It is important to notice that the so-called Armenian Atrocities have
a remarkable family likeness to the “Bulgarian Atrocities,” over which
a large number of sentimental people in England developed a frenzy of
indignation.
A comparison of Sir Henry Layard’s despatch to Lord Derby on the
“Bulgarian Atrocities,” dated 1877, with Sir Mark Sykes’ account of the
happenings which commenced with the disturbances at Zeitun in 1895, show
exactly how both these events originated and were grossly exaggerated.
The history of every alleged massacre in Turkey is almost the same,
whether we consider the Bulgarian “atrocities” in 1876, the disturbances
in Sassun in 1896, those in Constantinople in the same year, or those
at Van in 1915. In every case we find the same charges of connivance by
local officials acting under orders from Constantinople, the same gross
exaggerations and the same stories of bestiality, in which the traducers
of the Turks seem to take a special delight. And it is these same people,
as the _Near East_ said in a leading article, who compel the Turks “to
listen to sermons about disorders which were deliberately fomented by the
preachers themselves or by men preaching in their name.”
Referring, to these “hellish” and “unutterable” forms of torture of which
the Turks are so freely accused, ‘Odysseus’ says:
These are often spoken of as being so terrible that the details
cannot be given in print, but I believe them to be largely
the invention of morbid and somewhat prurient brains. Medical
testimony makes it certain that no human being could survive
the tortures which some Armenians are said to have suffered
without dying.
Sir Henry Layard wrote as follows to Lord Derby:
The English people cannot, perhaps, yet bear to hear the truth
of the events of last year; but it is my duty to state it to
your lordship. The marvellous ability shown by RUSSIA and HER
AGENTS in MISLEADING PUBLIC OPINION in England and elsewhere
has been amply rewarded. It will probably be long before that
which is true can be separated from that which is false; when
history does so it will be too late. The Porte has taken no
effective means to place its case before Europe. It neither
employs the Press nor competent agents for such purposes. Its
appeals to the Powers, and the State papers that it issues to
refute the charges against it, are so prepared that they are
more calculated to injure its cause. A great portion of the
English public are, probably, still under the impression that
the statements upon which the denunciations against Turkey were
originally founded are true—the 60,000 Christians outraged and
massacred; the cartloads of human heads; the crowd of women
burnt in a barn; and other similar horrors. There are persons
and amongst them, I grieve to say, Englishmen, who boast
that they invented these stories with the object of “writing
down” Turkey, to which they were impelled by a well-known
hand. People in England will scarcely believe that the most
accurate and complete inquiries into the events of last year in
Bulgaria now reduce the number of deaths to about 3,500 souls,
including the Turks who were, in the first instance, slain by
the Christians. No impartial man can now deny that a RISING of
the CHRISTIANS, which was intended by its authors to lead to a
GENERAL MASSACRE of the MOHAMMEDANS, was in contemplation, and
that it was directed by RUSSIAN _and_ PANSLAVIST AGENTS.[4]
Sir Mark Sykes writes (and his account is so graphic that the author
makes no apology for quoting him in full):
Some Revolutionary Society, not being satisfied with the
general state of affairs in Turkey and scenting collections
and relief funds in the future, judged it expedient in the
year of grace 1895, to despatch certain emissaries to Armenia.
On the warlike population of Zeitun they pinned their hopes
of raising a semi-successful revolution, and six of their
boldest agents were accorded to that district. What the end of
the revolution would be these desperadoes recked little, so
long as the attention of Europe was drawn to their cause and
their collection-boxes. These individuals however found their
people by no means ripe for insurrection and their influence
was but small. True, there were certain persons ready to talk
sentimentally and foolishly, possibly treasonably, but in no
way prepared to rise actually in arms. However, an opportunity
of embroiling their countrymen unexpectedly presented itself,
by taking advantage of which they succeeded in forcing the hand
of the Government.
It happened that a number of Furnus and Zeitunli Armenians were
in the habit of going to Adana for the purpose of earning money
as farmers and handicraftsmen; for some reason, the Government
at that time issued an order that all strangers should return
to their own towns and districts. The Furnus and Zeitunli
Armenians were enraged at this action, saying that they were
not permitted by the Padishah to earn sufficient to pay their
taxes, which they considered exorbitant; consequently they were
foolish enough to pillage some Turkomans on their way home.
The Turkomans addressed themselves in complaint to the
Mutesarif of Marash, who decided to investigate the affair
by a commission consisting of a Turkish Bimbashi (field
officer) and an Armenian resident, escorted by five Zaptiehs.
The agents saw in this move a chance of bringing matters to
a crisis and either attacked, or persuaded the villagers to
attack, the commission, killing the Bimbashi and three of the
guard, and carrying off the Christian commissioner with them.
The surrounding Armenians, knowing themselves to have been
originally in the wrong, and seeing themselves compromised,
accepted the inevitable and joined the revolutionaries.
The Governor of Marash, having been informed of this affair,
despatched a company of infantry to reinforce the garrison
at Bertiz. The rebel leaders and their followers intercepted
this party, and an undecided action resulted, owing to the
assistance given by the Moslems of Bertiz. The next day the
revolutionists decided to attack the garrison at Zeitun in
order to force that town (whose inhabitants had but little
inclination) to join a jehad against the Osmanli. After a brief
resistance the castle surrendered, through the incapacity of
its besotted commander.
Having gained a victory of some importance, the Armenian force
proceeded to the Kertul district, where they plundered and
sacked several Turkish villages, eventually seizing Anderim,
where they burnt the Konak. On their way back to Zeitun they
committed some most disgraceful murders at Chukarhissar in
commemoration of the decease of the late Armenian kingdom which
was finally ended at that place.[5]
After this anarchy supervened. The Moslems and Kurds,
infuriated by exaggerated reports, lusting for treasure of the
wealthy but feeble bazaar Armenians, massacred and overwhelmed
them at Marash and elsewhere. The Turkish Government, now
thoroughly alarmed, had concentrated two divisions, one
at Marash, under Ferik Pasha, who showed an extraordinary
incapacity during the massacre; the other under a reliable
soldier, Ali Pasha, at Adana. The latter with considerable
promptitude swept forward towards Zeitun, driving before him
the Armenian population, and although certain “outrages”[6]
were committed during the march, I do not think that he is in
any way to blame for the conduct of the campaign. It would have
been a grave military fault to have left a hostile population
in his rear; and the Armenians he called upon to surrender,
were already too overcome with panic to accept terms, and
either awaited destruction in their villages, resisting to the
last, or fled to the town of Zeitun, where the revolutionary
agents, in order to maintain their prestige, were cramming the
population with absurd falsehoods of a British relief column
landed at Alexandretta.
One of them even sent out messengers, who returned with hopeful
letters which he himself had written. But this impostor and his
colleagues were not satisfied with the general disloyalty of
the inhabitants, and felt that some deed should be committed
which would absolutely debar the people from any hope of mercy
from the Government. Accordingly they assembled the refugees
driven in by Ali Pasha, and repaired with them to the Konak,
where the imprisoned garrison was quartered, _and proceeded
to murder them with bestial cruelty_. It must be remembered
that this piece of villainy can in no way be imputed to the
population of Zeitun, but to the disgraceful ruffianism of the
revolutionaries and the crazy fanaticism of the exasperated and
hopeless villagers. It must also be recorded to the credit of
the Zeitunlis themselves, that after this abominable butchery
several crept into the yard and rescued some seventy soldiers,
who survived beneath the corpses of their comrades: fifty-seven
of these were handed over at the end of the war. It is a relief
to find in all these bloody tales of Armenia such noble deeds
of kindness on the part of Christians to Moslems, and Moslems
to Christians, and that every massacre can bring similar cases
to light.
After that foolish slaughter the revolutionary agents may have
plumed themselves on a striking piece of policy. Zeitun was
compromised beyond recall, and the town prepared to withstand
the siege to the last; but here the chapter of Zeitun closes,
for within three weeks Edham Pasha, a noble example of what
a cultivated Turk can be, arrived on the scene, and with the
assistance of the European Consuls concluded an honourable
peace with the town; containing, alas! a clause by which the
miserable causes of all this unhappiness and bloodshed were
allowed to return unmolested to Europe, where they probably eke
out an existence as distinguished as their military adventures.
It would appear a grave fault on the part of the Powers to have
allowed the revolutionary agents to escape.
As to how far the Turks were in the wrong, who can judge? They
have a side which should be considered, as it is impossible
for them to allow a revolution to be impending in the heart
of their country, when threatening enemies appear on every
frontier. They have their own homes to consider, and if they
allowed the revolutionaries to continue their intrigues, there
is little doubt that a formidable insurrection would have
broken out whenever the moment was favourable. Also it must
be borne in mind, that in the event of an Armenian rebellion
it was the intention of the conspirators to have perpetrated
similar massacres.
The necessary killing in India after the Mutiny, although
carried out more formally, was just as merciless; and from all
one can gather, the gentle Skobeleff pacified Central Asia much
as the Turks aborted the Armenian revolution.
It is also a fact that the Armenians have an extraordinary
habit of running into danger without having the courage to face
it, and the revolutionists from abroad were always prepared
to provoke a massacre in order to induce the Powers to assist
them. I have good reason to know that these wretches actually
schemed to murder American missionaries, hoping that America
would declare war on the supposition that the Turks were the
criminals.
The same writer points out that the massacres of Malatia, in the year
1896, were an exception to the general rule, because in this instance the
Moslems struck first, fearing a general rising and slaughter of their
wives and families.
‘Odysseus’ says:
Perhaps this frame of mind will be more intelligible if we try
to imagine what would be the feelings of Anglo-Indians, if
they supposed that the natives, under the influence of Russian
intrigues, were preparing to repeat the horrors of the Mutiny.
Probably the orders issued to the local Ottoman authorities
warned them to be on their guard against any revolutionary
movement of the Armenians, and should there he any reason to
apprehend one, to at once take the offensive.
Sir Mark Sykes’s remarks also deserve quotation:
When one first hears the tale of the Malatia massacre, one
says, now indeed there was no excuse for the Turks; this
was a brutal attempt to destroy a harmless population; but
on inquiry it is the same foolish, hopeless tale, the usual
boastful Armenian threats, the inevitable noisy talk of freedom
and liberty; the cry that the Turks were on the verge of
collapse! the arms collected! the usual pointless intrigue and
the inevitable betrayals by each other; the final provocation
given, and the natural outbreak of the Moslems, resulting in
massacre. The Armenians had intended to fight; had prepared
for a revolution; had collected weapons from all parts; but
as usual, on the very first onslaught they were hopeless and
panic-stricken, and what they intended to have been a battle
ended in a pitiless slaughter.
The only few who maintained anything like a bold front were
those who took possession of the Armenian Church and held it
against the mob; but my admiration for them was lost when I
learned that these miserable hounds, when they saw Franciscan
monks escaping from their convent, fired on them at 200 yards
in hopes of killing a European and so forcing the hand of the
Powers. This ruse I have alluded to before, and it seems to be
a favourite stratagem, exhibiting the Armenian nature in its
most unpleasant light.
How massacres could well have been avoided is hard to imagine.
The Armenians insisted on threatening revolutions; openly
boasted that the Powers would help them; silently intrigued
against the Government; silently betrayed one another’s
intrigues; collected arms and gave offence to the Moslems, and
yet possessed no more cohesive fighting or military capacity
than rabbits.
The falsity of the suggestion of the Pro-Armenians that these were
unprovoked massacres inspired by the Turkish Government working upon
Moslem fanaticism and Kurdish greed, is also shown by the following
passage from Sir Edwin Pears’ book:[7]
As a friend to the Armenians, revolt seemed to me purely
mischievous. Some of the extremists declared that while they
recognized that hundreds of innocent persons suffered from each
of these attempts, they could provoke a big massacre which
would bring in foreign intervention.
The only apparent reason why Sir Edwin Pears regarded as “mischievous”
these revolts, resulting in the sacrifice of hundreds of innocent
persons, is indicated by his adding that “such intervention was useless
so long as Russia was hostile,” and it is interesting also to note
the callousness with which the extremists at the cost of hundreds of
innocent victims endeavoured to provoke a massacre of thousands of their
compatriots.
In August 1896 the revolutionaries, having failed to stir up a general
rising in Asia determined to adopt desperate measures in Constantinople
in the hope of forcing the hands of the Ambassadors. About 1 p.m. on an
August afternoon they suddenly attacked with bombs and revolvers the
guard of the Ottoman Bank, twelve of whom they killed. They then broke in
and seized the European staff as hostages. Besieged in the top story of
the bank they threatened to blow up the building with all who were in it,
rather than surrender. The Ambassadors hastily appealed to the Porte, who
yielded to their importunities on behalf of their nationals and allowed
them to guarantee a safe conduct to the conspirators. That night they
were quietly smuggled away on Sir Edgar Vincent’s yacht.
Bombs were also thrown in the Grand Rue de Pera, near the Galata Serai,
and some of the conspirators who had taken a position upon the roofs of
the houses in that, the principal thoroughfare of Constantinople, fired
upon the populace in the street below.
There seems little doubt that the revolutionists had contemplated a
series of attacks at different important points, to be followed by a more
or less general rising of the Armenian population, which numbered from
200,000 to 400,000.
A cry went through the city that the Armenians had risen in revolt and
were massacreing the other citizens. Many persons armed themselves with
cudgels and, joined by a cosmopolitan mob from Pera and Galata, many of
whom were Greeks anxious to pay off old scores on their hated commercial
rivals, wreaked vengeance on the Armenian population. The soldiers and
police took no part in the killing. It is estimated that about 1,000
persons perished, including those killed by the bombs and revolvers of
the conspirators. What happened in London and Liverpool after the sinking
of the “Lusitania” affords an idea of how the East End people of London,
who claim to be far more highly educated than the Constantinople rabble,
would have behaved if German desperados, after murdering twelve of the
sentinels on guard at the Bank of England, had been allowed to escape
free in deference to the representations of the American and Spanish
Ambassadors, especially after the fears and passions of the mob had
been aroused by German aliens shooting and bombing from the roofs of
the houses. In considering the question of massacre we must always bear
in mind that mob law is inevitably cruel and senseless, as witness the
excesses committed during the French Revolution and the Commune, the
lynchings in America of to-day, and the pogroms of Russia.
MR. SIDNEY WHITMAN was in Constantinople at the time as special
correspondent for the _New York World_ in connection with the “so-called
Armenian atrocities,” as he terms them. The instructions sent him by Mr.
Gordon Bennett were very precise:
The correspondent is to take no sides and express no opinions
of his own. In many cases it would appear that the matter sent
to the papers by their correspondents in Turkey is biassed
against the Turks. This implies an injustice, against which
even a criminal on trial is protected.
Mr. Sidney Whitman’s book of “Turkish Memories” throws many interesting
side-lights on these events. He says:
There was little or no reason for assuming that the
disturbances had their source in religious fanaticism directed
against the Christian as such; whilst evidence was accumulating
that a vast Armenian conspiracy, nurtured in England, obscured
the real issue, to which there were two sides.
Writing of the Press, he observes:
The agitation on the part of the Armenian Committees in the
different capitals of Europe had been carried on to such
purpose, that there was hardly an American or an English
newspaper which had a good word left to say of the Turks. A
horde of adventurers of various nationalities, déclassés of
every sphere of life, cashiered officers among the rest, who
had left their native country for its good, were eking out a
precarious livelihood by providing newspaper correspondents, if
not Embassies, with backstairs information.
He mentions that:
The agitation carried on in England by Canon McColl and the
Duke of Westminster, backed by sundry fervent Nonconformists,
had had the effect of exhibiting the fanatical Turk as
thirsting for the blood of the Christian.
And yet not a single Christian other than the Orthodox Armenians was
molested. With regard to the Jews he tells us how a Jewish money-changer,
mistaken for an Armenian, had been set on by the mob: when it was
ascertained that he was a Jew, he was released, but the crowd ran after
him, and brought him back to collect his money, which was scattered
on the ground. Would any other mob in the world have acted thus under
similar conditions?
It is a noteworthy fact that from the time when the Jews first found
shelter in Turkey from their Christian persecutors and the terrors of
the Inquisition in Spain, until the present date, no one has ever even
suggested that they have been ill-treated in the Ottoman Dominions; on
the contrary, thousands of fugitive Jews, escaping from pogroms in Russia
have within the last quarter of a century found security and peace in
Turkey. Many Poles fleeing from persecution have found a safe asylum in
Turkey, as well as the Hungarian leaders Kossuth, Gorgey and many others
after their abortive revolution against Austrian domination. Although
threatened with war by both Austria and Russia unless he surrendered
the fugitives, the Sultan of Turkey refused to break the sacred laws of
hospitality enjoined by Mohammed. On an earlier occasion a Sultan of
Turkey had similarly refused to surrender to Russia the King of Ukraine
(Lesser Russia), who was a refugee at his court, although he was offered
a great reward should he comply, with war as the alternative in case of
refusal.
If the Turk were a fanatical persecutor of all persons professing another
faith than his own, how is it that for centuries Jews, Roman Catholic
and Greek Christians have been allowed free exercise of their religion
in all parts of the Turkish Empire, and that Protestant missionaries of
many sects have not been interfered with in that country? Does not all
this tend to prove that the Armenian trouble is a political and not a
religious one?
Mr. Sidney Whitman further says, that in one hospital he visited he found
that about forty Turkish soldiers, who were lying there, were wounded by
Armenian bombs or revolver shots during the street fighting, and that the
correspondents of the different European papers, when asked to inspect a
large quantity of bombs found in a house at Pera, refused to do so.
Such was the general disinclination to admit any fact which
could tell in favour of the great provocation the Turks had
received from the Armenian revolutionists.
The sad case of the late Mr. Melton Prior shows a pleasing exception to
the general attitude adopted by the foreign journalists:
The renowned war correspondent confided to me that he was
in an awkward predicament. The public at home had heard of
nameless atrocities, and was anxious to receive pictorial
representations of these. The difficulty was how to supply them
with what they wanted, as the dead Armenians had been buried
and _no women or children suffered hurt, and no Armenian church
had been desecrated_. As an old admirer of the Turks, and as an
honest man, he declined to invent what he had not witnessed.
But others were not equally scrupulous. I subsequently saw an
Italian illustrated paper containing harrowing pictures of
women and children being massacred in a church.