CC BY
44ARMENOCIDE: THE HISTORICAL PRECEDENT OF THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS
Levon Shirinyan'
“Armenia is a vanguard of Europe in Asia” formula, which has been offered long ago, correctly defines the place of the Armenians in our world. The historical mission of the Armenian nation, prompted by the whole course of its development, is to seek and find the synthesis of the East and West”.
Valeriy Brusov
In present days, it has become fashionable to speak about the dialogue of civilizations, but one should not forget about the incompatibility of the cultures and civilizations, which often causes conflicts with tragic consequences.
One of such facts is the Armenocide, among many causes of which the cultural factor was also present. In fact, it was a consequence of the long-standing ethnic conflict between Christian Armenians and Sunni Turks from the Balkans to Anatolia and Caucasus. Being unable to assimilate the alien culture, the Turkish nationalist elite adopted a strategic objective to uproot and annihilate it.
Thus, on April 24, 1915, in accordance with the decision of the country’s government and by the will of the Turkish people events took place in Western Armenia, Armenian Cilicia and other regions of the Ottoman Empire aimed at the final solution of the Armenian Question, i.e. the total extermination of the disarmed and defenseless people. These events were characterized in the May 24, 1915 Declaration of the Allied Powers - Russia, Britain and France, as a crime “against humanity and civilization”.
* Doctor of political sciences and Candidate of Philosophy, the head of the Chair of the Political Sciences and the History of Law of the Kh. Abovyan Armenian State Pedagogical University.
20
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (7), 2010
L.Shirinyan
Turks premeditated and thoroughly planned their actions, and the goal was clear: “to fully exterminate the entire nation” once and for all, and to put an end to the very name of “Armenia”, to wipe out its civilization from the face of the earth, to turn Western Armenia into a logical absurdity – “Eastern Anatolia”, to appropriate its culture1 [1], and to seize the enormous material wealth of the Armenians living in the Empire using the Turkish predisposition to pillage and violence1 2.
The perverted Turkish mind had nurtured this evil deed for decades and began from the deliberate change of the place names in the country and the distortion of the demography. In 1862, a fundamental restructuring of the provinces was implemented. Consequently, the previously vast “Ermenistan eyalet” province was divided into Erzurum, Bitlis and Van provinces, and districts with Muslim population were added to each of them “with crooked, artificially drawn boundaries”, in order to change the demography. Later in 1880 new administrative and territorial divisions were made in Western Armenia to reduce the native population ratio. Furthermore, in 1880s the usage of word “Armenia” was banned. Carrying out such actions time to time targeted to assimilate the Armenians living on their native land to the alien environment consisting of a rabble of different tribes called “the Muslims”.
The pretext for this “adjustment” of the Turkish stance on the issue was the significant economic and civilizational upturn of Armenians, which had begun since the middle of the 19th century. An English clergyman, B. Barail mentioned that the adoption of the National Constitution for the Western Armenians (1860) “marked the revolution in the habits and customs of the East”. That is why, “very soon Armenians turned into a suspicious element both for Turkey and Russia, and since that day they have had no restful life anymore” [2, p. 15-16].
Indeed, the notorious Turkish bile played an exceptional role in preparing ethno-psychological grounds for the Armenocide3. However, the “main argument” was the uncontainable desire of the Turks to “appropriate” the motherland of the Armenians – Armenia, to take it away from its legitimate owners. The overall extermination of the Armenian population clearly showed that sultans and rulers, their political affiliation, gender, religion or nationality may change in Turkey, but their major goal of annihilating Armenia may not.
1 Ernst Dietz, a German art historian considered that the Seljuk art was an extension of the Armenian one.
2 The total value of the pillage by the Turks in the years of the Genocide was about $5 billion in gold. A part of that wealth was pocketed by the robbers and the top authorities, while its “lion’s share” was used for the needs of the Kemalist movement, particularly, for the war against Eastern Armenia.
3 This term is credited to the Syrian Arab historian Moussa Prince, who first used it in 1967.
21
L.Shirinyan
<21 st CENTURY», № 1 (7), 2010
Furthermore, during the times of collaboration between Lenin and Ataturk the prospects of the final annihilation of Armenia and Armenians clearly appeared, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kemalist Turkey Ahmed Mukhtar “explained” to the commander of the Eastern front Kazim Karabekir (now they have turned their eyes to Eastern Armenia): “Armenia is situated on vast Muslim territories (can you imagine that?) and hence, it must be eliminated both politically and physically. It should be considered that the general political situation and our power favour the realization of this plan [3, с. 76-77]”.
It has to be noted that it was Abdul Hamid who formulated and started to implement the plan for extermination of Armenia. His associates and followers, up to Kemal, simply continued the things he initiated. Hamid “directed” the process of stabilization and unification of the Empire, that was giving in under the pressure of the European powers (the policy of the great powers, the national-liberating movements, etc.), to the East. His goal was to gain access to Western Arabia, Muslim shrines and Armenia [4, p. 29]. The Balkan wars made his intentions firmer. “I will not regret about losing the Balkans that suck our powers dry”, said Abdul Hamid. “We want to stay in Anatolia and live separately”, stated the “the bloody sultan” [5, pp. 812, 827].
Hamid’s concept/idea was welcomed by somes in Europe. In this aspect the address of Baron Hans von Wangenheim to the central committee of “Ittihat” (on the eve of the 1914 war), the forerunners of German national-socialism, is rather conspicuous: “The alliance with Bulgaria is advantageous for you. It is necessary to gain access to the Berlin-Istanbul line, to arm the Straits, deprive Russia of the help from abroad and crush it with joint efforts. By giving you the Caucasus we want to open foryou an access to Turan. You will have to destroy the element getting in the way of Turkey’s unity (i.e. Armenians - L Sh.), and then you shall conquer Per-sa..”[6, p. 18].
Thus, in 1914 the German ambassador spoke about the things that the great Armenian poet Hovhannes Tumanyan had foreseen two years earlier (“... the Armenian Question is one of Turkey’s headaches and with the time it will get even worse as long as the Turks will have to retreat in these lands”). In the meantime, the European powers in mutual accord squeezed out from the Old World the element alien to them in civilizational terms - the Medieval Turkish janissary. They directed him to the East. And on that way Armenia lay. That was the reason why the help of the Christian Europe to the biblical country, the “cradle of civilization” (David Lang) -Armenia, was moderate.
22
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (7), 2010
L.Shirinyan
Meanwhile, the Turk who was out for blood adopted appropriate tactics and carried it out in three stages:
1. 1876-1915– the local, but tending to broaden and expand, policy of the deportation, forcible Islamization and massacres of the Armenians.
2. 1915-1918– the comprehensive process of the final solution of the Armenian Question. The Turks did not fully succeed in part due to the resistance of the remaining Armenians (battle-hardened soldiers and officers of the voluntary regiments; almost eight-month-long fights of the Armenian detachments from Yerznka (Erzincan) to Sardarapat and Baku, the breakthrough of the Syrian-Palestine front by the Armenian Legion on September 19, 1918), and in part due to the international situation.
3. 1919-1923– on one hand the Kemalist policy of annihilation of the Greeks, continuation of the uncompleted Armenocide in the Eastern Armenia and Transcaucasia and expansion to new lands, and on the other hand the denial of the guilt and responsibility of the Turkish state and nation.
Henceforth, according to the plan of the genocidal Turkish state, “the purpose was to try achieving the acceptance of the existing situation by the Armenians. They had to make Armenians abandon any territorial claims in exchange for the recognition of their diminutive state (i.e. the 1918 Republic of Armenia– L. Sh.). Thus, almost full debellation and annexation could have been actually presented as a cession – the voluntary concession of the territory, whereas the Genocide of the Armenian population of those regions, as regrettable events of the past” (Y.Barsegov) [7, p. 215].
Nevertheless, the Genocide brought about the issue of the responsibility of Turkey and Turks:
• criminal penalty of the individuals who masterminded and carried out this crime that shocked the world. They were punished only partly (operation “Nemesis”, Armenian Nurnberg, which was implemented under the active resistance of the Soviet government);
• political responsibility of the Turkish state and creation of Armenia in accordance with the arbitral decision by Woodrow Wilson;
• material responsibility in the form of restitution (restoration of the rights of the Armenians, return of the forcibly taken property, etc.) [8].
23
L.Shirinyan
<21 st CENTURY», № 1 (7), 2010
It is clear that the second and the third points will mostly condition the further struggle of the Armenians. This would beget the liquidation of the effects of the first Genocide in the world – Armenocide, and would avert once and for all the repetition of such crimes1 [9, p. 216, 240].
The remarkable words by Woodrow Wilson sound like a precept: “Armenia should get what it is historically eligible for. It has more rights to live than Turkey... Sooner or later Turkey will face the tribunal and will be held accountable, and then it will be demanded to return to the real owner everything it had robbed” [10, с. 186-187].
April, 2010
Reference Sources and Literature
1. Dietz Ernst, The Seljuk Art (in German), Constantinople, 1948.
2. Maghakia Ormanian, The Armenian Church (in French). Constantinople, 1911.
3. Sarkisian, R, Behind the Scenes: How the 1921 Moscow Treaty Came into Being (in Russian), «Literature of Armenia», 1991, No.1.
4. The Division of the Asian Turkey in Classified Documents of the Former Ministry of the Foreign Affairs (in Russian). Edited by E.A. Adamov, М.,1924.
5. Yazejian, G, The bloody Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Beirut. 1980.
6. Rifat Mevlan zade, The Dark Pages of Ottoman Revolution and Ittihat Program for Extermination of Armenians. Yerevan, 1990.
7. Yu. Barsegov, The Armenian Genocide: turkey’s Responsibility and Global Community’s Commitment. Documents and Comments (in Russian). In 2 Volumes, M.; 2005 (v. 2, part 2).
8. See for details: Barsegov, Yu. G, Armenian Genocide - A Crime by International Law Standards (in Russian). М., 2000.
9. Hocking Joseph, The Path of Glory («Путь к славе»), London, New York, Toronto, 1918.
10. Chalkhushian, G, The Red Book (in Russian). Rostov-on-Don, 2008.
1 Remarkably, hot on the traces of the mass massacre the civilized world spoke about the Armenian Genocide and characterized it as a holocaust, “ghastly holocaust”.
24
