THE PRESERVATION OF THE ARMENIAN ELEMENT IS ABSOLUTELY INDISPENSABLE
TO THE WELL-BEING AND PROSPERITY OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. IT HAS BEEN
PROVED THROUGH CENTURIES THAT CHRISTIANS AND MOSLEMS ARE ABLE TO
LIVE IN PEACE AND AMITY IN TURKEY, WHICH IS EQUALLY THE COUNTRY OF
BOTH.
One hesitates, on general principles, to attempt to advise, or to
admonish, as to its best interests, a nation at war. In a life and
death struggle such as this war has become, it would be naturally
supposed that a nation and its rulers are the best judges of what it
is to their interest to do. Advice from outside sources is open to the
suspicion of being not disinterested. And does not admonition, if not
sheer impertinence, betray impotence on the part of the admonisher?
But in the Ottoman Empire, the situation is different from that of
any other country in Europe. There is not a sufficient number of
educated men among the non-Christian elements of the Ottoman Empire to
form, let alone to guide, public opinion. Consequently, there is no
public opinion. The governing power has always been in the hands of a
small and corrupt circle, and the Ottoman nation has not developed in
self-government, in popular institutions, as have the other nations of
Europe.
The new régime was hailed with joy by the outside world, and by the
non-Moslem elements inside the empire as well, because the Constitution
of 1908 was regarded as the starting point in a struggle of the people
of the empire, irrespective of religion and race, against an absolutism
that had in practice proved equally injurious, if not equally
oppressive, to all the races subjected to the tyranny of Yildiz Kiosk.
It was very soon seen, however, that Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity
had no part whatever in the Young Turk conception of a constitutional
state. It was simply the replacing of one clique by another. The
honest, sincere Young Turks, with motives above suspicion, who
actually meant what they said, were so few in number that they could
not prevail against the type in the Committee of Union and Progress,
personified by such men as Talaat, Enver, Djavid, Djemal, Hairi, Ahmed
Riza, Dr. Nazim, Hadji Adil, Bedri, and Hussein Djahid. The Moslem
population of the empire, being intensely ignorant, could not be looked
to by the few enthusiasts to support constitutional principles. The
Christian population, much better educated and having much more reason
to appreciate the newly-proclaimed liberty, were the only elements upon
which a politically regenerated Turkey could stand. _For this reason
alone did the Armenian element become immediately a source of danger
to the new clique that had replaced Abdul Hamid._ These so-called
Young Turks turned upon the Armenians just as Abdul Hamid had turned
upon them--to prevent their becoming the leaven in the regeneration
of Turkey. The Constitution, hailed by the Armenians as the beginning
of their political emancipation, became almost immediately--and
_inevitably_--their death-warrant.
One does not need to study deeply, one has simply to read the history
of the Ottoman Empire since Great Britain and France saved the Turks
by the Crimean War, to realize that the Armenians, from the moment the
question of “reforms” was introduced by the Powers in their dealings
with the Sublime Porte, have been the unwitting victims of the cause of
civilization in the Near East. The Congress of Berlin fully recognized
this fact.
The trans-Caucasian policy of Russia, and the Balkan policy of all the
Great Powers first awakened, and has since been the exciting cause of,
the fanaticism of the Moslems of Turkey against the Armenians. Before
there was an acute “Question of the Orient,” did we ever have great
Armenian massacres? And yet, Christian Europe never made a concerted
effort to save this unhappy race from the results of Europe’s own
dealings with the Turks.
The Armenians, of course, always suffered to a certain extent from
their social and political disabilities under Moslem rule. But they
have lived for centuries in comparative security, and certainly with a
large measure of prosperity, as Ottoman subjects. Personal relations
between Turks and Armenians have been not at all bad. I have had
opportunity to observe this fact in different parts of Turkey. The
Turks are not, like the Arabs, a fanatical people by nature. The
persecution and massacre of Armenians is not, as the general European
and American public have erroneously thought, an age-old matter of
religious strife. Nor has it been, as is so frequently asserted by
those who have the effrontery to explain and attempt to condone (ye
gods!) Armenian massacres, because the Armenians are money-lenders and
oppress the simple-minded Turks. The refutation of the first of these
two prevalent beliefs is that the great Armenian massacres are events
of the last quarter of a century, while Armenians and Turks have been
living together in Asia Minor nearly seven centuries. The refutation of
the second is that the massacres have not been confined to the larger
cities, where many of the Armenians are well-to-do, but have always
taken place in exactly the same way and in exactly the same degree in
communities where the Armenians are both ignorant and poverty-stricken.
Nothing is more stupid, nothing more against nature and history, than
advocating that the solution of the Armenian question and salvation
of the Armenian race is in emigration _en masse_ to America or some
other country. The Armenians are an indigenous element in Asiatic
Turkey. Their wholesale emigration might save the lives of several
hundred thousand individuals. But it would break the hearts of most
of those who were thus saved, and it would mark the disappearance of
the Armenians as a race and a nation, just as certainly as if their
extermination by massacre were completed. What has the Armenian race
done that it should disappear? And is not _jus soli_ as strong as the
_jus patris_--especially in lands where there is sunshine?
The preservation of the Armenian element in Asia Minor is indispensable
to the well-being and prosperity of the Turks themselves. Politically,
as well as economically, it is impossible for the Turks to continue to
exist as an independent, and in any measure at all self-supporting,
nation without the help of the Armenians. The Armenian massacres
illustrate the old story of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
In their pitiful ignorance, in their frenzy of blood-lust, the Turks
are turning upon and destroying those whose existence is precious and
vital to their community and national life. Travel where you will
through Turkey, from one end of the great empire to the other, and you
find no community _that is prosperous_ without Armenians. Along the
seacoast, the Greeks play an important part in the economic life of
Turkey. But in the interior the Armenians are a _sine qua non_ to the
Turks.
Of the Armenians in Turkey one might have said without fear of
contradiction before the terrible events of the past six months,
that they were in no place numerically strong enough to jeopardize
the political independence of the Ottoman Empire, but that they were
everywhere in sufficient number to guarantee its economic independence.
Intelligent and patriotic Turks must certainly see that the attempt to
exterminate the Armenians, or to banish the remnant of them from Asia
Minor, is a mortal blow to Turkish independence, political as well as
economic. The extermination of the Armenians is to the interest of a
certain nation--but that nation is not Turkey!