room, not a single woman was present, for “custom still dominated life [in Tokat].”⁴⁰

Sıvas constituted a crucial stage of Sapah-Giulian’s journey. His arrival had obviously been announced beforehand: all the government officials and notables welcomed him at the city gates and escorted him to the Hnchak club, which had no fewer than six hundred members in 1911.⁴¹ The atmosphere in Sıvas was very tense: a considerable degree of insecurity reigned in the city, so the Armenians made plans to organize surveillance of the neighborhoods and the market, especially at night.⁴² In the region, in which the Armenian presence was much more conspicuous, trade, the crafts and transportation were largely in Armenian hands. At the market, the Armenians complained about endless shake-downs by Turkish officers and notables. They were often told that “the Constitution will not suffice to free you from our clutches; you are our merchandize; we will treat you as our needs dictate.”⁴³ Such remarks illustrate the particular status each group had.

Upon his arrival in Sıvas on 28 June 1911, Sapah-Giulian learned that Mustafa Necib had come to town shortly before him and had tried to sow dissent among the two Armenian political parties. In this city on the borders of the Armenian homeland, the ARF, which was omnipresent in the eastern provinces, and the SDHP, implanted mainly in the western regions, coexisted without problems. The two Committees had even decided, the Hnchak leader writes, to organize a joint self-defense plan. While they had divergent positions – the Dashnaks remained attached to the idea of cooperating with the Ittihadists, while the Hnchaks maintained a frankly hostile position that they proclaimed in public – recurrent provocations and a number of suspicious signs had ultimately alarmed the local Dashnak Committee, which had moved closer to the SDHP, the dominant party in Sıvas.⁴⁴

In the months preceding Sapah-Giulian’s visit, the Armenians had noticed that numerous meetings were being held in the homes of the town’s leading Turkish citizens. It had, however, finally become clear that the participants belonged to Sıvas’s anti-Ittihadist circles; it followed that the meetings were not aimed directly at the Armenians. Another event had left its mark: poisoned sweets had been scattered through the streets of the city’s Armenian neighborhoods and children had unsuspectingly picked them up and eaten them. Two had died and several others had to be treated for poisoning. People suspected the Ittihad of this vile act.⁴⁵ The tensions in Sıvas had not, then, been engendered by the Turkish-Armenian face-off alone, but were also due to a latent conflict between certain circles of notables and the Young Turk authorities. It would also appear that rumors had been put in circulation in order to turn Muslim public opinion against the Armenians. Sapah-Giulian reports that, at a meeting he held at the Hnchak club with Turkish hojas, the hojas asked, with obvious concern, if it was true that the Armenian patriarch had demanded the right to attend meetings of the Council of Ministers along with the şeyh ul-İslam. Many people were convinced that Mustafa Necib had been spreading rumors of this sort, although it was common knowledge that the SDHP was precisely the only party to advocate the abolition of all traces of religion from the Council of Ministers.⁴⁶ Sapah-Giulian, who had firsthand experience of the debate on the separation of church and state from his student days at the École des sciences politiques in Paris and, later, his exile in the French capital, knew what was meant by a secular state. But he was also aware that, in Sıvas, he found himself in a world for which such a debate was something altogether alien.

In the aggregate, all the details passed in review here provide a much clearer picture of the policies implemented by the CUP. It was the Ittihad’s activities in the provinces that allowed the Armenian parties to evaluate the concrete contents of the program elaborated by the CUP’s Central Committee. Here the Unionists found it harder than in the capital to veil their ethnic-nationalistic intentions.

However, the spring 1912 decision to call early elections for parliament forced the parties to find compromises and gloss over their differences. In Van, the authorities announced a census of the vilayet’s male population. “In view of the care the inhabitants of the city take to hide, to avoid either military service or taxes, the numbers given below,” the French vice-consul wrote in a report, “are most certainly underestimates.” The incumbent members of parliament – Tevfik Bey, Vahan Papazian, and Şeyh Tahir – were hoping to be re-elected with the support of the Ittihad and the ARF, who had concluded an electoral pact. Their opponents – the Hnchaks, the Ramgavars, and the Liberal Entente – had likewise joined forces in support of their candidates.⁴⁷

In Erzerum, Vartkes Seringiulian and Armen Garo were candidates for re-election and again had the support of both the ARF and the CUP.⁴⁸ Both men were re-elected, as were Murad in Sis-Kozan, Nazareth Daghavarian in Sıvas, and Kegham in Mush. Vahan Bardizbanian, a Dashnak physician elected in Smyrna on the CUP list, was among the newcomers to parliament.⁴⁹ In Siirt, a dark horse by the name of Nâzım Bey won a seat.⁵⁰ Nâzım was distinguished by the fact that he had a Muslim father and an Armenian mother, a situation that was extremely rare at the time. He was something of a symbol for the Ittihad, which dreamed of making all Ottoman subjects into Turkish citizens. In Van, Vahan Papazian was replaced by Arshag Vramian,⁵¹ who had much greater prestige in his own party and also the advantage that he was Turkish-speaking and well known in Constantinople Unionist circles.

When the Tripolitanian War broke out with the Italian landing on 4 October 1911, tension in the capital was at its height. This act of colonialist aggression led, as was often the case in Turkey, to increased hostility toward the empire’s Christian population. Vahan Papazian notes how badly the non-Turk deputies were treated in parliament. “You would think,” he writes, “that we were the ones who were fighting them in Tripolitania.”⁵²

The war came at the wrong time, for it upset the CUP’s plans, whose initial effects in the Anatolian provinces we have just discussed. The creation of the Türk Yurdu Cemiyet (Association of the Turkish Homeland), founded on 3 July 1911 by Mehmed Emin (Yurdakul), Ahmed Ağaoğlu and Yusuf Akçura,⁵³ testifies to the nationalists’ growing influence over the Young Turk movement, gained at the expense of the militants attached to Islam and existing institutions. Thus, the Committee was riven by antagonistic currents, and it seems reasonable to suppose that the radical orientation of the nationalists impelled many others to join the opposition. The conspicuous departure of Colonel Sadık and the young officers in his movement, who immediately joined the opposition, dealt the Ittihad a severe blow.

The opposition had been almost entirely renewed after its liquidation in April 1909. It was reorganized with the foundation, on 21 September 1911, of a new liberal party, Hürriyet ve Ittilâf Fırkasi (Party of Freedom and Understanding). Led by Damad Ferid Pasha (president), Colonel Sadık Bey (vice-president), Dr. Rıza Nur, Şükrü al-Aseki, and Rıza Tevfik, the new party brought together virtually all existing oppositional currents, conservative and liberal alike, and had the support of many different Greek and Armenian circles.⁵⁴ Sapah-Giulian notes that the day the Ittilâf and the SDHP signed an agreement to cooperate, “the Ittihadists’ apprehension was palpable.” He adds that his party was able to influence the Ittilâf’s politics thanks to this collaboration, making it more progressive, and that the SDHP played a role in organizing and educating its branches in the provinces.⁵⁵ The CUP had united everyone against it; the upshot was a triumph for the opposition in the Constantinople by-elections of November 1911.

The ARF’s sixth congress – the first congress of the party to be convened in Constantinople – was held in the same period, from 17 August to 17 September 1911. The party was now confronted with an issue it could no longer put off: whether or not it should maintain its alliance with the Committee of Union and Progress. In the ARF, too, the opposition to collaborating with a committee whose nationalistic ideology had become common knowledge was growing. Papazian writes in his memoirs that the party had already decided to break off relations with the CUP.⁵⁶ But this is highly unlikely. On more neutral accounts, many young people in the capital made it known that they were unhappy with the sixth congress’s decision to pursue its dialogue with the CUP; the distinction between that and Papazian’s statement is worth emphasizing.⁵⁷ Rostom, one of the ARF’s founders, observed after arriving in Constantinople in order to take part in the congress that the ARF’s bureau in Pera was no longer responding to invitations from the branches in the neighborhoods and had lost touch with its own militants. It was probably in order to deal with the fronde, which jeopardized the party’s credibility, that a meeting was called at the ARF’s club in Pera. At this meeting, Aknuni, H. Shahrigian, Arshag Vramian, Ruben Ter Minasian, and others finally agreed to renew the party’s pact with the CUP if the Ittihadists agreed to their conditions of 1) a struggle against domestic insecurity; 2) tax reduction; 3) abandonment of the policy of Turkification and Islamicization; 4) creation of genuine equality before the law, a constitutional regime and civil liberties.⁵⁸ It might well be asked, however, whether this was not a mere tactic designed to reduce the internal opposition to the prevailing line. Indeed, the Dashnak leadership in Constantinople cultivated an ambiguous attitude toward the Young Turks. Its relations with the CUP had certainly cooled after the massacres in Cilicia, but the break between the two parties had never been consummated.

Isolated in the face of a reinvigorated opposition, the CUP regained the initiative by setting out to negotiate a new agreement with the ARF. The resulting discussions, however, remained secret: they are not mentioned in any official ARF publication. We have to turn to an oppositional newspaper to form some idea of them.⁵⁹ Sapah-Giulian revealed that there were in fact two agreements. One, signed on 11 November, was for internal use and bore on the coming legislative elections. The contents of the other, secret agreement, signed in January 1912, have never been made public. The Hnchak leader, however, describes them in detail in a series of articles on the relations between the Dashnaks and Ittihadists that was published 18 months after the agreement was concluded. Here we make the rather surprising discovery that most of the stipulations of this agreement concern Persia – more precisely, the activity of the Dashnak military chief Ephrem Khan. Thanks to this document, we see for the first time that the ARF’s transnational dimension and its activities outside the Ottoman Empire constituted, in certain circumstances, a bargaining chip in its negotiations with the CUP. In other words, to win concessions from its Young Turk allies in the Ottoman context, the Dashnaktsutiun occasionally had to throw its influence in other areas into the scales. Persia, the case to hand, had become much more than a field of action for Dashnak fedayis on mission. Ephrem Khan and his commandos were the veritable initiators of the Iranian constitutional revolution; they comprised a force that put itself at the head of the country’s progressive groups and familiarized them with revolutionary ideas.⁶⁰

The January 1912 secret agreement stipulated, notably, that the ARF would curb Ephrem Khan’s activities in Persia, which had encouraged Russian ambitions. The party agreed not to conduct armed operations in the country and not to involve Ottoman subjects in its other activities there. According to Sapah-Giulian, the Western Bureau immediately sent the corresponding instructions to its Committee in Persia and also decided to review its pro-Russian positions, calling a halt to the activity of Ephrem, who was reputed to be following directives from Moscow.⁶¹ Thus, the Western Bureau is supposed to have firmly opposed Ephrem’s attack on the city of Hamadan. Sapah-Giulian goes so far as to speculate that the ARF might have been involved in the 6 May 1912 assassination of the leader of the Persian revolution, which took place under mysterious conditions at the entrance to the city.⁶²

The Committee of Union and Progress, however, apparently did not confine itself to concluding pacts with the Dashnaks. It is highly probable that it also encouraged the ARF to engage in a dialogue with the Hnchaks aimed at bringing them into an alliance with it. The ARF’s way of approaching the SDHP is quite interesting. The maneuvering began at a time when the Hnchak leader, Sapah-Giulian, whose hostility to this plan was well known, was touring the provinces.⁶³ Officially, the two Armenian parties were negotiating an electoral agreement. However, the driving force behind this rapprochement was the Marxist journalist Parvus, a Russian Jew living in Germany. Parvus, a socialist who had entered into relations with a few Hnchak leaders in Constantinople, was the founder of Millî İktisat (A Journal National Economy) and also an arms dealer and an informer working for the German intelligence service.⁶⁴ He was known at the time for having, at the CUP’s request, taken several Georgian socialist refugees under his protection in Istanbul and then dispatched them to Adjaria to foment an anti-Russian rebellion there. In arguing for his plan to bring the two Armenian parties to collaborate, he pointed to the need for a union of socialist forces, in accordance with the decisions of the Amsterdam Congress. A number of militants seem to have found this splendid demonstration convincing. To resolve the predictable problems connected with setting the number of Armenian parliamentary deputies, Parvus promised to serve as an intermediary with the CUP. The initial arrangement seems to have been that the Armenians would be given twenty seats, of which two or three would go to “neutral” candidates. Finally, written agreement was reached to the effect that the ARF would receive nine seats and the SDHP eight; the remaining seats would go to whichever party succeeded in taking them.⁶⁵

When Sapah-Giulian returned to Istanbul, the pact had almost been finalized. On his account, the Ittihad was in a ticklish situation, but had adroitly secured the ARF’s support and was now trying to rally the Hnchaks to its side by way of a pact between the ARF and SDHP. Thus Parvus, he writes, “was in the process of doing the CUP a great service.”⁶⁶ Matters had advanced so far that the Hnchak leader had a great deal of difficulty in turning the situation around. At the September 1911 meeting at which the agreement was to have been finalized, K. Gozigian, who was representing the Hnchaks at the negotiations, as Sapah-Giulian had suggested, told the two Dashnak representatives, Papazian and A[knuni], that he was prepared to sign if he were shown a document from the CUP’s Central Committee that “bore its official seal” and declared that it agreed to the establishment of “Armenian autonomy.” The Dashnaks pointed out that they had obtained an oral promise and that they would vouch for the CUP. This provided Gozigian the opportunity to turn the offer down.⁶⁷ The next day, Parvus, in his capacity as former intermediary, rushed to the Hnchak club and upbraided his socialist comrades for having made light of his mediation by rejecting the agreement. He also argued that the presence of two socialist parties in the Ottoman parliament would have had an excellent effect in Europe, adding that, in rejecting the agreement “for narrowly nationalistic reasons,” the SDHP was working against socialism.⁶⁸ Sapah-Giulian’s reply was in the same vein: it was regrettable that a convinced socialist such as Parvus, he riposted, could support a nationalistic party “that has the Adana massacres on its conscience [as well as] murders, kidnappings and confiscations of property carried out to further the objectives of Turkish nationalism.”⁶⁹

From these examples, we learn a number of lessons about the political practice of the Committee of Union and Progress. The CUP, which already had the main mechanisms of the state apparatus in its hands and could utilize them as it saw fit, while throwing a few crumbs of power to those who agreed to serve it or collaborate with it, was now seeking to gain the time it needed to put its plans into effect. To that end, it did not hesitate to have its opponents who represented a real threat murdered or exiled, while guaranteeing the criminals impunity. We can thus legitimately ask if the permanent insecurity reigning in the eastern provinces – plunder, kidnapping, localized massacres – was not the result of a plan.⁷⁰ In 1912, in any case, the situation there had deteriorated so badly that a sharp debate broke out in Armenian circles as to whether an alliance should be concluded with the Ittihad or the Ittifâl. The SDHP was convinced that it was necessary to harass the CUP in order to deny it the leisure to translate its program into reality (“To distract its attention from Armenia,” as Sapah-Giulian put it).⁷¹ In provincial Turkish circles, too, the Ittihad had earned the enmity of groups exasperated by the constant meddling in their internal affairs of local Young Turks, who were often less than respectable sorts. There were even cases in which Armenians intervened in these Turkish circles as peacemakers, in order to re-establish calm: for instance, when the Unionist club in Erba refused to confirm the appointment of a religious leader who was not a member of the club; or again, after an attack on the Ittihadist club of Balıkeser.⁷² Furthermore, certain government officials did not share Young Turkey’s political vision, as was shown when, in spring 1912, the kaymakam of Niksar, İhsan Bey, and the commander of the corresponding military district, Sabih Bey, entrusted the SDHP leadership with “valuable” documents emanating from the Unionist Central Committee on the one hand and the government on the other.⁷³ According to Sapah-Giulian, these texts all had to do with the way the Armenians were to be treated and the means to be employed in order to “rid the country of the Armenians and gain control of all their real estate and other assets.” Sabih Bey “doubtless thought,” Sapah-Giulian adds, “that we had no information on that head.”⁷⁴ An article in the Hnchaks’ official organ stated even more clearly what the SDHP believed the Turkists’ intentions to be:

When the least occasion offers ... Turkish nationalism, which, today, has the government of the country in its grip, will, without hesitation, ruthlessly massacre the Armenians, as a historical necessity. And, this time, it will massacre them more mercilessly than in 1895–6, more violently than during the Catastrophe of Adana. The psychology that makes for massacres is an abiding one; it has deep roots ... It is also plain that the old and new representatives of Turkish nationalism have no desire whatsoever to accept the idea of the existence, development and vitality of the Armenian people.⁷⁵

This viewpoint, however, remained that of a minority of Armenians, even if “no great benefits could be expected from the constitutional regime,” in the words of Gabriel Noradounghian, who would soon become the first and last non-Muslim Ottoman foreign minister, who expressed that opinion at a dinner he gave early in 1912 for the four Dashnak deputies and Krikor Zohrab.⁷⁶

In these conditions, it is easy to imagine the atmosphere reigning in the Ottoman Empire during the spring 1912 election campaign. This election, known as the sopah segim (“the big-stick election”), shocked more than one observer because of the violent methods and intimidation to which the CUP resorted to ensure the victory of its candidates.⁷⁷ The number one enemy was the Ittilâf, which counted many renegades from Unionist ranks among its members, notably non-Turks who had been excluded from any and all positions of responsibility in the CUP. In the weeks preceding the second legislative elections, the two parties traded blows with a vengeance. Unsurprisingly, the newly elected parliament had an Ittihadist majority and, in certain Armenian circles, electoral interests eventually gained the upper hand over questions of substance. Said Pasha formed the new cabinet; Mehmed Cavid was put back in charge of the Ministry of Finance.

It seems that, in this regime, power could only change hands by force. In May–June 1912, Colonel Sadık Bey, the Ittilâf’s vice-president, stepped up his pressure on the cabinet to the point that this pressure could be described as a coup d’état; he had the support of young officers known as Halâskâr Zâbitan (Savior Officers), a majority of whom came from the army in Macedonia.⁷⁸ On 21 July, the grand vizier stepped down in favor of a liberal cabinet formed by Ğazi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha, which included Noradounghian as foreign minister. In some sense, Prince Sabaheddin’s outlook had come to power for the first time (if one ignores the brief existence of the Tevfik cabinet in April 1909). The object was to restore confidence, in particular among non-Turkish groups, by applying the prince’s much ballyhooed decentralization program. Shortly after these events, it was learned that Mehmed Talât and Mustafa Rahmi had returned to Salonika; they were soon followed by Cavid and Dr. Nâzım.⁷⁹

To make certain that he could count on the army, Ğazi Muhtar appointed a graduate of Saint-Cyr, General Nâzım Pasha, as minister of war; Nâzım was a Çerkez from Istanbul whom Marshal Göltz considered to be the best officer in the Ottoman Army.⁸⁰ The ARF was not slow to draw the lessons of these changes. In an 18 July 1912 declaration, the Western Bureau announced that it had effectively broken with the Young Turks.⁸¹ In the same period, several books were published, the obvious purpose of which was to get at the truth about the massacres in Cilicia.⁸²

Significantly, the ARF waited until mid-September 1912 to create a special committee including Rupen Ter Minasian and Sepastatsi Murad. Its first working meeting took place in Constantinople. The “question of self-defense” was on the agenda, and this was the first time since the July 1908 revolution that the party discussed the issue. Those at the meeting agreed that a self-defense project would require “years and years” (of work), and that the party did not have “enough responsible cadres in the provinces or the necessary funds” to realize it.⁸³ Was the ARF’s suddenly renewed interest in “self-defense” a consequence of the deterioration of the situation in the eastern provinces? Perhaps. One can, however, also speculate that the momentary elimination of the ARF from the Istanbul political scene gave it a margin to maneuver that it had not previously enjoyed.

The Ottoman Empire, which found itself confronting the threat of war from the moment that Ğazi Ahmed Muhtar’s cabinet took the reins of government, was not, according to contemporary observers, in a position to fight. Its finances were at a low ebb and its army was poorly organized and demoralized after several years of lack of discipline. For the first time, however, non-Muslims would be taking part in a war; they were mobilized just as their compatriots were. The patriotic appeals thus concerned all Ottoman subjects, and the Armenians were not the last to rise to the “defense of the fatherland.”

The Balkan alliance seems to have surprised even the European diplomats, who were concerned, to be sure, about the fate of the Ottoman Balkans, but from the standpoint of the reforms that they hoped to compel the Sublime Porte to carry out. The specialists on the conflict concur that Greek Prime Minister Venizelos hid his hand with consummate skill and played a decisive role in forging the unlikely Balkan alliance.

In September 1912 a festive atmosphere, laced with patriotic sentiments, reigned in Constantinople. The most enthusiastic counted on celebrating their victory in Sofia before the year was out, Bulgaria having been promoted to the rank of the empire’s main foe. The liberal cabinets, made up of experienced men who were aware of the weakness of the army and its lack of modern arms and equipment, were opposed to the war, as was the majority of the Ottoman parliament. Only the Young Turks, who had lost most of their seats in the new assembly, actively campaigned in favor of going to war.⁸⁴ In an article published in the 21 September 1912 Tanin, a semi-official Ittihad organ, Enis Avni Bey wrote, under the pseudonym Aka Gündüz: “Every spot on which I tread shall spurt forth blood ... If I leave one stone upon another, may the home I leave behind me be razed.”⁸⁵ This longing for a good fight reflected the Young Turks’ ambition to profit from the opportunity offered by the war to win back territory lost over the past few decades. The violence that had attended the interventions of the Ottoman army in Macedonia and Albania in the recent past perhaps explains the declaration that the foreign minister, Noradounghian, made in the foreign press to the effect that the Ottoman army would observe the rules of civilized countries in waging the war and that there would be no massacres in the areas it occupied. On the afternoon of 21 September, the Ittilâf organized a rally on the square in front of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque; 100,000 people took part. One of the first to speak was an old acquaintance of ours, Diran Kelekian, the editor-in-chief of Sabah, who declared that he was in favor of going to war and made a patriotic speech that ended with the elegantly defensive formula: “Either the Ottomans will leave 30 million graves behind them or they will show Europe what stuff they are made of by crushing the Balkan states.”⁸⁶

On the evening of the same day, in the same square, the Ittihad held its own meeting under Talât’s lead. Those in attendance were younger. The list of speakers included Talât himself, Hasan Fehmi, Cemaleddin Arif, Hagop Boyajian, and the ARF’s representative, Dr. Garabed Pashayan.⁸⁷ “The ARF,” Pashayan said, “is generally opposed to war, which produces misery and privation for the people. However, it can only affirm its approval of a combat the purpose of which is to defend the fatherland against external aggression.” While Pashayan’s speech, which hewed closely to the Dashnaktsutiun’s line, was not characterized by patriotic excess, it nonetheless reaffirmed the ARF’s solidarity with its former allies in these difficult circumstances (the party had broken with the CUP on 18 July). The last speaker, Ömer Naci, who was considered one of the best CUP propagandists, appealed to the “spirit of a race” that had known only victory; Naci exhorted his listeners to “go spit in the faces of the handful of petty nations that insult the seven hundred years of existence of the Turkish race.”⁸⁸ In this atmosphere of patriotic one-upmanship, many Armenians volunteered for the army, as did many Çerkez and Kurds. It should be noted, however, that there was no draft in Syria, Mesopotamia, or the eastern provinces of Anatolia. Despite all this, the statements that foreign minister Noradounghian made to the reporter from Le Temps revealed that he was personally opposed to the war.⁸⁹

Both the Ittilâf and the Ittihad solicited Armenian support for their positions. The Ittihadist opposition, however, knew much better how to mobilize large crowds. Moreover, it could, although it was no longer in power, rely on the networks that it had built up in all classes of society. Turning the first public demonstrations to account, it mobilized university students in particular in order to pressure and destabilize Ahmed Muhtar’s liberal government. It knew better than any of its rivals what issues could bring people together, such as rejection of Article 23 of the Treaty of Berlin, which provided for reforms in Rumelia, or of the idea of equality for all the empire’s subjects – a theme symptomatic of the state of Ottoman society in the period. By far the most impressive demonstration of the day was the students’, started by one hundred or so Young Turk militants on 24 September 1912. It quickly turned into a semi-insurrection and put the government, whose hostility to the war was unpopular, in a delicate situation: the demonstrators accused it of “crawling before the Balkan states.”⁹⁰

Thus, the government was caught between the hammer of a public opinion burning to go to war and the anvil of the great powers, who were urging it to ratify the celebrated 23 August 1880 “law of the vilayets,” which would reform the local administration and translate Article 23 of the Treaty of Berlin into practice in the regions that the Balkan states sought to acquire. Hence, it was forced to publish a declaration that cautiously affirmed that the reforms were still under examination and that there could be no question of ratifying an unconstitutional law. At the same time, however, Noradounghian promised the Western ambassadors that Article 23 would soon be applied; this sparked new demonstrations. In order to avoid war, the Council had no other choice than to make the concessions that the Balkan states were demanding, and, in particular, to enact Article 23.⁹¹

It will readily be imagined how easy it was for the Ittihad’s networks to turn “Turkish” public opinion against reforms that were considered to be acts of treachery that profited the empire’s non-Muslim groups, who were perceived as enemies enjoying the support of the Christian powers. Torn between hopes sparked by the liberal government’s promises to enact reforms and alarm engendered by the public’s hostility to the slightest concession, Armenian circles assumed their responsibilities and summoned their compatriots to do their duty. They were, however, unsettled by Tanin’s affirmation that, if Article 23 were to be applied in the vilayets of European Turkey, “Article 61 would follow on its heels” – that is, the Article of the Treaty of Berlin that concerned the Armenian provinces.⁹² The cause-and-effect relationship was quite clearly spelled out, as was the parallel between events in the Balkans and the Armenian provinces in eastern Anatolia. Tanin’s remarks offered a glimpse of the Ittihad’s vision of the empire’s future and the depth of its determination to preserve its territorial integrity. It left the Armenians with little hope that even the smallest reform would be enacted in the east. A few weeks later, after the Ottoman army’s defeat at the hands of the Balkan Coalition, the CUP again assayed a rapprochement with the ARF, passing in silence over the positions it had taken in public on the eve of the war. The moving spirit behind this renewed invitation to collaborate was Mehmed Talât, who extended it to Zohrab as well. The situation was critical, and Talât accordingly made a number of promises that clearly contradicted the CUP’s long-standing positions: he held out the prospect of enacting the 1880 law on the vilayets, resolving agrarian questions (land theft) and repressing looters.⁹³

The ARF’s Western Bureau had observed the Balkan Coalition’s initial successes with a certain alarm, aware that the Armenians could not expect the slightest help from Europe or Russia if the Turks should turn against them. Caution was in order, in Simon Zavarian’s estimation: “This is crucial, for, if the Turks are defeated, they will naturally seek to avenge themselves on the Armenians, who constitute the weakest group and cannot defend themselves.”⁹⁴ There were grounds for these apprehensions. During the Balkan War and in the following months, the situation in the eastern provinces had deteriorated, due in part to the arrival of Bosnian muhacirs fleeing the fighting; large numbers of them had been sent pouring into the Armenian vilayets. These refugees, their feelings against Christians in general at a fever pitch, worried Vahan Papazian. “We feared,” he wrote, “that, like locusts, they would devour everything the Armenians possessed and carry out a new massacre of them. Such was the government’s diabolical plan.”⁹⁵

In the field, the Armenian soldiers did their duty, particularly in defending Janina. Observers unanimously declared that they had fought bravely and noted the competence of the Armenian officers, who were especially effective as artillerymen. Like the rest of the Ottoman army, they suffered many casualties.⁹⁶ In a defeated, humiliated country, however, that did not count for much.

The Ittihad’s leaders in particular perceived these events as a national and personal tragedy, proof of the total failure of the grandiose plans. Many of them had spontaneously enlisted in the army, beginning with Talât,⁹⁷ while others such as Cemal did their duty as officers. Dr. Nâzım was even subjected to the humiliation of being arrested in the historical headquarters of the Committee of Union and Progress when the Greeks captured Salonika in October 1912; arrested with him was the Albanian deputy from Derviş Bey, the leader of one of the Committee’s most active groups of fedayis. Nâzım and Serez, who were taken under heavy guard to Greece, had at least been spared the spectacle of the plunder of the Muslim and Jewish populations, as well as the murders and rapes committed by the Greek soldiers under the gaze of shocked witnesses.⁹⁸

All of General Nâzım’s courage and intelligence was required to halt the advance of the Bulgarian army in Çatalca, a few dozen kilometers to the west of Constantinople, and to free the other Young Turk leaders who had been apprehended during the battle⁹⁹ as they were attempting to flee to the capital. This minister of war, despised by the CUP leaders, now rescued the very men who would assassinate him a few months later. During these events, a new Young Turk paramilitary organization was to take its first steps in subversion, sabotage, and political murder. It would soon take the name Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa (Special Organization) and would play an important role in preparing the new conquest of Edirne in July 1913.¹⁰⁰

In a declaration published on 25 December 1912, the Ittihad’s bête noire, the Hnchak Central Committee, summed up the dilemma with which the Armenian authorities were confronted after this war, which put an end to the Turkish presence in Europe: “In this critical hour, this appalling, fertile hour, fraught with consequences, the Armenian Question has also loomed up: it is one of the thorniest questions there is, one of the most difficult to resolve, caught as it is in the iron ring of the most unfavorable circumstances.” The editors of the Hnchaks’ official organ went on to point out that Young Turkey had been unable to carry out the slightest reform, observing that its constitution “was a military ‘constitution,’ one which proved, for that very reason, from the standpoint of the interests of the people of the state, wretchedly sterile.” Alluding to the remedies the Young Turk leaders had prescribed for the country, they concluded that the Young Turks had “turned out to be, not doctors, but veterinarians; and not even that, but, rather, butchers killing animals in a slaughterhouse.”¹⁰¹

Chapter 5

Armenian Revolutionaries and Young Turks: The Anatolian Provinces and Istanbul, 1910–12