The previous brief history of this people, especially since the
introduction of Christianity into Armenia, has furnished the reader
with sufficient facts to show him that the real trouble of this nation
began from the time of its conversion to Christianity, and has come
down to the present time.
What the Armenians have been suffering now is just a little more
intensified than what they have suffered in the past by the hands
of the fire-worshiping Persians. Had they received Zoroastrianism,
forced upon them in the fifth century, they might have changed the
entire aspect of the history of Western Asia. Or, had they embraced
Mohammedanism in the seventh century, when fanatic missionary soldiers
of Mohammed fell upon them, sword in hand, and massacred thousands upon
thousands in cold blood, because they refused to accept the sensual
religion of a sensual and bloody man, again the history of Western Asia
might have been differently written.
When their infant sons were torn away from their parental bosom by the
Ottoman rulers, and reared in Islamism and inured to the profession
of arms, whose skill, vigor, and courage shook the foundations of the
then civilized world, then, we say, had the Armenians renounced their
religion and professed the Mohammedan faith and entered the army,
they would have brought “to bear on the problems of the battlefield
all the subtlety of intellect developed by ages of mental activity,”
unquestionably would they have saved the Turkish Empire from the
inevitable dissolution into which she has plunged herself. This also
would have undoubtedly given a different feature to the Ottoman history.
Why have the Armenians been so cruelly persecuted, oppressed, tortured
and butchered? Why were their beautiful daughters abducted, their
wives ravished, they themselves massacred by the Kurds, Circassians,
and Turks? Not because they belong to a different nationality--though
they do--but because they belong to a different religion--they are
Christians. So I beg the reader to bear in mind that the real trouble
or the Armenian question, at the bottom, is the old conflict, first
between Christianity and Paganism, then between Christianity and
Mohammedanism, and now with Pagan-Mohammedanism.
The Turkish government found a convenient excuse for persecuting
Christian Armenians under the garb of suppressing a revolutionary
movement. But this movement was of a very recent origin, and altogether
“harmless as to any effective force.” The Turkish misrule in Armenia,
and in all parts of the Ottoman empire, persecutions, confiscations
of property, forcible conversions to Islam, imprisonments, exiles,
and massacres, have begun since the entrance of the Turks into Western
Asia; at times they have been intensified; they are now at their height.
“Tears of Armenia” was the title of a little book which contained
the report of Vartabed Paul Nathanian, who was appointed in 1878
by Bishop Nerses, the patriarch, and the civic and ecclesiastical
councils of Constantinople, to take charge of the diocese of Palu in
Armenia. While there, this noble prelate, following the example of the
Good Shepherd, traveled through the country, visited his flock, and
reported the condition of the people. His report was published. With
great propriety he begins the preface in the following manner: “Tears
and misery, behold, these two painful words are chosen for the theme
of this present work, of which with an aching heart will I speak, and
still more painful it is, that the esteemed reader will hear undeniable
truths.”
The facts recorded in this pamphlet are too painful to be translated
into the English language. The crimes of the Kurds and the injustice
and cruelty of the government’s officers perpetrated upon the Christian
Armenians run from the simplest forms of robbery and cruelty to the
vilest forms of abduction, assault, outrage, torture, and murder.
The report of this venerable Vartabed Nathanian was only the
confirmation and verification of the oppressed condition of the
Armenians in the interior, more or less known before. For, when, in the
autumn of 1876, the European powers sent their representatives to meet
at Constantinople to consider the cruelties of the Turkish government,
the massacre of the Bulgarians and other disturbances in the empire,
Bishop Nerses attempted then to draw attention to the condition of the
Armenians. But his efforts were fruitless, as the conference itself was
futile; a peaceful adjustment of the differences was not agreed upon.
The Russo-Turkish war consequently broke out. Again Armenia had to
furnish the battle-field for these two formidable combatant nations in
Asia.
Russia was apparently fighting for the oppressed Christians. The Turks
were called upon to combat with a Christian nation, which was fighting
as the champion of the Christian subjects of the Ottoman government.
The officials of the government well may say: what do we care for these
wretched Christians who are a constant source of trouble to us? The
ignorant Turkish soldiers and the _bashi-bazouks_,[104] Circassians and
Kurds were incapable of knowing the difference between an Armenian and
a Russian, between a Greek and a Bulgarian, it was enough that all of
them went under the name “Christian.” It was their frequent utterance,
“_Ghiaurlari kesmeli_, the infidels must be killed.” Even when the
government had no war whatever there was no safety for the Christian;
how much less could any tranquillity now be expected. The mountains
especially were infested by those who deserted the army, and the
highway robbers were at the fullest exercise of their predatory powers.
Who suffered the worst, served the most, and received nothing in
Asiatic Turkey? The Armenians. The Turkish troops, by all means, would
avoid on their way to the battle-field lodging at a Turkish, but always
at an Armenian village, where even the most insignificant soldier was a
despot. He must have everything he wished for nothing, and not depart
in peace, but give some trouble to his Christian host. The writer, who
was not very far from the battle-field, being on the main road leading
to it, has seen these things with his own eyes. He may, therefore, say
with perfect truthfulness, that these soldiers did not leave out from
the category of their deeds anything evil, but the good only.
“Turkey bears a striking resemblance to the infernal regions, which
good George Herbert said are paved with broken promises; her conduct
in this war has been marked by the vilest crimes of which a nation can
be guilty. She has not only committed the crime of arming and letting
loose bands of undisciplined, fanatic robbers, whose passions, fed by
the religious exhortations of their bigoted priest, and strengthened
by the proclamation of the Sheikh-ul-Islam, have led, as _the Porte
knew full well and firmly intended that they should lead, to the
brutal massacre of the survivors of the Bulgarian rebellion and the
cold blooded murders of the inoffensive Christians in Armenia_.”[105]
The fearful consequence of this war was the ignominious defeat of
Turkey, and her readiness to come to terms with Russia whose armies
were almost at the gates of Constantinople. So the representatives
of these two combatant powers met at San Stefano, in March, 1878, and
drew out the treaty which bears the name of the place. The 16th article
of this Treaty was suggested and by the earnest solicitation of the
patriarch and the leading Armenians of Constantinople, the Russian
representative inserted the article for the express purpose of securing
the protection of the Armenians. This article runs: “As the evacuation
by the Russian troops of the territory which they occupy in Armenia,
and which is to be restored to Turkey, might give rise to conflicts and
complications detrimental to the maintenance of good relations between
the two countries, the sublime Porte engages to carry into effect,
without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local
requirements in the provinces inhabited by Armenians, and to guarantee
their security from Kurds and Circassians.”
It is the opinion of some of the best Englishmen, that had the
conservative government of England let the Treaty of San Stefano stand,
Russia would have forced the Turkish government to fulfill her promises
of reform in Armenia. But England upset and made it of non-effect by
her interference merely for selfish ends. She negotiated with Turkey
through the Cyprus convention of June, 1878. The following is the
first article of this Anglo-Turkish convention: “His Imperial Majesty,
the Sultan, promises to England to introduce necessary reforms, to be
agreed upon later between the two powers, into the government and for
the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in
these territories [Armenia], and in order to enable England to make
necessary provision for executing her engagement (keeping Russia out of
Armenia), His Imperial Majesty, the Sultan, further consents to assign
the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England.”
The Anglo-Turkish Convention of Cyprus was a dagger thrust by a friend
into the heart of Armenia; it may have been done unwittingly, yet
Armenia has been bleeding ever since.
In the following month, July, 1878, the Congress of the Great Powers
met in Berlin, to adjust the differences and make a smaller map for
Turkey both in Europe and Asia. The indefatigable Patriarch, Bishop
Nerses, sent a special deputation[106] to Berlin to petition the
Congress for a Christian governor over Armenia, like that of Lebanon
since 1861, and the European Powers themselves constituting the
guardians of the Christian Armenians. The Congress of Berlin saw at
once the justice and moderation of the Armenian request, and as a
result we have the sixty-first Article of the Treaty of Berlin. But
with an inexplicable stupidity, and with a criminal credulity, this
Congress left the whole matter in the hands of the Turkish government,
as if that wicked power was ever ready and willing to do what is right
and proper, and the European Powers were to take the simple attitude of
“watching over their [reforms] application.”
The Sixty-first article runs:
“The sublime Porte engages to realize without delay those
ameliorations and reforms which local needs require in the provinces
inhabited by the Armenians, and guarantee their security against the
Circassians and Kurds. It undertakes to make known from time to time,
the measures taken with this object to the powers who will watch over
their application.”
It is not enough to say that the Turkish government has failed
to introduce necessary reforms, to ameliorate the condition of
the Christians, or protect them from the atrocities of the Kurds,
Circassians, and the Turks, since the signing of the Treaty of
Berlin, for it has done more. It has determined, one way or the
other, gradually to decimate and finally to exterminate the entire
Armenian population in the empire. The facts of the history of the last
thirty-five years bear out this assertion.
It was only two years after the signing of the Treaty of Berlin and
England’s contract with Turkey that “the disturbances among the Kurds
assumed a more general character in September (1880), when new troubles
were reported in the district south of New Bajazid in the Sanjak of
Mush, and in other parts of the same region. Incendiary proclamations
were addressed to the Armenians by the insurgent chiefs, and the
governor-general of Van applied to Constantinople for reinforcements
but was answered that none could be spared. On the 20th of September
the Kurds had destroyed thirteen Armenian villages.”
The powers who fixed their signatures through their representatives
to the treaty of Berlin, “through Mr. Goschen, presented a collective
note, on September 7, 1880. It refuted the statement of Abedden
Pasha, that the government had already begun the work of reform, and
after criticising the projected reforms, declared that they had been
inadequate to the object in view and that a much greater development
of the principles of decentralization and religious equality, the
organization of a better police force, more energetic protection
against the Kurds, a more definite provision concerning the functions
of Governor-General, could alone satisfy the rights and expectations
created by the sixty-first article of the Treaty of Berlin.”[107]
“On October 3, without making the slightest references to censures
which had been addressed to it, and even appearing completely to
ignore the collective note, the Porte, assuming a haughty tone, merely
notified the Powers of what it intended to do.”[108]
From this time on it appears that the Powers thought they had done
enough. It is also reported that Prince Bismarck expressed the opinion
that there would be “serious inconvenience” in raising the Armenian
question and the British Ambassador at Constantinople, Mr. Goschen, in
anticipation, wrote to Earl Granville: “If they (the Powers) refuse, or
give only lukewarm support, the responsibility will not lie with Her
Majesty’s Government.”
Thus the abandonment of the cause of justice by the Powers, thus
leaving the Armenians at the pleasure of the Turks, paved the way for
successive massacres by the latter under various pretenses.
The Circassians, Kurds, and Turks, have always been at liberty to go
about well armed, but no Christian was allowed to carry arms of any
kind, not even for self-defense. In case he was found with arms, he
was arrested and cast into a dungeon of indescribable torture. If
the Armenians would protect themselves against their enemies, they
were seized upon by military force as insurgents. Yea, a groundless
suspicion was enough for the officers, who entered, by force of arms,
into the Armenian Church in Erzroum (1890), desecrated the sacred
edifice, disturbed the religious services of the Christians, under the
pretext of searching for arms. The indignation of the Christians at the
violation of their rights cost the lives of several persons, including
that of the Armenian bishop of Erzroum.
Notorious Mousa Bey, a Kurdish chief, after committing numerous
robberies and cruelties, murdered an Armenian and abducted his
daughter; at Bitlis, he tortured an Armenian to death with red-hot
iron. At the head of his brigands he fell upon another Christian
family and destroyed the entire family, and ravished the women in the
village of Dabovank. Many complaints and a multitude of witnesses of
his outrages could hardly effect his being brought to Constantinople to
answer for those charges. After all these crimes, the Turkish court of
Justice--rather of “Mockery,” as the distinguished statesman, the late
Mr. Gladstone, called it--acquitted him.
In the summer of 1890 it looked as if the persecution had reached its
climax. The _London Daily News_ sent special correspondents to Armenia,
and their reports leave no doubt that for some reason or other the
Turkish government have resolved to make the lives of the Armenians
unbearable.
“There is a well-founded suspicion that the sultan is deluding
himself with the idea that, by supplanting the Christian Armenians by
Mohammedan Kurds, he can raise up a formidable barrier to the Russian
conquest of the province. The immediate result of his asinine policy
is to make the Armenians look to the czar as their only powerful
friend, and the feeling of indignation in this country is so strong
on the subject that it is probable Lord Salisbury would not dare to
interfere should Russian troops enter Armenia.”
“Mampre Benglian, the Armenian bishop of Alashgerd, has arrived at
Constantinople by way of Trebizond, under guard as a criminal. The
charge against him is that he advised his flock to leave Armenia and
seek refuge in Persia. The Bishop was arrested and subjected to the
most outrageous indignities, insulted, spat at, and flogged, thrown
into a dungeon and there confined for some time before being sent
to Constantinople. Owing to the remonstrances by the British and
Russian ambassadors, he has been given his freedom on parole. A letter
from Alashgerd says: ‘We can neither depart nor stay, and no other
course is left us but to perish where we are. The Kurds and Turks
openly declare that they mean to kill as many Armenians as they can,
and that they have full permission.’ The Kurds have set fire to the
crops of the Armenians in many places in the vicinity of Bitlis. The
situation in Armenia is daily becoming more deplorable. There has been
a wholesale massacre of Christians at Moosh.”
The Turkish government has revised the sixty-first article of the
Treaty of Berlin, and the other signatory Powers have silently
consented to it. The following is the Turkish revision: “The
sublime Porte engages to realize without delay such maltreatments,
persecutions, oppressions, outrages, cruelties, and murders in the
provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and guarantees the security of
their enemies, the Kurds, Circassians and the Turks, and will acquit
them in case of their being brought to justice, and will assist them in
case the Armenians rise against them in self-defense, by force of arms,
and will declare the Christians as rebels. It, moreover, undertakes to
make known to the civilized and Christian powers from time to time,
that Mohammedanism and barbarism go hand in hand.” This is just what
Turkey has been doing with the silent consent of the European Powers.
Of course, Turkey is the chief criminal in the case and the other
Powers have been accessories of her crime. And England’s share of that
crime is confessed by the best of England’s sons:
“The only effect of the Anglo-Turkish convention has been to increase
the confidence of the sultan that he can do as he pleases in Armenia
notwithstanding Article LXI of the Berlin Treaty.
“England, therefore, is responsible in three ways. She destroyed the
Russian guarantee exacted by the Treaty of San Stefano. She framed
the ‘watching’ clause of the Berlin Treaty, and then, to preclude all
possibility of effective pressure upon the Turk, she concludes the
Cyprus convention which established an illegal British protectorate
over the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan.”[109]
“In the field of Eastern politics generally the conspicuous result
has been the failure--the complete, humiliating, and irretrievable
failure--of the traditional policy pursued by England of supporting
the Turk against Russia. That policy, first attempted by Mr. Pitt, in
1791, against the vehement protests of Mr. Burke[110] but presently
abandoned, was warmly espoused by Lord Palmerston. It prompted the
Crimean war of 1853, and was embodied in the Treaty of Paris of 1856.
It had the lifelong support of Lord Beaconsfield, who by refusing to
join Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1876 in applying pressure to the
sultan, brought on the war of 1877. Public opinion in Great Britain,
outraged by the Bulgarian massacre, prevented him from giving the
armed support of Great Britain to the Turks in that year. But he was
able to revert to and enforce that policy in the negotiations of 1878,
which substituted the Treaty of Berlin for the Treaty of San Stefano,
and it dictated the provisions of the Anglo-Turkish convention.”[111]
The Armenian question is simply this: Whether the Armenians should
enjoy the liberty of conscience and of action according to the laws of
civilization and Christianity, or whether they should be annihilated
by the inveterate enemies of civilization and Christianity, the
Turkish rulers. The Armenians brought this question to the decision
of the Berlin Congress. The Congress decided that the Armenians must
enjoy freedom of conscience and action according to the _laws_ of
civilization and Christianity. Turkey, by her representatives, agreed
and consented to the decision and promised to have civilized laws,
and give freedom to Christianity. But no sooner was the Congress
dissolved and the representatives of the nations returned to their
respective governments, than the Turkish government took up the work
of annihilation of the Christian Armenians. The decision, without any
action on the part of the Powers, encouraged the Turk to return to his
mire to wallow in.[112] The historian’s sad duty is to describe the
beast and his bestial acts, so far as it is permissible, and to point
out the sources wherefrom he derives his power.
This work of extermination has been carried on in different ways in
certain parts of the country. While in the interior small groups
of Armenians have been killed and done away with, in the cities
imprisonments, tortures, exiles, assassinations and compulsive
conversions to Ismal have been in vogue. The following letter
dated June 26, 1891,[113] published in _L’Observateur_, from its
Constantinople correspondent, will show some ways of doing away with
the Armenians:
“I have already written you, that in consequence of the late
disturbances at Constantinople most of the Armenian prisoners have
been banished, in small groups, to various distant places, in order
not to attract the attention of the public. Is it possible ever to
pen the tortures that these unfortunates are suffering in Turkish
prisons? The penal system in Turkey is still in its primitive state,
and has undergone no improvement since the time of Sultan Mehmed II
(1451-1481). Many prisoners have not been able to stand the tortures
inflicted upon them, and the death of one of them, Vartan Calousdian
(a young man twenty-six years of age), is a new proof of their
atrocities.
“The parents of this young man, hearing of his death in prison,
succeeded in securing, through the almighty ‘backshish,’ the remains
of their beloved in order to inter him in their family grave. While
the attendants of the Church at Galata were washing the body according
to the custom of the Armenian Church, they could not withhold their
tears, and they were awe-stricken at the sight of numerous wounds
which marked the body. The poor young man had many of his ribs broken,
the palms of his hands and the bottom of his feet were burned and his
breast and back striped with long burns....
“Similar cases occur quite often in Asia Minor, but the local
authorities conceal them with the utmost care, and make every effort
to keep them from the people. The Armenians have not even the right to
emigrate from this barbarous country. I telegraphed to you yesterday
that the governor of Trebizond prohibited about one hundred Armenian
emigrants from leaving the port on the Massangeric steamer ‘Niger.’”
Without the slightest fear of exaggeration the reader can stretch the
compass of his imagination to picture to himself the pitiable condition
of those prisoners and their families in Asia Minor and Armenia proper.
There was neither press nor the influence of the foreign powers;
neither facilities of rapid communication, nor the possible use of
the telegraph system which is controlled by the government; nor did
any safety exist in the post-office system; letters were often torn
open with the pretense of suspicion, where “similar cases occur _quite
often_, but the local authorities concealed them with utmost care.”
These unfortunate prisoners were tortured and starved to death in those
filthy and infectious jails; their wives were exposed to the assaults
and outrages of the enemies of their religion, their daughters were
abducted and proselyted by threats, their little ones were crying for
bread, but there was none to provide for them. They and their homes and
families were completely ruined. Like the lambs on the thousand hills
of Armenia, the Christian inhabitants of Western Asia were turned over
to the Mohammedan wolves by the European Powers.
The following poem, which is translated and recomposed from the
original by Mr. Thomas G. Allen, Jr., appeared with an article by
the same gentleman in the New York _Herald_, about twenty-five years
ago. The object of the writer was to show how the inflammatory and
revolutionary literature had provoked the Turks, who, almost driven out
of Europe, were also threatened in Asia. The following is his closing
words:
“And now the Turks are threatened in Asia itself. Is there no possible
reconciliation between the conflicting elements? Is the unity of
civilization to be had only by the sacrifice of whole populations, and
those above all, which [the Turks] are distinguished by the highest
moral qualities--Uprightness, truth, manliness, courage and tolerance?”
Tastes surely differ. Even the bloodthirsty and bestial Turks are
distinguished by the highest moral qualities according to Mr. Allen.
Here is the revolutionary poem: