Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, 1913-1923 9781785334337

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GENOCIDE IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

GENOCIDE IN THE

OTTOMAN EMPIRE Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, 1913–1923

Edited by

George N. Shirinian

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2017 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2017 The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc. Published in association with The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc. and The Zoryan Institute All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Shirinian, George, 1949- editor of compilation. Title: Genocide in the Ottoman Empire : Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, 1913-1923 / edited by George N. Shirinian. Other titles: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, 1913-1923 Description: First edition. | New York : Berghahn Books, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016047877 (print) | LCCN 2016054924 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785334320 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781785334337 (E-book) Subjects: LCSH: Minorities--Turkey--History--20th century. | Greeks--Turkey--History--20th century. | Assyrians--Turkey--History--20th century. | Armenian massacres, 1915-1923. | Genocide--Turkey--History--20th century. | Turkey--Politics and government--1909Classification: LCC DR434 .G47 2016 (print) | LCC DR434 (ebook) | DDC 956.1/023--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016047877 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Cover image: Photo of Greek refugee caravan courtesy of the War Museum, Athens. Map of the Ottoman Empire from William Eleroy Curtis, Around the Black Sea (New York: Hodder & Stoughton, George H. Doran Company, 1911), courtesy The Newberry Library, Chicago. ISBN 978-1-78533-432-0 hardback ISBN 978-1-78533-433-7 ebook

Contents

Prefaceix List of Illustrations

xiii

Introduction1 George N. Shirinian PART I. CONTEXTS Chapter One. The Background to the Late Ottoman Genocides George N. Shirinian Chapter Two. Convulsions at the End of Empire: Thrace, Asia Minor, and the Aegean Dikran M. Kaligian

19

82

Chapter Three. Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire and the Official Turkish Policy of Their Extermination, 1890s–1918 105 Anahit Khosroeva PART II. DOCUMENTATION AND EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS Chapter Four. Considering Genocide Testimony: Three Case Studies from the Armenian, Pontic, and Assyrian Genocides Appendix: The Three Accounts 147 Paul R. Bartrop

135

Chapter Five. The Assyrian Issue 1914-35: Australian Documents and Press  Stavros T. Stavridis

158

Chapter Six. Ethnic Cleansing, American Women, and the Admiral: Deep in Anatolia during the Turkish Nationalist Revolution Robert Shenk

187

vi

| CONTENTS

Chapter Seven. Found in Translation: Eyewitness Accounts of the Massacres in Nicomedia as Reported by Greek Journalist Kostas Faltaits 214 Ellene S. Phufas Chapter Eight. The Destruction of Smyrna in 1922: An Armenian and Greek Shared Tragedy Tehmine Martoyan

227

PART III. LEGACIES AND INTERPRETATIONS Chapter Nine. Lemkin on Three Genocides: Comparing His Writings on the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Genocides Steven Leonard Jacobs

253

Chapter Ten. The Greek Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Parallels with the Armenian Genocide Gevorg Vardanyan

274

Chapter Eleven. The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks 1913–23: Myths and Facts Appendix: Full Text of the IAGS Resolution 317 Thea Halo

300

Chapter Twelve. “Redeeming the Unredeemed”: The Anglo-Hellenic League’s Campaign for the Greeks in Asia Minor Georgia Kouta

323

Chapter Thirteen. Genocide by Deportation into Poverty: Western Diplomats on Ottoman Christian Killings and Expulsions, 1914–24 Hannibal Travis

354

Chapter Fourteen. The Socio-psychological Dimension of the Armenian Genocide Suren Manukyan

403

Index

Illustrations

3.1. Around Lake Urmia, April–May 1915. 107 3.2. Six armed Assyrian men and one boy with one seated man. 107 7.1. Kostas Faltaits on horseback in Asia Minor. 216 8.1. Greek army units landing in Smyrna, May 1919. 228 8.2. Final moments of Smyrna. 228 8.3. Final moments of Smyrna.229 10.1. Refugees fleeing Thrace, 1922. 277 11.1. Refugee caravan. 301

Preface

Most of the studies in this collection have their origins in the “International Conference on the Ottoman Turkish Genocides of Anatolian Christians,” held at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in May 2013, co-organized by the Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, the Armenian National Committee, and the Assyrian Center for Genocide Studies. This scholarly gathering was a special effort to treat the genocidal experiences of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in Asia Minor, Pontus, and Eastern Thrace in the early part of the twentieth century as an integrated history and, in the process, bring representatives and scholars of those three communities together to share an understanding of this catastrophic era. In their own languages, the Armenians and Greeks both use the term “great catastrophe” to describe these events, while the Assyrians use the term “seyfo,” which means “sword.” That meeting and this book are the latest in a series of activities that are part of a long-term project of the Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center (AMPHRC) to promote the study of the larger pattern of genocide in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic.1 They are the product of a dedicated group of volunteers, who give of themselves tirelessly so that this knowledge may be shared and hopefully the lessons of this history may be learned in our time. Even though it is not possible to acknowledge all of those whose hard work and talent has gone into this work, special mention must be made of the organizing committee comprised of George Mavropoulos, founder of the AMPHRC, Greg Bedian of the Armenian National Committee, and Dr Norman Solhkhah and Joseph Tamraz of the Assyrian Center for Genocide Studies. Kelley H. Szany, Associate Director of Education and Genocide Initiatives at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, must also be recognized for her support in this endeavor. The AMPHRC is a not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) organization established in January 2011. The Center’s goal—unique in its kind—is to document and raise awareness of the “Great Catastrophe” that resulted in the uprooting and destruction of the Greek communities in their homelands of Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace in the early decades of the twentieth century after a 3,000-year-long presence there.

preface

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The Greek experience, similar to the Armenian and Assyrian genocide, although officially recognized as genocide by the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS Resolution, 2007), is not widely known to the English-speaking world. The AMPHRC’s mission is to promote knowledge and understanding among contemporary scholars and the public at large of the events that led to the events now known as the “Great Catastrophe.” Organizing academic conferences, collecting documentation, publishing, preparing educational materials, and disseminating information on the genocide and destruction of Hellenism during a decade of relentless persecution and destruction at the end of the Ottoman Empire is essential to helping ensure these atrocities never happen again. Each of the chapters has gone through a process of careful revision in order to shape the book into a coherent volume. I would therefore like to express my personal thanks to each of the authors for giving so much of their time and expertise to help make this book a reality and contributing towards filling a gap in the literature. I offer a special word of appreciation to George Mavropoulos, for his inspiration, leadership, and active involvement in the entire project. I also would like to acknowledge Erin Ball, Kylie J. Cumming, and Dr Anastasia Giannakidou for their talent, hard work and editorial assistance in the preparation of the text for publication. Finally, I must express profound gratitude to my own institution, the Zoryan Institute, for its extensive support and encouragement to enable me to complete the research, editing and preparation of this book. George N. Shirinian

Notes 1. See George N. Shirinian, ed., The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923 (Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012), 9–10.

Bibliography Shirinian, George N., ed. The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923. Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012.

INTRODUCTION George N. Shirinian Origin of the Concept of “Ottoman Genocides” In the midst of World War I, and after decades of violent and political internal conflict, the Young Turk regime recently in control of the Ottoman Empire rounded up the political, religious, and intellectual leaders of the Armenian community and executed most of them. Thousands of Armenians were arrested, 2,345 in Constantinople alone.1 Thus commenced a process that would lead to the deportation, massacre, and ultimate destruction of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. At the time the mass deportation and killing of the Armenians began, observers were keenly aware that it was not the Armenians alone who were being targeted. As early as March 7, 1915, the German vice-consul in Alexandretta had written: During the last few days house-to-house searches took place at all the homes of the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire residing here— Armenians, Syrians, Greeks—on order from higher up (most likely from Constantinople). In some houses, papers were confiscated, apparently only because they were in a foreign language, as well as books, especially English ones. Nobody has been placed under arrest because of these occurrences so far. As far as I know about the character and doings of the small local population, I do not believe that they would commit treason. For this reason, many of the local foreigners who were not affected by these measures shook their heads in disbelief… As I heard from the military, these actions were taken because of the rising mistrust which has largely been growing in government circles against the Christian (and especially Armenian) elements of the population in Syria and Cilicia—and I am sure elsewhere—and which has been fanned here and in the surrounding area by a few small incidents…2 As Armenians and Greeks began to be deported from their homes en masse, it was obvious to contemporaries that the deportations were not intended merely to relocate

2 |Introduction

the Christian minorities from strategic areas for military reasons, as the government was claiming, but to exterminate them under the guise of wartime necessity. Already by June 22, 1915, Rev. Johannes Lepsius wrote from Potsdam to the German Foreign Office in Berlin: According to information from the Imperial Ambassador in his telegram of 31 May, Enver Pasha plans “to settle in Mesopotamia those families from the currently insurgent Armenian centres who are not irreproachable.” As I have already stated in my letter dated 18 June, this is not a case of deporting individual families, but rather of mass deportations of large parts of the Armenian population from Anatolian areas and from Cilicia to various districts, especially to Mesopotamia. These measures cannot be justified for military reasons. They are out of all proportion to the unimportant reasons which motivated them. They are also in contradiction to the official statement made by the Turkish Government on 4 June (W.T.B. [Wolff’s Telegraph Bureau—GNS] to Constantinople) that “the Armenians from Erzerum, Derdjan, Egin, Sasun, Bitlis, Mush and Cilicia were not subjected to any measures whatsoever by the Imperial authorities because they had committed no acts which would disturb the public law and peace.” For mass deportations have also taken place in these areas and they are gradually being extended to all the Armenian areas. Even the passage, “If certain Armenians had to be removed from their places of residence, this was done because they lived in a warzone,” cannot be used as a lever, for generally speaking this concerns areas which lie in central Anatolia, far from the war-zone. The news so far is that until now about 200,000 Armenians have been affected by the deportation measures … As the Greek population in the villages of Thracia between Adrianople and the Sea of Marmara was also deported, this is obviously an attempt to decimate the Christian population in the empire as far as possible under the veil of martial law and by putting to use the Muslim elation aroused by the holy war, abandoning it to extermination by carrying it off to climatically unfavourable and unsafe districts along the border.3 In fact, the Greeks had been targeted even earlier, in 1913 and 1914, with an economic boycott, violent persecution, and deportations.4 Due to German pressure, the Young Turk regime temporarily suspended the deportation of the Greeks, but in the meantime, once the deportation and killing of the Armenians was in full operation in 1915, it was often said that the Greeks would be next.5 On July 21, 1914, the Ottoman government declared a general mobilization of all men aged 19 to 45. The Greek conscripts were not provided with uniforms, hats, or shoes and received only a single ration of bread per day.6 With the Ottoman Empire’s entry into World War I on October 28, 1914 and a series of military defeats in the first months of the war,

Introduction | 3

the Young Turk leadership blamed the Christian minorities for their military failures. They disarmed the Armenian and Greek conscripts and formed them into labor battalions under very harsh working conditions designed for their ultimate demise due to exposure, hunger, exhaustion, and disease. As a consequence, some chose to survive and deserted the army, further fueling the authorities’ suspicion about their loyalty.7 The needs of the army were used to justify the Ottoman government’s requisitioning of food, textiles, and all manner of goods from Greek businesses, paying them little or nothing, while taking much less from Muslims. On the pretext of tracking down robbers and deserters, local authorities took advantage by seizing the wealth of the Greeks. The Ottoman Parliament enacted special laws and then proceeded to strip the Greek rural populations of their property. With farm workers drafted into the army and removed from the land, there were food shortages, and the confiscation of private property contributed additionally to the ruin of local economies. In October 1915, a new law to deter deserters provided for their families to be deported. In April 1915, the inhabitants of Matsouka, for example, were ordered to abandon their homes and were deported across the Pontic Alps to the interior of Asia Minor, most of them to the Erzerum plateau. The sufferings they underwent in the region’s chill April weather were indescribable. The freezing cold was the main cause of death among deportees. Starvation and infectious diseases would deal the final blow. Any who survived were forced to convert to Islam. In some locations, such as the Pontos region, the oppressed people created partisan groups to rescue Greeks in rural areas. The Assyrians, too, were targeted for deportation as early as October 26, 1914.8 The Assyrian Genocide was part of the same process of dealing with the Christian minority, with massacres sometimes taking place in the same locations and at the same time as the Armenians.9 As the US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, later noted, The Armenians are not the only subject people in Turkey which have suffered from this policy of making Turkey exclusively the country of the Turks. The story which I have told about the Armenians I could also tell with certain modifications about the Greeks and the Syrians. Indeed, the Greeks were the first victims of this nationalizing idea … It was probably for the reason that the civilized world did not protest against these deportations that the Turks afterward decided to apply the same methods on a larger scale not only to the Greeks but to the Armenians, Syrians, Nestorians, and others of its subject peoples. In fact, Bedri Bey, the Prefect of Police at Constantinople, himself told one of my secretaries that the Turks had expelled the Greeks so successfully that they had decided to apply the same method to all the other races in the empire.10 For this and other reasons, some scholars today feel that the term “Armenian Genocide” does not capture adequately the intent and breadth of the Young Turk exterminatory campaign against all the Christian minorities from 1913 to 1923.11 Thus,

4 |Introduction

the term “Ottoman Genocides” was introduced in a resolution passed by the International Association of Genocide Scholars in 2007,12 and has begun to catch on.13 There are many benefits to studying the genocidal experiences of these three peoples together. The social and political environment of the Ottoman Empire influenced the development of the Christian minorities similarly, setting them apart from and subordinate to the ruling Muslim majority, leading to violence against them, both individually and collectively, on numerous occasions. The extreme nationalist policies of the Young Turk regime also impacted the Christian minorities similarly. We can understand better the causes, methods, and impact of the extreme violence against each of these groups when we study them together, holistically, within that broader context. Tragically, extermination of Christian populations in the Middle East has resurfaced recently on a large scale, and the lessons that can be drawn by studying the twentieth-century Christian genocides will help us better contextualize and understand current events, and hopefully offer insights into how to prevent current or future crimes against humanity. Along with the many similarities, however, we must also be conscious and respectful of the differences between each of these cases. It is for this reason that we use the term “Ottoman Genocides” in the plural, because each case has its significant particularities that must be examined and appreciated.

Why Did the Events of 1915 Become Known as “The Armenian Genocide?” The genocidal experience of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks during the final years of the Ottoman Empire and beginning years of the Turkish Republic ought naturally to have been studied together as an integral part of Ottoman history. There are several reasons this did not happen.

The Issue of the Armenian Reforms The issue of reform in the Ottoman Empire was promoted by the European Powers from the early 1800s. The idea of Tanzimat, a program of reorganization, gave them an instrument to intervene in the governance of the empire, ostensibly to protect the Christian minorities, but also to insinuate their control. While this intervention was unwelcome to the Ottoman leadership, they shrewdly accepted Tanzimat for its ability to help them modernize the system of government, army, and economy and make them better able to cope with pressures, both internal and external. The reforms legislated in 1839 and 1856 largely failed. This was due to their being implemented half-heartedly by a conservative ruling class, and being not well thought out in the first place. The introduction of reforms for the Armenians, in particular, during the peace negotiations following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 (the Treaty of San Stefano and the Treaty of Berlin), was again used by the European Powers as leverage over the sultan. This time, the Armenians had been singled out.

Introduction | 5

Dissatisfaction with Sultan Abdul Hamid II for his handling of that war and its peace negotiations resulted in harsh criticism from the Ottoman Parliament. In 1878, Abdul Hamid suspended the constitution, dismissed Parliament, and reasserted his role as monarch and caliph. He did not comply with the Armenian reforms required by the Treaty of Berlin. The Armenians were singled out for annihilation in 1915 not only because they challenged their inferior status as Christians, but also because the Young Turk regime was convinced that the Armenian reform issue, which was very much alive and being pushed by the European Powers in 1913–14, would lead to the break-up of the empire.14

The Armenians Were the Primary Target Morgenthau suggested that up to the time he wrote in 1918, the deportation of the Greeks was not as destructive as that of the Armenians, and that may also help explain why the genocide is more identified with the Armenians. Everywhere the Greeks were gathered in groups and, under the so-called protection of Turkish gendarmes, they were transported, the larger part on foot, into the interior. Just how many were scattered in this fashion is not definitely known, the estimates varying anywhere from 200,000 up to 1,000,000. These caravans suffered great privations, but they were not submitted to general massacre as were the Armenians, and this is probably the reason why the outside world has not heard so much about them.15 Indeed, the measures taken against the Armenians were explicitly not to be used against the other targeted groups. The Turkish Minister of the Interior, Talât Pasha, sent a telegram on July 12, 1915 to the local authorities in Diarbekir ordering that “the disciplinary and political measures taken against Armenians should absolutely not be extended to other Christians. Any measures threatening the lives of local [non-Armenian] Christians are to end immediately and should be reported.”16 On September 9, 1915, the German vice-consul in Samsun wrote to the German Embassy in Constantinople: “… some Armenian mothers had hidden their children with Greek families. Upon threat of heavy punishment, these poor creatures, among them babies, were torn away from their foster parents who showed only Christian kindness! The Greek Christians are trembling, and with good reason, for at the first opportunity they are sure to suffer the same fate as the Armenians.”17 An American report in December 1915 stated that many Armenians were hiding in Greek villages.18 Such reports show that Greeks were not under attack at the time. In another example, some Armenian women from Adapazar, visiting Egin in 1915, were caught up in the deportation there. They were speaking Greek to each other, which they had the habit of doing when they didn’t want others to know what they were saying. When the guards heard the women speaking Greek, they reacted by saying that Greeks were not supposed to be deported. When asked if they were Greek, the

6 |Introduction

Armenian women readily claimed they were, and they were allowed to stay in Egin until the matter could be confirmed.19

The Turkish State Policy of Historical Revisionism and Denial When Kemal Ataturk established the Republic of Turkey in 1923, part of his plan for building a new nation was to dissociate the fledgling republic from the negative aspects of its Ottoman past. He thus took measures to ensure the history of the end of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of the Turkish Republic was told from an exclusively flattering, Turkish point of view. As part of that effort, Ataturk officially replaced the Ottoman alphabet, which had been based on a Turkish form of the Arabic script, with one based on the Latin alphabet. This was a high personal priority for him, and he engaged himself in the alphabet’s development directly. He enacted legislation on November 1, 1928, which came into effect on January 1, 1929. While the stated goals were to rid Turkish culture of Arabic influence, enhance Turkish nationalism, and modernize Turkey, a by-product of the alphabet reform was that all the books, newspapers, and official documentation of the time describing the mass deportations and killings of the Christian minorities would become inaccessible to future generations, allowing this history to become malleable and ultimately forgotten.20 A couple of years later, in 1931, Ataturk established the Turkish Historical Institute (Türk Tarih Kurumu). This official government agency had the task not only of writing official Turkish history to promote Turkish nation-building, but also of rewriting history to ingrain selected national myths that Ataturk wanted to promote about the end of the empire and the founding of the republic. According to one of those myths, there was no such group in Turkey as Armenians, and therefore there could not have been an annihilation of them. Thus, an attempt was made to write not only the Armenians but also the Assyrians and Ottoman Greeks out of history.21 The Different Circumstances and Responses of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks It was as a response to that official policy of selective historical amnesia and denial that the Armenians began, in April 1965—the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Armenian deportations and massacres—to call attention to what had by then become the “Forgotten Genocide.”22 There was a massive public demonstration of some 100,000 people in Yerevan on April 24, 1965 calling for the Soviet government to recognize the Armenian Genocide, to build a memorial to it, and for the return of land in Turkey to the Armenian people.23 This public outpouring of nationalism is remarkable, considering that it was totally contrary to Soviet nationality policy at the time, and it has inspired such demonstrations around the world annually ever since. The Armenians, absorbed in trying to survive and perpetuate their culture in the aftermath of such devastation, as well as in dealing with their own psychological

Introduction | 7

trauma arising out of a genocide actively denied by Turkey and its supporters and unacknowledged by most of the world, inevitably focused on their own identity politics and engaged in reconstructing their own history. Owing to the fact that many Armenians had settled in Western countries by the late 1970s, their efforts at cultural preservation were informed by the languages and cultures of such places as Australia, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where there was a strong political and academic tradition. The Armenians found a fertile environment in those places for their political and academic activities, organizing political parties and lobby groups, and by the 1980s they had invested in Armenian Studies chairs and departments in several universities. The Armenians were thus able to start producing a body of political activity and scholarly work that promoted awareness and understanding of the Armenian Genocide. The influence of the Armenian terrorist movement in the 1970s to the mid 1980s must also be taken into account in this regard.24 That movement did garner coverage in the international press, but also caused the Turkish state to escalate its genocide denial efforts, which, in turn, only further motivated Armenian efforts to produce scholarship countering it. Despite the lack of greater political success in genocide affirmation, the Armenians, along with non-Armenian scholars, have been effective in establishing a solid, academic basis for the acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide through the fields of Armenian Studies, Genocide Studies, and Comparative Genocide Studies. The Assyrians and Greeks had to deal with such post-genocide problems as well, but did so differently. Few Greek historians in the diaspora have pursued the study of the destruction of the Ottoman Greeks. There are important studies produced in Greece, but they remain inaccessible to those who do not know the Greek language, and, moreover, the Greek government has not been supportive of promoting awareness of this subject. Some feel it is because it exposes errors in Greek foreign policy at the time; others feel it is so as to not strain already difficult relations with neighboring Turkey, which is also a NATO partner, with all the political considerations that entails. There are still only a handful of studies in Western languages on the Assyrian experience of genocide. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the Assyrians have suffered repeated persecution in Turkey, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East. They are now in the process of reorganizing in the diaspora and some fine scholarly work is being produced on their history by both Assyrian and non-Assyrian scholars. The subject of why the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks responded to the Ottoman Genocides differently is an interesting one, larger and more complex than can be examined within the limits of this brief introduction. We can say that it is understandable if one group tends to focus more on its own genocidal pain and not on the pain of others. Regardless of the full explanation, it is clear that these three victim peoples did react to their genocidal experiences largely in isolation of one another.

8 |Introduction

The Legacy of the British “Blue Book” Another factor contributing in some measure to the genocide of the Christian minorities being identified primarily with the Armenians was the publication in 1916 of the influential British parliamentary “Blue Book,” The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–16: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, by Viscount Bryce.25 It reproduced, among its many documents, reports from the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief.26 Yet, while the massacre of Assyrians is reported in the book, the Assyrians were omitted from the book’s title. The Influence of Raphael Lemkin It is worth noting that Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term “genocide” and made its study and prevention his life’s work, had extensive notes for a separate publication on the Armenian Genocide and spoke publicly about it. He also planned significant chapters for his magnum opus on the Assyrians and Greeks,27 but it is likely that one of the reasons he did not write on the Assyrians or Greeks by the end of his life was the lack of material available in the languages he knew. The Availability of Published Information in Western Languages A substantial body of primary source material and secondary literature on the Armenian Genocide has been published in the major languages of Western scholarship. This is much less the case for the Assyrian and Greek Genocides. One of the objectives of this book is to help redress this imbalance and to view these three related cases through a single lens, as a shared experience.

The Benefits of Studying the Late Ottoman Genocides of the Christian Minorities as a Whole The logic of approaching the genocides of the Christian minorities in the late Ottoman Empire as a whole, rather than as completely separate case studies, is clear. To a large extent, the experiences of these three peoples took place in the same country, during the same period, as part of the same historical, social, economic, and political forces, involving a continuity of perpetrators with the same motive. There are significant benefits to a collective, comparative approach to the Late Ottoman Genocides. From a theoretical perspective, comparative scholarship in the humanities and social sciences is valuable because one cannot derive general truisms from only a single case study. Individual case studies are by nature narrow, self-contained, and, as such, are of limited value if one wants to build a theory of how recurrent, predictable patterns emerge. In their general thrust, individual case studies are descriptive, and inherently do not allow us to see patterns, which are underlying generalizations based on common denominators of several cases.

Introduction | 9

Comparison, on the other hand, is essentially an analytical task. The characteristics of genocide can be brought out in the interplay of such common denominators. Only the comparative approach can yield carefully delimited generalizations about the nature and mechanics of genocide as a general problem of humanity. Even though generalizations distilled from comparative studies reflect the common features and characteristics among the cases being compared, their elaboration does not need to exclude other features that are not common. Each case of genocide has its own contribution to make to our understanding. One need not limit one’s self to the quest for common denominators in order to do justice to the comparative method. By taking into account those factors that are particular to each case, one may in fact underscore the importance of the common features.28 By approaching these three genocides chronologically, in a single, interwoven narrative, rather than separately by ethnicity, we can see the development of the common historical, political, economic, and social processes taking place in the Ottoman Empire that led to the Young Turks’ destructive policies and a common, tragic outcome. Such an approach will be utilized in the first chapter in the present volume, “The Background to the Late Ottoman Genocides.”

The Studies in this Collection The studies in this collection cover a wide variety of subjects and can be seen as part of the extremely dynamic paradigm of Genocide Studies. Five of them are explicitly comparative in nature, and three treat the three Ottoman Genocides together in a holistic way. Other studies examine the particular cases of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Ottoman Greeks, but make reference as appropriate to the other cases. The first chapter lays out the historical, social, political, and economic background of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth century and the situation of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks within it. It attempts to explain why these three ethnic minorities were targeted for destruction by the Young Turk regime, and also the expulsion of the Greeks by the Kemalist regime. Dikran Kaligian provides a historical background to the conditions of insecurity in which the Ottoman Armenians and Greeks lived. After the Young Turk revolution in 1908 and the restoration of the constitution, personal security for the Christian minorities improved. However, the government’s policy of resettling embittered Muslim refugees from the Balkan Wars into the areas inhabited by the Christians caused renewed clashes. Also, after the defeat of the Ottomans in the First Balkan War in 1912, there was a wave of persecution and forced emigration of Greek villages in Eastern Thrace. The Westenenk Commission, created to investigate complaints of violence against the Armenians in the eastern provinces, was the last straw for the Ottomans, who perceived it as the final step that would lead to the partition of Turkey by the Europeans. This was a key factor in the Young Turks’ decision to enter World War I and commit the genocide.

10 |Introduction

Anahit Khosroeva makes a new contribution to the small number of studies in English on the Assyrian Genocide. Such descriptive accounts are essential to lay the groundwork for more analysis that will begin to answer such questions as why the Assyrian Genocide took place, how it was implemented, and what its impact has been on the Assyrian people. Most especially, it is indispensable for understanding the characteristics the Assyrian experience has in common with the Armenian and Greek cases, as well as how it may differ. Paul Bartrop analyzes an example of a survivor memoir from each of our three case studies. Survivor memoirs are a special kind of historical source. They convey the sense of the genocidal experience on a very personal and detailed level for those who read them. They are also cathartic for those who write them. In the case of the Armenian Genocide particularly, because of the aggressive and ongoing denial by the Turkish state, they have not been well incorporated into the scholarly literature nearly as much as, say, Holocaust survivor memoirs. Nevertheless, they can contribute to our understanding of how genocide takes place and its impact on the victims in a unique and invaluable way. The importance of survivor memoirs is seen in several of the studies in this collection. Stavros Stavridis describes the successful approach taken by Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek scholars in Australia to promote awareness of the Ottoman Genocides. They have told this story through the lens of Australian sources, thereby making these genocides a part of Australian national history. There is a rich source of information in the letters and memoirs of ANZAC soldiers who were prisoners of war in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The Australians and New Zealanders are particularly interested in this subject because of their great sacrifices at Gallipoli, Palestine, and Syria. Stavridis illustrates how the Assyrian issue was represented in the Australian press and official documents. Robert Shenk, using the letters and memoirs of courageous female American missionaries, recreates vividly some of the scenes of violence between Turks and Armenians and Turks and Greeks. He illustrates the anti-Armenian attitude of American officials Admiral Mark Bristol and General James Harbord and contrasts it with the more balanced and often pro-Armenian and pro-Greek perspectives of the American missionaries. Ellene Phufas shares the story of the Greek journalist Kostas Faltaits, who collected Greek survivor accounts and published them as a book in 1921. Once again, these survivor testimonies provide invaluable information on the Greek experience during the period of the Great Catastrophe. Tehmine Martoyan reconstructs the infamous destruction of the Armenian and Greek communities of the cosmopolitan city of Smyrna. Drawing on archival sources, she represents this genocidal event as a single, shared history. Utilizing eyewitness testimony, she makes clear that the burning of the Armenian and Greek sections of the city was done deliberately by the Turkish army. She is able to conclude that the

Introduction | 11

destruction of Smyrna by the Kemalists was a continuation of the Young Turk policy of genocide. Steven Jacobs looks at Raphael Lemkin, who invented the term “genocide,” devoted his life to its study and the establishment of an international law for its punishment and prevention, and may be considered the father of Genocide Studies. As noted earlier, Lemkin had planned an extensive publication of the history of genocide, and Jacobs examines Lemkin’s notes on the genocide of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. Gevorg Vardanyan gives an innovative comparative analysis of the similarities and differences between the Armenian and Greek cases of genocide. While the active killing was more extensive among the Armenians, large numbers of both Armenians and Greeks died of starvation, exposure, and illness during their deportations and suffered just as painfully. He notes that the role of the Kurds was major in the case of the Armenians, but was mostly absent in the case of the Greeks. Thea Halo observes that beside the denials of the Armenian Genocide, the genocide of the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire during the same period is even more widely misrepresented, when mentioned at all. She re-evaluates various assumptions used to discount the brutal treatment of the Greeks during the period of the Great Catastrophe and offers valuable correctives. Georgia Kouta’s chapter discusses the role of the Anglo-Hellenic League in London in shaping Western public opinion and British policy on the Ottoman government’s treatment of its Greek minority. The League collected valuable documentation on the atrocities through Greek and non-Greek eyewitness reports, church and newspaper accounts, and published pamphlets. Other groups and writers in London are also examined. Kouta traces the attempt to promote the Megali Idea and a national consciousness among Greeks, at the same time describing the growth of Turkish nationalism and the ensuing conflict between them. It is an interesting study of how a diaspora group tried to influence its host country’s policies in favor of its homeland. Hannibal Travis takes a legal approach in considering the role of deportation in the genocide of the Ottoman Christians from 1914 to 1924. His chapter compares the findings of diplomats and other contemporary reports on the deportations to the jurisprudence of international and domestic criminal tribunals concerning deportation as a genocidal act. He challenges in impressive detail those scholars who, in recent years, have made their academic reputations by staking out a middle position on the Armenian Genocide—somewhere between the traditional Armenian Genocide story and the “Armenian allegations” narrative propounded by the Turkish government. Examining in depth the legal basis for treating the partial destruction of a group by deportation as genocide, he concludes that there is important evidence of genocidal intent to be found in the strains of extremist ideology that emerged in the Ottoman Empire during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and first quarter of the twentieth century.

12 |Introduction

Suren Manukyan explores the question of how an ordinary Turk could become a mass murderer. Drawing on social and psychological theory, and making comparisons with Nazi Germany, he discusses the different classes of perpetrators and examines their various motivations. He argues that the ability to participate in mass murder is not inherent in the human character, but is developed socially. He illustrates how the Ottoman state conditioned its majority population to be able to murder its Christian minorities. Taken together, these studies provide valuable historical, comparative, and theoretical insights into the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Genocides and contribute towards the growing view that the events of this historical period can be better understood when these three cases of genocide are examined together. It is possible to see more clearly, for example, the importance of the subordinate political and social position of the non-Muslims within the Ottoman reality, a condition that holds true in other cases of genocide. This enabled a pattern of violence against all three millets (i.e., ethnic or religious groups) prior to 1912, though at different times and under different circumstances. This repeated violence and its impunity made the genocidal actions of 1912–23 not only possible, but even likely. Thus, a comparative study shows that violence against these three ethnicities was governmental policy, whether the government was that of the sultan, the Committee of Union and Progress, or the Kemalists. We see the cumulative effects of the policies of the European Powers, as they played up to each of the three millets and played them off against the Ottoman state and against their rival European Powers. It is possible to understand through a comparative study that it was neither ethnicity nor religion alone that made the ruling Turkish majority see the Ottoman Christians as the “other,” but their relative prosperity and the envy that it generated. It helps illustrate and solidify the intent, motivation, and strategy of the perpetrators through a consistent policy against all three. Establishing intent is useful as a tool to fight revisionism and denial, if intent and motive are clearly illustrated across multiple groups. Comparative study allows us to see patterns and adaptation of violence both chronologically and regionally. A comparative study of these three cases also sheds light on themes that require further study and analysis, such as the role of the Kurds as an instrument of governmental policy against all three millets. This only begins to explore what we can learn from the comparative study of these three cases of genocide. Because the necessary details to go deeper are still lacking in the English language, we hope that these studies will contribute towards a deeper knowledge of this history, which can enable deeper analysis, not only of these cases themselves but also of their relation to other cases of genocide, and will be of value to the broader field of Comparative Genocide Studies. Finally, as mentioned earlier, with the extermination and depopulation of Yezidis and Christians in the Middle East resurfacing through the actions of the Islamic State since 2014, the lessons that can be drawn by studying the genocides of late Ottoman

Introduction | 13

Christians can help us better contextualize and understand contemporary identity-based violence in the region, and hopefully offer insights into how to recognize and prevent current or future crimes against humanity. Notes 1. Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, 6th rev. ed. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 221. 2. Wolfgang Gust, ed., The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915– 1916 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014), 152, March 7, 1915 report from the vice-consul in Alexandretta (Hoffmann) to the Ambassador in Constantinople (Wangenheim), 1915-03-07-DE-011. 3. Gust, The Armenian Genocide, 212–13, June 22, 1915 private correspondence from Rev. Johannes Lepsius in Potsdam to the German Foreign Office in Berlin, 1915-06-22-DE-001-E. 4. See Matthias Bjørnlund, “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a Case of Violent Turkification,” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 41–57; Tessa Hofmann, “The Genocide against the Christians in the Late Ottoman Period, 1912–1922,” in The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923, ed. George N. Shirinian (Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012), 43–67, esp. 48–50; Taner Akçam, “The Greek Deportations and Massacres of 1913–1914: A Trial Run for the Armenian Genocide,” in Shirinian, The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide, 69–88. 5. See, for example, Gust, The Armenian Genocide, 331, August 28, 1915 report from the German consul in Trebizond to the Imperial Chancellor in Berlin, 1915-08-27-DE-003; 365, September 5, 1915 report from the German correspondent von Tyszka to the German Foreign Office, 1915-09-05-DE-001; 376, September 9, 2015 report from the German consul in Samsun to the Embassy in Constantinople, 1915-09-09-DE-002. 6. Arthur Beylerian, Les Grandes Puissances, L’empire Ottoman et les Arméniens dans les Archives Françaises (1914–1918): Receuil de Documents (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1983), 52. 7. See Speros Vryonis, Jr., “Greek Labor Battalions in Asia Minor,” in The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Pub., 2007), 275–90. 8. David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2006), 447. 9. On Armenians and Assyrians being killed in the same locations and at the same time, see, for example, Beylerian, Les Grands Puissances, 50–51, report of M. Guys to the French Embassy in Constantinople, July 24, 1915; Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 81; David Gaunt, “Death’s End, 1915: The General Massacres of Christians in Diarbekir,” in Armenian Tigranakert/Diarbekir and Edessa/Urfa, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2006), 309–59, esp. 316–17. 10. Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1919), 323. 11. See Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer, “Late Ottoman Genocides: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish Population and Extermination Policies,” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (March 2008): 7–14, esp. 9–12. 12. See the chapter by Thea Halo, “The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks 1913–23: Myths and Facts,” in the present volume. 13. For example, the special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (March 2008) titled, “Late Ottoman Genocides: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish Population and Extermination Policies”; the chapter titled, “The Ottoman Destruction of Christian Minorities,” in Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 149–78; and Matthias Bjørnlund, “The Persecution of Greeks and Armenians in Smyrna, 1914–1916: A Special Case

14 |Introduction in the Course of the Late Ottoman Genocides,” in Shirinian, The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide, 89–133. 14. See Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 101–2, 155–56; Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012), 129–35; Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, 207–9, 213– 16; Hans-Lukas Kieser, Nearest East: American Millennialism and Mission to the Middle East (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 83–84; Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 356. 15. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 324–25. 16. Akçam, A Shameful Act, 186–87. 17. Gust, The Armenian Genocide, 376, 1915-09-09-DE-002. 18. James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee, The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, by Viscount Bryce, uncensored ed. (Reading, UK: Taderon Press, 2000), 374 (355 in the original 1916 edition). 19. Fatma Müge Göçek, Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789–2009 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), x–xi. 20. Taner Akçam, “The Genocide of the Armenians and the Silence of the Turks,” in Studies in Comparative Genocide, ed. Levon Chorbajian and George Shirinian (London: Macmillan Press, 1999), 125–46, 136. For more on the reasons for Turkey embracing this historical amnesia, see ibid., 137–44. 21. Of course, Turkish state denial evolved and adapted over time with different arguments, as it had to deal with the evidence that was gradually produced. 22. Marjorie Housepian is credited with writing the first modern article in English calling attention to the Armenian Genocide, with “The Unremembered Genocide,” Commentary 42, no. 3 (1966): 55–61. While after Raphael Lemkin himself, Joseph Guttmann may have been the first to use the term “genocide” in relation to the Armenians in the publication The Beginnings of Genocide; a Brief Account of the Armenian Massacres in World War I (New York: Armenian National Council of America, 1948), it is interesting to note that the Commemorative Committee on the 50th Anniversary of the Turkish Massacres of the Armenians still used the term “massacres” in its name in 1965. 23. Nora Dudwick, “Armenia: The Nation Awakes,” in Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States, ed. Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 261–87, 272. 24. Groups such as the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and the Armenian Justice Commandos assassinated Turkish diplomatic representatives and committed other acts of violence in Western countries, partly to wrest Western Armenia from Turkey, and partly to bring world attention to the case of the “forgotten” Armenian Genocide. Thomas de Waal, Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 152–53. 25. London: Sir Joseph Causton and Sons, Limited, 1916. The “Blue Book” was influential in its day and for generations afterwards, being subsequently reproduced in different editions in 1965 and 2000. “Bryce, in particular, was central in defining and using the Armenian case to describe the killings as an ‘exceedingly systematic’ ‘premeditated’ crime committed with the intent to exterminate an entire population. This framing of the massacres against Armenians would come to influence Raphael Lemkin’s coining of the term genocide in the 1940s to describe crimes against Ottoman Armenians and German Jews.” Michelle Tusan, “Humanitarianism, Genocide and Liberalism,” Journal of Genocide Research 17, no. 1 (2015): 83–105, 98. 26. This organization, founded in 1915, became the American Committee for Relief in the Near East or Near East Relief in 1919, and finally the Near East Foundation in 1930. 27. See the chapter by Steven Leonard Jacobs in this volume, and Raphael Lemkin, Raphael Lemkin’s Dossier on the Armenian Genocide (Glendale, CA: Center for Armenian Remembrance, 2008).

Introduction | 15 28. Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Comparative Aspects of the Armenian and Jewish Cases of Genocide: A Sociohistorical Perspective,” in Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, 3rd ed., ed. Alan S. Rosenbaum (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2009), 139–74.

Bibliography Akçam, Taner. “The Genocide of the Armenians and the Silence of the Turks.” In Studies in Comparative Genocide, edited by Levon Chorbajian and George Shirinian, 125–46. London: Macmillan Press, 1999. ———. “The Greek Deportations and Massacres of 1913–1914: A Trial Run for the Armenian Genocide.” In The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923, edited by George N. Shirinian, 69–88. Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012. ———. A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006. ———. The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012. Beylerian, Arthur. Les Grandes Puissances, L’empire Ottoman et les Arméniens dans les Archives Françaises (1914–1918): Receuil de Documents. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1983. Bjørnlund, Matthias. “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a Case of Violent Turkification.” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 41–57. ———. “The Persecution of Greeks and Armenians in Smyrna, 1914–1916: A Special Case in the Course of the Late Ottoman Genocides.” In The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923, edited by George N. Shirinian, 89–133. Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012. Bryce, James, and Arnold Toynbee. The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, by Viscount Bryce. Uncensored ed. Reading, UK: Taderon Press, 2000. Dadrian, Vahakn N. “The Comparative Aspects of the Armenian and Jewish Cases of Genocide: A Sociohistorical Perspective.” In Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, 3rd ed., edited by Alan S. Rosenbaum, 139–74. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2009. ———. The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. 6th rev. ed. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008. de Waal, Thomas. Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Dudwick, Nora. “Armenia: The Nation Awakes.” In Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States, edited by Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, 261–87. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Gaunt, David. “Death’s End, 1915: The General Massacres of Christians in Diarbekir.” In Armenian Tigranakert/Diarbekir and Edessa/Urfa, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 309–59. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2006. ———. Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2006. Göçek, Fatma Müge. Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789–2009. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Gust, Wolfgang, ed. The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915– 1916. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014. Guttmann, Joseph. The Beginnings of Genocide; a Brief Account of the Armenian Massacres in World War I. New York: Armenian National Council of America, 1948. Hofmann, Tessa. “The Genocide against the Christians in the Late Ottoman Period, 1912–1922.” In The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern

16 |Introduction Thrace, 1912–1923, edited by George N. Shirinian, 43–67. Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012. Housepian, M. “The Unremembered Genocide.” Commentary 42, no. 3 (1966): 55–61. Jones, Adam. Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2011. Kieser, Hans-Lukas. Nearest East: American Millennialism and Mission to the Middle East. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010. Lemkin, Raphael. Raphael Lemkin’s Dossier on the Armenian Genocide. Glendale, CA: Center for Armenian Remembrance, 2008. Lewis, Bernard. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. Morgenthau, Henry. Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1919. Schaller, Dominik J., and Jürgen Zimmerer. “Late Ottoman Genocides: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish Population and Extermination Policies.” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (March 2008): 7–14. Tusan, Michelle. “Humanitarianism, Genocide and Liberalism.” Journal of Genocide Research 17, no. 1 (2015): 83–105. Vryonis, Speros Jr. “Greek Labor Battalions in Asia Minor.” In The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 275–90. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Pub., 2007.

PART I. CONTEXTS

CHAPTER ONE THE BACKGROUND TO THE LATE OTTOMAN GENOCIDES George N. Shirinian

Introduction Medz Yeghern, Seyfo, Megali Katastrophi. These are among the terms used by Armenians, Assyrians,1 and Greeks, respectively, for the horrific, massively destructive, and psychologically traumatic experience they underwent during the years 1913–23, an experience today we call genocide. The purpose of this study is to examine a number of interrelated factors that culminated in the Young Turks, and subsequently the Kemalist leadership, believing that the solution to Turkey’s political problems lay in the removal or destruction of its Christian citizens. We will also explore reasons the rest of the population went along with, and even participated in, this horrific policy. As this is a long and complex subject, the material presented here is selective and told in a compressed manner. Ample references are given, however, to allow the reader to pursue the various topics further.

The Political and Social Structure of the Ottoman Empire and the Status of the Non-Muslim Minorities The political and social structure of the Ottoman Empire was based on the separation of its subjects into distinct communities (millets) along ethnic and religious lines.

20 |George N. Shirinian

While this arrangement gave these communities a measure of autonomy, power and privilege rested with the “ruling nation” (millet-i hâkime), primarily ethnic Turks who were Muslim. The non-Muslim minorities—primarily Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Jews—were giavours, non-believers in Islam, and conquered peoples. They had a significantly inferior status, legally, politically, and socially. There were a number of ways in which the distinctions between Muslims and Christians were observed and enforced. These include but are not limited to the following. It was forbidden for non-Muslim men to marry Muslim women, although Muslim men could marry non-Muslim women. Non-Muslims were repeatedly forbidden to live near mosques, or to build tall houses. Churches were not to be higher than mosques. It was not permitted for Christians to ring a bell to call the faithful to church, only to hit a wooden board with a mallet.2 Christians were not allowed to serve in the army, but had to pay a special tax for that exemption. They were not allowed to bear arms, so they could not defend their farms, property, or families when attacked by predatory nomads. If a Christian on horseback encountered a Muslim on horseback, the Christian must dismount until the Muslim passed by. The testimony of a Christian against a Muslim in court was not valid unless it had been extracted by torture.3 The punishment of a Muslim for a crime was halved if the victim was a non-Muslim.4 The complex system of clothing regulations is of special interest in this context. Up to the reforms of Sultan Mahmud II (ruled 1808–39), non-Muslims were required to dress differently from Muslims, to make their inferior status instantly recognizable. A British traveler and advisor to the Foreign Minister observed that “[t]he marks of distinction between Greek or Christian and Turk, are dress, name, and mode of salutation; the most important, however, is dress; every one must have felt this who for a day has worn the two costumes in Turkey. When these distinctions are no longer matters of right and law, they will fall into disuse….”5 In 1580, for example, “considering that their attitude from the point of view of the sheriat [Muslim holy law] and of logic should be humility and abjection,” Jews and Christians were formally forbidden to dress like Muslims, to wear silk, fur, or red shoes, and required instead to wear dark blue colors. Only Muslims could wear white or green turbans and yellow slippers. Greeks, Armenians, and Jews were distinguished respectively by sky blue, dark blue (later red), and yellow hats, and by black, violet, and blue slippers. The rules governing the costume of religious minorities were regularly reasserted, suggesting they were continuously challenged.6 Violators of the clothing laws could be executed. There was the sad case of a Christian beggar who was executed for wearing a pair of used yellow slippers—a color reserved for Muslims—that he had just received from a charitable Muslim.7 The adoption of the fez for all government employees in 1829, while supposedly intended to promote social equality, still included small badges to distinguish Christians from Muslims, at least up to the 1840s.8 Christians were even to wear signs suspended from cords

Background to the Late Ottoman Genocides | 21

around their necks, so that they might be distinguished from Muslims when undressed in a public bathhouse.9 The Amiras—wealthy bankers and moneylenders who were also an essential part of the state tax collection system, and who were mostly Armenian10—were allowed to wear special clothing that distinguished them from Muslims and non-Muslims alike.11 Such restrictions prevented Muslims and Christians from developing positive social relations with each other. The clothing regulations, for example, led many non-Muslims, especially the more prosperous ones in larger urban centers, to embrace the fez and the new official dress code as a means of escaping discrimination. Paradoxically, freed now from state-imposed clothing laws premised on religious differentiation, non-Muslims expressed their wealth visibly and publicly through their clothing. Thus, wealthy non-Muslims not only aspired to appear like their Muslim countrymen, but even competed with the highest government officials in ostentatiously differentiating themselves from ordinary people of all faiths.12 As a result of this inferior social status and visible differentiation, the Christians tended to develop social ties with other non-Muslims, who were either members of other Ottoman minorities or foreign residents of the empire, who were often connected to European embassies. This religious divide in Ottoman society was a significant factor in the social fragmentation of the empire.13 In the Ottoman concept of the social and political order, the non-Muslim subjects had their assigned place. When they were felt to be gaining too much wealth or power, it caused profound resentment among those in the ruling nation.14

The Economic Status of the Armenians and Greeks The growth of international trade led to the non-Muslim Ottomans becoming dominant in this activity in the nineteenth century. This was especially the case after the Anglo-Ottoman commercial treaty of 1838, which led to a large influx of foreign capital into the Ottoman Empire.15 The European merchants were not as familiar with the business markets and practices locally as the native Christians. In many cases, the local markets were too small to make it worth the European merchants’ efforts. And significantly, the nature of buying and selling depended on extending credit to the local consumers, which the Ottoman Christians were able to supply. Thus, the foreign merchant and the local Christian agent complemented each other profitably.16 In Constantinople especially, the non-Muslim minorities lived close to the large European colonies. Unlike the Muslims, they had no restrictions in associating with Europeans. Jews and Christians were proficient in European languages, which enabled them to act as translators for foreign embassies and trading companies. Furthermore, European merchants were conscious that any contract entered into with a Muslim could be struck down in a Muslim court. Thus, Europeans increasingly partnered with non-Muslim merchants and helped them obtain the same economic

22 |George N. Shirinian

benefits from the “capitulations” that they enjoyed, i.e. exemption from paying the poll tax, lower trade duties, and therefore lower costs.17 Perhaps even more significantly, the Europeans increasingly provided special legal protection for the non-Muslim merchants, which prevented the sultan from confiscating the latter’s wealth.18 In addition to foreign trade, the non-Muslims were well represented in finance (banking and moneylending), mechanized transport, export-oriented agriculture, and modern industries. They were also prominent in the professions, such as medicine, pharmacy, engineering, law, and teaching.19 Ottoman Christians, mainly Greeks and Armenians, represented the majority of officially registered merchants in Constantinople in 1911—as high as 90%. Twothirds of the largest textile importers were Armenians.20 Of the 654 wholesale companies in Constantinople in 1911, 528 (81%) were owned by ethnic Greeks.21 Of the 40 private bankers in Constantinople in 1912, none had a Muslim name; of those who could be identified with reasonable confidence, 12 were Greek, 12 Armenian, 8 Jewish, and 5 Levantine or European. Of the 34 stockbrokers, 18 were Greek, 6 Jewish, 5 Armenian.22 In Smyrna, one of the principal economic centers of the Ottoman Empire and the major exporting port involved in trade with the West, Greeks made up between 40 and 50% of the city’s merchants during the second half of the nineteenth century, and shipping between Smyrna, the islands along the Anatolian coast, and with Greece was dominated by Greeks.23 Between 1880 and 1910, over 1,500 industrial plants were established in Smyrna with Greek capital.24 In the vilayet of Aydın (in which Smyrna was situated), 4,008 of the estimated 5,308 industrial establishments were owned by Greeks, some 76%, and they employed some 78% of the workers there.25 In 1915, a German observer noted, “The whole of the bazaar in Adana is Armenian. The cotton cultivation is also almost exclusively in Armenians’ hands; trade with this commodity in Greek hands.”26 The Christian minorities preferred to pay the special head tax in lieu of military service, as the possibilities of a military career were almost non-existent, and pursue more lucrative commercial careers. All this contributed to resentment by the majority population towards the non-Muslim minorities.

The Role of Education in the Status of the Armenians and Greeks During the Reform Period (Tanzimat), 1839–76, the Christian population of the Ottoman Empire surpassed the Muslim majority in education; this, in turn, led to an increasingly dominant role for the Christians in the economy. In 1861, there were 571 primary and 94 secondary schools for Ottoman Christians, with a total of some 140,000 students, a figure that far exceeded the number of Muslim children in school during the same time. By 1895, the gap had narrowed, but still only 6.5% of Muslims attended school, compared to some 9% of non-Muslims. The non-Muslims were found especially in the foreign and medical schools.27

Background to the Late Ottoman Genocides | 23

The Amiras built many Armenian schools and provided endowments for their continued operation. The intention was to increase the literacy of the Armenians, not only to encourage the spread of Armenian culture, but also to assist them in acquiring Western technical skills and professions.28 The American, British, and other Western missionaries set up schools that were eagerly attended by the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, where they taught about such concepts as liberty, equality, and independence. In the 1870s, there were 105 Greek schools in Constantinople alone, with fifteen thousand students, and by 1912, the number of schools grew to 113, not counting private schools.29 The Greek Orthodox maintained by far the largest number of schools among the non-Muslims at 4,390.30 It was said by one contemporary observer that “[t]he Greeks spend more money for educational purposes than any other nation in Turkey.”31 These schools taught the Hellenic heritage and the Orthodox faith; little Turkish was taught there until 1895, when the Ottoman government made it a requirement. During the second half of the nineteenth century, Ottoman Greek education relied heavily on Greece, and Ottoman Greeks who studied in Athens returned home “eager to spread the ideas of Greek nationalism and Hellenic culture.”32

The Situation in the Rural Areas Not all of the Armenians and Greeks were prosperous businessmen. A majority of them, along with the Assyrians, worked the land as farmers. During the nineteenth century, the growth of international trade resulted in an increased demand for agricultural goods, and so the value of agricultural land also increased. Agricultural production grew during the nineteenth century, so that by 1914 it represented 56% of the Ottoman national income.33 The Ottoman state wanted to settle the nomadic Kurdish tribes in Eastern Anatolia, so they could grow crops, husband animals, produce wealth, and be taxed.34 The revenues for the imperial treasury accruing from this agricultural production were collected by a system of tax farming. This was a system whereby local administrators bid for the contracts to collect taxes, committing a lump sum to the government and taking any surplus as profit. Such a system lent itself to corruption and abuse, and the Ottoman government tried to abolish it twice, but reinstated it both times because it was too lucrative for the imperial treasury.35 The central government’s agricultural tax policy of requiring everyone to pay the same rate strained relations between Christians and Muslims, the latter of whom resented being equated in this way with the Christians.36 During this time, conflict arose between the Armenian agriculturalists and Kurdish aghas (tribal chiefs who were large landowners), who were displacing the Armenians from their traditional land in large numbers. The situation was summarized by a contemporary Russian traveler with the following observations:

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According to some Russian newspapers, the cause of the economical situation is purely agricultural, but this is not so. It is useless to raise the question of restoring to the true Armenian owners the lands that have been seized from them by the Kurds. The Armenians must give up all such hope. It is tale [i.e., fantasy—GNS] to talk of wiping out two and a half million Kurds, who now hold those lands. Before the constitution, the lands of the Beys, who were generally the landlords of the country, were cultivated by the Armenians as tenants without any contracts. But after the constitution the Beys demanded contracts of a monstrous kind. Besides the payments under the contracts, the Armenians had to pay half or even three quarters of the harvest. Moreover, there are land taxes. Thus the Armenian is at the Bey’s mercy and can make no profit for himself as all the profit goes to the Bey. The situation of the Armenian landowner is still worse as he is being deprived of his land, his only means of subsistence. In addition to the legal direct and indirect taxes there are a series of arbitrary impositions, for instance a tax: “Mer Dorma” (“give and ask no question”) paid on dairy produce. Again, there are the taxes for roads, schools, though no Armenian school gets any subvention from the Government. The Government has invented an infernal device to take the lands away from the Armenian land owners. This is the Government agricultural bank, which, with fair speeches, press on the Armenian, who wants in advance of ten, fifteen or twenty pounds, to be repaid in 1 year with heavy interest. The poor, simple villager consents and loses all his land. In the region of Ekhlat, 92 percent of the lands of the Armenians are thus pledged to the bank, and 87 percent in the region of Malatia. Nothing then remains but emigration.37 The Armenians found no aid from the Ottoman government for this situation and other serious grievances regarding the corrupt taxation system, Kurdish predations, inequality under the law, and their being subjected chronically to personal violence. They turned to the European Powers, especially Great Britain and Russia, for assistance. This created an escalating cycle of interference by the European Powers in the internal affairs of the Ottoman sultan, a growing distrust of the Armenians by the Ottoman ruling elite, the development of the desire among the Armenians for selfrule, and an active Armenian revolutionary movement against the Ottoman state. Not only the Armenians, but also other Christian minorities had such complaints. For example, the Assyrian Patriarch, Mar Rouil Shimon, wrote an official letter to the Russian tsar, dated May 14, 1868: …We are a poor nation; my people have not enough grain to provide themselves with bread…The Kurds have forcibly taken many of our Churches and convents, they constantly abduct our virgins, brides, and women, forcing them to turn Moslems…The Turks are worse, they do not protect us, demand military taxes, poll tax, also the Kurds take our

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money for they consider us as “Zirr Kurr” (slaves—being Christians…) …Now, such being our condition, we beseech your mightiness, for the sake of Jesus, His Baptism, and cross. Either to free us from such a state or to procure us a remedy….38 In 1870, the Armenian National Assembly in Constantinople appointed a special commission to investigate and report on acts of oppression in the eastern provinces. In April 1872, the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, Mkrtich Khrimyan, sent the first official report to the Sublime Porte. It gave a general summary of the types of complaints of the Armenians, along with suggestions on how they could be remedied. In September 1876, the Armenian National Assembly sent a second official report—by this time Khrimyan had resigned as patriarch—this time providing details of the oppressive acts that had occurred in about 320 locations in the four years since the previous report. The overwhelming majority of these acts consisted of the usurpation of Armenian-owned land by Muslim overlords.39 The report gave its explanation for this situation as follows: The principal causes of this fatal and intolerable state of things are the non-diffusion among Mohammedan people of the idea or sentiment of equality and the deficient administration of justice. Particularly those officials who occupy inferior posts in the provincial administration have, through their ignorance, prejudice, and bigotry, never shown any disposition to propagate and diffuse among the masses the principles of equality, nor have they shown any aptitude for the regular administration of justice, while these were their sacred duties, as our newly-crowned Sultan distinctly says in his Hatti-Sherif.40 Among the remedies the report recommended, quite reasonably, were that in drafting the new Ottoman constitution later that year, the situation of all the subjects of the empire be taken into equal consideration, and that the communal assemblies in the respective provinces be consulted when selecting candidates to represent the community in local government, since the appointment of such candidates was being done quite arbitrarily.41 Though holding no official position, Khrimyan led a delegation to Berlin during the peace negotiations at the end of the Russo-Turkish War and tried to engage the European Powers in pressing the Ottoman regime for reforms for the Armenians. While the Treaty of Berlin (1878) did include provisions for reforms for the Armenians, the mutual rivalries of the European Powers interfered with their support for them, and the Ottoman authorities got away with not implementing them. A Russian report of October 19, 1880 noted the following: After waiting for the resolution of the Armenian Question, the Porte realized that the Europeans were not pressing the issue, and revived Abbedin Pasha’s project; a project that was previously unanimously rejected by the

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Europeans. This was a plan to redraw the administrative map of Turkish Armenia in such a way that Armenians would not represent a majority [in the vilayets]. Neighboring regions, populated by Kurds and Turks, were attached to Armenian-populated districts. In addition, the Porte began to harass the Armenians and to appoint its own bishops without the approval of the patriarch…The patriarch states that Turkish and Transcaucasian Armenians have already approached him with the idea of a revolt, a plan which he has rejected, but which may be carried out by a small group of zealots.42 Earlier that year, the Russian vice-consul in Van noted an increase in Armenian nationalism there and that it was being nurtured from Russia. A very strong national movement is spreading among the Armenians. The main force behind this is the “Araratian” Society, which plans to educate the Turkish Armenians. Most of its leaders and its financial base come from the Russian citizens—Armenians from the Caucasus. The Armenian activities here are pro-Russian in nature. The Turkish government is aware of this and has begun strict measures to restrict contacts between Turkish and Russian Armenians. For example, Armenian journals published in Russia have been banned here…43 The minorities looked for help not only from outside the country, but also from each other. The Russian vice-consul in Van reported on November 12, 1880, that “[t]he Nestorians of the vilayet of Van under their leader, Marshimun, have begun discussions with the Armenians for joint defense measures against their enemies.”44 The problems continued to fester, however. The English traveler Isabella L. Bird Bishop documented a catalogue of chronic injustices against the Christians, including robbery, kidnapping of girls, and murder, during a two-and-half-month journey through Kurdistan in 1890. “What is known as the ‘Armenian Question’ … ought to include a ‘Nestorian Question,’” she wrote.45 It cannot be said that the “disorders” which I have attempted to describe are confined to small localities and are created by “peculiar local circumstances.” From the Persian frontier a few miles from Urmi, along a more or less travelled route of several hundred miles, there was generally speaking no security for life, property, or traffic, and on the other side of Erzeroum, even up to the vicinity of the Russian frontier, on the Passin Plain, and in the district of Alashgird, things were, if possible worse.46 One of the major problems was that exorbitant taxes were demanded from the non-Muslims, even when they could not pay. Bishop described complaints of villagers north and west of Lake Van who were beaten mercilessly when they failed to pay. They alleged with great unanimity that it was usual for the zaptiehs [Turkish police] to tie their hands behind their backs, plaster their faces with

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fresh cow-dung, or throw pails of cold water at their eyes, tie them to the wooden posts of their houses, and beat them severely. In the village of — it was asserted that the zaptiehs had tied twenty defaulters together, and had driven them barefooted round and round over the thistles of a threshing-floor, flogging them with their heavy riding-whips.47 Bishop described the Christians as living without hope in “abject terror.” The British consul in Erzerum wrote in 1890 that “in all the crimes of violence of which the Christians have been the victims during the past year in the province of Erzeroum no one has been punished, nor, with very few exceptions, has any effort been even made to bring the offenders to justice.”48 Some people she talked with told her that they had long hoped that England would intervene to help them. They told her “the uneducated masses hoped that Russia would occupy Armenia in the spring, but the few educated men would prefer England.”49 Armenian political parties and armed revolutionary groups had been formed in the 1880s to press their complaints for justice and a measure of autonomy.50 This challenge by a subordinate nation was an intolerable affront to the authority of the ruling Muslim elite. The British consul in Erzerum observed, “Discontent or any description of protest is, however, regarded by the Turkish Local Government as seditious, and a policy such as I described in my dispatch alluded to is pursued, depriving the Armenian subject of every liberty to his person, and for which no justification exists.”51

Tanzimat: The Failed Promise of Reforms In an attempt to address the complaints of the minorities, as well as to modernize the political, social, economic, and military structure of the empire to better withstand challenges from within and without, successive sultans and their ministers initiated a series of reforms during an era known as the Tanzimat period (1839–76). In 1839, the Hatt-ı Hümayun [Noble Rescript] of Gülhane was proclaimed, promising to secure the life, honor, and property of the sultan’s subjects; to provide fair and public trials, with no execution of criminals until the defense was judged publicly; to allow the heirs of a criminal their rights of inheritance if they were free of complicity in the crime; to establish a fairer tax system; and to develop a fairer system for conscripting, training, and maintaining soldiers for the sultan’s army, so as not to overburden the capacity of some local areas. Later reforms dealt with education, the criminal and civil court systems, and the penal code. The complexity and responsibility of the Supreme Council for administering reforms were too great, however, and many of the reforms were not fully implemented, or were poorly thought out. At the same time, the Supreme Council was a conservative institution, whose members resisted reform. The tax reforms of 1839 failed, and the decline in revenues strained the imperial treasury, so the old system of tax farming was quickly restored in 1840. Even though new protections were added, corruption was common and over-taxation prevalent.

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In 1856, after the Crimean War, a new reform decree, the Hatt-ı Hümayun, prepared under strong pressure from the British and French ambassadors, reaffirmed the principles of Gülhane. It intended to abolish tax farming and its associated abuses and promised equality for all Ottoman citizens, regardless of their ethnicity or religion. The Christian millets were encouraged to discuss and submit the reforms required from their perspective and were promised access to public employment, military schools and service, and the right to establish their own schools, though instructors and the selection of professors would be controlled by a mixed council. In the period 1861–64, the Armenians, Greeks, and other millets were granted new national constitutions, which defined (i.e. limited) the political powers of the religious heads and created new national assemblies for the various millets with a lay legal system compatible with the needs, aspirations, and philosophies of the middle class merchants and intellectuals. This reform helped unify various ethno-religious groups and helped stimulate the rise of national identity among them.52 These reforms, however, challenged the traditional relationship between the ruling Muslims and the subject non-Muslims and threatened the privileged position the former enjoyed. By 1871, the leaders of the reform movement in the government were mostly gone, and a reaction against their legacy developed. Through a series of measures, Sultan Abdul Aziz took power back from the government and reasserted the supremacy of the sultanate. The Islamic nature of the Caliphate was re-emphasized, restrictions were imposed on the activities of foreign missionaries, the sale of Christian scriptures in the Ottoman language was banned in 1874, and Ottoman Christians were dismissed from public office. A new constitution was proclaimed at the end of 1876. All citizens were to be considered Ottoman, regardless of religion, and equal in the eyes of the law. All were free to pursue their own religion, though Islam remained the official state religion. Torture was prohibited. Non-Muslims had their own millet courts. In sum, the new constitution contained the same basic provisions for human rights as the previous failed reforms. The new sultan, Abdul Hamid, was endowed with supreme authority, however, in spite of there being an elected parliament. As a reaction to criticism by the parliament about his conduct of the Russo-Turkish War, Abdul Hamid dissolved parliament in 1878. One result of the reforms was that because they had come about largely because of foreign pressure, the ethnic and religious minorities continued to seek foreign intervention to resolve their problems with the Ottoman state. It seemed clear to the minorities that the rulers of the empire were not truly interested in their problems. Thus, the Christians sought reforms only for their own particular problems, while ignoring the problems of the general population. This gave rise to the perception among Muslim citizens that the Christians did not care about their interests and were even committing treason. While the long-term effect of Tanzimat was to make Ottoman society more secular, it nevertheless also served to divide Christians and Muslims.

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The Kurdish Factor Generally, the Armenians and Assyrians lived in areas also populated by Kurds. The Greeks did not. Kurdish politics impacted the Armenians and Assyrians significantly. During the early 1800s, Kurdish chiefs set up their own independent states in Eastern Anatolia, in defiance of the Ottoman government. They forced the local Christians to take sides, and the Assyrian tribes in particular went into battle in support of one Kurdish tribe or another. In 1841, the Assyrians supported the losing side in an internal Kurdish conflict, and thereafter the Assyrians themselves became divided politically. The Kurds massacred many Assyrians during the 1840s. Owing to press reports of these massacres in Europe, the Great Powers put pressure on the Ottoman government to intervene, and the latter succeeded in destroying the Kurdish emirates. It has been said that “the Christian massacres woke European politicians and public opinion to the victimization of the Ottoman Christians, the hostility of the Kurds, and the suspected collusion of the government authorities.”53 This has been described as “an important milestone for public opinion concerning international protection for religious minorities,”54 later enshrined in the Treaty of Berlin, a major irritation for the Ottoman ruling elite, and a major source of their hostility towards the Christian minorities. In 1891, sultan Abdul Hamid established the Hamidiye irregular cavalry, named after himself. The Hamidiye was recruited from loyal Kurdish tribes and led by their chiefs. They were given uniforms, modern arms, and official ranks. Ostensibly, they were to serve as a defensive force against Russian incursion. A secondary consideration, however, was to use them to suppress rising Armenian nationalism. As Gerald Henry Fitzmaurice, Chief Dragoman at the British embassy in Constantinople noted: The Turkish Government, after the Treaty of Berlin, realising that a sense of nationality cannot easily live without a peasantry, and that if it succeeded in uprooting the Armenian peasantry from the soil and driving them into the towns or out of the country, it would in great part rid itself of the Armenians and the Armenian question, condoned and encouraged Kurdish usurpation of Armenian lands. This retail process was repeated on a wholesale scale after the big massacres of 1895–6.55 The massacres of the 1890s and 1909 were directed primarily against the Armenians, but in the process many Assyrians were also killed.56 The newly regimented and fortified Kurdish tribes quickly realized their superiority over rival tribes and used their force to satisfy vendettas. The Ottoman authorities did not intervene, as they wanted to retain the loyalty of these Kurdish troops. When the Ottoman state was unable to pay their wages, the Hamidiye regiments were assigned certain Christian villages from which they could collect—or extort—taxes, a situation that was rife with abuse.57

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Moreover, the political and social condition of the Christians left them unarmed and defenseless against Kurdish predations of their property, crops, animals, wives, and daughters, and attacks upon their persons and lives. The Commission of Usurped Lands established by the Armenian Chamber of Deputies analyzed 135 reports presented to the Ottoman government between 1890 and 1910 and found seven thousand cases of illegal land seizures in the eastern provinces, causing a massive emigration of Armenians.58 The Ottoman state provided no relief. All this only aggravated the Armenians’ fervent desire for reform, drove them to seek the help of the European Powers, and helped fuel the Armenian revolutionary movement.

The Hamidian Massacres Owing to the situation just described, tensions between the Armenians and the Kurds increased and there were armed clashes in the summer of 1893, continuing into 1894. The Armenian farmers in Sasun in 1894 refused to pay exorbitant taxes because of a bad harvest—there had been floods that spring—and because the government failed to protect them from Kurdish depredations. The Armenian villagers fled into the mountains and were able to resist the Kurdish troops sent by the kaymakam [district governor]. To the government, this was a revolt. It sent in Ottoman troops, who committed a massacre of the Armenians, which spread far beyond Sasun in a series of massacres that continued until February 1897, and sporadically after that. Sultan Abdul Hamid had popular support for the massacres, as the rumor was spread that the Armenians wanted to establish a Christian kingdom in Eastern Anatolia.59 In May 1895, Britain, France, and Russia proposed the “Project of Reforms for the Eastern Provinces of Asia Minor.” Sultan Abdul Hamid refused to agree to it. In October of that year, he finally agreed to a set of reforms, but the massacres continued regardless, and the reforms were not implemented. It is estimated that Ottoman government forces killed more than 200,000 Armenian civilians. Assyrians were sometimes killed along with the Armenians.60 Three elements emerged from this whole episode. First, the mistrust between the entire Armenian people and the Ottoman government and society was further exacerbated. Second, the government was absolutely against reforms for the Armenians. Third, even after an official commission of inquiry that involved the European Powers, there were no negative consequences for the sultan and his government. The lesson they took from this was that they could kill the Armenians en masse with impunity.61

The Role of the European Powers As described earlier, special privileges known as “capitulations” had been granted by sultans to foreign states. Initially, these diplomatic and commercial concessions were intended to be reciprocal and to ensure the influx of goods to the Ottoman

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marketplace. By the eighteenth century, however, the capitulations were increasingly one-sided in favor of the foreign states and imposed by them upon the Ottoman state. While a series of free trade agreements made during the period 1838 to 1841 between the Ottoman Empire and the major European countries resulted in a great increase in Ottoman foreign trade, an accompanying result was a large Ottoman trade deficit. During the course of the eighteenth century, however, certain non-Muslim Ottomans also managed to acquire these special privileges when they served as interpreters for foreign consulates. It has been suggested that the large number of non-Muslim Ottomans availing themselves of foreign protection indicates a significant loss of their confidence in the empire. By the end of the eighteenth century, for example, Austria had 260,000 protégés in Moldavia and Wallachia, and by 1808, an estimated 120,000 Ottoman Greeks had benefited from Russian protection. Not only was the Ottoman state deprived of their taxes, but the fact that they had the ear of foreign diplomats was considered to call into question their loyalty to the sultan.62 With the Battle of Vienna (1683), the European nations had stopped the Ottoman Empire’s expansion militarily. After that, France, Great Britain, and especially Russia looked for opportunities to extract territory or wealth from the Ottoman Empire by engaging in direct wars with it, encouraging rebellion among its subjects, and involving themselves in the internal affairs of the empire. The Ottoman ruling elite not only resented this interference in their internal affairs, but also blamed the minorities for being willing tools of foreign interests. The Crimean War (1853–56), which had pitted Russia, on one side, against the Ottoman Empire, France, and Great Britain on the other, strained the Ottoman treasury and forced the Ottoman government to take a series of foreign loans under terms that put it deeply and permanently in debt. During the peace negotiations following that war, the European Powers all declared their interest in guaranteeing the territorial integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire. Their real interest, however, was in preventing each other from gaining any advantage. The Ottoman leadership observed the rivalry among the European Powers and used it skillfully, if not always successfully, to help defend the empire against intrusions into Ottoman sovereignty. The crash of the international stock exchanges in 1873 marked the beginning of a major economic depression in Europe that lasted until 1896, making it impossible for the Ottoman Empire to obtain new loans. By 1876, with the temporary loss of revenues from Bosnia and Bulgaria, the Ottoman government was forced to suspend all debt payments to the European banks. This further provoked the Europeans’ increased involvement in the internal affairs of the empire and helped promote the image of Turkey as vulnerable and “the sick man of Europe.” As stated earlier, during the peace negotiations following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, an Armenian delegation attended the Congress of Berlin. It used the opportunity to bring the Armenians’ chronic complaints of mistreatment by the

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Ottoman state to the attention of the European Powers once again. Terms were agreed to at the Congress and, thanks to Great Power rivalry, a watered-down version was enshrined in Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin, which left Turkey to its own devices in implementing this requirement. Article 61 stated: The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out, without further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds. It will periodically make known the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, who will superintend their application.63 It has been noted that the failure of the European Powers to actively address the Armenian situation at this time caused a festering problem to grow. If anything, the situation was becoming more critical, as was depicted in some 500 folio pages of the [British] Parliamentary Papers, filled with the reports of British representatives from Asia Minor covering the last half of the year 1878. Most of these despatches deal with the misery and suffering of the Armenians in their native provinces. Indeed, their contents are so heavily laden with tales of inconceivable horrors and endless sufferings that many a reader may think they are entirely partial, and written to the prejudice of all other peoples living in these provinces.64 The Greeks, who were not participants in the Russo-Turkish War, also sent a delegation to the peace conference and demanded Crete, Thessaly, and Epirus. In the end, the Ottoman Empire was forced to give up two-fifths of its entire territory and onefifth of its population, about 5.5 million people, of whom almost half were Muslims, and lose substantial revenues.65 This disaster must also have angered the Ottoman leadership towards their Armenian and Greek citizens. According to the analysis of long-term French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Paul Cambon, the Ottoman leadership consciously decided to exacerbate the Armenian Question through inaction, provocation, and playing the European Powers against each other. In maintaining that the Armenians were conspiring, the Armenians ended up engaging in conspiracy; in maintaining that there was no Armenia, the Armenians ended up conjuring the reality of her existence … The harsh punishment of conspirators, the maintenance in Armenia of a veritable regime of terror, arrests, murders, rapes, all this shows that Turkey is taking pleasure in precipitating the events [in relation to] an inoffensive population. In reality the Armenian Question is nothing but an expression of the antagonism between England and Russia…66

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Greece and the Megali Idea During the nineteenth century, the Megali Idea, the “great idea” of a larger Greece, developed among the leadership in Greece. After the Greek War of Independence (1821–32), the Greeks felt their borders were unsatisfactory, as less than one-third of all Greek nationals were included within the boundaries of the newly established state, and no major Ottoman city from among those containing significant Greek populations. The great idea demanded the completion of the unfinished project of Greek liberation, or replacing the Ottoman Empire with a Greek one.67 Expansion would have to come at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, aided by Russian interest in taking advantage of that empire, as well as by European philhellenism. The Slavic-speaking populations were included in this grand vision. The Greeks assumed that Slavs would want to be included in the Eastern Orthodox fold, and that anyone aspiring to Greek education and culture would regard themselves as Greeks. The Greeks did not emphasize race, but rather language, common history, and the identification of the individual with Hellenism as constituting the Greek nation, and many Slavs figure prominently in the annals of Greek patriotism.68 Thus, after attaining independence, Greece came into conflict, either diplomatic or armed, with the Ottoman Empire repeatedly—1841 (the Cretan revolt), 1854 (the Crimean War), 1863 (proclamation of King George I as “King of the Hellenes,” rather than King of Greece), 1866 (the Cretan revolt), 1878 (acquisition of parts of Thessaly and Epirus arising out of the Congress of Berlin), 1885 (the Bulgarian crisis), 1897 (the Cretan revolt), 1905–12 (struggle for the unification of Crete with Greece), and 1912–13 (the Balkan Wars).69 The Greeks believed that a general historical tendency was at work in favor of Greece, and that the European parts of the Ottoman Empire were destined to be liberated by the Balkan peoples.70 The continual conflict inspired by the Megali Idea led to hostility on the part of both the Ottoman leadership and its Muslim population towards its own citizens of Greek ethnicity.

The Role of Envy and Resentment From the late eighteenth century, the Turkish-Muslim peasants’ failure to modernize meant they gradually lost socio-economic status when compared to the more progressive Christian peasantry, which was strengthened by the development of its middle class (merchants, intellectuals, clergy). The Turkish-Muslim segment of society did not have a middle class that could compete politically with the Christian one. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Turkish-Muslims ceased to be a substantial economic force. Unable to comprehend the changes that were reducing their lot in life, Turkish peasants used religion as a basis of group solidarity, thus identifying with the Ottoman political elite. Eventually, the elite used this religious identification to solidify the lower strata of society and achieve political solidarity.71

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Envied social groups often become the targets of attempted mass elimination. There is a strange mix of both respect and dislike for high-status out-groups, e.g. the business class or rich people. These out-groups are associated with by other groups because of their high status and resources, but they are also sometimes attacked on account of being privileged outsiders. Thus, envy elicits resentment and attack under unstable social conditions. To the extent that high-status groups seem to use their competence and their position to serve themselves instead of others, they invoke resentment.72 It has been said that Envy dissolves social cohesion. It destroys trust, creates aggression, promotes suspicion over proof, and leads people to bolster their sense of self-worth by denigrating others. Those who achieve success, especially if they are also outsiders, are invariably subjected to side-long glances, malicious rumor, and libel. At the same time…jealous people gradually poison themselves, becoming ever more dissatisfied and bitter. Thus they tend to conceal their shameful, base resentment of others behind supposedly more sophisticated arguments—for example, those of racist theory.73 Envy of the education, financial prosperity, and upward social mobility of the non-Muslim minorities, and the efforts of the Tanzimat movement to bring a measure of legal and political equality to them, led to increasing levels of resentment against them on the part of the ruling Muslim majority, as well as the average Ottoman Muslim citizen. One British diplomat summed it up in this way: One may criticize the Turkish character, but given their idiosyncrasies, one must admit that they derive little profit from such blessings of civilization as are introduced into their country. Foreign syndicates profit most, and after them native Christians, but not the Osmanli, expect insofar as he can make them disgorge their gains.74 Thus, economic growth and disparity intensified social differentiation among the empire’s millets and helped divide Muslims and non-Muslims into increasingly hostile groups.75 This resentment manifested itself in a variety of ways. At the time of the proclamation of the Hatt-ı Hümayun in 1856, which promised equality for all Ottoman subjects, one high government official noted: …in the whole range of government, the non-Muslims were forthwith to be deemed the equals of the Muslims. Many Muslims began to grumble: “Today we have lost our sacred national rights, won by the blood of our fathers and forefathers. At a time when the Islamic millet was the ruling millet, it was deprived of this sacred right. This is a day of weeping and mourning for the people of Islam.”76

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The idea of equality promoted by Tanzimat offended the Turks’ inherent sense of the rightness of their privilege. “‘Now we can’t call a gavur a gavur,’ it was said, sometimes bitterly, sometimes in matter-of-fact explanation that under the new dispensation the plain truth could no longer be spoken openly.”77 The Turks’ deeply felt sense of the sacredness of their rights in this regard is illustrated by the views of participants in the conspiracy of 1859 against sultan Abdul Medjid. Professor Roderic Davison explains: Some forty-odd participants, many of them army officers and Muslim theological professors and students, were arrested. Interrogation revealed that through their rather fuzzy ideas there ran a general dissatisfaction with the Ottoman government, caused more by the proclamations of Christian equality than by any other single factor. The conspiracy’s leading spirit and theoretician, one Sheikh [Şeyh] Ahmet, indicated that he regarded the reform edicts of 1839 and 1856 as contraventions of Muslim law, the Şeriat, because they allowed Christians equal rights with Muslims. According to the deposition of another conspirator, Sheikh Ahmet had been teaching in the medrese that the Christians got these privileges with the help of foreign powers. The Kuleli incident, as this abortive conspiracy has since been known, provides a good index to widespread Turkish attitudes. It revealed an ill-defined resentment against the mere concept of equality, a conscious support of “religious law,” and condemnation of the government both for its reform edicts and for its apparent submission to foreign influence. The doctrine of equality seemed bad if for no other reason than that it proclaimed to be equal adherents of religions that were not equal. And Osmanlılık, as a purely political concept of the allegiance of peoples of all creeds to a ruler who treated them equally, was unreal, because the traditional concept of “Osmanli” had always carried strong implications of Muslim orthodoxy as well as of loyalty to the Ottoman state.78 Ziya Gökalp, one of the most influential ideologues of the newly developing Turkish nationalism, complained that equality could never be attained so long as the Christians could have recourse not only to the Ottoman government, and to their millet representatives, but also to foreign protectors. For example, he wrote, if a guilty Christian is jailed, he is suddenly released without cause because someone influential has intervened. But if an innocent Muslim were to fall into the toils of justice and be imprisoned without cause, who is there to help him? “Is this equality?” he asked bitterly.79 An Armenian writing in 1895, during the highly publicized Armenian massacres, offered his view of envy as the source of Turkish animosity: I can supply illustrations of the grounds of hatred which the Turks have against Christians. In the quarter of Marsovan in which I lived when I

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was a child, the Turks were everywhere; our own house was owned by a Turk. To-day the whole of that part of the town is inhabited by Armenian Christians. If you go to market the Christians are there too, the whole of the commerce and industry being in their hands. In Marsovan there is not one baker, one tailor, one shoemaker, or one mason who is Mohammedan. It is easy to see, then, what has provoked the Turkish jealousy, and love of plunder.80 Ahmed Riza, one of the leaders of the Young Turks in Paris, wrote in 1896 regarding the Armenian massacres: …but the fact is that, in our country, there is no comparison between the fate of the Ottoman Christians and that of the Muslims. The Christians are by far happier, or, if one prefers, less wretched…If Christians are the preferred targets of looting, the reason is that they enjoy greater wealth and material comfort than the Muslims and that, either out of fear or suspicion of the victor, they generally keep their doors shut.81 Articles in the party organ of the Committee of Union and Progress decried the protection and privilege afforded to the Christians by the European Powers. The following statement from 1903 is illustrative. Our courts cannot pronounce a verdict against Russian subjects! Mr. Maksimov slaps our privates. Greek bishops function as Russian consuls. We cannot collect taxes from Greek subjects. When a [Greek] prostitute falls in love with a fireman and wants to convert to Islam to marry him, the dragoman of the Russian consulate intervenes and scolds the mufti.82 In Diyarbekir in 1895, Muslim resentment against the Armenians manifested itself in several ways. Armenians were accused of monopolizing import/export trade. They built a clock tower that was higher than a minaret. When a cholera epidemic broke out, it was said that more Muslims than Armenians fell victim.83 Regarding Muslim–non-Muslim relations and the idea of an inclusionary Ottoman citizenship, members of the Committee of Union and Progress were negative from an early stage, as this article from ca. 1905 illustrates: If there are among the Turks those who are hesitant to extend the right of citizenship to Christians, there are grounds for such hesitation. If a Christian happens to be a member of the Greek community, he looks towards Athens, if of the Bulgarian, to Sofia, and if he is an Armenian, he dreams about the establishment of an independent Armenia. Attempting to wrest from us a piece of our homeland, it was the Greeks who rebelled yesterday, and now the Bulgarians and the Armenians are engaged in armed rebellion. Turks are witnesses to all this, and naturally are saddened and feel that the Christians have hurt them.84

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The Committee of Union and Progress criticized the nationalistic education that the Christians were receiving in their schools, as illustrated in this article from 1903: At the Armenian, Greek, and Bulgarian schools, the pupils’ nationalist feeling are fomented against the Turkish administration, while at our schools the students are not allowed to pronounce the term “fatherland!”85 The resentment at the education, general vitality, and happiness of the Christians is illustrated by the remarks of Ahmet Şerif, an Ittihadist intellectual, traveler, journalist, and Ottoman government official, who published the following after he visited the predominantly Armenian town of Hajin in March 1910: “From the faces of the schoolgirls and schoolboys, life and vitality burst forth. Let us not lie: I did not feel admiration for this, but jealousy.” In 1911, after a visit to Samsun on the Black Sea, he wrote: It is as if a general orphan-like spirit floats over the [Muslim] quarter. Laziness, an apathetic attitude toward life is the character that appears among the Muslims. In contrast, if you enter the quarter of the Christians, your heart feels happiness; you find superbly constructed houses, which testify to proprietors interested in life, and to their beautiful disposition, and clean and broad streets. In contrast to the immobility of the Muslims, the Christians are always on the move. In this respect, they enjoy the good things of life much more…The difference is even more obvious in regard to education. Whereas the Christian citizens generally know how to read and write more or less, the Muslims are very much behind.86 The transition from envy to resentment to irrational feelings of anger and violence is illustrated in this statement from the Committee of Union and Progress’s party organ in 1904: Putting obstacles in the way of those who have been smuggling guns, dynamite, and bombs over the Russian border is considered violent treatment of Armenians…You are accusing Turks. You don’t have the right [to do so]. If the Turk, with whom you have lived together for centuries, had massacred you, you would not exist today. This is an absolute proof that he has never massacred you! Let’s address this question to the entire world: Is there another nation that grants such magnanimous treatment to an ethnic group like the Armenians, who have done nothing for the maintenance of the common fatherland, and who have not shed a drop of blood to this end? Therefore, what is the reason behind the Armenians’ revolt? What do they want? Autonomous administration in the lands which they dare to call Armenia?…If so, the revolt of the Armenians is not a rebellion but a war.87

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Editorials in the nationalist paper Türk during the period 1905–07 criticized the Armenians for rendering service only to the Western imperial powers and called for Turks to boycott Armenian goods,88 a plan they would soon implement against both Armenians and Greeks (see below). In the drive to Turkify the economy, non-Muslims were described in pamphlets and speeches in terms such as the following: We are broken hearted at finding you Muslims are still asleep. The Christians, profiting from our ignorance, have now for ages been taking our place and taking away our rights. These vipers whom we are nourishing have been sucking out all the life-blood of the nation. They are the parasitical worms eating into our flesh whom we must destroy and do away with. It is time we freed ourselves from these individuals, by all means lawful and unlawful…89 Thus, envy turned into resentment and developed into outspoken calls for violence against the Christians.

The Role of Extreme Turkish Nationalism A new Turkish nationalistic organization was formed in Istanbul 1889, which joined with other organizations and eventually became the political party known as the Committee of Union and Progress (“CUP,” in Turkish, Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti).90 They developed political ideas based on an ideology of Turkish racial supremacy, pan-Islamism, and pan-Turanism. This ideology called for the “unification of the Turks—who share language, race, customs, and even for the most part, religion, and who are spread throughout the majority of Asia and Eastern Europe,” and would result in the “formation of a vast political nationality … from the peoples of the great race,” encompassing Central Asian Turks and Mongols “from Peking to Montenegro.”91 Especially after the Balkan Wars, they saw Turkey as the homeland for Turks alone and assumed that the Christian minorities were interested only in destroying the empire. During the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire endured a series of losses of its territories, including Bessarabia, Serbia, Abkhazia, Mingrelia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kars, Ardahan, and Cyprus. It was felt that the empire was surviving only because the European Powers could not agree among themselves how to dismember it. Thus, when British and Russian diplomats met in June 1908 to resolve the fate of Macedonia, Ottoman nationalists were certain that the final fate of the empire was at hand. The CUP launched a revolution in July 1908 to overthrow the sultan, reintroduce the constitution, which had been put into abeyance by sultan Abdul Hamid in 1876, place limits on the monarchy, and provide stronger leadership to protect the empire and keep it intact. The destabilization inherent in the revolution, however,

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encouraged the Austro-Hungarian Empire to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria to declare full independence, and Crete to move towards union with Greece. In the beginning, the CUP tried to be inclusive. It ran candidates in the parliamentary elections that year in alliance with the Armenian Dashnak Party and received a majority in the Chamber of Deputies. In the 1908 parliament, out of 275 seats, twenty-six were held by Ottoman Greek deputies and twelve by Armenians. For a time, all citizens felt they were at the beginning of a new era of fraternity and equality.92 Before long, however, Greek and Armenian leaders realized that the intentions of the CUP were not what they had expected, and the CUP was not going to deliver on their expectations. The CUP had promised land redistribution in 1908, but by 1910 they abandoned the plan.93 In August 1909, the Law of Associations came into effect, which, among other things, forbade the establishment of political organizations based on nationality or ethnicity. Immediately, Greek, Bulgarian, and other minority clubs in the European Ottoman territories were shut down. A series of other measures were enacted to impose an Ottoman Turkish identity in the educational system, such as mandating that the Turkish language would be the official language of instruction in elementary and high schools, and that local languages could be taught only in high schools. Non-Muslims were no longer exempt from military service. If drafted, the non-Muslims wanted to be formed into their own units, but the Young Turks opposed this. In 1911, the CUP granted land, which was to have been returned to Armenians, to new immigrants from the Balkans.94 An atmosphere of distrust and confrontation developed.95 At the annual party congress of the Committee of Union and Progress held in Salonica in August 1910, discussions were held outside of the plenary sessions, in which the impossibility of equality for non-Muslims was discussed, as well as the possibility of the forced homogenization of the country’s population. The British acting consul in Monastir reported a speech attributed to Talat given at a “secret conclave”: You are aware that by the terms of the Constitution, equality of Mussulman and Ghiaur was affirmed, but you one and all know and feel that this is an unrealizable ideal. The Sheriat, our whole past history, and the sentiments of hundreds of thousands of Mussulmans and even the sentiments of the Ghiaurs themselves, who stubbornly resist every attempt to ottomanize them, present an impenetrable barrier to the establishment of real equality. We have made unsuccessful attempts to convert the Ghiaur into a loyal Osmanli, and all such efforts must inevitably fail, as long as the small independent States in the Balkan Peninsula remain in a position to propagate ideas of Separatism among the inhabitants of Macedonia. There can therefore be no question of equality, until we have succeeded in our task of ottomanizing the Empire—a long and laborious task, in which I venture to predict that we shall at length succeed after we have at last put an end to the agitation and propaganda of the Balkan states.96

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In regard to the violent implications of this speech, the British ambassador wrote a few days later: That the Committee have given up any idea of Ottomanizing all the nonTurkish elements by sympathetic and Constitutional ways has long been manifest. To them “Ottoman” evidently means “Turk” and their present policy of “Ottomanization” is one of pounding the non-Turkish elements in a Turkish mortar…97

The Massacres at Adana On April 12, 1909, there was an attempt at a countercoup by reactionary forces in the country. In addition to a clash of two armies in Constantinople, there was a wave of violent outbreaks across Anatolia, during which some 20,000–25,000 Armenians were massacred in and around Adana, in two separate episodes. Opposition to the modernization represented by the 1908 revolution motivated the countercoup, and as the Armenians were viewed as allies of the CUP and as agents of modernization, they were targeted with violence.98 The Armenians of Adana were also more prosperous than their Muslim neighbors, which fostered additional resentment. It was not only resentful conservative Muslims who participated in the massacres, but also Turkish troops under CUP command. The Adana massacres are deemed to represent a change in policy towards the Christians. It was not only the Armenians, but also Chaldean and Syriac Assyrians who were targeted.99 It appears that the Muslim population was increasingly viewing the Christians as the “other.” They believed it was the Christian minorities who were interested in the dissolution of the empire and who were collaborating with foreign powers to help bring it about.100 They felt that only the most extreme and radical measures could prevent this and save the empire. And the Armenians saw another example of how they could not trust the Young Turks.

The Cretan Question and the Boycott against Greeks, 1908–11 The Cretan Question, which had arisen repeatedly during the nineteenth century, surfaced again in 1908 to vex the Young Turks. The Greeks of Crete had wanted unification of their island with Greece, and thanks to a series of revolts, had been semi-independent of the Ottoman Empire since 1878, administered by a Christian governor. After the Cretan revolt of 1896–97, Crete became an autonomous state under the administration of Greece, thanks to the intervention of the European Powers, but was required to recognize the diplomatic rights of the Ottoman Empire. In 1908, the Cretan Assembly made a declaration favoring unification with Greece. There were calls in Turkey for a boycott of Greece, but none materialized at that time. During the fall of 1909, however, calls for a boycott of Greece over Crete arose again.

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In May 1910, Cretan officers and members of the Cretan Assembly were required to take an oath of fidelity to the Greek king. However, sixteen Muslim deputies in the Assembly refused to do so, causing a diplomatic crisis. Meetings were held by Muslims throughout the Ottoman Empire to protest. Exacerbating the ill feeling in Turkey was the assumption of the Greek prime ministership by Eleutherios Venizelos in September of that year. Venizelos was famous for his role in the Greek resistance in Crete in 1897 and 1905, was well known to be a strong advocate for the island’s unification with Greece, and, in fact, as the person in charge of the Cretan rebel administration’s foreign affairs, had unilaterally declared unification in 1908.101 Then the Cretan Greeks refused to accept the Ottoman Empire’s right to appoint Islamic judges there. There were numerous public meetings and demonstrations over this throughout the Ottoman Empire in May and June 1910. A boycott of Greek businesses was announced and monitored by public criers in many cities. Greek shops were marked by special signs so that Muslims would know to avoid them. Watchmen used coercion and threats to enforce the boycott. Muslims from Crete emerged as a force against Greek businesses, especially in the port cities, and bands of Cretan Muslims marched through Smyrna trying to compel Greeks to close their shops or renounce their Greek citizenship. If they refused to do so, they were beaten. There were many clashes and instances of violence. The British embassy watched the boycott movement with great interest, as Greek shops were stocked with British products, so foreign interests were also at stake. The Ottoman government feared it might have to pay for British losses and tried unsuccessfully to limit the boycott to Greek merchandise that came on Greek ships. Crete finally achieved internationally recognized unification with Greece in 1913. The significance of this Cretan episode is severalfold. First, it was part of the growing Muslim consciousness of the idea of Turkifying the economy, an important element of the philosophy of extreme Turkish nationalism, described above. Second, it fed Turkish fears of foreign intervention. Third, it further heightened Greek–Turkish tensions. Fourth, it represented a shift from hostility towards external enemies (Greece) to identifying internal enemies (Ottoman Greek citizens), in spite of the fact that Greeks who were Ottoman citizens were theoretically exempt from the boycott. Fifth, it was a precedent for even more severe anti-Greek measures just a few years later. Sixth, during the Balkan Wars and World War I, there was a large wave of emigration of Muslims from Crete,102 adding to the influx of Muslim refugees from the Balkans and exacerbating the problem for the Young Turks of where to place them.

The Balkan Wars, 1912–13, and the Young Turk Seizure of Power As the nationalist mood in Turkey grew, there were increased calls for militarism to restore the glory of the empire. In the weeks preceding the outbreak of the First Balkan War in October 1912, between Turkey and the allied countries of the Balkan League (Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia), Bulgaria declared itself fully

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independent of the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Greece finally declared its unification with Crete. Crowds led by university students and CUP supporters demonstrated in the streets of Constantinople. Their rallying cry included such chants as “We want war, war, war, war;” “To Sofia, to Sofia;” and “Down with Greece! Greeks bow your heads.”103 The First Balkan War started on October 8, 1912, when Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, and lasted for six weeks. It was a brutal conflict, with some 200,000 combatants killed, not counting civilian casualties, against whom the Ottoman army committed atrocities. Serbian forces, aroused by stories of atrocities committed against Christian peasants during the unrest in the Albanian territories, unleashed their hatred against defenseless villages in Macedonia. During the war, the forces of each of the Balkan League members engaged in the massacre of Muslim civilians.104 When the Ottoman forces surrendered on November 18, 1912, some twenty thousand Muslim refugees were put up in mosques, but were expelled from them by Bulgarian and Greek soldiers. During the Ottoman army’s retreat from Adrianople in Thrace, it committed atrocities against the Christian population. The advancing Bulgarian forces retaliated against the Muslim population. The Bulgarian forces came within thirty-two kilometers of Constantinople, causing considerable panic in the capital city.105 A peace agreement was finally signed in London in May. The Second Balkan War broke out on June 13, however, due to disputes among the members of the Balkan League, and lasted for one month.106 During this second campaign, the Ottoman army destroyed, looted, and burned all the Greek villages near Gallipoli.107 The Balkan Wars were disastrous for the Ottoman Empire. During the period 1911–13, with the loss of Libya in a war with Italy, the official unification of Crete with Greece, and the loss of almost all the remaining European territories of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman government was in disarray, and the CUP was losing its influence in the government. At the same time, tens of thousands of resentful Muslim refugees (muhacirlar) fled or were forcibly expelled from the Balkans.108 They flooded into Anatolia and were resettled among the existing Christian population, a recipe for disaster. The losses in the Balkans caused a tremendous shock to the Turkish psyche. On January 13, 1913, the CUP, led by Enver, had carried out a coup d’état and formed a new government. The empire came under the rule of the virtual dictatorship of Talat, Enver and Cemal (pronounced and sometimes written as Djemal). With the loss of the European parts of the empire, the Anatolian homeland became their focus. The CUP’s policies were radically reformed so that Turkish nationalism became the party’s principle. Young Turk ideologue Ziya Gökalp articulated what this meant. Turks were the “supermen” whom German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche imagined; Turks needed to embrace their Turkishness; there must be an end to the illusion of Muslim–Christian equality. The nation was to be considered a “social totality,” including “cultural unity,” “economic unity,” and “political unity.” He attributed mys-

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tical and divine qualities to the nation, and in so doing, made nationalism a religion. Therefore, whatever was done in the name of nationalism would be good and right.109

Anti-Armenian/Greek Measures of 1913–14 As part of the plan for national economic unity, a number of guild associations were established. These were for Turks only, and Christians were specifically excluded. One important institution was established to help found new Turkish-owned companies and create a bourgeoisie composed only of Turks, replacing Christians, who had traditionally occupied that role.110 Its activities included the boycott of Greek- and Armenian-owned businesses and their wholesale confiscation, so that they could be turned over to Turkish owners and Turks placed in jobs monopolized by Greeks. The British ambassador in Constantinople described the situation as follows: In small towns such as Magnesia, and throughout the villages where the ubiquitous Greek petty trader is to be found, boycotting in a most severe form is being carried on. All Moslems or Greeks who are found entering raya shops are beaten, and all semblance of free commerce or equality is at an end while as things tend at present, the position of the Greeks and Armenians in many districts is becoming more and more untenable. This boycott is the direct result of Committee of Union and Progress influence, and Committee emissaries are everywhere instigating the people.111 An example of the way the boycott was implemented in one location is described in the following passage: …After the receipt of these orders the boycott of the Christians began to be strictly enforced, and twenty paid men of the very lowest class, armed with clubs in their hands, went round the town and prevented all Turks from entering Christian shops, and if they found anyone who had actually purchased an article from a Christian shop they destroyed the article and stamped it under foot. It was even forbidden to any Turk to salute [i.e. greet—GNS] a Christian. …Eight men rushed into the offices of Kazaxi Bros. (leading merchants here), striking them and demanding money, and ordering them to quit the country within 24 hours. This news made such an impression upon the Christians that they immediately closed their shops and shut themselves up in their houses. The streets soon were filled with ruffians armed with sticks, who struck anyone they found in the streets and attacked the houses. No one dared even to show his face at a window. I looked out and nearly got a bullet through me for my curiosity. About 25 steps from my door they broke the neck of a householder who was returning home with

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two loaves for his children … A Turkish herald went through the streets announcing that if a single Christian fired a shot it would be considered as rebellion, and a general massacre of Christians would follow…112 Posters, placed in schools and mosques, called on Muslims to exterminate the Greeks. Turkish newspapers published violent and inflammatory articles arousing their readers to persecution and massacre. These articles were said to be obviously instigated by the authorities. Cheap and crude lithographs were also produced showing Greeks cutting up Turkish babies or ripping open pregnant Muslim women, and various purely imaginary scenes. These were effective in provoking violence against the Greeks of Asia Minor.113 Such measures were designed to pressure especially the Greeks to emigrate.114 The CUP wanted badly to have the Greeks out of the country.115 In late 1913 and early 1914, they even tried to negotiate an exchange of Christians in Turkey for Muslims in the Balkans and Greece.116 On May 14, 1914, Talat ordered the clearing of all Greek settlements in the coastal areas between the Dardanelles and Çeşme and the replacement of the Greeks with Muslim refugees from the Balkans or Turks from the interior of Asia Minor. This was followed by the large-scale massacre of Greeks in May and June.117 In a telegram to Berlin dated July 16, 1914, the German ambassador to Constantinople reported on a meeting with the Grand Vizier, during which the latter stated his willingness to abandon the islands on the Turkish coast to Greece, if it would mean “the complete removal of the Greek population of the Asia Minor coast.”118 For its part, Greece promised Germany it would stay neutral in the war if Turkey made no moves against Greece’s islands off the Asia Minor coast, and if the deportation of the Greeks of Asia Minor ceased. In addition, the Greek Prime Minister, Venizelos, threatened that unless the harsh measures against the Greeks of Asia Minor did not stop, he would carry out a similar campaign against the Muslims under Greek rule.119 The European Powers reacted strongly against these harsh measures, Germany in particular.120 The CUP was forced to stop the Greek expulsion at this point and initiate a committee of inquiry, but, as we shall see below, the attacks would still continue.121

The Elections of 1913–14 and the CUP’s Consolidation of Power Having seized control of the government in January 1913 and undergone an internal reorganization, the CUP was the only organized party to contest the 1913–14 Ottoman elections. The Dashnaks had ended their political alliance with the CUP in August 1912. The Armenian community of Constantinople decided to fight the coming elections as a united group and sought proportional representation in parliament with about twenty deputies for a population of two million. This was initially rejected by the government. The Greek community also pressed for the same demand and was similarly rejected. After negotiations, a compromise was worked out whereby

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Christian candidates could run in the election, but had to be screened by the CUP first. Not all the Christian deputies elected were CUP nominees, however.122 “When Parliament reconvened on May 14, 1914, all the strings of political power were in the hands of the CUP.”123 With the immense loss of territory and the concomitant five million population during the period 1911–14, the Turks became numerically the most important element in the empire, and nationalism would be given greater emphasis in the CUP’s policies.124 Moreover, the Central Committee of the CUP now held the reins of power, not only for the party, but also for the entire government apparatus.

The Secret Alliance between Turkey and Germany and the Mobilization for War As part of its reorganization, beginning in early 1913 the CUP leadership was concerned with keeping its military officers in line politically. It was believed that this could best be achieved by arranging for Germany to be involved with the Ottoman military, and, in preparation, on June 6, 1913, Kaiser Wilhelm II appointed General Liman Von Sanders to head the German military mission to the Ottoman Empire.125 On November 2, 1913, the terms of reference for the German military mission were signed.126 Germany would provide financial support, military training, and officers for the Ottoman army. The Ottoman Empire would engage Russia and keep Russian troops from tying up German forces on Germany’s eastern front in the coming war. The CUP leadership concluded a political and military alliance with Imperial Germany on August 2, 1914. The agreement was kept secret initially, as the CUP leadership was not yet ready to commit to the war.

Anti-Armenian/Assyrian Measures in 1914 and the Armenian Reform Commission Ongoing grievances about unfair taxation and an increase in the continual anti-Armenian violence by Kurds continued to be ignored by the Ottoman authorities, and after the Balkan Wars, the Armenians renewed their demands for reform. In the absence of action by the Ottoman government, the Dashnaks decided that they had to respond to the killings by Kurds in kind. Kurdish leaders who oppressed the Armenians would have to be intimidated and terrorized. Lands that had been seized from the Armenians by force would be taken back by force.127 In the meantime, Russia displayed renewed interest in the Armenians and became an advocate on their behalf once again. The CUP was pressured to sign a reform agreement on February 8, 1914 and establish a reform commission. Plans were made to divide the Armenian provinces into two parts, under joint Ottoman Christian, Ottoman Muslim, and foreign adminis-

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tration. Laws and official pronouncements were to be issued in the local languages. Muslims and Christians would be represented fairly in matters dealt with by the councils and the police. The dreaded Hamidiye cavalry was to be demobilized. All this was widely perceived by the Muslims as opening the door for a takeover by Russia and the beginning of the final partition of the empire. The statements of several CUP leaders confirm that the Armenian reforms and the fear that these reforms would lead to the partition of Anatolia and the end of the Ottoman Empire were crucial factors that led them to enter World War I, eliminate the Armenian Question, and deal with the minorities once and for all.128 An inspection commission was appointed in April 1914, consisting of Dutch and Norwegian representatives, to visit the region and make recommendations.129 However, with the outbreak of World War I, the commission’s work was halted, and on December 31, 1914, the Ottoman agreement to the reform commission was formally cancelled.130

World War I On June 28, 1914, World War I broke out in Europe. On July 21, the Ottoman government declared a general mobilization, and all male subjects were conscripted into the armed forces. Initially, Armenian and Greek males in the younger and older age groups (15–20 and 45–60, respectively) were organized into labor battalions, without proper uniforms or equipment, and were forced to work under harsh conditions.131 In September 1914, Ottoman spies in St. Petersburg, along with reports from other sources, raised suspicions that Armenian rebels would revolt with assistance from Russia.132 Compounding suspicions against the Armenians for appealing for European intervention for reforms in 1912 was the fact that the Dashnak Party declined the Young Turks’ request to engage Russian Armenians in conducting a guerrilla war against the Russians in the Caucasus, along with the Special Organization. (The Special Organization was originally created under the Ottoman War Ministry to conduct guerilla operations against the enemy, especially behind enemy lines. Soon, however, their activities were directed against Ottoman Christians.) This suspicion was in spite of the Dashnaks having notified the CUP in July 1914 of their intention to defend the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire.133 A similar request was also made of the Assyrians.134 Armenian representatives advised the Young Turk representatives not to become part of the war in Europe, calling it “a dangerous adventure which would lead Turkey to ruin.” This response was considered treason by the Young Turk representatives.135 In spite of the Dashnaks’ official pledge of loyalty to the Ottoman Empire, some Armenian revolutionary bands began to be formed in the fall of 1914, before Turkey entered the war.136 A volunteer corps from Russia was organized with Armenians, Georgians, and Muslims, and wealthy Armenian merchants were reported to have contributed large sums of money for their equipment.137 Some Armenians left for Russia and joined the Russian Imperial Army, as did Armenian volunteers from sev-

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eral countries.138 Some 2,400 went to Persia, where they organized into regiments, and there were also separate partisan bands. The Armenian bands attacked Ottoman military units, gendarme outposts, and supply convoys, and cut telegraph lines. Their numbers were relatively small, but caused a great deal of concern. In September 1914, War Minister Enver had issued orders that Armenian privates were not to be used in combat or employed in any headquarters. Commanders were authorized to use martial law, but were instructed not to be so harsh as to incite loyal and obedient subjects to revolt out of desperation. Nevertheless, in February 1915, Armenian villages in Bitlis were burned by the Ottoman authorities.139 Ottoman forces occupied an area of northwestern Persia in 1914, in order to defend against an anticipated Russian invasion. It was an area where Turkish was spoken and Sunni Kurds lived, and annexation of this territory to Turkey was part of the secret alliance with Germany.140 Armenians, Assyrians, and Persian Kurds in northwestern Persia organized and attacked the Ottoman army with some success between August and December 1914.141 However, during an initial Russian retreat, Turkish forces and local Kurds burned Christian villages and massacred the inhabitants.142 The deportation and expulsion of the Nestorian Assyrians in Van was ordered on October 26, 1914 with the following cipher telegram, which illustrates the suspicion in which they were held by the Ottoman authorities. It also represents the early application of a resettlement policy, whereby the minorities would represent only a tiny percentage in the area to which they were removed. The consequences of this policy were devastating for the Armenians only a few months later. The position of the Nestorians has always remained doubtful for the government [due to] their predisposition to be influenced by foreigners and become a channel and an instrument. Because of the operation and efforts in Iran, the consideration of the Nestorians has increased. Especially those who are found at our border area with Iran, due to the government’s lack of trust of them resulting in punishment … their deportation and expulsion from their locations to appropriate provinces such as Ankara and Konya, to be transferred in dispersed manner so that henceforth they will not be together in a mass and be [settled] exclusively among Muslim people, and in no location to exceed twenty dwellings, and on the issue of settlement, with the proviso that the government will not undertake to provide any type of support, to be permitted to stay and transmit the communication to the appropriate Province and after the dispensation of the matter to depart from Van.143 The CUP leadership, convinced that it could defeat Russia and turn the empire’s fortunes around, entered World War I on October 28, 1914, as an ally of the Central Powers (Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire) aligned against the Allied Powers (also known as the Triple Entente, i.e. Britain, France, and Russia) and began by bombing Russian Black Sea ports. At the same time they declared war,

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the CUP leaders dismissed parliament and effectively established a dictatorship. The wartime emergency situation provided them with the opportunity to put into action a plan to get rid of the Christian minorities once and for all. When the war began, Turkish officials started to take everything they needed for the war from the Armenians, confiscating their goods and money.144 Generally, the Armenians fought in service of the Ottoman Empire with distinction. Initially, Enver, the Minister of War, praised the conduct of Armenian soldiers in this campaign. He visited Sebastia in December 1914 and gave a speech praising the Armenians for their part in the war. The Armenian soldiers are fighting bravely for their Ottoman Fatherland, for their “Vatan.” At all the fronts the Armenian doctors and nurses are treating our wounded soldiers. Most of the Armenian soldiers master the military techniques, for that I’m very thankful to you. And you, in your turn, work well at the rear to supply our army with food.145 In a letter to the Armenian Patriarch and other high-ranking clergy sent on February 26, 1915, Enver spoke of his “pleasure and thanks to the Armenian nation, which was known to represent an example of complete loyalty to the Ottoman Government.”146 The massive defeat at Sarikamish of the Ottoman army at the hands of the Russians was a great shock to the Young Turks, however, who were very proud of their military heritage. A scapegoat was needed for their failure and the Young Turk leadership convinced themselves that the defeat could only have been caused by the treacherous minorities, especially the Armenians.147 Many people fled to Russian Armenia. By the end of January 1915, these totaled 49,838 Armenians, 8,061 Assyrians, 9,345 Greeks, and 113 of other nationalities.148 Several thousand Armenians became volunteers in the Russian army, joining other Armenian volunteers already there. In February 1915, over a thousand armed Armenians in a district north of Van revolted. Skirmishes between Armenian bands and Ottoman gendarmes took place in many areas in Van province. Armenians who lived in mixed Muslim-Armenian villages fled to Armenian villages or streamed into Van city.149 The Young Turk leaders declared that there was a general Armenian rebellion, yet German diplomatic officials in various locations in the field wrote to the embassy in Constantinople that they saw no possibility of widespread rebellion.150 On the contrary, it seems that the Young Turks had planned a campaign against their Armenian citizens and falsified reports about rebellion in order to create a pretext for their annihilation.151 On February 25, 1915, the decision was made to disarm all the Armenians in the army and transfer them to the labor battalions. There, they were underfed, exhausted, and suffered from disease. They were mistrusted, put under armed guard, and watched constantly.152 Henry Morgenthau described the situation as follows:

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In the early part of 1915, the Armenian soldiers in the Turkish army were reduced to a new status. Up to that time most of them had been combatants, but now they were all stripped of their arms and transformed into workmen. Instead of serving their country as artillerymen and cavalrymen, these former soldiers now discovered that they had been transformed into road labourers and pack animals. Army supplies of all kinds were loaded on their backs, and, stumbling under the burdens and driven by the whips and bayonets of the Turks, they were forced to drag their weary bodies into the mountains of the Caucasus … They were given only scraps of food; if they fell sick they were left where they had dropped, their Turkish oppressors perhaps stopping long enough to rob them of all their possessions—even of their clothes. If any stragglers succeeded in reaching their destinations, they were not infrequently massacred. In many instances Armenian soldiers were disposed of in even more summary fashion, for it now became almost the general practice to shoot them in cold blood. In almost all cases the procedure was the same. Here and there squads of 50 or 100 men would be taken, bound together in groups of four, and then marched out to a secluded spot a short distance from the village. Suddenly the sound of rifle shots would fill the air, and the Turkish soldiers who had acted as the escort would suddenly return to camp. Those sent to bury the bodies would find them almost invariably stark naked, for, as usual, the Turks had stolen all their clothes. In cases that came to my attention, the murderers had added a refinement to their victims’ sufferings by compelling them to dig their graves before being shot.153 On March 7, 1915, the German vice-consul in Alexandretta wrote to the German ambassador in Constantinople, “During the last few days house-to-house searches took place at all the homes of the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire residing here—Armenians, Syrians, Greeks—on order from higher up (most likely from Constantinople).”154 By April 20, Van city was openly in rebellion. Armenians and Muslims there were now polarized and inter-communal attacks were perpetrated by both sides.155 At the same time, the Ottoman army was engaged in a major defensive operation at Gallipoli against British, Australian, New Zealander, and Newfoundlander invading forces. It was against this background that the CUP Central Committee’s decision to eliminate the Christian minorities was made, perhaps somewhere around the end of March of 1915.156

Implementation of the Genocides Starting on April 24, 1915, the political, religious, and intellectual leaders of the Armenian community throughout the empire were rounded up, imprisoned, some

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were put on trial, and most were killed. (It is noteworthy that in 1921, the Kemalists similarly used the Independence Courts to indict Pontian Greeks, disallow any legal defense, and assign them the strictest sentences possible.) The Armenians in the Ottoman military who had been disarmed and put in labor battalions were murdered. The remaining population were forced to leave their homes, abandon most of their belongings, and set out on deportation routes that inevitably led to their death, through mass murder, starvation, exposure, and disease. In the early stages, those who converted to Islam were spared, but by July 1916, even converts were deported and killed. The worldwide public outrage was such that on May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers issued a joint declaration, decrying the massacres and threatening to punish those responsible: For approximately one month, the Kurdish and Turkish population of Armenia have acted in collusion, often with the support of the Ottoman Authorities, to massacre the Armenians. Such massacres have taken place towards mid-April in Erzerum, Dertshun, Egin, Bitlis, Mush, Sasun, Zeytun, and throughout Cilicia; the inhabitants of some hundred villages in the district of Van have all been murdered, and the Armenian quarter is under siege by the Kurds. At the same time, the Ottoman Government in Constantinople has dealt severely with the harmless Armenian population. In the face of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the allied Governments are letting the Sublime Porte know publicly that they will hold personally responsible for those crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of its agents who will be found implicated in similar massacres.157 The deportation convoys, which started out with thousands of Armenians from each town, were frequently raided by Kurdish bands or local villagers as they marched on their route towards the Syrian desert. These raids were instigated by the Special Organization, an outfit that included criminals released from jail by the Young Turks for such killing operations.158 As they continued their forced march, the deportees continually had their little remaining property stolen, were slaughtered, and the more attractive girls and children were taken into Muslim households, where they were either adopted or became “slave” labor or concubines. As such, they had to convert to Islam, were forced to hide or suppress their true identities and were essentially assimilated as Turks. Another measure designed to destroy Armenian identity and the Armenian presence in the Ottoman Empire was the order that in no place could the Armenians make up more than 10% of the local population.159 In the end, by the time of the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, on July 24, 1923, up to one and a half million Armenians had perished.160 The deportation of Assyrians from Van began in October 1914, and starting in March 1915, they began to be massacred, along with the Armenians. The attacks

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increased in frequency and intensity, culminating in full-scale genocide during the summer of 1915. Not only were the mountain tribes who fought the Ottoman army targeted, but also non-combatant Assyrian farmers in Anatolia and Persia. Like the Armenians, they were sometimes driven from their homes and perished on the way, suffering kidnapping, rape, and sexual slavery. Like the Armenians, their property was confiscated and plundered. Their homes, churches, and villages were destroyed. As with the Armenians, the Young Turks’ plan was to prevent the Assyrians from returning to their homes or establishing communities. Unlike the Armenians, however, most Assyrians were not placed in deportation columns, but rather massacred in their villages by local Kurdish tribes coordinated by local militia. An estimated 250,000 Assyrians were killed by late 1919.161 The Greek Genocide may be said to have evolved in three phases, before, during, and after World War I, and by both the regimes of the Committee of Union and Progress and the successor nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal. As described above, before the entry of the Ottoman Empire into World War I, there was a mass deportation of the Greeks in Thrace and along the Aegean coast. One source estimated that 115,000 Greeks were expelled from Eastern Thrace and sought refuge in Greece, 85,000 Greeks were deported from the same region to the interior of Asia Minor, and 150,000 Greeks were driven from the coast of Western Anatolia and went to the shores of Greece.162 However, as explained above, the anti-Greek actions were temporarily suspended. The roundup, deportation, and mass murder of the Armenians continued, however. During the deportation and killing of the Armenians during this period, one German consul reported the following: The government measures that have recently been introduced here show how thoroughly things are being done: some Armenian mothers had hidden their children with Greek families. Upon threat of heavy punishment, these poor creatures, among them babies, were torn away from their foster parents who showed only Christian kindness! The Greek Christians are trembling, and with good reason, for at the first opportunity they are sure to suffer the same fate as the Armenians: should Greece go over to the enemy camp, its brethren and sisters in faith in Turkey are lost!163 The deportations of the Greeks resumed in April 1916, even before Greece went “over to the enemy camp.” The Greek provisional government did not declare until September 26, 1916 that it would enter the war on the side of the Allied Powers, and Greece did not enter the war officially on the side of the Allied Powers until June 30, 1917.164 As one observer noted at the time, “But in le Temps of last night, I found a new and resounding proof of a preconceived plan; that is the measures taken against the Greeks … The Greeks, however, have not risen against the Turkish government and have done nothing to aid the ‘Enemy.’ The Turk wishes quite simply to rid the Empire of the Christian element.”165

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For example, on July 16, 1916, the German ambassador at Amisos wrote to Berlin about events in the Pontos region: From reliable sources, the entire Greek population of Sinope and the coastal area of the district of Kastanome has been exiled. Exile and annihilation have the same meaning in Turkish, because the ones not murdered die mostly from sickness and starvation.166 In December 1916 and January 1917, the Austrian ambassador to the Ottoman Empire informed his government of the latest events on the Black Sea coast, and specifically the fate of Samsun: December 11, 1916. Five Greek villages were plundered and burned. The inhabitants were sent away. December 12, 1916. Villages around the city are on fire. December 14, 1916. Whole villages are burning, including school buildings and churches. December 17, 1916. Eleven villages were burned in the Samsun province. The plundering continues. The villagers are being abused. December 31, 1916. About eighteen villages have been burnt to the ground. Fifteen were partly burned. About sixty women were raped. Even churches were plundered.167 The US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, described the overall process: The Turks adopted almost identically the same procedure against the Greeks as that which they had adopted against the Armenians. They began by incorporating the Greeks into the Ottoman army and then transforming them into labour battalions, using them to build roads in the Caucasus and other scenes of action. These Greek soldiers, just like the Armenians, died by thousands from cold, hunger, and other privations. The same house-to-house searches for hidden weapons took place in the Greek villages, and Greek men and women were beaten and tortured just as were their fellow Armenians. The Greeks had to submit to the same forced requisitions, which amounted in their case, as in the case of the Armenians, merely to plundering on a wholesale scale. The Turks attempted to force the Greek subjects to become Mohammedans; Greek girls, just like Armenian girls, were stolen and taken to Turkish harems and Greek boys were kidnapped and placed in Moslem households. The Greeks, just like the Armenians, were accused of disloyalty to the Ottoman Government; the Turks accused them of furnishing supplies to the English submarines in the Marmora and also of acting as spies. The Turks also declared that the Greeks were not loyal to the Ottoman Government, and that they also looked forward to the day when the Greeks inside of Turkey would become part of Greece. These latter charges were unquestionably true;

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that the Greeks, after suffering for five centuries the most unspeakable outrages at the hands of the Turks, should look longingly to the day when their territory should be part of the fatherland, was to be expected. The Turks, as in the case of the Armenians, seized upon this as an excuse for a violent onslaught on the whole race. Everywhere the Greeks were gathered in groups and, under the so-called protection of Turkish gendarmes, they were transported, the larger part on foot, into the interior. Just how many were scattered in this fashion is not definitely known, the estimates varying anywhere from 200,000 up to 1,000,000. These caravans suffered great privations, but they were not submitted to general massacre as were the Armenians, and this is probably the reason why the outside world has not heard so much about them. The Turks showed them this greater consideration not from any motive of pity. The Greeks, unlike the Armenians, had a government which was vitally interested in their welfare. At this time there was a general apprehension among the Teutonic allies that Greece would enter the war on the side of the Entente, and a wholesale massacre of Greeks in Asia Minor would unquestionably have produced such a state of mind in Greece that its pro-German king would have been unable longer to keep his country out of the war. It was only a matter of state policy, therefore, that saved these Greek subjects of Turkey from all the horrors that befell the Armenians. But their sufferings are still terrible, and constitute another chapter in the long story of crimes for which civilization will hold the Turks responsible.168 It is noteworthy that at this stage of the genocidal process, the expulsion and deportation of the Greeks, while brutal and resulting in great loss of life, did not include large-scale exterminatory massacres. This was because Venizelos had warned the Young Turk leaders about possible reprisals against Turkish nationals in Greece.169 Yet Ottoman Muslims were now forbidden to pay debts they owed to Greeks, while Greeks had to pay compulsory levies to the Ottoman government, were thrown into prison, and starved unless they converted to Islam. Entire Greek villages were destroyed, murders and rapes continued, and refugees were distributed among Turkish villages in the proportion of 10% of the Muslim population in order to dilute their presence and identity.170 Estimates of the extent of the destruction vary. According to one source, for example, from 1914 to 1917, more than 500,000 Ottoman Greeks were expelled from their homes and deported to the interior, with much loss of life.171 Another source, based on information provided by Turkish deserters, stated the following: The complete destruction of the Greek element is seen, at least from the compulsory recruitment, requisitions, and deportations. Up to the end of 1917, around 200,000 Greeks aged 15 to 48 had been conscripted, of whom the majority died of sickness, famine, and harsh treatment. The

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populations deported from Thrace and Asia Minor exceed 1,500,000; half of this number succumbed to privation or were killed. Turkish officials and officers declared without hesitation that the Christians would no longer be allowed to live in Turkey, and the Greeks are forcibly converted to Islam. The value of Greek property expropriated by the Turks surpasses 5,000 million francs.172 The third phase of the Greek Genocide began after World War I. Following the armistice of Mudros (October 20, 1918), Venizelos pressed the Allied Powers for land in Asia Minor, based on Greece’s service during the war.173 Greek forces occupied Eastern Thrace. On March 29, 1919, Italian forces moved towards Smyrna. On May 7, 1919, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George accused the Italians of encouraging the Turks to persecute the Greek population. American president Woodrow Wilson, Prime Minister Lloyd George, and French president Georges Clemenceau agreed to send Greek troops there. The Greek landing at Smyrna, supported by the warships of the Allied Powers, took place on May 15. Even though the British and French occupation had curtailed political activity in Ottoman Turkey, the Greek landing caused a strong reaction in Turkish popular opinion, and a resistance movement grew. For the Turks, it was bad enough that Greek forces were on Turkish soil, but when the Greek army entered Smyrna, there were incidents of violence, “and a number of Greek civilians took advantage of the melee to round up Turks, or those they took to be Turks, and to club, kick, and abuse them. Turkish soldiers were marched out of the government barracks and some were likewise attacked … Violence meanwhile erupted in the Turkish quarter and in outlying villages, where a number of Greeks decided to settle old scores by robbing, raping, and killing Turkish civilians.” Many Turks and Greeks were killed, with an unknown number injured and molested.174 On May 19, 1919, Mustafa Kemal (who later adopted the name Atatürk) landed at Samsun with orders from Constantinople to supervise the disbanding of the Turkish forces. Instead, he began to establish links with resistance groups and raise an army. Many members of the CUP, a good number of whom were wanted for crimes committed during the war, including the mass murder of the Armenians, flocked to him, and the occupied government in Constantinople unwittingly provisioned them with arms. By the time the Treaty of Sèvres was signed on August 10, 1920, giving Greece control over large areas of the Anatolian coast and effectively dismembering the Ottoman Empire, the Kemalists had established the Grand National Assembly in Ankara. The sultan’s government in Constantinople was no longer in control of the country, and the Treaty of Sèvres was repudiated by the Kemalist national movement. As the Entente was not willing to commit to an extensive military occupation of Anatolia, it accepted the Greek offer to try to enforce the treaty militarily. This attempt by Venizelos to implement the Megali Idea resulted in a full-scale war between Greece and Turkey, which lasted from 1920 to 1922.

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Even before Kemal’s landing at Samsun, deadly bands of çetes (organized brigands), especially those led by Topal Osman, had been engaged in continuous shooting, plundering, and raping of the defenseless Greek villagers in the Pontus region. With Kemal’s support, they stepped up their campaign with the objective of clearing the Greeks from the region by massacring the Greek population in cities such as Trebizond, Amasya, Pafra, Merzifon, and many others.175 By the spring of 1922, the bulk of the Greek population in the Pontus region, which was far from the war zone, had been deported to the interior. Along the way, tens of thousands perished from exposure, starvation, and disease. The dead and dying were thrown into rivers and ditches.176 Initially, the Greek army had conducted a successful campaign that brought it to within striking distance of Ankara by late July 1921. However, in the meantime, while Venizelos was occupied with the negotiations in Paris, he was unable to win re-election in Greece. Having lost the elections of November 14, 1920, Venizelos went into voluntary exile. By a plebiscite, the Greeks recalled King Constantine to rule the country, against whom the British were firmly opposed. The Allied Powers informed Greece that they would no longer provide it financial support. France and Italy made separate agreements with the Kemalist regime. Constantine and his chief general decided not to advance the army further to take Ankara, perhaps thinking that the ongoing negotiations would work in their favor. In May 1922, the Greek government appointed a new military leader to take command of their forces in Asia Minor. He raised a new army and in July 1922 threatened to enter Constantinople, which was occupied by Allied forces, hoping to provoke an attack by Kemal there. Kemal successfully routed the Greek forces on August 30, 1922.177 During their retreat, Greek troops committed atrocities against Turkish civilians.178 One of the most noteworthy incidents during the Greco-Turkish war was the destruction of the great city of Smyrna (modern Izmir) in September 1922. The majority of the population of Smyrna was Christian, and the city was known for being cosmopolitan, with a culture of ethnic and religious tolerance. The entry of the Turkish army on September 9 led to an event described by one historian thus: “What happened over the two weeks that followed must surely rank as one of the most compelling human dramas of the twentieth century. Innocent civilians—men, women and children from scores of different nationalities—were caught up in a humanitarian disaster on a scale that the world had never before seen.”179 Five days before even entering the city, the Kemalist government in Ankara had sent a note to the League of Nations stating that it would not be responsible for any consequences that might result from the actions of the Greek troops. The League responded that atrocities committed by one side do not justify those committed by the other.180 Nevertheless, the city was set on fire and a terrible massacre of the Christian population followed.181 On September 16, 1922, the League of Nations’ High Commissioner for Russian Refugees, Fridtjof Nansen, received an urgent request for aid for the many thousands of Greeks and Armenians who had fled to Constantinople from Smyrna and Brusa.

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Other refugees had fled to Samos and Chios, and there were both Christian and Muslim refugees in Eastern Thrace. The Mudanya convention of October 13, 1922, which ceded Eastern Thrace back to Turkey, triggered a second massive wave of refugees to Greece. It is estimated that well over one million destitute refugees arrived in Greece during this time.182 During this exodus, thousands died of dysentery, typhus, and cholera. Nansen saw the need for the refugees to settle on the land in order to be able to feed themselves. For that to happen, the men who were being held prisoner in Turkish labor battalions, where the mortality rate was very high,183 would need to be set free. To make room for them to live, however, it would be necessary for Muslims in Greece to abandon their homes and emigrate to Turkey. At about the same time, the Turkish Interior Minister in Ankara declared that his government had decided not to allow the further presence of Greeks on Turkish soil. It was under these circumstances that Nansen began to form the idea of a compulsory Greek–Turkish population exchange.184 Peace negotiations began in Lausanne on November 21, 1922. Turkey obtained full sovereignty over most of the territory that makes up today’s Turkish Republic and eventually rejected all claims against it for reparations. Accords were signed between Greece and Turkey regarding various aspects of the population exchange on November 30. Because one million Greek refugees had already been forced out of Turkey, the population exchange dealt with the remaining 400,000 Muslims from Macedonia and 200,000 Greeks from Pontus and Cappadocia. Whether the Greeks in Constantinople would be allowed to remain was still being debated, although in the end they were exempted from the population exchange. On January 3, 1923, in Lausanne, Greece and Turkey signed the treaty that provided for the compulsory exchange of populations between the two countries, involving some 1,300,000 Orthodox Christians and 585,000 Muslims. During the course of 1923, 189,916 Greeks were transferred from the Ottoman Empire to Greece, and 355,635 Muslims from Greece to the Ottoman Empire.185 Thus ended the millennia-long, vibrant Greek presence in Asia Minor, as well as the dream of the Megali Idea. It has been estimated that the loss of life among Anatolian Greeks during World War I and its aftermath was more than 735,000,186 and among the Pontian Greeks about 350,000.187

Some Observations on the Ottoman Genocides Causes It has been said that “… the really big body counts in history pile up when a large number of people carry out a motive that transcends any one of them: an ideology. Like predatory or instrumental violence, ideological violence is a means to an end. But with an ideology, the end is idealistic: a conception of the greater good.”188 That is certainly true in our cases. Not only did the loss of this vast territory mean the loss of a huge amount of revenue to the Ottoman imperial treasury; it was an affront and shock to the hubris of the Ottoman ruling elite.

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In fact, two ideologies were at play. First was the religious ideology of the superiority of Islam over Christianity and Judaism. Even though in religious terms the latter were considered “people of the book” and were to be protected, in legal, political, and social terms they were considered rayah, the “flock,” to be fleeced and consumed like sheep by the “ruling nation.” Second was the political ideology of extreme Turkish nationalism, of the superiority of the Turks, the “ruling nation,” with the sacred right to rule over the others because of their conquests. Nationalism by itself can be a positive force for good and for building a strong, cohesive society, but when taken to an extreme level, it can become a force for resentment, anger, scapegoating, and violence. The Ottoman ruling elite developed the belief that all of the empire’s problems were being caused by the treacherous Christians, who were conspiring with the Christian European Powers to dismember and destroy the Ottoman Empire. To preserve the empire meant eliminating the Christians. Turkey would be reserved only for the Turks and those who subordinated their ethnicity and religion to identify with Turks and their interests. The Christians were an obvious target for resentment, anger, scapegoating, and violence. In the urban centers, they were visibly surpassing the Muslims in education and the prosperity it engenders. In addition, they were constantly complaining to the European Powers to intercede on their behalf for reforms. Wide-scale, punitive massacres were perpetrated against the Armenians and Assyrians during the nineteenth century by Kurdish tribes, mostly instigated by the sultan, and into the early twentieth century. Although the European Powers intervened in a half-hearted manner after the fact, the Ottoman leadership quickly learned that there would be no punishment for such atrocities. This realization paved the way for full-scale annihilation of the Christians. It is part of the official Turkish interpretation of the history of Ottoman–minority relations that everything was peaceful up to the latter half of the nineteenth century, when, it is said, European intervention in Ottoman internal affairs incited the minorities to revolt against the government. Abdul Hamid II, for example, wrote in his memoirs regarding having non-Muslims in the Ottoman military: If we, the Turks, who are the dominant nation, agree to do military service under equal conditions with those among our subjects from different religions and sects, we would be sure to find ourselves in a bad situation. Immediately, the leaders of these communities and especially the Great Powers that intervene in our business at every opportunity would generate problems for us … We are right to be anxious about this because the Christians within our empire have always united with the Great Powers and worked against us … If state and religion were two entirely separate administrations, then one could think of Muslims and Christians undertaking joint military service. Yet no caliph would agree to such an absurd idea.189

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Similarly, Cemal Pasha, one of the three main leaders of the Young Turks from January 1913, summed up this sentiment in his memoirs: We are absolutely convinced that the policy of Russia alone was responsible for the enmity between Turkish and Armenian elements. Sixty years ago, or, to speak more accurately, until ten years before the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8, there was no question whatever of any religious conflict between the two races, i.e., religious differences between Mohammedans and Christians. In Anatolia, Rumelia, Constantinople, indeed throughout the Turkish Empire, the Armenians and Turks lived together in such harmony that Ottoman histories of that period do not even mention such a thing as the Armenian question.190 This interpretation of both Turks and Armenians being victims of the “great game” of European imperial rivalry as the main cause of the Turkish–Armenian conflict has been adopted too readily by some modern historians. It tends to overlook the failure and unwillingness of the Ottoman government to address the increasingly intolerable condition of the minorities, the numerous requests for reforms that the minorities made to the Ottoman government, or the sense of powerlessness and frustration the minorities felt for generations, leading them to seek assistance from foreign governments—in vain. It is clear the Ottoman ruling elite viewed non-Muslims as inferior and treated them with disdain and neglect. Today, one must understand how very oppressive Ottoman rule was for those who were not part of the “ruling nation.” Talat complained in his memoirs that the Armenians wanted a part of the homeland for themselves, while not participating in the Ottomans’ wars or sharing any of the homeland’s concerns.191 For the most part, however, the Armenians were not seeking independence, but rather reforms that would allow them a measure of selfrule, self-protection, equality, justice, and dignity within the empire.192 A major factor promoted in the Turkish nationalist narrative of these events has been the so-called “provocation thesis.” This refers to the notion that the origins of the conflict are to be found in the provocative behavior of the victims themselves, by their creating an existential threat to the integrity of the Ottoman Empire.193 It has even been suggested that the Armenians deliberately instigated a revolutionary movement in order to manipulate the European Powers to come to their rescue.194 This thesis and its variations do not stand up to scrutiny, however. It assumes that the Armenians and Turks were two comparably powerful national entities engaged in an equal struggle for the same territory, that it was civil war. This is not the case; it was for the most part one-sided slaughter. Furthermore, it is absolutely wrong to justify the killing of millions of civilians because of the activities of the relatively small number of Armenian revolutionaries. The revolutionaries were too few to be a serious military threat, and they were not a unified political or military force.195 In fact, the reports by spies and military officers of widespread rebellion were greatly exaggerated or outright false. If the justification for the deportations and massacres

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of the Armenians was the allegation of rebellion, what was the justification for the deportations and massacres of the Assyrians and Greeks? While it is true that the independent state of Greece pursued the Megali Idea and was in conflict with the Ottoman Empire many times during the nineteenth century, starting in 1908, Ottoman policy changed and was directed not only against Greece, but also against its own Greek citizens. The Assyrians were at odds not so much with the central Ottoman government as with the local Kurdish chiefs. The Ottoman ruling elite, wishing to keep the Kurds loyal, allowed them to run rampant against the Assyrians. In addition to ideological, nationalist, and political motives, the genocidal plans of the Ottoman Turks illustrate other considerations. A number of contemporary observers were of the firm opinion that the deportations of the Christians were merely an excuse for plundering their considerable wealth.196 In some cases, this wealth would help the imperial treasury finance the war; in other cases, individuals confiscated the land and properties and became very wealthy and powerful as a result.

Was It Genocide? One pro-Turkish historian has challenged the logic of the notion that the Young Turks would develop an intentional policy of genocide against the Armenians. He has argued, “If the Armenian sources are to be believed, the Ottomans decided that their first priority was to kill Armenians, even if it meant losing the war. This is absurd.”197 Yet that is exactly what Hitler did in his maniacal, hate-filled campaign to eliminate the Jews of Europe. He devoted significant resources to rounding up Jews, maintaining them in concentration camps, killing them en masse, and disposing of their bodies. Even during the waning months of World War II, when the Third Reich was clearly losing the war, he obsessively dissipated his dwindling resources on persecuting the Jews. And just as Hitler also targeted the Poles, Roma, and other groups for destruction, so too did the Young Turks target the Assyrians and Greeks, and even the Jews were not exempt.198 Some pro-Turkish historians have argued that there is a lack of evidence of genocidal intent on the part of the Young Turks.199 Actually, there is sufficient evidence, not only of the genocidal intent of the Young Turks, but also of the intent to commit ethnic cleansing by the Kemalists. For example, Morgenthau wrote of one of his many meetings with Talat: He told me that the Union and Progress Committee had carefully considered the matter in all its details and that the policy which was being pursued was that which they had officially adopted. He said that I must not get the idea that the deportations had been decided upon hastily; in reality, they were the result of prolonged and careful deliberation.200 In one of his confidential telegrams, Morgenthau informed the Secretary of State that the deportations were not simply relocations. He related, “Deportation of and

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excesses against peaceful Armenians is increasing and from harrowing reports of eye witnesses it appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against rebellion.”201 To further illustrate the careful planning that the Young Turks had undertaken, when Morgenthau asked Talat to relent regarding the Armenians, consider the material loss, and what would become of Turkey without them, he recorded Talat’s response as follows: “We care nothing about the commercial loss,” replied Talat. “We have figured all that out and we know that it will not exceed five million pounds. We don’t worry about that. I have asked you to come here so as to let you know that our Armenian policy is absolutely fixed and that nothing can change it. We will not have the Armenians anywhere in Anatolia. They can live in the desert but nowhere else.”202 German missionary Dr. Martin Niepage made the following observation regarding the intent of the deportations: The object of the deportations is the extermination of the whole Armenian nation. This purpose is also proved by the fact that the Turkish Government declines all assistance from Missionaries, Sisters of Mercy and European residents in the country, and systematically tries to stop their work. A Swiss engineer was to have been brought before a court martial because he had distributed bread in Anatolia to the starving Armenian women and children in a convoy of exiles. The Government has not hesitated even to deport Armenian pupils and teachers from the German schools at Adana and Aleppo, and Armenian children from the German orphanages, without regard to all the efforts of the Consuls and the heads of the institutions involved. The Government also rejected the American Government’s offer to take the exiles to America on American ships and at America’s expense.203 While the use of the term “genocide” is widely accepted in the case of the Armenians, there has been some reluctance to apply it to the cases of the Assyrians and Greeks. There are several reasons for this. First, the various Turkish governments since the establishment of the Turkish Republic have made great efforts to deny the Armenian Genocide. They have claimed that whatever lives were lost were due to the government’s self-defense during civil insurrection and wartime exigencies, and that whatever happened, it cannot be called genocide. This has motivated Armenian scholars especially to produce ample research and documentation on the Armenian Genocide in the main Western languages, while this is not the case for the other two. Similarly, there has been an active movement for the international recognition of the Armenian case as genocide for decades, while the movements on behalf of the Assyrians and Greeks are still relatively new and modest. Third, some argue that the

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fact that there was an agreement signed by both the Greek and Turkish governments for the 1922 population exchange supposedly proves that Turkey had no genocidal intent against its Greek citizens, and that if anything was wrong, the Greek government was no less culpable than the Turkish. According to the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2, which provides the internationally accepted legal definition, “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Article 3 stipulates, “The following acts shall be punishable: (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide.”204 There is no doubt that in the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek cases, all five criteria in both Articles 2 and 3 apply. The argument that lives were lost due to civil insurrection and wartime exigencies does not explain why whole populations were deported and killed far from the war zones. In fact, consular officials of Imperial Germany, the military ally of the Ottoman Empire, reported again and again that there was no Armenian rebellion. The insurrection argument was well addressed in the final verdict of the post-World War I Ottoman Military Tribunals prosecuting the crimes committed against the Armenians. Although some weak-minded persons were inclined toward sympathy with the enemy after they were gripped by the incitements and encouragements of the members of revolutionary groups, and although [many of ] these persons participated in revolutionary movements and revolts in the areas of military operations, and especially in the lands of the enemy and in the areas under his occupation, this [does not and] cannot prove that the other members of their community in other parts of the Ottoman Realms were involved in the harboring of the[-se aforementioned] vile ideas. It is true that a segment of the Armenian nation did indeed participate in seditious actions such as these, which materialized from time to

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time, but the rest of the populace, contrariwise, proved their loyalty and devotion [to the Ottoman state] in numerous ways. As was recorded above it is an absolute command for [all] government officials, regardless of their position, to devote themselves to the defense of the lives and legal rights of the population, which were entrusted to their protective hands as unto a benevolent father, without prejudice to national sentiment or personal rancor.205 The argument that there was a mutually signed agreement for the population exchange ignores the fact that the Ankara government had already declared its intention that no Greek should remain on Turkish soil before the exchange was even discussed. The final killing and expulsion of the Greek population of the Ottoman Empire in 1920–24 was part of a series of hostile actions that began even before Turkey’s entry into World War I. Owing to the fact that in the earlier stages of the deportation and expulsion of the Greeks there were relatively few outright massacres, some believe the term “ethnic cleansing” is more appropriate. This term was coined during the wars of secession of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia to describe the forced, wholesale depopulation of an ethnic group from a region without necessarily involving its total annihilation. This is recognized both as a war crime and a crime against humanity.206 As mentioned above, one of the characteristics that distinguishes genocide as a unique crime in international law, however, is the element of genocidal intent, as stipulated in Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention. Evidence of genocidal intent is rarely available as a single, convenient, incriminating document or in an admission of guilt by the perpetrator. The insistence on legalistic terminology, judicial standards of proof, and a court verdict is too restrictive for historical interpretation. Historical understanding is very different from criminal prosecution. Restricting historical enquiry to legal rules of evidence can be a tool of genocide denial and create the opposite of historical justice.207 Nevertheless, from a strictly legal perspective, genocidal intent can be inferred from a pattern of systematic attacks on, or the targeting of a group, atrocities on a large scale, or repetitive destructive and discriminatory acts. This was a ruling of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia hearing the case of Slobodan Milosevic.208

Conclusion As a result of Ottoman misrule, starting early in the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire lost a great deal of territory due to the desire for freedom among the subject peoples and the encroachment of other powers, such as the Russian Empire, the British Empire, the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and other countries, such as Italy and Greece. The Serbian revolution (1804–15) marked the beginning of an era of national awakening among the subjects of the Ottoman Empire and was

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soon followed by the Greek War of Independence (1821–32) and other nationalist independence movements, lasting for a century. These include Crete, 1841, 1866– 69, 1897, 1905, and 1912–13; Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1874–76; the First Balkan Crisis of 1876; and the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, many massacres, mass atrocities, and what we call today “crimes against humanity” took place, not only during the struggles for independence by various national groups and fierce resistance to them by the Ottoman Empire, but also under other circumstances perpetrated by the Ottoman government and by civilian mobs on both sides. Examples include the massacre of Turks in Tripoli in 1821, the massacre of Greeks on Chios in 1822, Greeks in Missolonghi in 1823, the Janissaries in Constantinople in 1826, the Assyrians in Mosul in 1850, the Maronites in Lebanon in 1860, the Bulgarians at Batak in 1876, the Armenians in Bayazid in 1877, the Armenians in Alasguerd in 1879, the Christians in Alexandria in 1881, the Yezidis in Mosul in 1892, the Armenians in various cities in the eastern provinces in 1894 and the years following, the Armenians in Constantinople in 1896, the Slavs in Macedonia in 1903–04, and the Armenians in Adana in 1909. Thus, an atmosphere in which political and social disputes were addressed only with extremes of violence became the norm within the Ottoman Empire. The problem of violence in Ottoman society may be traced to the fact that between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, the Ottoman legal system had ceased to function effectively in the management of social interactions. The idea of a civil society came to the Ottoman Empire only very late, despite the fact that reformers had sought to reintroduce the idea of law during the course of the Tanzimat era. This inability to regulate social conflicts through legal means resulted in two problems. First, society itself fell into factions that engaged in vendettas. Second, the state chose authoritarianism as a means of keeping order, instead of an equitable system of laws and justice.209 The inequalities and gross injustices experienced by Christians living under a Muslim theocracy gave rise to the dissatisfaction of the Christians, and an active political movement for self-determination especially among the Armenians. Encountering resistance to change from the Ottoman state and society, the Christians sought help for political and social reform from foreign, Christian powers. At the same time, the Christians’ relatively superior educational and economic status within Ottoman society was visible, and caused envy and resentment among their Muslim neighbors. The Christians’ attempts to go beyond their allotted place in Ottoman society resulted in them being perceived as treasonous. Religious identification became the litmus test for loyalty. If one identified oneself as Christian, then one was perceived to align oneself with the foreign powers, who were thought to be only interested in the destruction of the empire. Ottoman Christians could prove their loyalty to the empire by converting to Islam. Many converted; many more did not. It remains to be

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studied whether the Christians’ refusal to convert was for political reasons, a matter of faith, or something else. In attempting to understand the motivations of the perpetrators, Taner Akçam has drawn on various sociological theories, particularly the work of Norbert Elias, making an interesting comparison of Turkish national identity leading up to the period of the genocides with that of Nazi Germany.210 He found several common threads between the two societies: (1) “the perception of the states on one’s borders as threats to one’s existence”; (2) “the loss of the previous hegemony within the international hierarchy of states”; (3) the inability “to offer a stable national identity to replace this insecurity”; (4) the central role of military and bureaucratic elites in the development of a new national identity; and (5) the longing for unity and the search for a leader who could achieve it. The combination of these factors created what Akçam described as a “desperate fear of annihilation,”211 which led to the genocides of both the Christians in the Ottoman Empire and the Jews and other groups in the Holocaust. In this study, we have looked at a large number of historical, political, social, and economic factors which served as the background to, and in certain cases the causes of the genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. We approached this study from the beginning as if there were three distinct cases of genocide. This is the way the scholarly literature has studied them, and this is the way the three national victim groups involved have treated them. Looking back on these factors, however, and seeing how interconnected the cases are, as well as how interwoven the actual implementations of the killings were, there is some reason to consider treating them as a single case, which may be called the “Late Ottoman Genocide.” George N. Shirinian is the Executive Director of the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (A Division of the Zoryan Institute), which is devoted to research, publication, and education in the fields of Genocide Studies, Diaspora Studies, and Armenia Studies. He is an official of the journal Genocide Studies International and one of the organizers of the annual Genocide and Human Rights University Program, run in partnership with the University of Toronto. He is the author of articles on the Armenian Genocide, co-editor of Studies in Comparative Genocide (Macmillan, 1999), and editor of The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos and Eastern Thrace, 1913–1923 (The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, 2012). Notes 1. The name “Assyrians,” as used throughout this volume, is intended to refer to Assyrians, Nestorians, Chaldeans, and Syrian/Syriac Christians. Hannibal Travis, “‘Native Christians Massacred’: The Ottoman Genocide of the Assyrians during World War I,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 1, no. 3 (2006): 327–71, at 350 note 2. The name is used collectively to describe a variety of small, autonomous religious groups who nevertheless proudly adhere to their respective traditional faiths. David Gaunt, “The Complexity of the Assyrian Genocide,” Genocide Studies International 9, no. 1 (2015): 83–103, at 83.

Background to the Late Ottoman Genocides | 65 2. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, “Introduction,” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, ed. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, Vol. 1 (New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1982), 5–7; Fatma Müge Göçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Decline of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 35–36. 3. Robert Curzon, A Year at Erzeroom and on the Frontiers of Russia, Turkey, and Persia, 3rd ed. (London: John Murray, 1854), 84–86, 90–91. 4. Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, Seventh–Twentieth Century (Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996), 82. 5. David Urquhart, Turkey and Its Resources (London: Saunders and Otley, 1833), 6. 6. Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire, 1453–1924 (London: John Murray, 1995), 20–21. Mansel notes that non-Muslims could buy exemption from the dress regulations. 7. Donald Quataert, “Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 1720–1829,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29, no. 3 (1997): 403–25, at 410. Cf. Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), 95. 8. Mansel, Constantinople, 246–47; Quataert, “Clothing Laws, State, and Society,” 413. One Turkish historian has suggested that Armenians “were permitted to wear the imperial monogram on their headgear as a sign of trust in them by the State.” Salahi R. Sonyel, The Ottoman Armenians: Victims of Great Power Diplomacy (London: K. Rustem & Brother, 1987), 25. However, if a Christian or Jew wore the fez, he was required to sew on it a strip of black ribbon or cloth, not to be concealed by the tassel. Roderic H. Davison, “Turkish Attitudes Concerning Christian–Muslim Equality in the Nineteenth Century,” in Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774–1923, ed. R. H. Davison (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 112–32, at 113. 9. Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude, 91. 10. Armenians were mostly guarantors of the tax farmers and thus intermediaries between the tax farmers and the imperial treasury, ensuring timely payment of the contracted revenues. Svetla Ianeva, “Negotiating Identities: The Non-Muslim Tax Farmers in the Fiscal and Economic System of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century,” in Religion, Ethnicity and Contested Nationhood in the Former Ottoman Space, ed. Jørgen S. Nielsen (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 45–62, at 50. 11. Hagop Barsoumian, “The Dual Role of the Armenian Amira Class within the Ottoman Government and the Armenian Millet (1750–1850),” in Braude and Lewis, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, 171–84, at 176. 12. Quataert, “Clothing Laws, State, and Society,” 414 and notes 71–73. 13. Göçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, 35. 14. Braude and Lewis, “Introduction,” 7. 15. Alexis Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek–Turkish Relations 1918–1974, 2nd ed. (Athens: Centre for Asia Minor Studies, 1992), 31. 16. Gerasimos Augustinos, The Greeks of Asia Minor: Confession, Community and Ethnicity in the Nineteenth Century (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1992), 95–96; Elena Frangakis-Syrett, “The Economic Activities of the Greek Community of Izmir in the Second Half of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics, Economy, and Society in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Dimitri Gondicas and Charles Issawi (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1999), 17–44, at 18, 21–22. 17. The capitulations were grants made by successive sultans as far back as 1352 to the various European Powers, providing rights and privileges for foreign subjects to travel and trade in the Ottoman territories, but outside of the sultan’s legal and fiscal jurisdiction. Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 77. 18. Göçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, 93, 96; Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 127. 19. Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul, 31.

66 |George N. Shirinian 20. Donald Quataert, “The Age of Reforms,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, Vol. 2, ed. Halil Inalcik with Donald Quataert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 840. 21. Norman Stone, “Turkey in the Russian Mirror,” in Russia: War, Peace, and Diplomacy: Essays in Honour of John Erickson, ed. Mark and Ljubica Erickson, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004), 97 and note 38. 22. Charles Issawi, “The Transformation of the Economic Position of the Millets in the Nineteenth Century,” in Braude and Lewis, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, 261–85, at 262–63. 23. Frangakis-Syrett, “The Economic Activities of the Greek Community of Izmir,” 17–19, 26. 24. Haris Exertzoglou, “The Development of a Greek Ottoman Bourgeoisie in the Ottoman Empire, 1850–1914,” in Gondicas and Issawi, Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism, 89–114, at 96. 25. Ibid., 96. 26. Wolfgang Gust, The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915–1916 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014), 326, 1915-08-21-DE-011, Enclosure 2, Franz Johannes Guenther, the Chairman of the Baghdad Railway in Constantinople, to the Chargé d’Affaires of the German Embassy in Constantinople, Neurath, August 21, 1915. 27. Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Volume II: Reform, Revolution and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 113. 28. Barsoumian, “The Dual Role of the Armenian Amira Class,” 178. 29. Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul, 45. 30. Shaw and Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, 250. 31. K. H. Basmajian, Social and Religious Life in the Orient (New York: American Tract Society, 1890), 177. 32. Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul, 46. 33. Quataert, “The Age of Reforms,” 843–45. 34. Janet Klein, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 130–33. 35. The tax farming system was abolished by the Hatt-ı Sherif of Gülhane in 1839 and again by the Hatt-ı Hümayun in 1856. 36. Quataert, “The Age of Reforms,” 876. 37. Gust, The Armenian Genocide, 143, 1913-11-15-DE-002, from the Ambassador in Constantinople (Wangenheim) to the Imperial Chancellor (Bethmann Hollweg), November 15, 1913, Enclosure 2, “Disappearing Armenia.” See also Dikran Mesrob Kaligian, “Agrarian Land Reform and the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire,” Armenian Review 48, no. 3–4 (2003): 25–45; Stephan H. Astourian, “The Silence of the Land: Agrarian Relations, Ethnicity, and Power,” in A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimark (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 55–81. 38. John Joseph, The Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbors: A Study of Western Influence on Their Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 99. 39. Astourian, “The Silence of the Land,” 59. 40. Ibid., 59–60. A sixty-four-page English edition of the report was published at the time as Reports on Provincial Oppressions: Official Publications of the Armenian National Patriarchate at Constantinople (London: Gilbert and Rivington, 1877). 41. Aylin Koçunyan, “The Transcultural Dimension of the Ottoman Constitution,” in Well-Connected Domains: Towards an Entangled Ottoman History, ed. Pascal W. Firges, Tobias P. Graf, Christian Roth, and Gülay Tulasoglu (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2014), 235–58, at 254. 42. George A. Bournoutian, Russia and the Armenians of Transcaucasia, 1797–1889: A Documentary Record (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1998), 446–47.

Background to the Late Ottoman Genocides | 67 43. Ibid., 445. 44. Ibid., 447. 45. Isabella L. Bishop, “The Shadow of the Kurd I,” Contemporary Review 59 (May 1891): 642–54, at 642. 46. Isabella L. Bishop, “The Shadow of the Kurd II,” Contemporary Review 59 (June 1891): 819–35, at 826. 47. Ibid., 829–30. 48. Ibid., 834. 49. Ibid., 828. 50. For the development of Armenian political parties, see Louise Nalbandian, The Armenian Revolutionary Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963). 51. Bishop, “The Shadow of the Kurd II,” 834. 52. Kemal H. Karpat, “The Ethnicity Problem in a Multi-ethnic Anational Islamic State: Continuity and Recasting of Ethnic Identity in the Ottoman State,” in Kemal H. Karpat, Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History: Selected Articles and Essays (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 712–29. 53. David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006), 32. 54. Ibid., 32. 55. Cited in Kaligian, “Agrarian Land Reform,” 26. 56. Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 43–45. 57. David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, revised and updated paperback ed. (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1997), 59–60. 58. Astourian, “The Silence of the Land,” 65. 59. Hans-Lukas Kieser, Nearest East: American Millennialism and Mission to the Middle East (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 58–59. 60. See, for example, Jelle Verheij, “Diyarbekir and the Armenian Crisis of 1895,” in Social Relations in Ottoman Diyarbekir, 1870–1915, ed. Joost Jongerden and Jelle Verheij (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 85–145, at 106. 61. For the Abdul Hamid-era massacres, see Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, 6th rev. ed. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 113–71; George Shirinian, “The Armenian Massacres of 1894–1897: A Bibliography,” 1999, www. zoryaninstitute.org/bibliographies/The%20Armenian%20Massacres.pdf (accessed January 7, 2012). 62. Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 469. 63. Jacob C. Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East: A Documentary Record 1535–1956, Vol. I (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1956), 190. 64. Arshag Ohan Sarkissian, “History of the Armenian Question to 1885,” Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences 22, no. 3–4 (1938): 1–151, at 91. 65. Shaw and Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, 190–91. 66. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, 35. 67. Ioannis N. Grigoriadis, Instilling Religion on Greek and Turkish Nationalism: A “Sacred Synthesis” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 21. 68. Douglas Dakin, The Unification of Greece, 1770–1923 (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1972), 8. 69. Theodore George Tatsios, The Megali Idea and the Greek Turkish War of 1897: The Impact of the Cretan Problem on Greek Irredentism, 1866–1897 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1984), 3, 5, 20; Harry J. Psomiades, The Eastern Question: The Last Phase. A Study in Greek-Turkish Diplomacy, 2nd ed. (New York: Pella Publishing, 2000), 9–12.

68 |George N. Shirinian 70. Michael Llewelyn Smith, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919–1922 (London: Allen Lane, 1973), 5–6. 71. Kemal H. Karpat, “The Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789–1908,” in Karpat, Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History, 27–74, at 35–36. 72. Lasana T. Harris, Mina Cikara, and Susan T. Fiske, “Envy, as Predicted by the Stereotype Content Model,” in Envy: Theory and Research, ed. Richard Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 133–47, at 133, 136–37. 73. Götz Aly, Why the Germans? Why the Jews? Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust, trans. Jefferson Chase (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014), 5. 74. Sir Charles Eliot, Turkey in Europe (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1900), 153, cited in Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul, 32. 75. Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul, 32. 76. Braude and Lewis, “Introduction,” 30, citing Cevdet Paşa, Tezakir, Vol. 1, ed. Cavid Baysun (Ankara: Türk Tarihi Kurumu Yayınları, 1963), 67–68. 77. Davison, “Turkish Attitudes,” 123 and note 38, citing the story from Abdurrahman Şeref in Enver Ziya Karal, Osmanlı Tarihi, Vol. V (Ankara: Türk Tarihi Kurumu Yayınları, 1947), 190; see also Gad Franco, Développements constitutionnels en Turquie (Paris: Arthur Rousseau, 1925), 12. 78. Davison, “Turkish Attitudes,” 125 and note 45, citing Letter of February 5, 1867, in Le Nord (Brussels), February 7, 1867. In note 46, Davison remarks, “The whole reform program was of course often condemned as contrary to religious law by men whose interest was not at all in the Şeriat but only in their vested interests in sources of power and income. Such were numerous officials, tax-farmers, moneylenders, etc.” 79. Davison, “Turkish Attitudes,” 127 and note 53, citing Hürriyet, no. 15 (October 5, 1868), reproduced in Ihsan Sungu, “Tanzimat ve Yeni Osmanlılar,” in Tanzimat I: 100 ncü Yıldönümü Münasebetile, ed. Türk Tarih Kurumu (Istanbul: Naarif Matbaası, 1940), 797. 80. Rev. Professor G. Thoumaian, “From Moush to Kars,” London Daily Telegraph, March 5, 1895, 5. 81. Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 13, citing Ahmed Riza, “Atrocités contre les chrétiens,” Mechveret I/14 (July 1, 1896), 4. 82. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 35, citing “Shcherbina’nın Vefatı,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, no. 28 (May 13, 1903): 3 83. Verheij, “Diyarbekir and the Armenian Crisis of 1895,” 91. 84. Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 40, citing “[Bois de] Boulogne Ormanında Bir Rum ile Muhavere,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, no. 41, 3. 85. Ibid., 41, citing “Ecnebiler Içinde Top Oynayor [sic], Şûra-yı Ümmet, no. 30 (June 11, 1903): 1. 86. Both statements by Şerif in Kieser, Nearest East, 76–77. Cf. Uğur Ümit Üngör and Mehmet Polatel, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (London and New York: Continuum, 2011), 22–25. 87. Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 41–42, citing [Sami Paşazâde Sezaî], “Ermeni Mes’elesi,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, no. 57 (August 13, 1904): 1. It must be pointed out that a very well-documented series of widespread massacres against the Armenians in the eastern provinces and in Constantinople took place sporadically from 1894 to 1905, in which over 200,000 Armenians were killed. It is illogical, if not outright irrational, therefore, to claim that the existence of the Armenians who survived those massacres is “absolute proof ” that Turks have never massacred Armenians. Such illogic and irrationality also suggest that the reasons given for the anger and violence directed towards the Armenians are exaggerated. 88. Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 69. 89. Doğan Çetinkaya, The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement: Nationalism, Protest and the Working Classes in the Formation of Modern Turkey (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013), 168, citing British FO 195/2458, No. 84, July 11, 1914, 470.

Background to the Late Ottoman Genocides | 69 90. Starting in 1895, the influential branch of the group in exile in Paris also went by the name “Jeunes Turcs,” in English, Young Turks. Erik J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 3rd ed. (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 87. 91. Yusuf Akçura, Uç tarz-i siyaset (Constantinople, 1911), quoted in Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 402. 92. Feroz Ahmad, “Unionist Relations with the Greek, Armenian, and Jewish Communities of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1914,” in Braude and Lewis, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, 401–34, at 401; Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 210–11. 93. Dikran Mesrob Kaligian, Armenian Organization and Ideology under Ottoman Rule, 1908–1914 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2009), 59–65. 94. Kaligian, “Agrarian Land Reform,” 35–39. 95. Ahmad, “Unionist Relations,” 403. 96. Cited in Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 218. See also Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 75–76; Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, 179–80. 97. Cited in Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 218-9; Akçam, A Shameful Act, 76; Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, 179. 98. Erik J. Zürcher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), 73–83; Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, 181–82; Bedross Der Matossian, “From Bloodless Revolution to Bloody Counterrevolution: The Adana Massacres of 1909,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 6, no. 2 (2011): 152–73; Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 215–16. 99. Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 45. 100. Taner Akçam, From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2004), 67, 73, 76–78. 101. Çetinkaya, The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement, 145. This section draws heavily on Çetinkaya, 89–135. 102. Elektra Kostopolou, “The Art of Being Replaced: The Last of the Cretan Muslims between the Empire and the Nation State,” in Nielsen, Religion, Ethnicity and Contested Nationhood, 129–46 at 131. 103. Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Role of the Turkish Military in the Destruction of Ottoman Armenians: A Study in Historical Continuities,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 20, no. 2 (1992): 257–88, at 269. 104. See Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995), 141–52. 105. Misha Glenny, The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers 1804–2012, new and updated ed. (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2012), 219–39. 106. Ibid., 246. 107. Vasileios Meichanetsidis, “The Genocide of the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire, 1913–1923: A Comprehensive Overview,” Genocide Studies International 9, no. 1 (2015): 104–73, at 119. 108. See McCarthy, Death and Exile, 156–64. 109. Akçam, A Shameful Act, 87–89. 110. Ibid., 90–91. 111. FO242/251/188, Sir L. Mallett to Sir Edward Grey, Constantinople, February 26, 1914, Enclosure 1, Consul-General Barnham to Sir Louis Mallet, Smyrna, February 18, 1914. Cited in Kaligian, Armenian Organization and Ideology, 217.

70 |George N. Shirinian 112. The Anglo-Hellenic League No. 13, Letters on the Expulsion of Greeks from Asia Minor, and in Reply to Allegations of Ill-Treatment Inflicted on Turks in Greek Macedonia (London: The Anglo-Hellenic League, 1914), 2–3, reproduced from The Asiatic Review, July 1914. 113. George Horton, The Blight of Asia: An Account of the Systematic Extermination of Christian Populations by Mohammedans and of the Culpability of Certain Great Powers; with the True Story of the Burning of Smyrna (London: Sterndale Classics, 2003), 24–25. 114. For more on how the persecutions and expulsions took place, see Horton, The Blight of Asia, 28–33; Matthias Bjørnlund, “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a Case of Violent Turkification,” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 41–57; Matthias Bjørnlund, “The Persecution of Greeks and Armenians in Smyrna, 1914–1916: A Special Case in the Course of the Late Ottoman Genocides,” in The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923, ed. George N. Shirinian (Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012), 89–133; Tessa Hofmann, “The Genocide against the Christians in the Late Ottoman Period, 1912–1922,” in Shirinian, The Asia Minor Catastrophe, 43–67. 115. See Meichanetsidis, “The Genocide of the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire,” 120–22. 116. Taner Akçam, “The Greek Deportations and Massacres of 1913–1914: A Trial Run for the Armenian Genocide,” in Shirinian, The Asia Minor Catastrophe, 69–88, esp. 70–72. 117. Meichanetsidis, “The Genocide of the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire,” 121. 118. Auswärtiges Amt, 16.7.1914; R 1913; A 14075; pr. 17.7.1914 a.m.; 16.7.1914 22:30/17.7.1914 12:30; Botschaft Konstantinopel an Auswärtiges Amt, Telegram Nr. 346. I thank Wolfgang Gust for bringing this document to my attention. 119. Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012), 99–101. 120. Ibid., 103. 121. Akçam, A Shameful Act, 104–8. 122. Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks: The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics 1908–1914 (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 144–45. 123. Ibid., 150. 124. Ibid., 154. 125. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 142. 126. Vahakn N. Dadrian, German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity (Watertown, MA: Blue Crane Books, 1996), 20. 127. Kaligian, Armenian Organization and Ideology, 187. 128. Akçam, A Shameful Act, 102, 232–33; Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, 207–9, 213– 16; Kieser, Nearest East, 83–84; “The Proposed Reforms in Armenia,” The Manchester Guardian, January 26, 1914, 9, col. 4, reproduced in The Times of the Armenian Genocide: Reports in the British Press, Vol. 1: 1914–1919, ed. Katia Minas Peltekian (Beirut: Four Roads, 2013), 12–13. For an analysis of the overall significance of the Armenian Reform Commission, see Hans-Lukas Kieser, Mehmet Polatel, and Thomas Schmutz, “Reform or Cataclysm? The Agreement of 8 February 1914 Regarding the Ottoman Eastern Provinces,” Journal of Genocide Research 17, no. 3 (2015): 285–384. 129. See W. J. van der Dussen, “The Question of Armenian Reforms in 1913–1914,” Armenian Review 39, no. 1–153 (Spring 1986): 11–28; L. C. Westenenk, “Diary Concerning the Armenian Mission,” Armenian Review 39, no. 1–153 (Spring 1986): 29–89; Kieser, Nearest East, 81–82. 130. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, 212–16. The date was December 16, 1914 according to the Rumi calendar and December 31 according to the Gregorian. 131. See Speros Vryonis, Jr., “Greek Labor Battalions in Asia Minor,” in The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Pub., 2007), 275–90; Erik Jan Zürcher, “Ottoman Labour Battalions in World War I,” in Der Völkermord an den Armeniern

Background to the Late Ottoman Genocides | 71 und die Shoah / The Armenian Genocide and the Shoah, ed. Hans-Lukas Kieser and Dominik J. Schaller (Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2002), 187–95, at 187; Arthur Beylerian, Les Grandes Puissances, L’Empire ottoman et les Arméniens dans les Archives françaises (1914–1918): Receuil de Documents (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1983), 52. 132. Justin McCarthy et al., The Armenian Rebellion at Van (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006), 185–86. 133. Kieser, Nearest East, 85; Kaligian, Armenian Organization and Ideology, 220–22, 236. 134. Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 56–57. 135. The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, by Viscount Bryce, uncensored ed. (Reading, UK: Taderon Press, 2000), Document 21, The North-eastern Vilayets: Statement Communicated by the Refugee Roupen, of Sassoun, to the Armenian Community at Moscow, 116. 136. Hovhannes Katchaznouni, The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnagtzoutiun) Has Nothing to Do Any More, trans. Matthew A. Callender (New York: Armenian Information Service, 1955), 5. 137. “Eager to Fight the Turks: Armenians and Caucasians Enrolled in a Volunteer Force,” New York Times, October 31, 1914, reproduced in Armenians at the Twilight of the Ottoman Era, Vol. 1, comp. and ed. Vosgan Mekhitarian and Vahan Ohanian (n.p.: Genocide Documentation and Research Center, 2011), 1535–36. 138. “Armenians and Liberty: Their Help to Russia in the Caucasus,” The Manchester Guardian, March 5, 1915, 6, col. 6, reproduced in The Times of the Armenian Genocide, 40–41. 139. McCarthy et al., The Armenian Rebellion at Van, 188–90. 140. Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 54. 141. McCarthy et al., The Armenian Rebellion at Van, 192–93; Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 95–102. 142. Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 132–35. 143. Cipher telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to the Province of Van, October 26, 1914, in Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 447. 144. The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Document 23, Moush: Statement by a German Eye-witness of Occurrences at Moush, 124. 145. Souren Sargsian’s testimony, in The Armenian Genocide: Testimonies of the Eyewitness Survivors, ed. Verjiné Svazlian (Yerevan: Gitoutyoun, 2011), 315. 146. Akçam, A Shameful Act, 143, citing Johannes Lepsius, Der Todesgang des armenischen Volkes: Bericht über das Schicksal des armenischen Volkes in der Türkei während des Weltkrieges, 4th ed. (Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1930), 161–62. 147. Akçam, A Shameful Act, 125. 148. Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 65. 149. McCarthy et al., The Armenian Rebellion at Van, 194. 150. Kieser, Nearest East, 85. For statements that there was no rebellion in Erzerum, see Wolfgang Gust, ed., Der Völkermord an den Armeniern 1915/16: Dokumente aus dem Politischen Archiv des deutschen Auswärtigen Amts (Springe: zu Klampen Verlag, 2005), 143, Document 1915-05-15-DE-012, and 226, Document 1915-08-05-DE-002. For a similar statement on Mosul, see 346, Document 1915-11-04-DE-001. For refutation of accusations that Armenians deserted from the army at Aleppo, see 404, Document 1916-01-03-DE-001. (German and English versions also available at www.armenocide.de.) For another perspective on Armenian deserters, see The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Document 17, Van: Narrative by Mr. Y. K. Rushdouni, 97. 151. Zaven Der Yeghiayan, My Patriarchal Memoirs, trans. Ared Misirlyan (Barrington, RI: Mayreni Publishing, 2002), 46–49. See also Akçam, A Shameful Act, 199–200; Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, 220.

72 |George N. Shirinian 152. Zürcher, “Ottoman Labour Battalions in World War I,” 192. 153. Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1919), 302–3. 154. Gust, Der Völkermord an den Armeniern 1915/16, 121, Document 1915-03-07-DE-011. 155. McCarthy et al., The Armenian Rebellion at Van, 202. 156. Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity, 183. 157. Gust, Der Völkermord an den Armeniern 1915/16, 158, Document 1915-06-05-DE-001, Enclosure 1; Gust, The Armenian Genocide, 199. 158. See Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Role of the Special Organisation in the Armenian Genocide during the First World War,” in Minorities in Wartime, ed. Panakos Panayi (Oxford and Providence, RI: Berg Publishers, 1993), 50–82. 159. For details on the Young Turks’ demographic policy, see Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity, 226–85; Fuat Dündar, The Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878–1918) (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010), 103–20. 160. For details on the implementation of the deportations and massacres, see The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, VI. The Deportations of 1915: Procedure, 635–49; Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, 219–47; Akçam, A Shameful Act, 149–204. For a study of the number of Armenians killed and the problems of population statistics, see Levon Marashlian, Politics and Demography: Armenians, Turks and Kurds in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, MA: Zoryan Institute, 1991). 161. David Gaunt, “The Ottoman Treatment of the Assyrians,” in Suny, Göçek, and Naimark, A Question of Genocide, 244–59, at 245–46. For more details on the implementation of the Assyrian Genocide, see Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 81–272; David Gaunt, “Death’s End, 1915: The General Massacres of Christians in Diarbekir,” in Armenian Tigranakert/Diarbekir and Edessa/Urfa, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2006), 309–59, at 316–17; and Travis, “‘Native Christians Massacred.’” Gaunt examines the issue of Assyrian population and mortality statistics in Massacres, Resistance, Protectors in his Introduction and Appendices 2 and 3. Statistics are also provided in Hannibal Travis, Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2010), 247ff, and on page 266 he describes 250,000 as “a figure which many journalists and scholars have subsequently accepted.” 162. Stephen P. Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 15–16. 163. Gust, Der Völkermord an den Armeniern 1915/16, 304–5, Document 1915-09-09-DE-002-E, German Vice-Consul Kuckhoff in Samsun writing to the German Embassy in Constantinople. (German and English versions also available at www.armenocide.de.) 164. Thanos Veremis and Helen Gardikas-Katsiadakis, “Protagonist in Politics, 1912–20,” in Eleftherios Venizelos: The Trials of Statesmanship, ed. Paschalis M. Kitromilides (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 115–33, at 124. 165. Letter of Archag Tchobanian, Secretary of the Armenian Committee of Paris, to the Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Art, April 6, 1916. Cited in Beylerian, Les Grandes Puissances, 189–90. Translation by the author. 166. Constantinos E. Fotiadis, The Genocide of the Pontus Greeks by the Turks, Vol. 13: Archive Documents of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Britain, France, the League of Nations and S.H.A.T. (Thessaloniki: Herodotus, 2004), 19. 167. Ibid., 20, citing Wien HHStA, PA, Türkei XII, Liasse 467 LIV, No 97/pol., Constantinople (19.12.1916) and Constantinople (2.1.1917). The same report by Pallavicini, together with other reports on the persecutions, is found in the archive of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. See: Bonn P.A.A.A., Türkei No. 168, Bd. 15, f. Bd. 16, No. 61/pol. A. 4699, Berlin (9.2.1917). 168. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 324–25. 169. Dadrian, German Responsibility, 229–31; Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity, 99-101.

Background to the Late Ottoman Genocides | 73 170. Greek Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Persecutions of the Greek Population in Turkey since the Beginning of the European War According to Official Reports of Hellenic Diplomatic and Consular Agents (London: Constable & Co. Ltd., 1918), 12–20. The Young Turks’ demographic policy and its relation to the genocide are discussed in Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity, 227–85. 171. Harry J. Psomiades, Fridtjof Nansen and the Greek Refugee Crisis 1922–1924 (Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontus Hellenic Research Center, 2011), 13. 172. Report by the English Information Service to the Minister of War, June 19, 1918. Cited in Beylerian, Les Grandes Puissances, 624. Translation by the author. 173. Dakin, The Unification of Greece, 221. 174. Marjorie Housepian, The Smyrna Affair (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 50. Some examples of atrocities are described in Giles Milton, Paradise Lost. Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance (London: Sceptre, 2008), 140–48; and Horton, The Blight of Asia, 49–51. 175. For details of this campaign, see Fotiadis, The Genocide of the Pontus Greeks by the Turks, 21–26, 56ff, 125ff. 176. Psomiades, Fridtjof Nansen and the Greek Refugee Crisis, 14–15. 177. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 143–47, 155; Psomiades, The Eastern Question, 25–28; Dakin, Unification of Greece, 231–37. 178. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 163. 179. Milton, Paradise Lost, 6. 180. Constantine G. Hatzidimitriou, ed., American Accounts Documenting the Destruction of Smyrna by the Kemalist Turkish Forces, September 1922 (New York: Aristide D. Caratzas, Publisher, 2005), 8. 181. The books by Hatzidimitriou, Housepian, and Milton, cited above, and Lou Ureneck, The Great Fire (New York: HarperCollins, 2015) all provide great detail about the epochal destruction wrought in this one place. If the International Court of Justice could find the killing of some seven thousand Bosnian Muslims in the city of Srebrenica in July 1995 to be “genocide,” then surely the willful killing of Christians in Smyrna would meet the same test. See International Court of Justice, “Case Concerning the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro),” February 26, 2007, para 370, http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/91/13685.pdf. 182. Renée Hirschon, “‘Unmixing Peoples’ in the Aegean Region,” in Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey, ed. Renée Hirschon (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003), 3–12, at 6. 183. “The life-span of a Greek or Armenian in a Turkish labor battalion was generally about two months.” Psomiades, Fridtjof Nansen and the Greek Refugee Crisis, 48. 184. Harry J. Psomiades, “Fridtjof Nansen and the Greek Refugee Problem (September–November 1922),” Bulletin of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies [Athens] 16 (2009): 287–346, at 295–99. An article in the New York Times suggests that the idea of a population exchange originated with Ismet, chief negotiator for the Turkish delegation at Lausanne. Edwin I. James, “Turks Proclaim Banishment Edict to 1,000,000 Greeks,” New York Times, December 22, 1922, 1. 185. Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities, 438–39. A detailed examination of the number of refugees can be found in ibid., 643–45. The text of the population exchange agreement can be found in Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey, edited by Renée Hirschon, 281–87 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003). 186. Hatzidimitriou, American Accounts, 2–3. 187. Michalis Charalambidis, The Pontian Question in the United Nations (Thessaloniki: Pontian Society of Thessaloniki “Euxinos Leschi,” 2004), 15. Fotiadis, The Genocide of the Pontus Greeks by the Turks, 32, gives the figure of 353,000, citing G. Valavanis, Synchroni Genike Istoria tou Pontou (Athens, 1925), 24. Taner Akçam reviews the statistical estimates in A Shameful Act, 106–7. 188. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011), 556.

74 |George N. Shirinian 189. Fatma Müge Göçek, Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians 1789–2009 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 88. Abdul Hamid dictated his memoirs to his secretary in 1917, while in captivity in Istanbul. Kemal H. Karpat, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 446. 190. Djemal Pasha, Memories of a Turkish Statesman—1913–1919 by Djemal Pasha: Formerly Governor of Constantinople, Imperial Ottoman Naval Minister, and Commander of the Fourth Army in Sinai, Palestine and Syria (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1922), 241. 191. Duygu Coşkuntuna, Minds of Passage: An Interpretation of the Memoirs of Young Turks (Istanbul: Libra Kitapçılık ve Yayıncılık Ticaret Ltd., 2014), 144, citing Talat Paşa, Talât Paşa’nin Hatıralar (Istanbul: Güven Yayınevi, 1946), 58–59. 192. See, for example, the wording of the various Armenian petitions requesting reform; the 1904 letter from Antranik and Serop to consular representatives cited in Gerard J. Libaridian, “What Was Revolutionary about the Armenian Revolutionary Parties in the Ottoman Empire?” in Suny, Göçek, and Naimark, A Question of Genocide, 82–112, at 91; and the resolutions of the Dashnak congresses of 1907, 1908, and 1909, by which they reaffirmed their loyalty to the constitution and vowed to defend the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire. 193. For a discussion of the provocation thesis, see Robert F. Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 5–6, 10–12, and 152–59. 194. See the discussion by Margaret Lavinia Anderson, “A Responsibility to Protest? The Public, the Powers and the Armenians in the Era of Abdülhamit II,” Journal of Genocide Research 17, no. 3 (2015): 259–83, at 267–71. 195. Melson, Revolution and Genocide, 154–59. 196. See, for example, Harry Stuermer, Two War Years in Constantinople. Sketches of German and Young Turkish Ethics and Politics, trans. E. Allen and Harry Stuermer (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1917), 52; Gust, The Armenian Genocide, 283, Document 1915-08-05-DE-002, Secret Report from the Administrator in Erzerum (Scheubner-Richter) to the Ambassador in Extraordinary Mission in Constantinople (Hohenlohe-Langenburg), August 5, 1915; Gust, The Armenian Genocide, 375, Document 1915-09-06DE-002, from the Consul in Adana (Büge) to the Embassy Constantinople, September 6, 1915; Gust, The Armenian Genocide, 502, Document 1915-12-21-DE-011, Notes by the Consul General in Constantinople (Mordtmann), December 21, 1915. 197. McCarthy et al., The Armenian Rebellion at Van, 235. 198. On December 17, 1914, more than five hundred Jews were expelled from Jaffa. Searches for weapons and illegal documents were conducted in the homes of Jewish leaders; Hebrew-language signs were ordered to be removed from shops and replaced by Turkish ones, and more anti-Zionist actions were implemented. Yair Auron, The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000), 64–66. In August 1915, Talat sent a message to the commander of the Fourth Army ordering the deportation from Palestine of Jewish citizens of enemy states. Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity, 59. 199. See, for example, Guenter Lewy, “Can There Be Genocide without the Intent to Commit Genocide?” Journal of Genocide Research 9, no. 4 (2007): 661–74; Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005), 245–57. 200. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 333. 201. NA/RG59/867.4016/76, July 16, 1915. United States Official Records on the Armenian Genocide 1915–1917, compiled with an introduction by Ara Sarafian (Princeton, NJ and London: Gomidas Institute, 2004), 55. 202. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 338.

Background to the Late Ottoman Genocides | 75 203. Martin Niepage, The Horrors of Aleppo Seen by a German Eyewitness (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1917), 15–16. Cf. Gust, Armenian Genocide, 431–34, at 434, Chairman of the Baghdad Railway in Constantinople Franz Johannes Günther, Report to Chargé d’Affaires of the Embassy in Constantinople Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath, October 1915, 1915-11-01-DE-001. 204. William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 668. 205. Vahakn N. Dadrian and Taner Akçam, Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011), 292. 206. For a detailed discussion of the legal implications of the term “ethnic cleansing,” see Alfred de Zayas, “Ethnic Cleansing: Applicable Norms, Emerging Jurisprudence, Implementable Remedies,” in International Humanitarian Law, ed. John Carey, William V. Dunlap, and R. John Pritchard (Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers, Inc., 2003), 283–313. 207. Tony Barta, “With Intent to Deny: On Colonial Intentions and Genocide Denial,” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 111–19, at 111. See also Norbert Finzsch, “If It Looks Like a Duck, If It Walks Like a Duck, If It Quacks Like a Duck,” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 119–26; David E. Stannard, “Déjà Vu All Over Again,” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 127–33. 208. Travis, “‘Native Christians Massacred’,” 345 and note 251. Travis cites Prosecutor v. Milosevic, Decision on Motion for Judgement of Acquittal, IT-02–54-T (June 16, 2004), http://www.icty.org/x/cases/ slobodan_milosevic/tdec/en/040616.htm (accessed September 24, 2016), para. 120, which cites Jelisic Appeals Judgment, para. 37, which itself cites Akayesu Trial Judgment, paras. 698–734. 209. James J. Reid, Crisis of the Ottoman Empire: Prelude to Collapse, 1839–1878 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000), 21–22. 210. Akçam, From Empire to Republic, 39–58. 211. Ibid., 54.

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Background to the Late Ottoman Genocides | 79 ———. “The Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789–1908.” In Kemal H. Karpat, Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History: Selected Articles and Essays, 27–74. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Katchaznouni, Hovhannes. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnagtzoutiun) Has Nothing to Do Any More. Translated by Matthew A. Callender. New York: Armenian Information Service, 1955. Kévorkian, Raymond. The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011. Kiernan, Ben. Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2007. Kieser, Hans-Lukas. Nearest East: American Millennialism and Mission to the Middle East. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010. Kieser, Hans-Lukas, Mehmet Polatel, and Thomas Schmutz. “Reform or Cataclysm? The Agreement of 8 February 1914 Regarding the Ottoman Eastern Provinces.” Journal of Genocide Research 17, no. 3 (2015): 285–384. Klein, Janet. The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. Koçunyan, Aylin. “The Transcultural Dimension of the Ottoman Constitution.” In Well-Connected Domains: Towards an Entangled Ottoman History, edited by Pascal W. Firges, Tobias P. Graf, Christian Roth, and Gülay Tulasoglu, 235–58. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2014. Kostopolou, Elektra. “The Art of Being Replaced: The Last of the Cretan Muslims between the Empire and the Nation State.” In Religion, Ethnicity and Contested Nationhood in the Former Ottoman Space, edited by Jørgen Nielsen, 129–46. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. Ladas, Stephen P. The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. New York: Macmillan, 1932. Lewis, Bernard. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. Lewy, Guenter. The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005. ———. “Can There Be Genocide without the Intent to Commit Genocide?” Journal of Genocide Research 9, no. 4 (2007): 661–74. Libaridian, Gerard J. “What Was Revolutionary about the Armenian Revolutionary Parties in the Ottoman Empire?” In A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimark, 82–112. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Mansel, Philip. Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire, 1453–1924. London: John Murray, 1995. Marashlian, Levon. Politics and Demography: Armenians, Turks and Kurds in the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge, MA: Zoryan Institute, 1991. McCarthy, Justin. Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1995. McCarthy, Justin, Esat Arslan, Cemaettin Taşkıran, and Ömer Turan. The Armenian Rebellion at Van. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006. McDowall, David. A Modern History of the Kurds. Revised and updated paperback ed. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1997. Meichanetsidis, Vasileios. “The Genocide of the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire, 1913–1923: A Comprehensive Overview.” Genocide Studies International 9, no. 1 (2015): 104–73. Melson, Robert F. Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Milton, Giles. Paradise Lost. Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance. London: Sceptre, 2008. Morgenthau, Henry. Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1919. Nalbandian, Louise. The Armenian Revolutionary Movement. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963. Niepage, Martin. The Horrors of Aleppo Seen by a German Eyewitness. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1917. Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Viking, 2011.

80 |George N. Shirinian Psomiades, Harry J. The Eastern Question: The Last Phase. A Study in Greek–Turkish Diplomacy. 2nd ed. New York: Pella Publishing, 2000. ———. Fridtjof Nansen and the Greek Refugee Crisis 1922–1924. Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontus Hellenic Research Center, 2011. ———. “Fridtjof Nansen and the Greek Refugee Problem (September–November 1922).” Bulletin of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies [Athens] 16 (2009): 287–346. Quataert, Donald. “The Age of Reforms.” In An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, Vol. 2, edited by Halil Inalcik with Donald Quataert, 759-944. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ———. “Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 1720–1829.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29, no. 3 (1997): 403–25. ———. The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Reid, James J. Crisis of the Ottoman Empire: Prelude to Collapse, 1839–1878. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000. Sarkissian, Arshag Ohan. “History of the Armenian Question to 1885.” Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences 22, no. 3–4 (1938): 1–151. Schabas, William A. Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Shaw, Stanford J., and Ezel Kural Shaw. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Volume II: Reform, Revolution and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808–1975. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Shirinian, George. “The Armenian Massacres of 1894–1897: A Bibliography.” 1999. www.zoryaninstitute. org/bibliographies/The%20Armenian%20Massacres.pdf. Smith, Michael Llewelyn. Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919–1922. London: Allen Lane, 1973. Sonyel, Salahi R. The Ottoman Armenians: Victims of Great Power Diplomacy. London: K. Rustem & Brother, 1987. Stannard, David E. “Déjà Vu All Over Again.” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 127–33. Stone, Norman. “Turkey in the Russian Mirror.” In Russia: War, Peace, and Diplomacy: Essays in Honour of John Erickson, edited by Mark and Ljubica Erickson, 86-100. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004. Stuermer, Harry. Two War Years in Constantinople. Sketches of German and Young Turkish Ethics and Politics. Translated by E. Allen and Harry Stuermer. New York: George H. Doran Co., 1917. Sungu, Ihsan. “Tanzimat ve Yeni Osmanlılar.” In Tanzimat I: 100 ncü Yıldönümü Münasebetile, edited by Türk Tarih Kurumu. Istanbul: Naarif Matbaası, 1940. Tatsios, Theodore George. The Megali Idea and the Greek Turkish War of 1897: The Impact of the Cretan Problem on Greek Irredentism, 1866–1897. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1984. Thoumaian, Rev. Professor G. “From Moush to Kars.” London Daily Telegraph, March 5, 1895. Travis, Hannibal. Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2010. ———. “‘Native Christians Massacred’: The Ottoman Genocide of the Assyrians during World War I.” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 1, no. 3 (2006): 327–71. Üngör, Uğur Ümit, and Mehmet Polatel. Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property. London and New York: Continuum, 2011. Ureneck, Lou. The Great Fire. New York: HarperCollins, 2015. Urquhart, David. Turkey and Its Resources. London: Saunders and Otley, 1833. van der Dussen, W. J. “The Question of Armenian Reforms in 1913–1914.” Armenian Review 39, no. 1–153 (Spring 1986): 11–28. Veremis, Thanos, and Helen Gardikas-Katsiadakis. “Protagonist in Politics, 1912–20.” In Eleftherios Venizelos: The Trials of Statesmanship, edited by Paschalis M. Kitromilides, 115–33. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. Verheij, Jelle. “Diyarbekir and the Armenian Crisis of 1895.” In Social Relations in Ottoman Diyarbekir, 1870–1915, edited by Joost Jongerden and Jelle Verheij, 85–145. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012.

Background to the Late Ottoman Genocides | 81 Vryonis, Speros Jr. “Greek Labor Battalions in Asia Minor.” In The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 275–90. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007. Westenenk, L. C. “Diary Concerning the Armenian Mission.” Armenian Review 39, no. 1–153 (Spring 1986): 29–89. Ye’or, Bat. The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, Seventh–Twentieth Century. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996. ———. Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002. Zürcher, Erik J. “Ottoman Labour Battalions in World War I.” In Der Völkermord an den Armeniern und die Shoah / The Armenian Genocide and the Shoah, edited by Hans-Lukas Kieser and Dominik J. Schaller, 187–95. Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2002. ———. Turkey: A Modern History. 3rd ed. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004. ———. The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010.

CHAPTER TWO Convulsions at the End of Empire Thrace, Asia Minor, and the Aegean Dikran M. Kaligian

Following the Constitutional Revolution of 1908 and the ascent of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), there was, at least initially, cause for the minorities of the Ottoman Empire to be optimistic. Under the new constitution, all Ottoman citizens were to be equal, independent of their religion, in marked contrast to conditions under the sultan’s autocracy. Greek, Armenian, and other ethnic political parties had worked with the CUP when they were in opposition. Before the 1908 parliamentary elections, the CUP reached electoral agreements with both the Greeks, through the leadership of the patriarch, and the Armenians, through the leadership of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF).1 (On policy matters, the cooperation was more difficult.) The ARF and CUP began cooperating in support of a constitutional regime that had not yet consolidated its political position. Such cooperation resulted in improved security for the Armenians, at least in parts of the eastern vilayets. Resolution of the security issue was one of the five objectives, the foremost of which was land restitution, agreed to in negotiations between the parties after the April 1910 Salonika Accord. The security issue was defined, first and foremost, as the curbing of attacks by Kurdish tribes on peasants. Yet many such assaults were curtailed merely by the

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ascension to power of the CUP and the Kurds’ consequent realization that being Muslim would not allow them to act with impunity against Christians, as it had under the sultan. British Ambassador Lowther described this phenomenon: It is extraordinary to note how, simultaneously with the disappearance of the Palace rule, there was an almost complete disappearance of the desperate Armenian complaints from the distant provinces. The Kurds no doubt saw, from the fate of Ibrahim [a stalwart supporter of the Palace who was hunted down] that the new Government was not to be trifled with, and once they had ascertained the nature of the orders which the authorities were receiving from Constantinople, they ceased in a trice from their misdeeds.2 The CUP also agreed to take action when, at the end of 1909, there were many reports of the Russian government fomenting rebellion among the Kurdish tribes in the interior.3 The CUP had shown itself ready to take action against the Kurdish tribes; a significant and welcome development for the security of the Christian population. The ARF raised questions in Parliament about conditions in the Armenian provinces. The Armenian deputies gathered documents and statements in order to answer questions about their descriptions of the persecutions and thievery. An inspection committee had been formed that would soon go to the provinces to examine the situation.4 Erzerum vilayet was almost entirely without disorder for the first months of 1909. This pleasantly surprised British Consul Shipley, as police powers had been curtailed. Therefore, he concluded that “the maintenance of public order has been largely due to the good sense and self-control of the people themselves.” He also noted that: On their part, the Armenians have contributed their fair share towards the maintenance of order and, as a population, have shown a commendable desire to avoid offending the susceptibilities and prejudices of their Mussulman fellow-subjects, with the result that the good relations between the two inaugurated by the celebrations of August and September of last year have been satisfactorily maintained.5 In Diyarbekir, seventeen people were arrested and convicted of treasonable acts connected to the counterrevolution. This caused a sensation in the vilayet, as most were prominent and influential notables. The powerful beys and aghas were especially shocked, as they “never expected that the Government would dare to take such strong measures.” It was expected that they would be exiled and that further action would be taken against other reactionaries.6 Due to the local government’s energetic response to any breach of the law, relations between the Kurds and Armenians in Bitlis had become friendly. At the same time, there were feelings of discontent among some Muslims because they had lost the privileged position they had previously held.7

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By July 1909, the area around Muş, Bitlis, and Khinis was experiencing a degree of security greater than at any point in the prior fifteen years, according to the British consul. Yet, had the counterrevolution not been suppressed, local reactionaries would likely have started an insurrection. In May, there were widespread fears of Kurdish massacres of Armenians in the districts around Van. That they did not materialize was attributed to signals from the local government that disorder would be punished.8 There was a revival in the number of political murders and general insecurity in October and November in the Bitlis, Van, and Mosul areas. In some cases, the local authorities showed little interest in investigating, which would likely encourage further pillage and murder. In mid October in Van, Kurds killed eleven Armenians in two separate incidents.9 The new vali of Erzerum,10 Celal Bey, was showing energy in investigating reports of excesses and seizures of land by Kurdish chiefs. His administration seemed to be doing all it could to avoid frictions between Muslims and Christians and to ensure the protection of lives and property.11 Erzerum vilayet was quiet in the new year, with no robberies or crimes in the prior month. There were, however, several important arrests, including five Kurds accused of the murder of six Armenians in Adilcevas. Salim Pasha in Bitlis was actively suppressing disorder, removed a number of corrupt officials, and required the remainder to pass an examination to remain in office.12 In April 1910, the ARF Eastern Bureau reported that the government had hanged a soldier who had killed two Armenians in Khnous. This made a great impression on the Turkish population in the area.13 The only hope for law and order and true cooperation between the different ethnic groups was the administration of equal justice. Under Abdul Hamid’s regime, the murderer of a Christian was infrequently prosecuted and this engendered a distrust of the judiciary and police by Christians and a sense of impunity on the part of some Turks and Kurds. The willingness of the CUP to end this practice gave the Armenians another tangible example of the benefits of equal status. Unfortunately, this seems to have been an isolated incident in which justice was administered; there are no others mentioned in the ARF correspondence of the time. Despite the progress in curtailing Kurdish attacks, there was also an ominous development. The establishment of the Hamidiye irregular cavalry units had emboldened the Kurdish tribes that had obtained Hamidiye status. Under the new regime, the Hamidiye were not disbanded but were reorganized between 1908 and 1910 and renamed Tribal Regiments. By August 1910, they had grown to sixty-four regiments composed of over 53,000 men.14 The CUP was not unaware that the Armenians felt threatened by the continued existence of the Hamidiye. At a meeting with the CUP, the ARF proposed the disarmament of anti-constitutional forces and the immediate dissolution and disarmament of the Hamidiye. It also proposed that the gendarmerie be reorganized to include all ethnic groups and that the government arm Armenians to serve as village guards in Armenian villages. While the latter two proposals were rejected, an outline

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of an agreement was drawn up and sent to Constantinople. The outline included the proposed disarmament of the Hamidiye and anti-constitutional forces.15 The CUP’s public commitment to equal status for all citizens had likely discouraged excesses by the Hamidiye tribes. Yet given their history and growing numbers, if any private signal to the contrary were sent, they could again become a real danger to the lives and property of the Armenian peasantry.

Administrative Changes The ARF also pressed the CUP to make changes in some of the government’s administrative personnel in the provinces. While there was no need for a wholesale purge, there were many individual governors and lesser officials who had distinct anti-Armenian biases. It would be in the CUP’s interest to remove such individuals as well, not only to assuage Armenian grievances, but also as they were opponents of the constitution. It should not be surprising that those officials most prejudiced against non-Muslims should also be among the most reactionary and hostile to the constitutional movement. After all, it was the constitution that ostensibly made Armenians, Greeks, Jews, and Assyrians the equals of Turks as Ottoman citizens. This was offensive to traditionalists who wished to maintain the position of ethnic Turks in Anatolia as the overlords of the political, military, and social structure. Thus, in areas administered by such officials, the Armenians experienced a range of harassment and injustices. These could include excessive and disproportionate tax assessments, arbitrary arrest, biased administrative rulings, lack of police protection, etc. Institutions bore the brunt, as churches, schools, and clubs could face police harassment or financial hardship as a result of an official’s decision. The ARF was particularly critical of the CUP reaction to disturbances in Papert (Baiburt). Rather than using the opportunity to replace officials who were known to oppose the constitution, they allowed them to keep their positions. This included the Papert kaïmakam and the local rayiz (village chief ).16 In December 1909, the Western Bureau informed the Muş Central Committee that the CUP would probably begin changing the federal employees throughout the vilayet of Bitlis, once they completed the process in the vilayet of Van.17 The Armenian community had serious conflicts with the mutasarrif of Bitlis, Tahir Pasha, and for months demanded that the CUP remove him. In March 1910, the ARF Western Bureau repeated its demand of the CUP, who responded that they too were dissatisfied with Tahir Pasha and promised his replacement within days.18 The CUP had been operating under the impression that he was a supporter of the constitution, and it took months of complaints and reports of his actions by the ARF to correct this misperception.19 By June the situation had worsened. The Bureau urgently asked that Tahir Pasha be recalled at all costs and be replaced by a constitutionalist. In its opinion, the fault was with the central government because the region was under the control of the army’s Fourth Battalion. Its commander, Ibrahim Pa-

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sha, was conservative and old-fashioned, and his one-sided opinions drove provincial policies.20 He stood behind the Kurdish feudal lords and against the Armenians. In addition, Inspector General Osman Pasha of the Fourth Battalion had ordered the massacre in the village of Khuyt. Yet, Ibrahim made little effort to investigate the massacre.21 In July, Ibrahim Pasha was dismissed. The CUP informed the Western Bureau that the Mutasarrif of Isgeli, Ismael Hakki, would be replacing Tahir Pasha. Hakki was viewed by the ARF as a capable man and one of the more important figures within the CUP. He would first be appointed as the lieutenant governor and later take the governor’s position. In this way, the CUP hoped to head off the petitions being prepared demanding Tahir Pasha’s removal.22 In other regions as well, the government was taking halting steps to replace corrupt and biased officials. The unpopular governor of Mosul province was replaced, but his successor soon proved to be a failure as well. His authority was undermined by the ulema (religious scholars) and local notables who orchestrated the murder of the Kurdish Sheikh Saïd and his party of twenty-four who had recently arrived from Suleimanieh.23 In the southeast, it would take another two years before the kaïmakams of Aintab and Antioch were replaced.24 By the end of 1910, governors had been recalled or had resigned in Van, Bitlis, Erzerum, Sivas, and Kharpert (Harput).25 In contrast to the land restitution issue, the CUP devoted the political capital needed to make these substantive changes in administrative personnel. The ARF could hold up to the Armenian community the removal of reactionary, anti-Armenian officials as tangible evidence that the CUP was committed to the constitution and equal rights. Yet there were few other visible reforms in the first eighteen months after the Adana massacres of April 1909.26 The months of delays to replace just one official in Bitlis showed the limitations of cooperation, even on issues where the interests of both parties coincided.

Antioch In the aftermath of the Adana massacres, the Christian population of the southeastern region of Cilicia was understandably on edge and wary of anything that would hint of renewed attacks. Particular attention was paid to the trials of those arrested for participation in the massacres as an indicator of whether or not the constitution’s promise of equal protection under the law would be adhered to. While it was in a few cases, the British consul reported that: At Antioch the situation is unpromising as far as the remnant of the Armenian community there is concerned. The decisions of the courtmartial, whereby some twenty Moslems were condemned to death and a large number to penal servitude, have been over-ruled at Constantinople, where it has been decreed that the Adana court shall retry each

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case. The five agas, or Moslem notables, of Antioch, who were placed under arrest and sentenced to banishment for life, have been released… Their release is attributed to the efforts and influence of Rifaat Aga, deputy of Antioch…27 In January 1910, there was “a new feeling of panic among the Christians” in Adana. This was due to the re-arrest of several Armenians and threats that were being made against Armenians, Greeks, and foreigners. Discontented Muslims were plotting against the vali, Cemal Bey, due to his “reforming zeal” and his execution of twenty-five Muslims for their part in the Adana massacres.28 But by February, the situation was reported to be “in a perfectly tranquil state.” All agreed that most of the credit for the improvement in conditions was due to Cemal, whose “untiring efforts and energy” inspired confidence in the population. Some 8–10,000 of the 12–15,000 Christians who fled the city after the massacres had already returned.29 Cemal traveled to the Armenian town of Hajin, to try to improve the “miserable condition” of the people in the district.30 In the spring of 1911, the British consul informed the acting vali of the reports he had been receiving from Rev. Dr James Martin at Antioch. He described a serious situation in the town, where the number of soldiers in the garrison was minimal while Christians were being accosted daily and threatened with a massacre: …even soldiers are dropping remarks confirmatory of the widespread apprehensions. I am making a list of the threatening speeches which, in different parts of the town, have been addressed lately to Christians by Moslems, all to one and the same effect—a massacre to take place—“just after Greek Church Easter.” Repeated instances have occurred where a Moslem in the country, being friendly towards some Christian in Antioch, has sent, or has come, and told that Christian he had better come out of Antioch to the country for a time, as there was going to be trouble in Antioch….31 When the British consul informed the acting vali of Aleppo of the dangers, he was informed that one part of the problem was that the officials in Antioch were divided between supporters and opponents of the kaïmakam, and thus political calculations played a role in their decision-making. He promised to urge the military commander to send reinforcements to the town, but a week later, they had not arrived. He also sent three other kaïmakams to hold an inquiry, and they reported back “that public security left nothing to be desired.” Finally, a colonel of gendarmes and thirty men were dispatched and order was maintained. A month later, the kaïmakam of Antioch was recalled and the vali had to admit that he and the other kaïmakams had concealed from him the evidence of insecurity and threats in the town. In fact, the head of the CUP in Antioch had been trying to foment violence and threats against the Christians in order to get his bitter enemy, the kaïmakam, dismissed from his post.32

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Aegean The first significant clashes between Ottoman Greeks and the Ottoman government during the constitutional period occurred on some of the Southern Sporades Islands, and especially on Samos. In early 1910, the Council of State in Constantinople sent instructions “that the privileges and immunities of the islanders are forthwith to be abolished, and the vali of Rhodes is authorized to employ Turkish naval and military forces to quell any opposition or resistance to the enforcement of this decree.” Their new interpretation of the imperial firmans (edicts) was that only the four islands of Nicaria, Patmos, Leros, and Kalymnos were granted privileges and that the other eight Southern Sporades Islands were to be incorporated into another vilayet. This would mean the end of their internal self-government and exemption from military service and from certain custom duties and taxes that the islanders had enjoyed for centuries.33 While the islanders were still stinging from this decree, elections were held on the island. Unexpectedly, the opposition soundly defeated the party of the Prince Governor of Samos. He immediately cancelled the elections in a number of villages and used local gendarmes and Turkish troops to reverse the election results. This naturally caused outrage and unrest, which gave the prince the pretext to request reinforcements from the mainland. Thus, an island with a population of only 45,000 became garrisoned with seven hundred men plus a gunboat and two torpedo boats. So many troops not only alarmed the islanders, but also vastly exceeded the limit of fifty soldiers allowed by the statute that governed the island, the parties to which were Britain, France, and Russia.34 Tensions worsened in September as the prince arrested a number of elected deputies when they tried to enter the House chamber. The prince claimed that there was a movement on the island to break away from the empire, so that he could receive another six hundred reinforcements. By winter, however, tensions had eased and most of the troops were withdrawn. A year later, the controversial and unpopular prince was assassinated by a citizen of Greece. The Turkish press lamented “the loss of so excellent and ‘patriotic’ a governor.”35 The Italo-Turkish War revived political agitation on the islands, as the Italian army invaded and captured Rhodes and ten of the Dodecanese Islands, but not Samos. The Italians “were received with great enthusiasm by native Christians, who saw in them their possible liberators from Turkish yoke.” This created great fear of reprisals should the islands be returned to Ottoman rule unless all the islands were given full autonomy. Due to their reception of the Italians, they were already labeled traitors and their traders boycotted on the mainland. The British consul on Rhodes feared that: Should the Italians evacuate these islands before the present feelings of animosity entirely subsides, it would not be safe for any Greeks to remain unless the privileges enjoyed ab antique by the Sporades Isles are confirmed and extended to Rhodes and Cos. Without some such arrangement, there appears to be no other option for their inhabitants but to emigrate en masse.36

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A Greek political agitator named Sofoulis saw the Ottoman military defeats as an opportunity and was believed to have succeeded “with the consent of the Cretan Government in forming a body of about 500 armed men ready to be sent here to expel the Turkish troops” from Samos with the assistance of the local population.37 Demonstrations were held insisting on the removal of the Turkish garrison of five hundred men. When gendarmes intervened, they were disarmed by the demonstrators. The local inhabitants petitioned Constantinople to appoint a new Prince Governor “subject to the approval of the three protecting Powers” and that European officers be appointed to reorganize the local gendarmerie, which to date had been appointed through a system of political patronage.38 After initial skirmishes, an all-out attack on the Turkish troops began on September 23. The Greek forces, including hundreds of locals, neared a thousand men. But the Turkish troops fought back fiercely, assisted by their two Krupp field guns. The continuous firing from elevated positions endangered the non-combatants in the capital, Vathi. In other towns, women and children abandoned their homes and gathered in churches to escape the fighting. Reinforcements, including five hundred troops and irregulars and two more artillery pieces, landed on the island and looted villages while moving towards the fighting.39 The Greek government considered sending a warship to support the Samians, but was dissuaded by the British ambassador. Instead, they urged the three guarantor Powers to press the Ottomans to withdraw their garrison, “which was there in contravention of guarantee and was the sole cause of trouble.” After days of fighting, the Ottoman garrison was withdrawn from the island and order restored.40

Gendarmerie Reforms The security problem in the eastern provinces was exacerbated by the local authorities and the gendarmes. Local authorities in the provinces were often either corrupt, incompetent, predisposed to ignore Kurdish excesses, or virulently anti-Armenian. The prejudices of these officials were readily adopted by the gendarmes under their orders. In addition, in areas governed by fair-minded officials, corrupt gendarmes might undermine their orders. Colonel Claude Hawker of the British Army had been employed with the Imperial Ottoman Gendarmerie since 1910 and would be appointed the chief of the committee of inspection of gendarmerie for the eastern vilayets in 1913. He reported that the solution to the problem in the gendarmerie lay in the recruitment and training of replacements for the old gendarmes. While Hawker found the replacements to be more efficient and less corrupt than the old gendarmes, he noted that “without proper supervision owing to the shortage of officers they are apt to deteriorate very quickly….” Yet there was a serious shortage of officers and training facilities for the gendarmerie. Although Hawker believed the army could easily spare hundreds of officers, it was no longer allowing any officers to be transferred to the gendarmerie. Training was essential to prevent corruption and for men who were often unfamiliar

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with the eastern provinces. However, the only officers’ training school had a capacity of just one hundred.41 There was some hope of improvement with the opening in Erzerum of a new police school that was intended to provide gendarmes for the six Armenian vilayets.42 Unfortunately, even diligent gendarmes were hampered in efforts to arrest those guilty of raids on villages due to the fear of the victims.43 As part of its reform efforts, the government in 1912 ordered that commissions be established composed of a European officer, a Turkish inspector, and the gendarmerie officers for a particular region. These commissions would “settle all questions on the spot in conjunction with the local civil authorities.” They could also gather information to assist the overall gendarmerie reform plan.44 Such reform efforts were dealt a setback with the fall of the CUP government in July. The new cabinet transferred gendarmerie officers to the army or to different stations, without explanation, upon orders from the War Minister. Colonel Hawker bemoaned the fact that a number of efficient and non-partisan officers were thus transferred. It also left many gendarmerie companies without officers. It was assumed by most observers that such transfers were politically motivated. Hawker wrote a letter of protest to the Inspector General, but there was little hope of preventing the transfers. On the other hand, the operation and increased capacity of the gendarmerie school produced positive results.45 Efforts to reform and reorganize the gendarmerie in the provinces continued into 1914. A French gendarmerie officer was part of a commission under Osman Senai Bey that had spent twelve months on such a project. However, in the opinion of the British military attaché in Van, Lieutenant Smith, “The results obtained and improvements effected by this commission appear to be absolutely nil, so that the task of changing the corps into an efficient and useful force has had to be started again from the beginning….” Regarding the vilayet in which he was stationed, Smith found that: On the whole, it may be said that the gendarmerie contains a very good class of men who, in this vilayet, carry out their work in difficult and often dangerous conditions with a degree of efficiency which is surprising considering the irregularity with which they receive their pay, the very inferior way in which they are housed, and the way in which the service has been neglected by the Government until last year.46 Smith bemoaned the “squalid and often ruinous buildings” in which the gendarmerie was housed because there were no government barracks in the eastern provinces. The construction of such barracks would enhance the image and authority of both the government and the gendarmerie itself. At the same time, newspaper reports of gendarmes mistreating the population were greatly exaggerated, at least in Van vilayet. There were valid complaints that gendarmes who were permanently posted in villages were a heavy burden on the villagers from whom they drew their supplies

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when the government did not pay them for months. Otherwise, the villagers appreciated the added security of having a gendarmerie post in their village.47 There were continuing calls by Armenian political leaders and in the press in 1914 to increase the small number of Armenians in the gendarmerie. They insisted that the Armenians should comprise a proportion of the gendarmerie force comparable to their proportion of the population in each province. The government had made promises to fulfil this demand, but had been unsuccessful in substantially increasing the number of Armenian and Greek recruits. A major reason for this was the poor housing and generally unhealthy living conditions for gendarmes. Another problem was that the gendarmerie force was constantly weakened by their use for other duties. General Hawker informed European Inspector General Westenenk that gendarmes were used to escort the mail, guard prisons, and guard shipments by the salt and tobacco monopolies and the Public Debt administration. Thus, there were substantially fewer gendarmes available to maintain public order. Westenenk promised Hawker he would work to have many of these duties transferred to others.48

A Resurgence of Violence The situation in Muş took a turn for the worse in 1912 with the return to the area of Musa Bey, the Kurdish chieftain who had come down from the mountains and raided Armenian villages the prior two winters. His treatment by the government was sure to increase Armenian distrust of both the Ottoman judicial system and the government’s ability to maintain security in the province: Musa Bey has been acquitted by the court at Mush of the charges that have been standing against him for the last two years. It came about in the true Turkish fashion. The Minister of the Interior, Adil Bey, telegraphed to the acting vali here to seize Musa and his brothers … At the same time he sent a telegram to Mush asking that the court close the case against Musa in his favour.49 In Van vilayet, the plundering of caravans and travelers continued throughout the spring with the gendarmerie unable to do anything about it.50 The Armenian population and ARF members in the vilayet were fed up with the anarchy, killings, and robbing. The local ARF reported that the situation was dire. They were considering taking up arms to defend themselves and to deter attacks on their villages.51 The ARF Bureau met with the CUP branch in Erzerum and discussed security and the lands issue. The bureau again raised the issue of having the government arm village guards to protect Armenian villages.52 Relations between the Armenian and Kurdish deputies in Parliament became more strained with each report of violence from the provinces. The ARF deputies approached Interior Minister Ferid Pasha and proposed that an investigating body be sent to the spot to verify the protests, the oppression, and

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the plundering of property. Ferid Pasha sent such a bill to Parliament but its title alone caused a great commotion among the Kurdish and some Turkish deputies.53 With the change in cabinets in July 1912, the ARF feared an immediate outbreak of violence and anarchy. However, things were largely calm in Muş and in the villages on the road to Erzerum. But there were clear indications that trouble was coming. The fear was that the cabinet would try to consolidate its political position by making concessions to the power brokers in the provinces, thus contributing to the creation of anarchy there. In Van province the Kurds were committing excesses and the local government was showing indifference, and conditions were worsening in Bitlis and Diyarbekir vilayets.54 The British consul’s report for August also concluded that while Van, Bitlis, and Diyarbekir vilayets had seen an increase in violence and robberies, security had been well maintained in Erzerum.55 In September, the British chargé reported that the new valis of Van and Bitlis met the Armenian patriarch and discussed how to remedy the situation in the eastern provinces.56 Before they even reached their posts, however, the press in Constantinople published reports of “outrages committed by Kurds on Armenians in the vilayets of Van, Bitlis, and Diyarbekir.” Two villages in Shatakh kaza in Van vilayet had been pillaged and twelve men and two women were massacred. Eight more women “were carried off.” In response to the violence, the executive of the Armenian National Assembly met in Constantinople. It sent a petition to the Minister of the Interior that included a list of the murders that had been committed as well as the other outstanding grievances of the Armenian community. A delegation from the Assembly, led by the patriarch and two Archbishops, met with the Grand Vizier and the Minister of Justice. The patriarch threatened to resign and close the patriarchate if Armenians in the provinces were not protected. The Grand Vizier promised that all possible measures would be taken to prevent future attacks and to punish those responsible for the recent outrages.57 The ARF was so frustrated by the repeated inability or unwillingness of the CUP to fulfil its promises on security and land restitution issues that it presented an ultimatum after a lengthy internal debate. When the CUP was unable to meet the conditions set, the ARF announced in August 1912 that it had broken relations with the CUP.58 The government did take steps to try to restore confidence and security for the Armenian population. In addition to the appointment of the new valis of Van and Bitlis, the Sheikh-ul-Islam wrote to the senior clerics in Erzerum, Van, Bitlis, and Mamouret-el-Aziz vilayets ordering them to use their influence to prevent crimes against Armenians, as they were “contrary to the precepts of holy law.” The disturbances in the provinces continued, however. The British consulate in Diyarbekir reported that in the vilayet, Kurdish tribes were once again responsible for “widespread and very serious outrages.” An ex-deputy had been urging Kurds not to trade with Christians and was rousing “dangerous fanaticism.” The government’s “connivance with the Kurdish malefactors has engendered a general expectation of a great massacre, and the feeling of insecurity….”59

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Thousands of Armenians gathered in Van to protest the killings that were taking place in their region and to demand that the vali take action. They sent a telegram to Constantinople stating that they would arm themselves if the government could not protect them from Kurdish attacks. The dragoman of the British consulate in Van pointed to Russian agitation among the Kurds as one of the causes for the disorder. In one case, the Bedrkhan tribe was reported to be working with Russian agents “to establish an autonomous Kurdistan” while the Balkan War distracted the central government. Kurdish tribes began attacks on Armenian villages, robbing and killing, sometimes in broad daylight. Protests to the government remained unanswered, which gave the impression that the Kurdish intimidation had forced the acquiescence of the provincial government. This impression was further reinforced when the government began releasing other imprisoned Kurdish chiefs.60 In the eastern provinces the greatest threat to peace was posed by the increased restiveness of the Kurdish tribes. As early as February 1913, the ARF leadership was concerned that Armeno-Kurdish clashes would resume in the interior in the spring. Thus, the Central Committee in Iran was alerted that they may need to send fighting units to the Van area. The government did take measures to discourage the Kurds from wholesale massacres of Armenians.61 But piecemeal attacks, repression, and looting were ignored or encouraged by all sectors of the local government in Van vilayet: …the local authorities, the gendarmerie, the police, the Tribunals, in fact, all are working together in the pursuit by every means, legal and illegal, of one end—to crush, to enfeeble, to annihilate the entire strength of the Armenian people. The laws are applied only for befriending the Kurd malefactors and striking the Armenian population.62 This latter point was confirmed by ARF reports that the soldiers sent into the hills immediately took up residence in Armenian homes in the villages and beat people while supposedly searching for guns. While Armenians were being killed almost daily, the vali was releasing thieves and murderers from prison. Most had been jailed in prior months to pacify Armenian demands for protection from those who were preying on them.63 The government in Constantinople was limited in its ability to change the attitude and modus operandi of many of the local authorities even at those infrequent times when it aggressively pursued it: The present Cabinet…has of late sent stringent orders to the local Governors…to hunt down, capture, and punish some of the more notorious Kurdish depredators, and cases have been recently reported where commendable energy has been displayed by the local authorities. These spurts however, are usually followed by relapses into virtual acquiescence in the state of lawlessness…64

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An exception to the rule concerning subordinate officials was the kaïmakam of Peri, in Kharpert (Harput) vilayet. The kaïmakam was very liberal-minded and put the Kurdish beys under great pressure to stop their excesses. He was jailing beys and aghas who were responsible for murders, and he showed that resolute action by local officials could be effective in curbing Kurdish lawlessness.65 It must also be noted that the depredations of Kurdish tribesmen were not reserved for the Armenians alone. Assyrians, Syriacs, and other Christians were all subject to similar treatment in various regions. Assyrian villages in the Hakkari region near the Iranian border were repeatedly raided by a number of Kurdish tribes starting in 1913, and there were similar reports from British officials in Mosul concerning Assyrians in their province. Two Kurdish tribes raided Christian villages in Sairt sancak and murdered a Syriac priest who had gone to Bitlis to complain to the vali. There were similar reports from Pasen, near the Russian border in Erzerum vilayet, and elsewhere.66 There were serious dangers in Bitlis vilayet in 1914. The government sent troops to arrest the leader of the Kurdish movement there, Selim. On the way to town, a mob attacked the soldiers, disarmed them, and freed him. This encouraged Selim, and he began to implement his long-held plans to attack and occupy Bitlis.67 In March he initiated a revolt of Kurds in the outlying regions and then the Kurds in the city rioted. The government feared that any attacks on the Armenian population by the rioters would become cause for foreign intervention. Therefore it acted decisively and provided 150 rifles to the Armenian population when the ARF requested assistance. It was then able to crush the rebellion with troops brought in from Van and Muş. Selim took refuge in the Russian consulate but the other leaders of the rebellion were tried and eleven were hanged.68 Unlike most of his peers and predecessors, the vali of Van, Tahsin Bey, was actively working to eliminate the brigandage in his region. Several of the most notorious brigands had been captured and some executed for their crimes. In the sancak of Hakkari, he dealt with the question of two thousand Manhoran Kurds, who four months earlier had immigrated from Persia and settled in Armenian villages. He removed them and had most of them distributed among Kurdish villages near the frontier. The local Armenians acknowledged the vali’s accomplishments but attributed it to the impending reforms: by showing improvements in security, he hoped to show that more extensive reforms were unnecessary.69

Forced Emigration of Greeks During the First Balkan War, there were repeated instances of massacres and the burning of Muslim villages as Greek and Bulgarian forces advanced into Macedonia. The worst instances of terror were inflicted not by regular army troops, but by irregulars. Such irregulars had been responsible for violence against civilians for over a century during Balkan ethnic warfare. The fortunes of war, however, in this case

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meant that it was Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Greek irregulars who advanced and destroyed, rather than the Turkish bashibozouks. A flood of refugees followed the Turkish army as it retreated.70 Thus, a wave of Muslim refugees (muhajirs) entered the Ottoman Empire. While the violence and political turmoil caused by the wars certainly was a major factor in this migration, it “rapidly increased due to Young Turk propaganda.”71 Agents of the Turkish government encouraged the migrants by promising that they would receive the property of Christians who were being coerced to leave through both physical and mental pressure. Turkish Migration Office statistics indicate that 413,912 Muslims migrated to the empire prior to 1914 and, of these, 132,500 were settled in Eastern Thrace.72 Many of these muhajirs were resettled, as a loyal Muslim element among Christians who were perceived to be disloyal, not just in the borderlands in Europe but also in the eastern provinces. Once the CUP retook power in its January 1913 coup d’état, there was a concerted policy to shift the demography of the border regions in its favor. In addition to resettling “loyal” elements, they worked to drive out other elements, in particular the Ottoman Greeks due to the “disloyal” behavior of some of them during the Balkan Wars. The Danish diplomatic minister in Constantinople, Carl Ellis Wandel, reported that, during the wars, CUP Central Committee member Dr Nazim Bey “developed a plan to settle Muslims, who had themselves been violently cleansed from Macedonia, at various places in the empire where non-Muslims would be deported.”73 This demographic engineering would serve to both ease the pressure of territorial claims based on demographic arguments and deprive a possible invader of local support. Heavy and irregular taxation, the drafting of young men into the army, and increased brigandage drove many Greeks to emigrate to Greece or to the Aegean islands. The homes, vineyards, and orchards left behind could then be resettled with Muslim muhajirs.74 Hundreds of Albanian muhajirs arrived in the South Marmara region in the spring of 1913, where they violently evicted local Greeks from their villages and stole at will.75 According to Taner Akçam: The primary goal of this project, which can be described as an ethnoreligious homogenization of Anatolia, was a conscious reshaping of the region’s demographic character on the basis of its Turkish-Muslim population…As of 1913, these policies were put into place through the exercise of a dual mechanism of parallel official and unofficial tracks. On the one hand, an official policy encouraged emigration based on agreements with other countries, and on the other hand, an unofficial policy of forced expulsion was followed…At the same time, various covert, extra-legal but state-sponsored acts of terror were undertaken under the protective umbrella provided by the official state policies.76

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The loss of the Balkan lands had a profound impact on the CUP leadership and almost certainly increased their ambition and urgency to change the demography of their remaining territories. This was due to the shocking defeat of the Ottoman army and the loss of so many major cities, but even more so the fact that so much of the CUP elite came from those cities themselves. Talât, Cavit, and Dr Nazim were all from the region and members of their families were among the refugees arriving in the empire.77 These demographic changes would have the added benefit of significantly aiding the CUP’s policies of milli iktisat (national economy). The policies were based on CUP ideologue Ziya Gökalp’s theory that non-Muslims had been monopolizing significant portions of the Ottoman economy and preventing the creation of a Turkish bourgeoisie. His solution was to replace Greek and Armenian artisans and traders with ethnic Turks.78 This would comprise the economic sector of the campaign of Turkification that the CUP embarked upon after returning to power. By 1914, “the plan was initiated in earnest in a decidedly violent and involuntary manner” to ensure that the Ottoman economy was reorganized to the benefit of “ethnically-desirable” citizens.79 Thus, the non-Muslim bourgeoisie that had “dominated the modern industrial, financial and commercial sectors of the economy” would be replaced by “a ‘national’ that is to say: Muslim bourgeoisie….”80 The result, according to Munis Tekinalp, was “the ruin of hundreds of small Greek and Armenian tradesmen….”81 Matthias Bjørnlund has observed that: The aim of economic Turkification was to create a class dominated by Turks or Turkified Muslims who were perceived by the CUP … as loyal, not only because of their ethno-religious traits, but because they owed their position to those who had “removed the competition.” Christian entrepreneurs, on the other hand, had gained a degree of independence and had become a perceived obstacle, not just because of their ethnicity and religion, but because of their perceived membership of an economic class that was seen as having a limited allegiance to the state.82 In areas where the non-Muslim population did not abandon their businesses quickly enough, the CUP sent party leaders and agents of the Teşkilat-i Mahsusa to step up the terror tactics and speed up the process. In the summer of 1914 in Smyrna, the “political and nationalist persecution gained momentum as boycotts and expropriations escalated into kidnappings and assassinations of Greek businessmen and community leaders, and even wholesale deportations of villages.” The CUP celebrated the fact that so many Ottoman Greeks fled to Chios or Greece after this terror campaign.83 The Second Balkan War saw the former Balkan allies fighting each other and allowed the Ottomans to recapture a small portion of their Balkan territories. Once they had reoccupied Eastern Thrace in the summer of 1913, attacks on the Greek population began. Acts of intimidation, violence, and pillaging were widespread, in

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part as reprisals for Greek conduct towards the Turkish population while the region was occupied by the Bulgarians. Turkish forces also targeted Armenians in the region, although they had not been part of the Balkan League and despite the fact that many Armenians had served in the Ottoman army during the war. The towns of Malkara and Rodosto (Tekirdağ) saw some of the worst attacks on Greek and Armenian civilians. After March 1914, the forcible removals became more systematic. Units of the Teşkilat-i Mahsusa attacked Greek villages and villagers and forced the population to abandon their homes. Entire villages were emptied, their adult males were conscripted into labor battalions, and Greek-owned businesses were seized and turned over to Muslim owners.84 In early 1914, Talât Pasha gave instructions through CUP party channels to Turkify the regions along the coast of the Aegean.85 Halil Menteşe wrote that “Talât Bey suggested that the country be cleansed of those elements that were seen as capable of betraying the state.”86 The Greek Orthodox patriarch made repeated protests to the Grand Vizier that Greeks were being forced from their homes and facing great hardships in Thrace. When the British ambassador raised similar concerns, the Grand Vizier responded with his own demands that Greece come to an agreement with the Porte for the return of the islands of Chios and Lesbos.87 The persecution of Ottoman Greeks was thus not only serving the demographic goal, but also creating a bargaining chip in Ottoman efforts to recover some of the territories lost in the Balkan Wars. The wave of persecutions laid waste to Greek villages in Eastern Thrace. Villagers would be obstructed from farming their lands and later the whole village would be forced to expatriate. Often the villagers would be attacked as they made their way to boats that were evacuating them. Each time the Greek government protested, the Porte replied that it was Greece that was encouraging the Ottoman Greeks to emigrate. To the degree that the Porte conceded that there was some pressure placed on the Greek inhabitants, it portrayed it as a natural reaction to the expulsion of Muslims from Macedonia and Epirus and certainly not government organized or encouraged. Greece proposed a joint Greek-Turkish commission be sent to Thrace and Macedonia to examine the behavior of the respective local authorities. The Porte rejected the proposal and instead sent Talât, as Minister of the Interior, on a tour of Thrace. Upon his return he assured Ambassador Mallet that “he had given the strongest orders for the cessation of Greek emigration, and had himself visited many of the Greek villages and reassured the inhabitants.” Mallet stressed that wholesale forced emigration and ill treatment of the Greeks would result in economic losses and negative reactions from European public opinion and the Greek government.88 The hollowness of Talât’s assurances is evident from the actions of Enver Pasha after he became Minister of War in January 1914. In May, June, and August, Enver organized secret meetings at his ministry with operatives of the Teşkilat-i Mahsusa to discuss “the elimination of non-Turkish masses.” Many of the problems and weaknesses of the Ottoman Empire were blamed on concentrations of non-Turkish populations in strategic areas like the Aegean coast and eastern provinces and the meetings

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concluded that such “internal tumors” had to be removed.89 The British military attaché in the region, too, remained convinced that the enforced emigration of Greeks was being directed by government officials. He reported that this was confirmed, “by Shukri Bey, the civil inspector attached to the vilayet, who recently admitted to me that it was the intention of his Government to establish a purely Moslem population between the frontier and the capital.” Over the next months, this policy would succeed in causing some sixty thousand ethnic Greeks to flee Thrace.90 Starting in May, it became clear that the attacks had spread from Thrace to throughout the empire as reports were being received of Greeks from the widespread regions around Smyrna, Aivali, Eregli, Brusa, Samsun, and Kirikilisse being driven from their villages and robbed. Consular reports from Smyrna and Constantinople confirmed their mistreatment. Muslim muhajirs were abusing the Greeks, purportedly with the acquiescence of local authorities.91 The Danish consul in Smyrna reported that the governors of Smyrna and neighboring provinces on the Aegean conducted inspection tours to their coastal towns and gave “semi-official orders” to their sub-governors “to force the Greek population … to evacuate these towns” using “tortuous and vexatious measures.”92 There were arrests and expulsions throughout the Aegean coast, encouraged by the press stirring up anti-Greek sentiments. The June massacre at Phocea, north of Smyrna, “was one of the worst attacks of the campaign.”93 Mobs first attacked the villages to the south and drove out the Greek population; they then attacked the town from three sides and destroyed it. Another town of nine thousand named Manciet “was methodically destroyed and plundered by well-armed bands.” Regular troops sent to restore order instead joined in the destruction.94 The Teşkilat-i Mahsusa was sent from village to village and used intimidation and veiled threats to encourage the population to flee. Under the direction of the CUP party secretary for Smyrna, some 150,000 Greeks fled the coastal provinces and relocated on the Aegean islands.95 Thus, prior to World War I, one sees in Thrace and on the Aegean coast the first case of ethnic cleansing by the CUP. This has been described as “the first systematic phase of the unified plan for the elimination” of the non-Turkish elements in the Ottoman Empire and, as such, a precursor for the Armenian Genocide.96 Indeed, the very tactics used, including the deployment of the Teşkilat-i Mahsusa, the conscription of men into labor battalions, and the seizure and redistribution to Muslims of lands and businesses, resembles nothing so much as a dry run for the Genocide. The entire sequence of events following the January 1913 coup d’état and return to power of the CUP shows a gradual escalation of violence against Greeks and Armenians in the empire. There had been a substantial reduction in violence in 1909 and 1910 for three main reasons. Both the public declaration of equal rights for all citizens and the prosecution of a number of perpetrators eliminated the sense of impunity with which Muslims could act against Christians, as did the removal of some of the most egregiously anti-Armenian government officials. The CUP, how-

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ever, gradually moved away from these reforms as they faced greater internal and external opposition. The decisive blow came when it was expelled from the government for six months by its opposition, which hardened attitudes within the CUP leadership. The reformist faction lost its power struggle with the chauvinist, Turkish nationalist faction, and the leadership abandoned reform. Local officials would not be pressed by Istanbul to protect and deal fairly with Greeks and Armenians because they were no longer viewed as necessary to maintain the CUP’s grip on power. Henceforth, they would only rely on ethnic Turkish elements in the empire. While the Ottoman Empire was at war with Greece in the First Balkan War, Greek citizens of the empire were vulnerable and were viewed as surrogates for their ethnic brethren. Thus, violence, expropriation, and expulsion were visited upon them when the fortunes of war soured. Two years later, Armenian citizens were vulnerable and were viewed as surrogates for the Russians when the CUP embarked on its disastrous winter invasion of the Russian Empire. They too would be subjected to violence, expropriation, and expulsion, but in a horrifyingly intensified form. Dikran M. Kaligian is the Managing Editor of the Armenian Review and teaches at Worcester State University. He received his Ph. D. in history from Boston College in 2003. His book, Armenian Organization and Ideology under Ottoman Rule, 1908-1914, was published in 2009 by Transaction Publishing. His articles have been published in the Journal of Genocide Research, Genocide Studies International, the Armenian Review, and in the book Through a Lens Darkly: Films of Genocide. Notes 1. The ARF and CUP had worked together in the Congress of Ottoman Opposition Parties and created a tactical alliance to try to overthrow the Sultan. The ARF had strength throughout the Armenian provinces, while the Social Democratic Hnchakian Party had its greatest influence in Cilicia and Constantinople. 2. 1908 Annual Report, February 17, 1909, as published in British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898–1914 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1926–38), V: 305. 3. ARF Archives/ Section C/107-4, Western Bureau-Turkish Section to Eastern Bureau-Turkish Section, January 9, 1910. 4. ARF/C/191-81, Constantinople Responsible Body to Sivas ARF Body, October 29, 1908; ARF/C/191-90, Constantinople Responsible Body to Western Bureau, November 8/21, 1908; ARF/C/193-22, Constantinople Responsible Body to Mourad, January 26, 1909. 5. British Foreign Office Archives, Confidential Print, Turkey (hereafter FO424). FO424/219/57, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, April 18, 1909), enclosure 1, Consul Shipley to Sir G. Lowther (Erzerum, April 5, 1909). 6. FO424/219/139, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Therapia, June 15, 1909). 7. FO424/221/37, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, October 13, 1909), enclosure 2, Mr Safrastian to Consul Shipley (Bitlis, September 9, 1909). 8. FO424/220/13, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Therapia, July 6, 1909). 9. FO424/221/93, Mr Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, November 16, 1909).

100 |Dikran M. Kaligian 10. Under the Tanzimat reforms the Ottoman provincial government was reorganized. A governor-general (vali) governed each province (vilayet). Each vilayet was divided into a number of sancaks, each with its own governor (mutasarrif). Each sancak, in turn, was divided into a number of districts (kazas) governed by a kaïmakam. The area of Historical Armenia was divided into all or part of six vilayets: Sivas (Sepastia), Erzerum (Garin), Mamuret El-Aziz (Kharpert), Diyarbekir (Dikranagert), Bitlis (Paghesh), and Van. 11. FO424/221/93, Mr Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, November 16, 1909); FO424/221/115, Mr Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Pera, December 1, 1909). 12. FO424/222/9, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, January 3, 1910). 13. ARF/C/99-20, Parseghian to Daron Central Committee (Erzerum, March 27, 1910). 14. Robert Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 10. 15. Vahan Papazian, Im Housheruh [My Memoirs], Vol. II. (Beirut: Hamazkain Press, 1952), 126–29. 16. ARF/C/99-3, Eastern Bureau-Turkish Section to Western Bureau-Turkish Section, February 10, 1910. 17. ARF/C/106-31, Western Bureau-Turkish Section to Daron Central Committee, December 10, 1909. The Daron region included the city of Muş and the Sasun highlands and was part of the same sancak as the city of Bitlis at that time. 18. ARF/C/99-11, Eastern Bureau-Turkish Section Circular, March 6, 1910. 19. ARF/C/106-31, Western Bureau-Turkish Section to Daron Central Committee, December 10, 1909. 20. ARF/C/99-36, Parseghian to Western Bureau (Erzerum, June 9, 1910). 21. ARF/C/78a-1, Western Bureau-Turkish Section report on relations with the Ittihad ve Terraki from November 1909 to August 1911. 22. ARF/C/107-102, Apro on behalf of the Western Bureau to Daron Central Committee, July 17, 1910. 23. FO424/223/9, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, April 5, 1910), enclosure 2, Notes by Vice-Consul Wilkie Young on the Mosul District. 24. FO424/237/32, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, January 15, 1913), enclosure 1, Consul Fontana to Sir G. Lowther (Aleppo, December 29, 1912). 25. ARF/C/78a-1, Western Bureau-Turkish Section report on relations with the Ittihad ve Terraki from November 1909 to August 1911. 26. In April of 1909, reactionaries took advantage of the coup in Constantinople to initiate massacres of Armenians in the city of Adana and across much of Adana vilayet. After the Action Army suppressed the anti-government forces in Adana, a second round of massacres commenced with the government troops joining in the carnage. Between 10,000 and 20,000 Armenians were killed. 27. FO424/222/91, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, March 23, 1910), enclosure 1, Consul Fontana to Sir G. Lowther (Aleppo, March 5, 1910). 28. FO424/222/24, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, February 2, 1910), enclosure, Vice-Consul Doughty-Wylie to Sir F. Lowther (Adana, January 24, 1910). 29. FO424/222/54, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, February 23, 1910), enclosure, Acting Vice-Consul Rawlins to Sir F. Lowther (Adana, February 14, 1910). 30. FO424/222/78, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, March 8, 1910). 31. FO424/227/55, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, May 9, 1911), enclosure 1, Consul Fontana to Sir G. Lowther (Aleppo, April 25, 1911). 32. FO424/227/55, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, May 9, 1911), enclosure 1, Consul Fontana to Sir G. Lowther (Aleppo, April 25, 1911); FO424/227/105, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, June 13, 1911), enclosure 1, Consul Fontana to Sir G. Lowther (Aleppo, May 31, 1911). 33. FO424/223/30, Mr D. N. Petrides to Foreign Office (London, April 20, 1910); FO424/221/83, Mr Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, November 9, 1909).

Convulsions at the End of Empire | 101 34. FO424/224/66, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Therapia, August 2, 1910), enclosure 2, Vice-Consul Marc to Consul-General Barnham (Samos, July 24, 1910); FO424/224/91, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Therapia, August 16, 1910). 35. FO424/224/91, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Therapia, August 16, 1910), enclosure 2, Vice-Consul Marc to Consul-General Barnham (Samos, July 30, 1910); FO424/224/133, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Therapia, September 11, 1910), enclosure 1, Vice-Consul Marc to ConsulGeneral Barnham (Samos, September 4, 1910); FO424/231/2, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, March 26, 1912). 36. FO424/231/152, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, May 27, 1912), enclosure 2, Acting Vice-Consul Biliotti to Consul-General Barnham (Rhodes, May 1912); FO424/232/46, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, July 7, 1912), enclosure 2, Acting Vice-Consul Biliotti to Consul-General Barnham (Rhodes, June 22, 1912). 37. FO424/232/232, Charles Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, September 9, 1912), enclosure 2, Vice-Consul Marc to Consul-General Barnham (Samos, August 31, 1912). 38. FO424/232/232, Charles Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, September 9, 1912), enclosure 2, Vice-Consul Marc to Consul-General Barnham (Samos, August 31, 1912); FO424/232/233, Charles Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, September 10, 1912), enclosure 2, Vice-Consul Marc to Consul-General Barnham (Samos, September 3, 1912). 39. FO424/233/49, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, October 9, 1912), enclosure 2, Vice-Consul Marc to Consul-General Barnham (Samos, September 28, 1912) and enclosure 4, Mayor and Councillors of Mavradjia to Captain of the ‘Medea’ (Samos, September 26, 1912); FO424/233/27, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, October 2, 1912), enclosure 2, Vice-Consul Marc to Consul-General Barnham (Samos, September 25, 1912). 40. FO424/232/227, Sir Edward Grey to Mr Beaumont (Foreign Office, September 12, 1912); FO424/233/28, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, October 7, 1912). 41. FO424/228/115, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, August 29, 1911), enclosure 1, Colonel Hawker to Sir Gerard Lowther (Smyrna, August 21, 1911). 42. FO424/230/8, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, January 3, 1912), enclosure 2, Quarterly Report on Affairs of Anatolia, ended December 31, 1911. 43. FO424/228/115, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, August 29, 1911), enclosure 1, Colonel Hawker to Sir Gerard Lowther (Smyrna, August 21, 1911). 44. FO424/233/66, Colonel Hawker to Sir G. Lowther (Smyrna, October 11, 1912). 45. Ibid. 46. FO424/253/11, Sir L. Mallet to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, June 29, 1914), enclosure 1, Lieutenant Smith to Sir L. Mallet (Van, June 10, 1914). 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid.; Louis Constant Westenenk, “Diary Concerning the Armenian Mission,” The Armenian Review 39, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 73. 49. FO424/230/124, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, March 20, 1912), enclosure 2, Rev. G. Knapp to Consul McGregor (Bitlis, February 26, 1912). 50. FO424/232/82, Mr Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, July 23, 1912), enclosure 1, ViceConsul Molyneux-Seel to Sir G. Lowther, Quarterly Report (Van, July 10, 1912). 51. ARF/C/60-39, Western Bureau to United States Central Committee, May 25, 1912; ARF/C/109-76, Western Bureau to Troshag Editorial Board, May 25, 1912. 52. ARF/C/101-51, Eastern Bureau-Turkish Section to Western Bureau-Turkish Section, August 7, 1912. 53. Papazian, Im Housheruh, 154. 54. ARF/C/101-65, Rosdom to Western Bureau-Turkish Section, August 27, 1912.

102 |Dikran M. Kaligian 55. FO424/232/237, Mr Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, September 11, 1912), enclosure 1, Consul Monahan to Sir G. Lowther (Erzerum, August 22, 1912). 56. FO424/232/258, Mr Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, September 17, 1912). 57. FO424/232/237, Mr Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, September 11, 1912). The Armenian National Constitution of 1860 stipulated the organization and hierarchy of the administration of the Armenian Orthodox millet. It set forth the composition of an Armenian National Assembly that would elect an executive to represent the millet and thus curtail the powers of the patriarch. The assembly was dominated by representatives from Constantinople. 58. ARF/C/109-60, Western Bureau-Turkish Section to Van Central Committee, April 28, 1912; FO424/232/237, Mr Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, September 11, 1912), enclosure 1, Consul Monahan to Sir G. Lowther (Erzerum, August 22, 1912). 59. FO424/232/305, Mr Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, September 24, 1912); FO424/233/105, Sir G. Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, November 10, 1912). The Sheikhul-Islam was the chief religious dignitary of the Ottoman Empire. 60. ARF/C/101-72, Sarkis to Western Bureau-Turkish Section (Erzerum, November 21, 1912); FO424/233/128, Sir G. Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, November 29, 1912). 61. ARF/C/61-5, Mikael Varantian to Iran Central Committee (Geneva, February 3, 1913); FO424/238/104, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, April 26, 1913), enclosure 1, Vice-Consul Molyneux-Seel to Sir G. Lowther (Van, April 4, 1913). 62. FO424/238/253, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, May 24, 1913), enclosure 1, Vice-Consul Molyneux-Seel to Sir G. Lowther (Van, May 8, 1913). 63. ARF/C/102-1, Farhad (Sarkis Ohanjanian) to Mikael Varantian (Erzerum, January 6, 1913). 64. FO424/239/40, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, June 29, 1913). 65. ARF/C/110-4, Asdrigian to Western Bureau (Kharpert, January 16, 1913). 66. FO424/238/340, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, June 5, 1913), enclosure 1, Vice-Consul Molyneux-Seel to Sir G. Lowther (Van, May 19, 1913); FO424/239/186, Mr Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, July 25, 1913), enclosure 1, Vice-Consul Molyneux-Seel to Sir G. Lowther (Van, July 9, 1913); FO424/239/47, Mr Marling to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, July 1, 1913), enclosure 1, Consul Monahan to Sir G. Lowther (Erzerum, June 18, 1913). 67. ARF/C/116-35, Western Bureau-Turkish Section to Troshak Editors, March 17, 1914. 68. Feroz Ahmad, “Unionist Relations with the Greek, Armenian, and Jewish Communities,” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, Vol. I: The Central Lands, ed. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982), 424; ARF/C/62-34, Western Bureau to U.S. Central Committee, (Constantinople, April 8, 1914). 69. FO424/251/117, Sir L. Mallet to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, January 30, 1914), enclosure 1, Vice-Consul Smith to L. Mallet (Van, January 10, 1914); FO424/251/33, Sir L. Mallet to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, January 6, 1914). 70. Benjamin Lieberman, Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), 60–62, 66–67. 71. Elisabeth Kontogiorgi, “Forced Migration, Repatriation, Exodus. The Case of Ganos-Chora and Myriophyto-Peristasis Orthodox Communities in Eastern Thrace,” Balkan Studies 35, no. 1 (1995): 21. 72. Ibid. 73. Matthias Bjørnlund, “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a Case of Violent Turkification,” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 43–44. 74. Herve Georgelin, “Greek Orthodox in the East, between Imperial Structures and National States’ Building: A Lethal Deadlock,” paper delivered at WATS workshop, Berkeley, CA, 2009, 6.

Convulsions at the End of Empire | 103 75. Ryan Gingeras, Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1912–1923 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 39. 76. Taner Akçam, “The Greek Deportations and Massacres of 1913–1914,” in The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide, ed. George N. Shirinian (Bloomington, IL: Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, 2012), 69–70. 77. Uğur Ümit Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 43–44; Erik Jan Zurcher, “Greek and Turkish Refugees and Deportees, 1912–1914,” Leiden Project Working Papers Archive (University of Leiden, 2003), 3. 78. Stephan H. Astourian, “Modern Turkish Identity and the Armenian Genocide: From Prejudice to Racist Nationalism,” in Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 35–36. 79. Bjørnlund, “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks,” 44. 80. Erik Jan Zurcher, “The Late Ottoman Empire as Laboratory of Demographic Engineering,” paper delivered at “Le Regioni Multilingui Come Faglia e Motore della Storia Europea nel XIX-XX Secolo,” Naples, September 16–18, 2008, 7–8. 81. Cited in Astourian, “Modern Turkish Identity,” 37. 82. Bjørnlund, “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks,” 45. 83. Uğur Ümit Üngör, “Seeing Like a Nation-State: Young Turk Social Engineering in Eastern Turkey, 1913–1950,” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 23–24. The Teşkilat-i Mahsusa or Special Organization was a clandestine paramilitary organization officially under the authority of the Ministry of War but which operated under the direction of the CUP. It played an essential role in the deportations and massacres of Christians, including the Armenian Genocide, during World War I. 84. Akçam, “The Greek Deportations,” 73–74; Lieberman, Terrible Fate, 73–74; Kontogiorgi, “Forced Migration, Repatriation, Exodus,” 22. 85. Zurcher, “Late Ottoman Empire,” 7. 86. Halil Menteşe, Osmanli Mebusan Meclisis Reisi Halil Menteşe’nin Anıları (Istanbul: Hürriyet Vakfi Yayınları, 1986), 165 as cited in Akçam, “The Greek Deportations,” 73. 87. Ahmad, “Unionist Relations,” 417; FO424/252/55, Sir L. Mallet to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, April 15, 1914). 88. Yannis G. Mourelos, “The 1914 Persecutions and the First Attempt at an Exchange of Minorities between Greece and Turkey,” Balkan Studies 26, no. 2 (1985): 391–92; FO424/252/74, Sir L. Mallet to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, April 30, 1914); FO424/252/100, Sir L. Mallet to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, May 6, 1914). 89. Üngör, “Seeing Like a Nation-State,” 22. 90. FO424/253/30, Sir L. Mallet to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, July 7, 1914), enclosure 1, Major Samson to Sir Louis Mallet (Adrianople, June 30, 1914); Mourelos, “The 1914 Persecutions,” 391–92. 91. FO424/252/168, Sir L. Mallet to Sir Edward Grey (Constantinople, June 8, 1914). 92. Bjørnlund, “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks,” 43. 93. Ibid., 47. 94. Ibid. 95. Zurcher, “Late Ottoman Empire,” 7. 96. Ioannis K. Hassiotis, “The Armenian Genocide and the Greeks: Response and Records (1915–1923),” in The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics, ed. Richard K. Hovannisian (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 135–36.

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Bibliography British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898–1914 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1926– 38), Vol. V. Ahmad, Feroz. “Unionist Relations with the Greek, Armenian, and Jewish Communities of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1914.” In Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, vol. 1, ed. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, 401-34. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982. Akçam, Taner. “The Greek Deportations and Massacres of 1913-1914: A Trial Run for the Armenian Genocide.” In The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912-1923, edited by George N. Shirinian, 69-88. Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012. Astourian, Stephan H. “Modern Turkish Identity and the Armenian Genocide: From Prejudice to Racist Nationalism.” In Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 23-49. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. Bjørnlund, Matthias. “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a Case of Violent Turkification.” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 41-57. Georgelin, Herve. “Greek Orthodox in the East, between Imperial Structures and National States’ Building: A Lethal Deadlock.” Paper delivered at WATS workshop, Berkeley, CA, 2009. Gingeras, Ryan. Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1912–1923. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Hassiotis, Ioannis K. “The Armenian Genocide and the Greeks: Response and Records (1915–1923).” In The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics, edited by Richard K. Hovannisian, 129-51. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Kontogiorgi, Elisabeth. “Forced Migration, Repatriation, Exodus. The Case of Ganos-Chora and Myriophyto-Peristasis Orthodox Communities in Eastern Thrace.” Balkan Studies 35, no. 1 (1995): 15-45. Lieberman, Benjamin. Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2006. Menteşe, Halil. Osmanli Mebusan Meclisis Reisi Halil Menteşe’nin Anıları. Istanbul: Hürriyet Vakfi Yayınları, 1986. Mourelos, Yannis G. “The 1914 Persecutions and the First Attempt at an Exchange of Minorities between Greece and Turkey.” Balkan Studies 26, no. 2 (1985): 389-413. Olson, Robert. The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989. Papazian, Vahan. Im Housheruh [My Memoirs]. Vol. II. Beirut: Hamazkain Press, 1952. Üngör, Uğur Ümit. The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. ———. “Seeing Like a Nation-State: Young Turk Social Engineering in Eastern Turkey, 1913–1950.” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 15-39. Westenenk, Louis Constant. “Diary Concerning the Armenian Mission.” The Armenian Review 39, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 29-89. Zurcher, Erik Jan. “Greek and Turkish Refugees and Deportees, 1912–1914.” Leiden Project Working Papers Archive, University of Leiden, 2003. http://www.transanatolie.com/english/turkey/turks/ottomans/ejz18.pdf ———. “The Late Ottoman Empire as Laboratory of Demographic Engineering.” Paper delivered at “Le Regioni Multilingui Come Faglia e Motore della Storia Europea nel XIX-XX Secolo,” Naples, September 16–18, 2008.

CHAPTER THREE ASSYRIANS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE OFFICIAL TURKISH POLICY OF THEIR EXTERMINATION, 1890s–1918 Anahit Khosroeva

Introduction The twentieth century was to be the darkest chapter in the history of the Assyrian nation, completely reshaping the destiny of its people. Assyrians (also known as Nestorians, Chaldeans, and Syriacs) have been repeatedly victimized by genocidal assaults over the past century, suffering violence and forcible conversion. The most significant persecution against the Assyrian population was the Assyrian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, which occurred during World War I. The infamy of executing that century’s first full-scale ethnic cleansing belongs to the Young Turk government. The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire is in both historiography and public memory almost solely associated with the murder of the Armenians. Although the Turkish government still denies that the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire fell victim to systematic murder, the extermination of the Armenians is far from being a “forgotten genocide.” No book on the history of genocide can omit the case of the Armenians. Unfortunately, achieving global remembrance of the genocide

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against the Armenians seems to have downplayed the fate of all other Christian minority groups in the Ottoman Empire, such as Assyrians and Greeks. Other Christian groups also suffered from ethnic cleansing and mass murder at the hands of Sultan Abdul Hamid II and the Young Turks. Henry Morgenthau, who served as US ambassador in Constantinople until 1916, stated in his memoirs: “The Armenians are not the only subject people in Turkey which have suffered from this policy of making Turkey exclusively the country of the Turks. The story which I have told about the Armenians I could also tell with certain modifications about the Greeks and the Syrians [Assyrians—A. K.].”1 Nevertheless, the suffering of the Assyrians is largely forgotten internationally and not recognized as genocide, which embitters the descendants of the victims. This ancient civilized nation faced the menace of total physical extermination—in the name of bringing about the dream of the Young Turks to create a “pure” Turkish state and “Great Turan.” The genocidal quality of the murderous campaigns against not only the Armenians, but also Assyrians and Greeks, is obvious. Historians who realize that the Young Turks’ population and extermination policies have to be analyzed together and understood as an entity are therefore often tempted to speak of a “Christian genocide.” The destruction of these three Christian communities was one aspect of the “homogenizing” process.

Roots of the Ottoman Christian Genocide in the Extermination Policies of the 1800s The Assyrian Genocide occurred in the same circumstances as the Armenian Genocide. It was part of the same process, taking place in the same locations and at the same time. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Assyrian people in the Ottoman Empire amounted to about one million,2 with a common language, culture, and national traditions. They were concentrated in the territory of modern Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq. There were large communities located predominantly in the lands near the Hakkari Mountains of Van province in Eastern Turkey or Western Armenia, such as the provinces of Diyarbekir, Erzerum, Kharpert, and Bitlis, and also the territories along Lake Urmia in Iran. Like other Christians living in the empire, Assyrians were treated as second-class citizens. Slavery was the fate of some Ottoman Christians, with slaves openly bought and sold in Diyarbekir, Baghdad, and Aleppo.3 Many Assyrians studied in Turkish educational institutions, but after getting their diplomas or certificates, found no opportunities for employment in public positions of authority.4 They did not even have an opportunity to economically develop their regions. Turkish authorities restricted where the Assyrians lived, so that they could not form a majority among the other nations with whom they resided.5 This was done in order to deprive them of the possibility of putting up a united front. An active public policy was conducted to arouse national and religious animosity among the nations inhabiting those territories.

Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire | 107

Figure 3.1. Around Lake Urmia, April–May 1915. Photo by Nikitin. Courtesy Romik Sarkezians.

Figure 3.2. Six armed Assyrian men and one boy with one seated man. Courtesy Romik Sarkezians.

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The first massacres of Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire took place in the 1840s. These were a series of massacres carried out by the Kurdish Emirs (chieftains) of the Bohtan and Hakkari regions—Badr Khan Bey and Noorallah—against the Assyrians of Hakkari and Tiyari.6 The Ottoman Turks allowed the Assyrians to be massacred by Badr Khan Bey, who summoned the surrounding Muslim population to a “Holy War,” killing 10,000 Assyrians, kidnapping and enslaving many women and children, and ravaging villages.7 The Kurdish brigades murdered the Assyrians of half a dozen villages. Dr Asahel Grant reported that the Kurdish chiefs of Bohtan, Hakkari, and Rowandiz destroyed everything they found in the Assyrian homeland, with “a change of religion or loss of life” being the choice they offered.8 The correspondent of the London Morning Chronicle described “a combination between the Pasha of Mosul and several powerful Kurdish chiefs for the extermination of the Nestorian Christians, or Chaldeans.”9 War broke out in Hakkari in 1839 between Noorallah, brother of the former Kurdish Emir, who governed from Bash Qal’a, and Suleyman, his nephew, whose capital was in Dzhulamerk. The Assyrians were also split in their allegiances, according to their distribution. Most of them, including the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Mar-Shimun XVII Abraham, supported Suleyman as the rightful successor to his father.10 The conflict turned into a massacre when Noorallah defeated his opponent and retaliated by attacking Assyrian villages and the Patriarchate in Qochanis in 1841. This led to a permanent rift in relations between the Kurds and Assyrians in general. The region descended into another war after a disagreement between the Ottoman Vali of Mosul, Mohammed Pasha, and the Kurdish Agha, Ismael Pasha of Amadiya. The latter resorted to cooperation with Noorallah of Hakkari and Badr Khan, the ambitious Emir of Bohtan. The three formed an alliance and called Assyrians to join them. The Patriarch, however, refused to do so after receiving promises of protection from Mosul in case the Kurds decided to retaliate again. War between the Kurds and Turks broke out in the summer of 1842. The next few months were particularly calm in Hakkari, with the Kurds busy with the war in Mosul. The Kurdish campaign ended in failure, and the Assyrians were blamed for refusing to intervene in the war. In early 1843, Noorallah called for a meeting with the Assyrian Patriarch and the latter apologized, using the weather, his religious duties, and the presence of a guest, the British missionary George Badger, as excuses. It seemed that the Assyrian Patriarch made his decision not to interven after being convinced by Badger to distrust the Kurds and to request assistance from the English or the Porte if the Kurds were to attack. Once Badger left, Noorallah renewed his alliance with the Badr Khan and Ismael Pasha, and requested permission from the Ottoman Vali of Mosul to subjugate the Christians. In July 1843, the Kurdish alliance, led by Badr Khan, attacked the Assyrians in Hakkari, destroyed their villages, and killed many of them; many were captured and sold in large numbers in slave markets in the Middle East.11 The British-appointed

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Hormuzd Rassam, an ethnic Assyrian archaeologist from Mosul and brother-in-law of Britain’s ambassador in the city, tried using his influence with the Vali of Baghdad, Najib Pasha, to pressure Badr Khan Bey for the release of prisoners, who included close relatives of the Patriarch of the Church of the East, who had in the meantime taken refuge in Mosul. His attempts led to the release of only about 150, one of whom was the sister of the Patriarch, while the rest were distributed as war booty among Kurdish and Turkish aghas and mullahs.12 Another massacre was inflicted by Badr Khan Bey in 1846. Encouraged by his victories, he decided to also subjugate the Thkuma region of Hakkari province inhabited by Assyrians. He ordered everyone killed, even the children and the elderly. The Assyrian Patriarch begged for help from Russian officials and Czar Nicholas I. To move them to pity, Mar-Shimun cut off the ears of the murdered Assyrians, put them into bags, loaded them onto several camels, and sent them to the Russian capital.13 This last period of massacres of Assyrians by Badr Khan Bey, and particularly this unprecedented request by the Assyrians for aid, became a topic of discussion in European diplomatic circles. This massacre received international attention through the Western press and aroused European politicians and public opinion to the plight of the Ottoman Assyrians. This led the European powers to pressure the Porte to intervene and stop the massacres. An Ottoman army was sent to the region in 1847 and clashed with the Kurds in several battles, ending with the arrest of both Badr Khan Bey and Noorallah, and their exile to Crete in 1850.14 Violence directed against Assyrians and Armenians at the end of the nineteenth century marked the beginning of the development of a state genocidal program.15 The first anti-Assyrian and anti-Armenian programs of a genocidal nature appeared in the middle of the last decade of the nineteenth century. In 1894, the British Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, condemned “massacres in Armenia by the Kurds, at the instigation of the Sultan.”16 While the massacres of the Armenians started in Sasun in April 1894, those of the Assyrians began in October 1895 in Diyarbekir. The Assyrian Church of the Holy Mother of God gave refuge to many Assyrians, Armenians, and Greeks. Here a revealing exchange occurred when several Assyrians suggested to their priest that the Armenian refugees be expelled from the building so as not to aggravate Turkish sentiment. The Assyrian priest replied: “The people who Cross themselves will stay in church to the end. Should we be killed, we will be killed together.”17 In the end, 119 villages in Diyarbekir were scorched and ruined; six thousand Christian families—about thirty thousand people—were killed.18 The initial climax of the Assyrian massacres organized by the Ottoman Empire occurred during the period 1895–96, perpetrated against unarmed people in peacetime. A large number of Assyrians were subject to Kurdish brigandage, outright slaughter, and forced conversion to Islam. Mass killings of the Assyrian population of the Ottoman Empire totaled 55,000.19 The French diplomat Gustave Meyrier,

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vice-consul of France in the region, indicated that both Kurdish and Turkish forces acted together to massacre the Christians of Diyarbekir.20 The New York Times blamed the Turkish government for the campaign of revenge against the Christians, whose cause had been championed by Europe throughout the prior century.21 The preparation for the Hamidian phase of the policy of Armenian and Assyrian massacres had several peculiarities. The most important was that they were planned and implemented by an authoritarian monarch, the sultan. Later massacres, in 1909 and the years of 1915 and later, were planned and implemented by the central committee of the ruling political party, the Committee of Union and Progress. It is noteworthy that while the two administrations had opposite philosophies in other matters of politics, they had the same philosophy regarding violence towards the Christian minorities. The genocidal nature of Sultan Abdul Hamid’s anti-Christian, in this case anti-Assyrian policy is beyond any doubt. Several of the circumstances from which international criminal tribunals’ judges infer genocide were present: mass killings, large-scale rapes, destruction of villages and religious sites, and deportation of civilians.22 Assyrian villages and towns were sacked by organized mobs or by Kurdish bands. Tens of thousands were driven from their homes. About 100,000 Assyrians from 245 villages were forcibly converted to Islam.23 Their property was plundered. Thousands of Assyrian women and girls were forced into Turkish and Kurdish harems. The massacres were perpetrated as barbarously as possible, regardless of gender or age. Thus, atrocity became a policy. On January 16, 1895, The New York Times described the massacres of Armenians, Jacobites, and Nestorian Assyrians in the region of Bohtan, Berwer, Mar Yokhanan, Shakh, and Nahrwan by Kurds.24 On June 2, 1895, The New York Times reported: “We have the unanimous verdict of the native Christians of Turkey: Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, that the Sultan is personally responsible, not only because he gave direct orders that men, women, and children should be tortured, outraged, and murdered, but because for years past he has persistently followed a course that would infallibly end in just such a condition of things as the present.”25 In October 1895, the Turkish army, along with the Kurdish Hamidiye regiments, entered Urfa. The pogrom launched by the sultan led to the massacre of three thousand women and children inside the city’s cathedral.26 In early 1896, the Turkish forces destroyed twelve Assyrian villages, raped the women, and stole everything: sheep, cows, and wheat, among other assets. All possessions, such as gold, silver, and money, were confiscated. Thousands of Assyrian men, women, children, and old people were brutally assassinated. The Hamidian massacres revealed most of all the breakdown of the traditional Ottoman paternalistic system, in which status was assigned and minorities were tolerated. Conservative Turks supportive of the regime were given complete license, at the discretion of the monarch, to victimize at will a population targeted for mistreatment. The tyranny of the sultan worsened this dynamic of the Ottoman system. Atrocity and repression were used as a method of government and as an acceptable policy in the treatment of a subject population.

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The sources of the Hamidian interpretation of the doctrine of pan-Islamism may be traced to the time Sultan Abdul Hamid invited the ideologist of pan-Islamism, Jamaluddin Afghani, to his court.27 The Hamidian version of pan-Islamism had two aspects.28 The foreign aspect implied consolidation of all the Muslims throughout the world under the aegis of the Ottoman Empire to withstand the Great Powers. The internal aspect implied application of it as an ideological means for maintaining the territorial integrity of the empire. This was much written about by foreign authors of Turkish origin, yet they omitted the fact that pan-Islamism was also a means to incite Muslim Turks and Kurds against Christians. The Austro-Hungarian ambassador to Constantinople defined it as “a crusade of Muslims against Christians.”29 The campaign for pan-Islamism was carried out both openly and in secret. In the more clandestine campaign of incitement, heads of the Muslim mystic brotherhoods—mullahs and sheikhs—were employed. They roamed the country and instigated the Turks and Kurds against Armenians and Assyrians. During the carnage, Muslim fanaticism became the principal tool for instigating the mob against the Christians. The Ottoman state system, with its inclination to mass violence and slaughter, had provided itself with an adequate concept, a theoretical foundation for the preparation and perpetration of the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides.

The Role of the Christian Missionaries The Ottoman Empire entered the twentieth century as a repressive, dictatorial state, which had already organized and tolerated massacres of the diverse ethnicities living within it. Western European countries, seeking economic benefits, interfered in the Ottoman Empire’s internal affairs. Turks, certainly, realized they were weakening gradually while the West was becoming stronger every day. The gaze of some European empires, notably those of Great Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, fell on the Ottoman Empire with the intention of finding a foothold or strengthening their position in the Middle East. They also tried to attract the Assyrians to their side, in order to use them for the pursuit of their own interests in these regions. To reach this goal they used every means, including religious activists. European missionaries had started pouring into the Hakkari Mountains, Urmia, and the Salamas plains, where the Assyrians lived as a Christian community among the Muslim majority. The nineteenth century was the golden age of missionary activity, although the intolerance of the period prevented evangelization of non-Christians by Europeans. We see the beginning of the influence of the missionaries, mostly American and British Protestants, French and Italian Catholics, and Russian Orthodox, in the eastern part of the Ottoman Empire. In particular, American and British missionaries extended their activities to address the needs of the people, such as the setting up of schools and hospitals, and caused many Assyrians to become Protestants. Year by year, the European Christian missionaries increased their efforts to expand their influence upon the local Assyrians, but it was not an easy task to convert the mountain-dwelling Nestorians to another branch of their religion, and these efforts

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were mostly unsuccessful. In the late 1840s, Nestorian Assyrians killed the American Protestant missionaries who had gone to the mountains of Hakkari with the mission of converting them.30 It was easier to convert the Nestorian Assyrians living in the Urmia and Salamas plains. In 1834, the large American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), making Urmia the center of its activities, was working towards converting the local Nestorian Assyrians to Protestantism. The head of the organization was Justin Perkins, who was the first US citizen to reside in Iran and became known as the “apostle to Persia.” He found that the local Assyrians whom he was serving were living lives of poverty and ignorance, functioning as virtual serfs to their Muslim rulers. Soon Perkins managed to win the sympathy of local Nestorian Assyrians. Through his efforts, some forty rural schools were opened in the Urmia region. In the village of Seyr in the Urmia region, a printing press had been operating since as early as the 1840s, where the religious periodicals Zahrire D-Bahra [Rays of Light] and Kukhva [The Star] were published in the Assyrian language in 1849–1914 and in 1906–15 respectively.31 Perkins was widely recognized as a scholar of the Syriac language. The high esteem in which he was held by both the Christian and Muslim populations made it possible for him to acquire various older documents, which have been highly valuable to scholars over the years. In terms of converting Nestorian Assyrians to Protestantism, American physician Dr Asahel Grant was especially notable. In a relatively short period, he managed to win the confidence of the local people, including the Assyrian Patriarch. Along with curing people of their illnesses, he was preaching Protestantism. The Anglican Church’s missionary activity among the Assyrians began in 1842 with Dr G. P. Badger (1815–88), who was sent in the name of the Archbishopric of Canterbury and the Bishopric of London to the Assyrian Patriarch, in order to help with the people’s education and to secure close relations with the Chaldean Church. In 1881, the Anglican missionaries already had influence upon the Assyrian population of Hakkari. The best known were William Henry Browne and Arthur John Maclean.32 They opened schools for males and females and a college to teach clergymen. The political changes of World War I put an end to the activities of the Anglican Church on this territory. On June 1, 1915, the Archbishop of Canterbury announced the end of their work in the region. French Catholic missionaries were present in the region from 1842. A mission center was established in Urmia by Lazarists with branches in various places in the locality. With the help of another missionary organization, St. Vincent de Paul’s Sisters, they opened schools for boys and girls. They also had an orphanage and a hospital. By 1884, many Nestorian Assyrians had already adopted Russian Orthodox Christianity. Through the efforts of the Russian Orthodox mission of the Urmia region, fifty schools opened, and many books were translated into Assyrian. By 1897, the number of Russian Orthodox Assyrians there reached thirty thousand.33 The Russian media called this success of the Russian Orthodox Church “The Victory of

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Orthodoxy.”34 The Ottoman administration did not show tolerance towards Russian missionaries. Moreover, the Ottoman state had influenced the Western missionary societies’ view of the Russians as rivals. At first, the humanitarian aid perhaps pleased the Assyrians living in the region, but later it split apart Eastern Christianity and caused serious problems among the Assyrian Christians. Although the Ottoman government supervised the missionary activities closely, in time the harm began to be noticed and among the Christians of the empire, dissatisfaction, a sense of oppression, and a distrust of the law began to emerge that had not previously existed. Religious disputes between and within Christian groups also began to increase. In making a general evaluation of the missionary work, it can be said that from the perspective of the Nestorians, Chaldeans, and Syriac Assyrians, the most significant outcome was the development of education. The opening of mission schools, printing houses, and hospitals in the region was undoubtedly greatly appreciated by them. But missionary work certainly had a negative effect as well. The Assyrians, who had practiced Christianity for centuries under the banner of their Ancient Church of the East, were split into denominations that did not, and do not today, concur with each other. This separation and the subsequent thinning of the Assyrian entity constituted a serious blow to this people. There is no doubt that a people that is united religiously, culturally, socially, and politically has a much better chance of survival as a body than one that is divided. The influx of Western missionaries had a negative effect politically as well. The common religious beliefs they shared with the Assyrians and other Christian minorities alienated the non-Christian inhabitants of the area. And when the major Western powers, with whom these foreigners were associated, began demonstrating their political intentions in the Middle East, the suspicions of the local Muslims were aroused. The Assyrians, who had lived with their neighbors for centuries, were now perceived as enemies.

“Holy War” Declared against the Assyrian Remnant in Turkey and Iran At the beginning of the twentieth century, the crisis embracing the political, economic, and social spheres in the Ottoman Empire was still deepening. Turks were definitely anxious about the instability inside their country. The idea of getting rid of Sultan Abdul Hamid II was growing and maturing among reform-minded Turks. The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, also known as the “Young Turks”) were the ones to accomplish change. On July 23, 1908, the CUP organized a revolt and seized power. All the people of the empire—Muslims and Christians—enthusiastically welcomed the overthrow of the “red sultan.” They hoped it was the dawning of a new age of freedom and brotherhood in the history of the Ottoman Empire. As they were unable to solve the empire’s political problems, however, the nationalism of the Young Turks developed into intolerant pan-Turkism, and they continued the

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policy of oppression and slaughter previously carried out by the “red sultan.” They were advocates of the idea of assimilation of all the nations of the empire to create a homogenous Turkish empire. Thus, people changed, new rulers came to power, but the policy towards the Christian minorities persisted. There would be neither unity nor social progress, but continued bloody massacre. How could a political vanguard that advocated democracy, fraternity, and equal rights in 1908 make such a hostile decision in 1910? At the 1910 annual Ittihadist Congress at Saloniki, the secret discussions outside the formal sittings revolved around a plan for the coercive homogenization of Turkey, euphemistically called “the complete Ottomanization of all Turkish subjects.” British Ambassador Lowther observed that “to them ‘Ottoman’ evidently means ‘Turk’ and their present policy of ‘Ottomanization’ is one of pounding the non-Turkish elements in a Turkish mortar.”35 Thus, the radical wing of the Young Turks did not limit its ambitions to governing a multinational Ottoman state. It espoused a complete ideology that envisioned the remaking of the Ottoman Empire into an exclusively Turkish nation. The Young Turks—including Minister of the Interior Talât—intended to transform the pluralistic Ottoman Empire into an ethnically-religiously homogenous national state. Christians could not have an equal part in such a new society. The ambitions of the Young Turks, however, extended beyond this primary goal. They also aspired to create a new and vast empire that extended into Central Asia. This idea was known as pan-Turkism or pan-Turanism. According to Professor Taner Akçam, the Committee of Union and Progress had prior to World War I “formulated a policy that they began to execute in the Aegean region against Greeks and, during the war years, expanded to include the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Syrians, and especially the Armenians, a policy that eventually became genocidal … Detailed reports were prepared outlining the elimination of the Christian population.”36 Britain, France, and Russia initially defined Ottoman atrocities against minorities as “crimes against Christianity,” but later substituted “humanity” after considering the negative reaction that such a specific term could elicit from Muslims in their colonies.37 During one of the secret meetings, the Young Turk ideologist Dr Nazım said: “… Massacre is necessary. I want Turks and only Turks to live on this soil and to be in full possession of it. The hell with all the non-Turkish elements, no matter what their nationality or religion is!”38 According to German missionary and humanist Dr Johannes Lepsius, the Young Turk party’s program stated: “Sooner or later all the nations under Turkish control will be turned into Turks. It is clear that they will not convert voluntarily and we will have to use force.”39 The Young Turks would not wait for circumstances to define their policy. They would seek the opportunity to proceed with their plans. That occasion offered itself sooner than expected in 1914, when Europe plunged into World War I, and the Young Turk triumvirate, Minister of the Interior Talât, Minister of

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War Enver, and Minister of the Navy Jemal, who had been governing the Ottoman Empire since 1913, secretly and eagerly brought their country into the war. During a talk with Dr Mordtmann, an employee of the German Embassy, Talât Pasha said that “exploiting the opportunity of martial law, the Turkish government would eventually get rid of its internal enemies—the Christians—without fear of foreign diplomatic intervention.”40 Dr Behaeddin Shakir, Executive Committee member of the CUP, said almost the same thing: …We are in war, there is no danger of European intervention; the world press cannot protest, and even if they do, it will not bring any results. In the future the present problem will have become a matter of fact, the voices will fade and no one will dare to raise a voice of protest. We must take full advantage of these delicate circumstances, since they will not present themselves again…41 The Assyrian Genocide was by no means accidental or unexpected. It logically derived from the brutal and nationalistic policy pursued by the Turkish sultans and, later, the Young Turks against the non-Turkish nations during the preceding decades. It was not a policy of individuals, but an official state policy that included persecution and carnage. The Young Turks’ overall aim was a demographic reorganization of the Ottoman Empire. All deportations were planned and supervised by the “Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants” that belonged to the Ottoman Ministry of the Interior. A relatively small number of government administrators were involved in the planning and coordination of the murder and expulsion of Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. Although local gendarmes, soldiers, tribes, and brigands carried out many of the killings, the deportation scheme issued from Istanbul.42 In furtherance of these plans, the Ottoman Empire on October 29, 1914 declared war against the Allied Powers. James L. Barton, Foreign Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, wrote: “Soon after Turkey entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, an effort was made to unite all the Moslem peoples under Pan-Islam and to declare a Holy War.”43 While the world was busy prosecuting the war, the British and the Russians took advantage of the situation to win various Assyrian groups over to the side of the Allies.44 Some Assyrian leaders were not in favor of rising against the Ottoman Empire, but the Turkish attitude against the Christians of the empire led Assyrians to submit to the suggestion offered by the Allies to prevent the total elimination of their nation. With the support of the majority of Assyrian leaders, the Patriarch of the Assyrian Holy Apostolic Church of the East, Mar-Shimun Benyamin XXI (1903–18), on May 10, 1915, declared war on Turkey on behalf of the Assyrian nation, siding with the Allies.45 The Assyrian forces under General Dawid, the Patriarch’s brother, led the Assyrians in a successful breakthrough of an encircling Turkish army maneuver, and across the Iranian border onto the plains of Urmia. The Assyrians were trying to es-

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tablish a relationship of patronage or protectorate with both Britain and Russia. For geographic reasons, it was strategically important for the British to gain influence in the region via the assistance of the Assyrians. This was due principally to the large oil fields. Britain wanted to make sure that the district of Mosul would be part of the newly colonized Iraq instead of the future state of Turkey. This occurred by promising the persecuted Assyrians their own homeland. There were friendly relations between the Assyrian Holy Apostolic Church of the East and the Church of England. This friendship was strengthening gradually. Unlike Britain, Russia had neither made great political efforts to win the support of the Assyrians nor promised an independent Assyrian state in order to woo them. For the Assyrians, Russia, as well as being the most credible power in the region, was a state that might bring them the best standard of living. Shortly before Turkey entered the war, the Assyrian Patriarch, anticipating the upcoming catastrophe, wrote an official letter to the Russian authorities asking for weapons to defend his people, and sent it with a messenger. The messenger was intercepted by Turkish intelligence and sent to Constantinople for further instructions. Turkish authorities circulated false rumors that Russia was already arming Assyrians against the Kurds. The Turkish soldiers and Kurdish bands began attacking and killing the Assyrian people and looting their villages. Years before World War I and even the Young Turk Revolution, in October of 1906, R. Termen, Russian vice-consul in the province of Van, received the government order to meet with Assyrian Patriarch Mar-Shimun Benyamin. The main goal of this meeting was to make a pact with Assyrians providing for cooperation in case of war with Turkey. During that meeting the Patriarch agreed to help the Russians and informed the vice-consul that “because of the crisis in the Empire, discontent was growing inside his community gradually day by day, and he was in fear that one day it could end with huge disaster.”46 As soon as World War I began, the Turkish government sent news to the Assyrian Patriarch, desiring that the Assyrians should at the very least remain neutral to the Ottoman entry into war. In return, it promised to listen to the complaints of the Assyrians in the region and to institute reforms in all areas. The Assyrians would be given weapons, new schools and medical clinics would be opened, and tribal leaders and clergy would be paid salaries from the Ottoman government. From a strategic point of view, the mountainous parts of Hakkari where the Assyrians lived were important to the Ottoman government. This was because Iran, despite having declared its neutrality in World War I, could be used by Russia from the north and Britain from the south as a route to attack Ottoman forces. It was especially important to win over the Assyrians to the Ottoman side since the Armenians were already deemed to be enemies. The promises of the Turkish authorities to the Assyrians, of course, were not kept. During the Great War, the Assyrians who joined the war on the side of Russia certainly provided a military and personnel benefit to the Russian units in the area. With the Russian advance into Eastern Anatolia, Armenian units within the Russian army

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were of great importance. Similarly, armed Assyrian units, who knew the area well, were better adapted to the environmental conditions than Russians. The Assyrian units were able to obtain support from local people and, in the areas in which they were located, served as guides and advance guards for the Russian army. According to Dr Tessa Hofmann, the main difference in the treatment of the Assyrians compared to that of the Armenians can be described in the following way: “They fell victim predominantly to direct and massive killings by the Ottoman forces and their Kurdish auxiliaries in two states: the Ottoman Empire and northwest Iran, which the Ottomans occupied twice, in 1914 and 1918.”47 But it is important to emphasize the significant fact that the Ottoman Turks, together with the Kurds, had already invaded Iran before the declaration of war—as early as 1907—and had left the countryside in the border area and on the plain of Urmia in ruins. The reports on prewar events come from German sources attached to the Lutheran Mission, and therefore present a perspective sympathetic to Turks and Germans. The 1907 events are described below by Elizabeth Wendt, the daughter of a German pastor, in a letter dated August 2, 1907. She was married to an Assyrian from the Tergawar district, the location of numerous Christian villages and parishes: Our village, Charbash, is now completely filled with people coming through, fleeing from Tergawar. Hundreds of people … arrive starving … I sewed a German flag which we intend to raise in case of emergency, as the Turks are friendly towards the Germans. Yesterday morning the Kurds came and everyone who was not killed fled. They fled from there without bread, without clothes, with only their lives. Many hundreds have gone to the city to the Russian consul and more keep coming … The actual reason for the terribly rushed flight was that the Turks came up behind the Kurds with cannons…48 Events in 1908 are described in another report by pastor Karl Robbelen written in 1909: The newspapers have reported about the terrible events which caused the political confusion in Persia. Havoc has also been wrought in the Northwest province of Azerbaijan … In August of last year (1908), the unrest and turmoil began in that province when the Turkish troops crossed the border, first occupying and plundering the region of Tergawar. Thousands of Syrian [Assyrian] Christians were robbed of all their possessions, expelled from their home and their land and left to their misery. This example incited the predatory Kurdish tribes in the mountainous districts. The confusion in the countryside and the government’s powerlessness and inactivity encouraged them to stage ever bolder raids. Since spring the Kurds’ looting has been constantly increasing in intensity. The rich Baranduz region was the first to be devastated in this manner, the Urmia region, where our brothers live, was next.49

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The Turkish troops occupied the whole region west of Urmia until 1912.50 For these reasons, the Assyrians endured massacres not only inside the Ottoman realm but on its periphery as well. The destruction of Assyrian villages accompanied German and Turkish military operations in Iran, which the two allies intended to use as a corridor to the oil regions of Baku and thereafter to invade Central Asia. Iran became a battleground on which acts of mass violence were perpetrated by the Ottomans against these “undesirable” elements. The Assyrians of the Urmia region were among the most unfortunate. Already in September 1914, before World War I started, more than thirty Armenian and Assyrian villages were scorched. On October 3, 1914, the Russian vice-consul in Urmia, Vedenski, along with the local governor, visited Assyrian villages that were already ruined by Kurds, Turks, and Iranian rabble. He wrote: “The consequences of jihad are everywhere. In the Assyrian village Angar, I saw burnt corpses of people with big sharp stakes in their bellies. The Assyrian houses are burnt and destroyed. The fire is still burning in the neighboring villages.”51 In his telegram of October 24, 1914, Vedenski reported to St. Petersburg: “The stream of refugees goes on. Rumors are afloat about a new slaughter coming.” The very next day he wrote that more than six hundred Assyrian refugees had passed from Turkey to Iran.52 “Fires were accompanied with brutality,” the newspaper Baku wrote. In the Assyrian village of Kanachar alone, two hundred people were burnt alive.53 An Iranian official in Urmia reported in October 1914 that the message of “Holy War” against Christians on behalf of the Ottoman state had spread among the tribes of the Ottoman/Iranian border.54 On November 19, 1914, the Russian troops operating in Iran, and fighting against the Turkish army, had occupied the central parts of Hakkari—Bashkale and Saray. In December 1914, immediately after the destruction of the Armenian villages of Akhorik, Hasan-Tamran, Tash-Oghlu, and Hazare, the Assyrian village of Kharabasorik with ten households was totally ruined. The population was murdered. Young girls and women were taken to Kurdish harems.55 The success of Russian troops at the Caucasian front in 1915 “made” the Young Turks undertake steps to get rid of the “interfering” non-Turkish populations. The slaughter of Assyrians took place not only close to the front line but also in Diyarbekir, Van, Bitlis, Urfa, Adana, and other distant places. Turkish troops twelve thousand strong invaded the Tur-Abdin region. The people of the Assyrian village of Aynvardo tried to resist the enemy but were all killed. Turkish soldiers burnt down the Nestorian church in the Assyrian village of Gardienne and forced all the women of the village to become Muslims. The unexpected retreat of the Russian army from Urmia in January 1915 had further tragic consequences for Assyrians living in Iran. Turkish troops, along with Kurdish detachments, organized mass slaughter of the Assyrian population. Only 25,000 people managed to escape death and take refuge in Transcaucasia.56 An English missionary who left Urmia with the fugitives described the flight in these words: “As far as the eye could reach in both directions there was a constant stream of fugitives, sometimes so dense that the road was blocked. It was

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a dreadful sight, and one I never want to see again. Many of the old people and children died on the way.”57 Before the seven days’ hard walking to the Russian border was accomplished, all encumbrances were cast aside, such as quilts, extra clothing, even bread. It became a question for the poor, tired, struggling crowd which they would carry—their bedding or their children. A number of women gave birth on the road. Those 25,000 who passed the Russian border lines were so haggard and emaciated that their own friends did not recognize them.58 From Tabriz, Khoi, Salamas, and Urmia, almost 44,000 Armenian and Assyrian refugees had to leave the places where they had lived for centuries and take refuge in Armenia, Georgia, and Russia.59 This was the report of the Brotherly Help Committee of Nakhichevan-Sharur-Daralageaz-Salamas. Another document from April 18, 1915, entitled “The Situation of the Armenian and Assyrian Refugees from Iran,” explains in detail how the Armenians and Assyrians left their properties, lands, animals, and everything else, and became refugees.60 It is important to emphasize that all the refugees who escaped from the Ottoman sword to Armenia were taken care of equally, no matter their nationality or denomination, Armenians or Assyrians. The Armenian bishop Nerses Melik-Tangyan sent a letter to his friend in February 1917 in which he wrote: “Give my regards to Mar-Shimun and tell him I take care of His people. There is no difference for me [between] Armenians [and] Assyrians.”61

From “Holy War” to Mass Murder of the Christian Population of Turkey Turkish forces, furious about the occupation of Dilman by the Russian army in April 1915, brutally murdered the populations of twenty neighboring Assyrian villages. Several hundred Assyrian women were undressed and brought out to the central street. They were given an hour to decide whether they would change their religion or be killed. All immediately fell to praying for strength to die. All were martyred.62 P. Price, a war correspondent for British and American newspapers, reported that “mountain Nestorians from the Tkhuma, Baz and Tiari regions, who had been fighting with the Kurds all summer and had had to flee for lack of ammunition, came pouring into the plain led by their Patriarch, Mar Shimun… Every day a hundred or more Assyrians and Armenians were dying in the villages round Diliman, and the same thing is going on now.”63 The following account is taken from the letters of the German missionaries in Iran. The letters were published in Der Christliche Orient and republished on October 18, 1915 in the leading Dutch newspaper in the Netherlands: The latest news is that four thousand Syrians [Assyrians—A. K.] and one hundred Armenians have died of disease alone, at the missions, within the

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last five months. All villages in the surrounding district with two or three exceptions have been plundered and burnt; twenty thousand Christians have been slaughtered.64 In January 1915, a platoon headed by Kachali Khan encircled the largest and the richest Assyrian village in Urmia, Gulpashan, where three hundred Assyrian families (totaling about 2,500 people) lived, and entirely destroyed it. All but a couple of hundred Assyrians were murdered.65 Rev. Dr William A. Shedd, the American vice-consul in Urmia, as well as the senior Presbyterian missionary in Urmia during the Great War, wrote in a letter of March 1: “The village Gulpashan has turned into ruins. The notable men of the village were shot in the graveyard at night. Women and young girls were raped by Turks. Within several hours more than 800 people were murdered.” Rev. Shedd sent a telegram to US consul Gordon Paddock in Tabriz asking him to visit Urmia and see the atrocities personally.66 In addition to Gulpashan, massacres took place in the Assyrian villages of Ada and Gyogtape, where local churches and schools were ruined.67 In the village of Khosrova (Husrava), the Assyrian population, which included refugees from neighboring villages (about seven thousand people), was gathered and slaughtered.68 In February 1915, in the Assyrian village of Haftvan, 750 people were beheaded, and later five thousand Assyrian women were taken to Turkish and Kurdish harems.69 By early March 1915, the Iranians were reporting that the Urmia region with tens of Assyrian villages had been completely plundered, leaving the population without the means to survive.70 The Iranian Foreign Minister complained to the Ottomans of attacks on “villages inhabited by Christians, where the population has been violated and barbarously killed.”71 In the town of Urmia, Ottoman officials entered the French mission compound on February 12 and seized more than 150 Assyrians, including the bishop. Sixty of these men were kept in jail, some were hanged just outside the city gates, and the rest were shot at Jewish Hill cemetery on February 23.72 In Urmia itself, many Assyrian refugees, finding asylum in the missions, starved and died of epidemic disease. The actual number of deaths during this time has never been calculated, but must have been enormous. The Ottoman army even executed hundreds of Armenian and Assyrian soldiers who formed part of its own forces. Documents from the Armenian National Archive describe how one thousand Assyrians were killed by the Ottoman invasion force and its allies by July 1915, and four thousand more died from disease at the American mission in Urmia.73 One document states that during this period, 63,000 refugees emigrated from the Urmia, Salamas, and Khoi regions of Iran to Russian territory. Thirty thousand out of those 63,000 were Armenians, and the remaining 33,000 were Assyrians.74 The manner in which the massacres were organized and implemented serves as irrefutable evidence of the Turkish government’s decision to eliminate peoples whose national and Christian identities threatened the Young Turks’ own ethnic and religious chauvinism. Even German consular officials believed that the anti-Christian

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actions were centrally planned. On March 7, 1915, for example, in his letter to the German ambassador in Constantinople, the German vice-consul in Alexandretta wrote: “During the last few days, house-to-house searches took place at all the homes of the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire residing here—Armenians, Syrians, Greeks—on order from higher up (most likely from Constantinople).”75 In 1916, the German vice-consul in Samsun reported that Turkish officials used desertion and spying by some ethnic Greeks to justify the “annihilation” of the Greek people, and that the deportation policies of the Ottoman state were destroying populations by causing extreme hunger and epidemics of disease.76 In 1918, a follow-up German diplomatic report indicated that by the end of 1917, the Ottoman military had conscripted 200,000 Greeks and killed most of them via mistreatment, underfeeding, lack of medical attention, and exposure to the cold.77 With regard to the Assyrians of Urmia, American vice-consul Rev. William Shedd, blamed Turkish incitement and leadership along with Kurdish and Persian “fanaticism” for mass violence and the destruction of communities.78 Also illustrating the continuity of a centralized policy of genocide against the Armenians are the massacres committed in Adana in 1909. The New York Times reported that four thousand Turkish soldiers and Turks from the surrounding villages rampaged against Christians, slaughtering Armenians, Greeks, and Syrians unsparingly.79 The governor of Diyarbekir, Reshid Bey, directed the anti-Christian extermination projects in his region. The Assyrians of the Mardin, Midiat, Urfa, and Jezire regions were especially victimized. The most brutal slaughters of many thousands of Assyrians were perpetrated. Through various compilations, there is written evidence of massacres and attacks against Christians in 178 small towns and villages in Diyarbekir province and its nearest neighboring regions (in 1915).80 Despite the official declarations excluding them from the “deportations,” non-Armenian Christians continued to be the object of mass murder.81 According to Prof. David Gaunt, Ottoman and Iranian documents establish that the Assyrians, along with the Armenians, were targeted as such, with local portions of these groups destroyed even as other portions of both groups fled. In 1915, the Ottoman Interior Minister wrote that “the Armenians of the [Ottoman] province of Diyarbekir, along with other Christians, were being massacred.”82 Byuzand Papazyan, a survivor and eyewitness of the Armenian and Assyrian slaughters in the Diyarbekir region, details in his book the massacres of the Christian population by the Young Turks. Papazyan observed that after the massacres many Armenian refugees found asylum in the Assyrian houses of Nisibin or Mtsbin in Mardin province.83 The priest of the local Chaldean Assyrians in the province of Diyarbekir, Rev. Joseph Naayem, reported that massacres in this region had taken place since April 8, 1915. The culprits gathered men over sixteen years of age, beat, tortured, killed them, and afterwards put turbans on their heads and photographed them in order to prove to the world that Christians were oppressing Muslims.84

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On July 1, 1915, joint massacres of Assyrians and Armenians took place in Mtsbin, Mardin, and Tell-Ermen. An order was given for Christians to surrender all weapons. Thousands of people were killed by Ottoman soldiers.85 Once the Christian peoples were completely paralyzed, the Young Turk government issued deportation edicts. On August 19, 1915, the American consul in Aleppo reported to the US secretary of state about the deportation of Assyrians: “from Mardin the Government deported great numbers of Syrians, Catholics, Caldeans, and Protestants…”86 Throughout the spring and summer of 1915, across the length and breadth of the Ottoman Empire, Assyrians and Armenians were ordered to prepare themselves for removal from their homes. Their destination was unknown. With only a few days’ notice in most places, entire villages and towns were deported. Thousands upon thousands were sent upon the roads, forced to abandon homes and belongings. Within days and weeks, travel for the deportees turned into a test of physical strength and the will to survive. Whole families, young and old, children and women, were thrown into the open, to walk by day and sleep on the ground by night. Families began to wither from exhaustion; this was the slowest way to die. Weakening day by day, with food resources running out, tens of thousands perished silently as their bodies were reduced to skin and bones. Countless people died of thirst. The cry of children for food drove some mothers out of their minds. Some of the young girls were taken as servant girls; others were seized as unwilling brides. Women preferred to drown themselves in rivers rather than submit. An American consular agent in Urfa documented how, throughout the summer of 1915, thousands of Christian refugees had passed through the city, all relating the same sequence of events: the murder of all the men on the roads out of their cities, the “criminal abuse” and kidnapping of the women and girls, the theft of all “money, bedding, and clothing … The poor weak women and children died by thousands along the roads…”87 One author suggests that in the region of Tur-Abdin, beginning on June 5, 1915, about ten thousand Assyrians lost their lives to these policies.88 A wide variety of atrocities were committed.89 In the province of Van, an early decree of October 26, 1914, by the Ministry of the Interior ordered the deportation of the Nestorians [Assyrians—A. K.], in particular “those who are found at our border to Iran,” to the province of Ankara and Konya.90 The governor of Van, Djevdet Bey, led a “butcher” regiment of eight thousand Muslim soldiers that perpetrated mass killings.91 The genocide of the Assyrians was perpetrated with unspeakable brutality. All possible methods of killing were used: shooting, stabbing, stoning, crushing, throat cutting, throwing off of roofs, drowning, and decapitation. In June 1915, the armies of Djevdet Bey and general Halil Bey organized a general massacre in the province of Bitlis which lasted throughout the month.92 The Assyrians were mercilessly killed in their houses and on the streets.93 In the provinces of Diyarbekir and Bitlis, the Assyrians who survived the massacres were deported to inhospitable conditions, together with the Armenian population.

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As early as 1916, while the crime was still in progress, a volume of valuable documents was prepared by Viscount James Bryce and Oxford historian Arnold Toynbee and published by the British Parliament. In one of its chapters, this “Blue Book” described how Djevdet Bey entered the regions of Bohtan, Bitlis, and Seert and massacred the Assyrian population.94 Confirmatory accounts are present in the American and Ottoman sources. On June 30, 1915, the American consul in Harput (Kharpert), Leslie Davis, wrote to US ambassador Henry Morgenthau that the Turks had found another way of exterminating the Christians—forced emigration. “On Saturday, June 28, it was publicly announced that all the Armenians and Syrians [Assyrians—A. K.] were to leave after five days.”95 A telegram from August 28, 1915, sent by Minister of the Interior Talât Pasha to the governors of Diyarbekir, Mamuret ul Aziz (Kharpert), and Aleppo, confirmed that Ottoman commander(s) had informed the Interior Ministry of Syrian Catholic deportations.96 In the supplemental papers relating to the foreign relations of the US in 1916, there is a series of reports from official and other reliable sources, showing that “the systematic deportations in Turkey were continuing through 1916: that thousands have died as result of cruelties, massacres, and starvation: and that it would appear that these awful conditions are the result of a studied intention on the part of the Ottoman Government to annihilate a Christian race.”97 In 1916, Abraham Yohannan, a professor at Columbia University in New York, wrote: The civilized world has been horrified by the monstrous crimes and most pathetic tragedy in history ancient or modern to which the Assyrians and Armenians have been once more subjected. We are witnessing to-day the greatest and the most ruthless atrocities in modern history. The entire Christian nations of the Armenians and Assyrians are undergoing the process of extermination, by cruel methods of execution which surpass anything that ever preceded them anywhere. The atrocities that are being committed now against these harmless and helpless Christians in Turkey and Persia are of a long standing character.98

An Extermination Campaign with Few Parallels in History In November 1916, The New York Times published an article by Dr William Rockwell entitled “The Total Number of Armenian and Assyrian Dead,” in which the author noted: “The Armenians are not the only unfortunates; … the Assyrians also have been decimated … Great numbers have perished, but no one knows how many.”99 Another American periodical, the Atlantic Monthly, wrote: “Within six months they [Young Turks—A. K.] succeeded in doing what the Old Turks were unable to accomplish in six centuries … Thousands of Nestorians and Syrians [Assyrians—A. K.] vanished from the face of the earth.”100

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Thus, the massacres and slaughters of the Assyrians which took place at the end of the nineteenth century and during World War I in the Ottoman Empire were clearly genocidal. According to Hannibal Travis, Professor of Law at Florida International University: [A]s in other recognized genocides, the Ottomans and their local allies, the Kurds and Persians, demonstrated a pattern of deliberate and systematic targeting of Christians as such, including Assyrians, for murder, maiming, enslavement, rape, dispossession, impoverishment, and cultural and ethnic destruction. Nevertheless, governments and historians have not been as willing to recognize the Assyrian experience during and after World War I as a form of genocide, or even to acknowledge the existence and criminality of the Ottoman atrocities against Assyrians.101 According to Prof. David Gaunt: The Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syriac victims were easy to single out because they belonged to a non-Muslim group and spoke non-Turkic languages. They were thus targeted for violent ethnic cleansing as religious and ethnic groups, but not as racial groups. Thus the reason for their extermination should be sought against the background of their religious and ethnic deviation from the political standards held by the ideologues in power.102 According to Prof. Taner Akçam, the documents from the Ottoman government archives in Istanbul, which were once classified as top secret, clearly demonstrate that Ottoman demographic policy from 1913 to 1918 was genocidal. Indeed, the phrase “crimes against humanity” was coined as a legal term and first used on May 24, 1915, in response to the genocide against Armenians and other Christian civilians.103 Certainly, nowadays, when modern Turkish historiography categorically denies the genocide of the Armenians, it similarly cannot accept the genocide of the Assyrians. The Assyrian Genocide is an unfinished chapter in world history, for the guilty party has yet to receive the punishment many feel it deserves. The lessons of history show that different peoples pay dearly when crimes against humanity are forgotten. The size of the people has no significance when the theory of race worship is raised to the level of an official state policy. According to Prof. N. Hovhannisyan, in the theoretical system of Genocide Studies, scholars such as Michael Banks and Barbara Harff have brought forth the theory of victimization, according to which a certain people becomes the victim of genocide not at the moment of the genocide’s execution, but, in a chronological sense, a long way in advance.104 Victimization is a lengthy process, conditioned by certain causes and factors. A complete study of the causes of the Assyrian Genocide reveals that its genesis is to be found many years before 1915.

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Conclusion As the sources reviewed in this chapter reveal, a policy of physical destruction of the Assyrians at the state level was implemented in the Ottoman Empire from 1895 to 1918. However, the roots of the genocide and victimization of the Assyrian nation run much deeper. As a consequence of actions taken by the Ottoman Turks with the intention of ethnic and religious purification, Assyrians today have been forced to live as a stateless people in the diaspora. Assyrians hope that countries such as Turkey will be compelled to act with objectivity and humanitarianism in confronting the past, so that future evils may be prevented. It is the moral responsibility of the international community to recognize this historical injustice, and to act to ameliorate the Assyrians’ plight. Anahit Khosroeva is Leading Researcher in the Department of Armenian Genocide Studies at the Institute of History, National Academy of Sciences, Republic of Armenia. She is also Associate Professor at Yerevan State University and a Scholar in Residence at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, North Park University in Chicago. Her books and articles on the Assyrian Genocide have appeared in Armenian, English, and Russian. Among her honors are “Woman of the Year” in appreciation of her efforts in scientific research of the genocide of Assyrians, Armenians, and Greeks, awarded at the Assyrian Universal Alliance 28th World Congress, Tehran, Iran, in 2011, and for “Dedication to advancing the Assyrian national cause in promoting international recognition of the Assyrian Genocide,” awarded by the Assyrian Universal Alliance Australia & New Zealand region, Sydney, Australia, in 2011. Notes 1. Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, ed. Ara Sarafian (Ann Arbor, MI: Taderon Press, 2000), 214. 2. Sahak Mesrop, Hayun Taretsuyts [Armenian Calendar] (Constantinople, 1913), 67–68. 3. Hirmis Aboona, Assyrians, Kurds, and Ottomans: Intercommunal Relations on the Periphery of the Ottoman Empire (Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2008), 226. 4. Ibid., 136–47. 5. Ibid., 100. 6. Ibid., 175–200. 7. John Joseph, The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East: Encounters with Western Christian Missions, Archaeologists, and Colonial Powers (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 73, 83. See also William Ainger Wigram, The Assyrians and Their Neighbors (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1929). 8. “Mountain Nestorians,” The Baptist Missionary Magazine 23 (December 1843): 314. 9. Cited in “Massacre of the Nestorian Christians,” Niles National Register, October 14, 1843, 107. 10. Joseph, The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East, 74. 11. Aboona, Assyrians, Kurds, and Ottomans, 210–18. 12. Ibid., 219.

126 | Anahit Khosroeva 13. H. Yeramyan, Hushardzan Van-Vaspurakani [A Monument to Van-Vaspurakan] (Alexandria: Hushardzan, 1929), 22. 14. Joseph, The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East, 85. 15. While the nineteenth-century massacres might not have been conceived of at the time as genocide, they are an important step towards that end. Today, they would qualify as genocidal under the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. See, e.g., Hannibal Travis, Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2010). 16. “Gladstone,” in Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 2, ed. Sir Sidney Lee (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1901), 323. 17. Tigran Mkund, Amitai ardzaganknere [Amida’s Echoes] (New York: Hye Gule Press, 1950), 234. English translation by AK. 18. Mkrtich Nersisian, Genocid Armyan v Osmanskoi Imperii [The Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire] (Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1966), 120. 19. Joseph Naayem, Shall This Nation Die? (New York: Chaldean Rescue, 1921), 274. 20. Sébastien de Courtois, The Forgotten Genocide: Eastern Christians, the Last Arameans (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2004), 108–10. 21. “Another Armenian Holocaust,” The New York Times, September 10, 1895. Retrieved from http:// www.teachgenocide.org/files/Newsaccounts/NYT%20Articles/NYT%20Article%20-%20Sep%205%20 &%2010,%201895.pdf. 22. Hannibal Travis, “‘Native Christians Massacred’: The Ottoman Genocide of the Assyrians during World War I,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 1, no. 3 (2006): 327–28. 23. Lev Sargizov, “Druzhba idushchaya iz glubini vekov (Assiriytsi v Armenii)” [A Friendship Coming from Ancient Times (The Assyrians in Armenia)], Atra (St. Petersburg) 4 (1992): 71. 24. Armenians at the Twilight of the Ottoman Era, comp. and ed. Vosgan Mekhitarian and Vahan Ohanian, News Reports from the International Press, V. I, The New York Times 1890–1914 (Yerevan: Genocide Documentation and Research Center, 2011), 135–40. 25. Ibid., 184. 26. William Miller, The Ottoman Empire, 1801–1913 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913), 429. 27. Ruben Safrastyan, Ottoman Empire: The Genesis of the Program of Genocide (1876–1920) (Yerevan: State Commission for Preparation of the 95th Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, 2011), 116. 28. A. Ozcan, Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain (1877–1924) (Leiden, New York, and Cologne: Brill, 1997), 46. 29. Taner Akçam, Insan Haklari ve Ermeni Sorunu: Ittihat ve Terakki’den Kurtulus Savasi’na (Ankara: Imge Kitabevi, 2002), 93. 30. B. Shelkovnikov, Proiskhozhdenie i sovremenniy bit siro-khaldeyskoy narodnosti [The Origins and Current Life of the Assyro-Chaldean People], Proceedings of the Caucasian Military Regional Headquarters, no. 3–4 (Tiflis, 1904), 43. 31. Nikolay Seleznev, Assiriyskaya tserkov Vostoka [The Assyrian Church of the East] (Moscow: ACV, 2001), 75. 32. A. J. Maclean and W. H. Browne, The Catholicos of the East and His People (London: SPCK, 1892). 33. Ibid., 43, 53. 34. Tserkovniye vedomosti [Church Sheets], no. 13 (St. Petersburg, 1898), 67–77. See also Bogoslovni vestnik [Theological Bulletin] (Moscow: Theological Academy, May 1898). 35. Vahakn N. Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995), 179.

Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire | 127 36. Taner Akçam, “The Ottoman Documents and the Genocidal Policies of the Committee for Union and Progress (Ittihat ve Terakki) Toward the Armenians in 1915,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 1, no. 2 (2006): 133–34. 37. Taner Akçam, “Turkey’s Human Rights Hypocrisy,” The New York Times, July 19, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/opinion/turkeys-human-rights-hypocrisy.html?_r=0. 38. Rifat Mevlan Zade, Osmanyan heghapokhutyan mut tsalkere ev Ittihati hayajinj tsragrere [The Obscure Folds of the Ottoman Revolution and the Ittihad’s Plans for Extermination of the Armenians] (Yerevan: “KPH,” 1990), 98–99. 39. Johannes Lepsius, Bericht über die Lage des Armenischer Volkes in Türkei (Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1916), 220. 40. Johannes Lepsius, Deutschland und Armenian 1914–1918: Sammlung diplomatischer Aktenstücke, Herausgegeben und Eingeleitet (Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1919), 26. 41. Levon Mesrob, Verabrogner, Der Zor (Paris: P. Elekian 1955), 258. 42. Taner Akçam summarizes some of the relevant orders in “The Young Turks and the Plan for the Ethnic Homogenization of Anatolia,” in Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands, ed. Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013), 258–79. 43. James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (1915–1930) (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 91. 44. I refer here to the leadership of the nation, and not to all persons, and acknowledge that there were local differences in the degree and timing of resistance to massacre and/or cooperation with the Allies. The Syrian Orthodox Christians of the cities and lowland villages and towns, for example, did not join the war in the same way or at the same time that the Hakkari Assyrians under Mar-Shimun Benyamin did. 45. Wilhelm Baum and Dietmar W. Winkler, The Church of the East: A Concise History (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 137. 46. Azat Hambaryan, Azatagrakan sharzhumnere Arevmtyan Hayastanum (1898–1908) [The Liberation Movements in Western Armenia (1898–1908)] (Yerevan: Gitutyun, 1999), 458. 47. Tessa Hofmann, “The Genocide against the Christians in the Late Ottoman Period, 1912–1922,” in The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide, ed. George N. Shirinian (Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012), 60. 48. Gabriele Yonan, A Forgotten Holocaust: The Extermination of the Christian Assyrians in Turkey and Persia (N.p.: Assyrian International News Agency, 1996), 58-59. Retrieved from http://www.aina.org/books/ lwp.pdf. 49. Ibid., 64-65. 50. Joseph, The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East, 127. 51. National Archive of Republic of Georgia, folder 13, list 27, book 2, no. 3361, 103. 52. Lev Sargizov, Assiriytsi stran Blizhnego i Srednego Vostoka [The Assyrians of the Near and Middle East] (Yerevan: Hayastan, 1979), 25. 53. Ibid., 26. 54. David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006), 63. 55. A-Do, Metz depkere Vaspurakanum 1914–1915 tvakannerin [The Great Events in Vaspurakan in 1914– 1915] (Yerevan: Luys, 1917), 117. 56 Abraham Yohannan, The Death of a Nation (New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916), 120. 57. Ibid., 120. 58. Ibid., 121. 59. Armenian National Archive, file 50, list 1, no. 127, 108–15 60. Armenian National Archive, file 227, list 1, no. 199, 18–19.

128 | Anahit Khosroeva 61. Armenian National Archive, file 57, list 1, no. 643, 1. 62. Naayem, Shall This Nation Die? 288. 63. Ararat (London), March 1916. 64. Der Christliche Orient, September–October 1915, 74. 65. Mshak, no. 55 (March 14, 1915). 66. Richard Diran Kloian, The Armenian Genocide: News Accounts from the American Press: 1915–1922 (Richmond, CA: ACC Books, 1985), 40. 67. Anahit Khosroeva, “The Assyrian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire and Adjacent Territories,” in The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2007), 271. 68. Naayem, Shall This Nation Die? 271. 69. Yohannan, The Death of a Nation, 127–28, 134. 70. Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 111. 71. Ibid., 82. 72. Documentation on the Genocide against the Assyrian-Syryoye-Chaldean-Aramaic People (Seyfo) (Frankfurt, 1999), 32. 73. Armenian National Archive, file 50, list 1, no. 127, 108–15. 74. Armenian National Archive, file 13, list 21, no. 2584, 116. 75. Wolfgang Gust, Der Volkermord an den Armeniern 1915/16: Dokumente aus dem Politischen Archiv des deutchen Auswärtigen Amts (Springe: zu Klampen Verlag, 2005), 121, Document 1915-03-07-DE-011. 76. Quoted in Hofmann, “The Genocide against the Christians in the Late Ottoman Period,” 54. 77. Speros Vryonis Jr., “Greek Labor Battalions in Asia Minor,” in Hovannisian, The Armenian Genocide, 287. 78. Hofmann, “The Genocide against the Christians in the Late Ottoman Period,” 61. 79. “Details of Slaughter Received,” The New York Times, May 5, 1909, retrieved from http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1909/05/05/101035488.html; “Massacres Continue; Adana Terrorized,” The New York Times, May 3, 1909, retrieved from http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/ browser/1909/05/05/101035486/article-view. 80. Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 76. 81. Ibid., 7. 82. Ibid., 73–74. 83. Byuzand Papazyan, Aryunot aperov [By the Bloody Riverside] (Yerevan: Arevik Publisher, 1990), 101. 84. Joseph Alichoran, Du génocide à la Diaspora: Les Assyro-Chaldéens au XX siècle (Paris: Revue Istina, 1994), 370. 85. Levon Vardan, Zhamanakagrutyun haykakan tasnhingi 1915–1923 [The Chronicle of the Armenian Fifteenth 1915–1923] (Beirut: Atlas, 1975), 45. 86. United States Official Documents on the Armenian Genocide, Vol. 1, ed. Ara Sarafian (Watertown, MA: Armenian Review Press, 1993), 54. 87. Ibid., 48–49. 88. Nicolay Hovhannisyan, The Armenian Genocide (Yerevan: Zangak 97, 2005), 51. 89. Documentation on the Genocide against the Assyrian-Syryoye-Chaldean-Aramaic People (Seyfo), 7. 90. Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 446. 91. A. S. Safrastian, “Bitlis, Moush and Sassoun: Record of an Interview with Roupen, of Sassoun,” November 6, 1915, in The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–1916: Documents Presented to the Viscount Grey of Fallodon, ed. Sir James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee (London: HMSO, 1916), retrieved from http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/1915/bryce/a04.htm. This source stated: “Towards the

Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire | 129 end of May, Djevdet Bey, the military governor, was expelled from Van, and the town was captured by the native Armenians and then by the Russo-Armenian forces. Djevdet Bey fled southwards and, crossing the Bohtan, entered Sairt with some 8,000 soldiers whom he called ‘Butcher’ battalions (Kassab Tabouri). He massacred most of the Christians of Sairt, though nothing is known of the details. On the best authority, however, it is reported that he ordered his soldiers to burn in a public square the Armenian Bishop Yeghishé Vartabed and the Chaldean Bishop Addai Sher. Then Djevdet Bey, followed by the small army of Halil Bey, marched on Bitlis towards the middle of June.” 92. Ibid. 93. Wife of the Rev. David Jacob, of Urmia, “Second Exodus from Urmia,” in The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–1916. This source reported: “Now the villages were plundered and mostly burned, a good many people killed, and our little girls and women wickedly tortured (very many even now have not been found; they were mercilessly carried into captivity); through all this long time of anxiety and expectation, during which our time was given to weeping, we prayed that God would once more save us by sending the Russians to our rescue … Now we are facing a winter of famine and wretchedness, homes without bedding and clothes. Of course nobody can supply all our needs. In addition to our own trouble, our countrymen from Turkey are taking refuge in the Urmia district, and their condition is worse than ours.” 94. A. S. Safrastian, “Bitlis, Moush and Sassoun: Record of an Interview with Roupen, of Sassoun,” November 6, 1915, in The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–1916. 95. Leslie A. Davis, The Slaughterhouse Province. An American Diplomat’s Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1917 (New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1989), 143–44. 96. See http://www.atour.com/~aahgn/news/20040306b.html. 97. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1916 Supplement The World War, File no. 867.4016/299 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1929), 858. 98. Yohannan, The Death of a Nation, 115. 99. Cited in Kloian, The Armenian Genocide, 188–89. 100. Ibid., 193. 101. Travis, “‘Native Christians Massacred,’” 327–28. 102. Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 303–4. 103. Akçam, “Turkey’s Human Rights Hypocrisy.” 104. Nicolay Hovhannisyan, Hayots Tseghaspanutyune tseghaspanagitutyan hayecakargain hamakargum [The Armenian Genocide in the Conceptual System of Genocide Studies] (Yerevan: Zangak, 2002), 18–19.

Bibliography “Another Armenian Holocaust.” The New York Times, September 10, 1895. Retrieved from http://www. teachgenocide.org/files/Newsaccounts/NYT%20Articles/NYT%20Article%20-%20Sep%205%20 &%2010,%201895.pdf. Armenians at the Twilight of the Ottoman Era, comp. and ed. Vosgan Mekhitarian and Vahan Ohanian, News Reports from the International Press, V. I, The New York Times 1890–1914 (Yerevan: Genocide Documentation and Research Center, 2011). “Details of Slaughter Received.” The New York Times, May 5, 1909. Retrieved from http://timesmachine. nytimes.com/timesmachine/1909/05/05/101035488.html. Documentation on the Genocide against the Assyrian-Syryoye-Chaldean-Aramaic People (Seyfo). Frankfurt, 1999. “Gladstone.” In Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 2, edited by Sir Sidney Lee. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1901. “Massacre of the Nestorian Christians.” Niles National Register, October 14, 1843.

130 | Anahit Khosroeva “Massacres Continue; Adana Terrorized.” The New York Times, May 3, 1909. Retrieved from http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/1909/05/05/101035486/article-view. “Mountain Nestorians.” The Baptist Missionary Magazine 23 (December 1843): 313–15. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1916 Supplement The World War, File no. 867.4016/299. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1929. The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915–1916: Documents Presented to the Viscount Grey of Fallodon, edited by Sir James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee. London: HMSO, 1916. Retrieved from http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/1915/bryce/a06.htm. United States Official Documents on the Armenian Genocide, Vol. 1, edited by Ara Sarafian. Watertown, MA: Armenian Review Press, 1993. Aboona, Hirmis. Assyrians, Kurds, and Ottomans: Intercommunal Relations on the Periphery of the Ottoman Empire. Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2008. A-Do. Metz depkere Vaspurakanum 1914–1915 tvakannerin [The Great Events in Vaspurakan in 1914– 1915]. Yerevan: Luys, 1917. Akçam, Taner. Insan Haklari ve Ermeni Sorunu: Ittihat ve Terakki’den Kurtulus Savasi’na. Ankara: Imge Kitabevi, 2002. ———. “The Ottoman Documents and the Genocidal Policies of the Committee for Union and Progress (Ittihat ve Terakki) Toward the Armenians in 1915.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 1, no. 2 (2006): 127–48. ———. “Turkey’s Human Rights Hypocrisy.” The New York Times, July 19, 2012. Retrieved from http:// www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/opinion/turkeys-human-rights-hypocrisy.html?_r=0. ———. “The Young Turks and the Plans for the Ethnic Homogenization of Anatolia.” In Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands, edited by Omer Bartov and Eric D. Weitz, 258–79. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013. Alichoran, Joseph. Du génocide à la Diaspora: Les Assyro-Chaldéens au XX siècle. Paris: Revue Istina, 1994. Barton, James L. Story of Near East Relief (1915–1930). New York: Macmillan, 1930. Baum, Wilhelm, and Dietmar W. Winkler. The Church of the East: A Concise History. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. Dadrian, Vahakn N. History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995. Davis, Leslie A. The Slaughterhouse Province. An American Diplomat’s Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1917. New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1989. de Courtois, Sébastien. The Forgotten Genocide: Eastern Christians, the Last Arameans. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2004. Gaunt, David. Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006. Gust, Wolfgang. Der Völkermord an den Armeniern 1915/16: Dokumente aus dem Politischen Archiv des deutschen Auswärtigen Amts. Springe: zu Klampen Verlag, 2005. Hambaryan, Azat. Azatagrakan sharzhumnere Arevmtyan Hayastanum (1898–1908) [The Liberation Movements in Western Armenia (1898–1908)]. Yerevan: Gitutyun, 1999. Hofmann, Tessa. “The Genocide against the Christians in the Late Ottoman Period, 1912–1922.” in The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923, edited by George N. Shirinian, 43–67. Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012. Hovhannisyan, Nicolay. The Armenian Genocide. Yerevan: Zangak 97, 2005. ———. Hayots Tseghaspanutyune tseghaspanagitutyan hayecakargain hamakargum [The Armenian Genocide in the Conceptual System of Genocide Studies]. Yerevan: Zangak, 2002. Joseph, John. The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East: Encounters with Western Christian Missions, Archaeologists, and Colonial Powers. Leiden: Brill, 2000.

Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire | 131 Khosroeva, Anahit. “The Assyrian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire and Adjacent Territories.” In The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 267–74. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2007. Kloian, Richard Diran. The Armenian Genocide: News Accounts from the American Press: 1915–1922. Richmond, CA: ACC Books, 1985. Lepsius, Johannes. Bericht über die Lage des Armenischer Volkes in Türkei. Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1916. ———. Deutschland und Armenian 1914–1918: Sammlung diplomatischer Aktenstücke, Herausgegeben und Eingeleitet. Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1919. Maclean, A. J., and W. H. Browne. The Catholicos of the East and His People. London: SPCK, 1892. Mesrob, Levon. Verabrogner, Der Zor. Paris: P. Elekian, 1955. Mesrop, Sahak. Hayun Taretsuyts [Armenian Calendar]. Constantinople, 1913. Mevlan Zade, Rifat. Osmanyan heghapokhutyan mut tsalkere ev Ittihati hayajinj tsragrere [The Obscure Folds of the Ottoman Revolution and the Ittihad’s Plans for Extermination of the Armenians]. Yerevan: “KPH,” 1990. Miller, William. The Ottoman Empire, 1801–1913. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913. Mkund, Tigran. Amitai ardzaganknere [Amida’s Echos]. New York: Hye Gule Press, 1950. Morgenthau, Henry. Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, edited by Ara Sarafian. Ann Arbor, MI: Taderon Press, 2000. Naayem, Joseph. Shall This Nation Die? New York: Chaldean Rescue, 1921. Nersisian, Mkrtich. Genocid Armyan v Osmanskoi Imperii [The Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire]. Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1966. Ozcan, A. Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain (1877–1924). Leiden, New York, and Cologne: Brill, 1997. Papazyan, Byuzand. Aryunot aperov [By the Bloody Riverside]. Yerevan: Arevik Publisher, 1990. Safrastyan, Ruben. Ottoman Empire: The Genesis of the Program of Genocide (1876–1920). Yerevan: State Commission for Preparation of the 95th Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, 2011. Sargizov, Lev. Assiriytsi stran Blizhnego i Srednego Vostoka [The Assyrians of the Near and Middle East]. Yerevan: Hayastan, 1979. ———. “Druzhba idushchaya iz glubini vekov (Assiriytsi v Armenii)” [A Friendship Coming from Ancient Times (The Assyrians in Armenia)]. Atra (St. Petersburg) 4 (1992): 70–78. Seleznev, Nikolay. Assiriyskaya tserkov Vostoka [The Assyrian Church of the East]. Moscow: ACV, 2001. Shelkovnikov, B. Proiskhozhdenie i sovremenniy bit siro-khaldeyskoy narodnosti [The Origins and Current Life of the Assyro-Chaldean People]. Proceedings of the Caucasian Military Regional Headquarters, no. 3–4 (Tiflis, 1904). Travis, Hannibal. Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2010. ———. “‘Native Christians Massacred’: The Ottoman Genocide of the Assyrians during World War I.” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 1, no. 3 (2006): 327–71. Vardan, Levon. Zhamanakagrutyun haykakan tasnhingi 1915–1923. [The Chronicle of the Armenian Fifteenth 1915–1923]. Beirut: Atlas, 1975. Vryonis, Speros Jr. “Greek Labor Battalions in Asia Minor.” In The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 275–90. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007. Wigram, William Ainger. The Assyrians and Their Neighbors. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1929. Yeramyan, H. Hushardzan Van-Vaspurakani [A Monument to Van-Vaspurakan]. Alexandria: Hushardzan, 1929. Yohannan, Abraham. The Death of a Nation. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916. Yonan, Gabriele. A Forgotten Holocaust: The Extermination of the Christian Assyrians in Turkey and Persia (N.p.: Assyrian International News Agency, 1996), 58-59. Retrieved from http://www.aina.org/books/ lwp.pdf

PART II. DOCUMENTATION AND EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS

CHAPTER FOUR Considering Genocide Testimony Three Case Studies from the Armenian, Pontic, and Assyrian Genocides Paul R. Bartrop

Introduction The uses that can be made of survivor testimony—from any genocidal situation—are many. It can, in fact, be argued that survivor testimonies play the most crucial role in forming our understanding of what life is like at such times. Where the Ottoman genocides of World War I are concerned, testimonial accounts, by virtue of their special status, are our primary links to the atrocities. They are the first-hand narratives of people who lived through the barbarities of the time under discussion. As such, the argument here is that all accounts, regardless of their artistic quality or historical accuracy, nonetheless are vitally important documents that must be considered and respected as historical data. Put simply, there is merit in every survivor account, even those which at first glance would seem to be of little use to the historian. A number of considerations need to be taken into account when assessing survivor testimonies. These are the reminiscences of men and women whom circumstances decreed should be persecuted under inhuman conditions with no guarantee

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of survival. They came from all walks of life, and from all corners of the Ottoman Empire. Their accounts were produced from the perspective of a few months or after the reflection of many years. For the most part, when considering testimonial accounts as sources for future generations, we need also to consider that they were not originally produced in English, and that most people from now onwards—and when the last survivors are gone—will be reading translations into English, rather than the originals. To be sure, very soon there will be no opportunity of follow-up with the survivors themselves. When the last survivors are gone, all we now have is all we are ever going to get.

The Testimonies In this study, I consider three accounts, one each from the Armenian, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek genocides. By way of introduction, it is appropriate that a brief summary of the three accounts be given. The first is from Sevly Krickorian (née Kouyoumdjian).1 Sevly was born sometime in the spring of 1911, in the Armenian village of Jibin. As a child, she was given up for protection by her mother to a Turkish woman, who promised to safeguard her life for as long as she lived—the presumption being that this would not be a lengthy obligation. The motives of the Turkish woman in making this offer are an open question: perhaps it was out of pity; perhaps it was to obtain a daughter; perhaps it was to gain a source of cheap household labor. Regardless, as the account shows, Sevly’s life was saved through this woman’s action. Interviewed in 1972 in Sydney, Australia (to where Sevly had migrated many years after her childhood experiences), the account shows a remarkable recollection of detail as seen through a child’s eyes. The second account to be considered is from the Reverend Joseph Naayem, an AssyroChaldean priest from Urfa in Turkey’s southeast.2 His account, when considered in its totality, makes him one of the key witnesses of the events surrounding the Ottoman destruction of the Assyrians. In 1920, Reverend Naayem wrote a book on his experiences entitled Shall This Nation Die? Containing an account of Naayem’s experiences as well as observations of the genocide of the Armenians and the Greeks, the book includes other first-hand accounts collected from Assyrians to whom Naayem had spoken. It includes a preface by Lord James Bryce (1838–1922), former British ambassador to the United States and the first British statesman to address the issue of genocide in the House of Lords (July 1915). Reverend Naayem’s testimony, in turn, was one of the first major statements alerting an English-speaking audience to the horrors perpetrated against the Assyrians during the Great War. The final account to be considered here relates to one we know only as “Papayiannis.”3 In chronicling the story of Tamama, a Greek girl lost to her family and raised as a Turk in the aftermath of the Pontic Greek genocide, author George Andreadis (b. 1936) uncovered an account of Tamama’s father, a priest named Yiannis (from the Kontanton family). As Papayiannis, or Father John, he was one of the leaders of

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the community of Espye. In this extract, we learn the fate of Papayiannis’s brother Kostas, and of the Pontic community of Espye as it was being forcibly deported to an unknown destination. The major question to be asked, through looking at these accounts, is “what general understanding of genocide can be achieved through reading survivor accounts such as these, and what light do they shed on genocide as experienced by those who lived through it?”

Sevly Krickorian Sevly Krickorian’s testimony describes an occurrence that was not uncommon during the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians (indeed, of any genocide), namely the surrender by mothers of their children to members of the perpetrator group in the hope that the child’s life might be spared. At the beginning of Sevly’s account, we are told that she was only four years old, which immediately brings up a matter of both interest and concern: how much could one so young (a) take in of the events around her, and (b) recall later? The account then deals with Sevly up to the age of eight or nine. We can, perhaps, expect that some of the things she recalled as she got older had a greater ring of authentic memory to them. On the other hand, traumatic images can certainly stay in the forefront of memory for even the youngest children—and Sevly certainly faced some challenging moments. The threat to her life was surely one of these moments. While being handed over by her mother to “the Turkish lady” did not appear to be anything out of the ordinary for Sevly (perhaps suggesting that the two women had known each other previously), she certainly recalled the tug of war between “the Turkish lady” and her two sons over her fate. Although the details might have blurred over time, it can be anticipated that being deposited, sick, in a rock fissure could also have been a memory that would have stayed with her. Beyond that, we are left to wonder how Sevly responded to both separation from her birth mother and adoption by “the Turkish lady.” From the perspective of history, we see from this one example that not all Turks were bloodthirsty killers, and a willingness on the part of “the Turkish lady” to look beyond stereotypes of race or religion for the purpose of saving the child’s life. Sevly even forgot her birth mother (who, as we learn, was named Goldie), and eventually called “the Turkish lady” Mama. The other important recollection we have of Sevly’s experience relates to her awareness of difference—between herself and those around her. She knew, because she was told continually, that she was a gavur, an offensive, derogatory name employed by Muslims in Turkey for non-Muslim “infidels.” This term is used a number of times in her testimony, indicating that she was aware that it meant her relative to everyone else. Alongside this, particularly when she visits the river and is confronted by a mass of bodies in the water, she is able to recognize that the fate of those who are gavurs is death. She understands that at some point this will also mean her.

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Sevly’s recollection of the time her mother returned to reclaim her from “the Turkish lady” is remarkable for its level of detail, but, given the nature of oral testimony, it is probably ex post facto in several instances. Nonetheless, by the time she was older, the images in her memory could have been retained more vividly. Recalling the bombing of Aintab, for example, was likely to have been undemanding, even if the details might have been skewed. The Siege of Aintab, as it became known, was a military engagement between Turkish Nationalist forces and those of the French army between April 1920 and February 1921. It did include air bombardment of the kind mentioned in Sevly’s account. However, substantial anti-Armenian measures had already been adopted by the Turks two years beforehand, with one contemporary account from April 1918 describing the depopulation of the city of its Armenians. It was from this earlier time that Sevly’s recollection of the Chetes (irregular Turkish militia forces) might well have come. Thus, through a child’s eyes, it is likely that the order of events could have become mixed up, even though there is enough detail present to be able to make some sort of sense of the horror that ensued. Moreover, as Sevly was undergoing her final evacuation to safety in Lebanon, she recalled passing through the southern Turkish city of Kilis, from which she boarded trains to Aleppo and then Beirut. The route she describes was no doubt accurate, though it was probably only the names of the towns that Sevly recalled. The main elements of Sevly’s story are the small points of memory that would stay in the mind of a small child growing to maturity: ointment, bucket, river, gavurs, donkey-cart, orphanage, raisins, “a single walnut,” stonemason’s cart, fear. Broader issues might or might not also have been present, but the details of these could well have been conveyed to Sevly later—either related to her by others (for example her cousins), or as a result of subsequent realizations transmitted in other ways. From the point of view of the history itself, we are reminded in this testimony of the establishment of orphanages to shelter Armenian children both during and after the genocide. This key piece of data has an important role to play within the history of the Armenian Genocide, as it was in these orphanages that the majority of the genocide survivors—children—sought sanctuary. At first in the outlying regions of southern Anatolia, and then, increasingly, in Lebanon, thousands of Armenian children found themselves freed from continued persecution. While inadequate when measured by modern-day standards, these places were all the children had, no small matter in a time of war, persecution, and the aftermath of both. Sevly’s account, while problematical in a number of ways (the most important of which is the quality and extent of her childhood recollections), is nonetheless highly evocative of the period of the genocide, and captures something of the horror experienced by a small girl at the events swirling around her. It is also a deeply intimate recounting of a single experience, which, regardless of its complications, is nevertheless a tiny piece in the jigsaw that can help us to generate some small measure of understanding.

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Reverend Joseph Naayem The Assyrian Genocide, or Seyfo, took place at the hands of the Young Turk regime in the Ottoman Empire simultaneously with the Armenian and Pontic Greek genocides. Taken together, it can be said that perhaps up to two million Syriac, Armenian, and Greek Orthodox Christians were murdered at the hands of the Young Turk regime and their Kurdish collaborators. At the start of the twentieth century, the Assyrian population in the Ottoman Empire numbered about one million, and was concentrated largely in what are now Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. The worst of the experiences took place between 1915 and 1918, and, as with the Armenian Genocide, a large proportion of the Assyrian deaths occurred as a result of death marches from their homeland in eastern Anatolia into the Syrian desert. Most of those who died were victims of heat, starvation and thirst, exposure, and incessant brutality at the hands of their captors. The testimony of Father Joseph Naayem, an Assyro-Chaldean priest, is based on his own experiences as well as his observations and conversations with others. First published in New York in 1920, his account narrates the horrors experienced by the Assyrians at the hands of the Turks prior to and during World War I. Both an eyewitness and a participant (as victim) to the events he describes, Fr. Naayem came from the southeastern Turkish city of Urfa, about fifty miles east of the Euphrates River. At the start of World War I, Urfa was home to about 75,000 inhabitants: 45,000 Muslims, 25,000 Armenians, and 5,000 Assyrians. In 1915 and 1916, the Young Turks hit both the Armenians and the Assyrians of Urfa, resulting in an estimated loss to the city’s population of some 40% of the prewar total. As a victim of the genocide, Fr. Naayem’s aim in publishing his account was to inform readers overseas, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States, of events that had been overshadowed by the more general horrors of the war. As we read his testimony, it is difficult to distinguish his experiences from those of Armenian survivors, reflecting the very close parallels between the two genocides. His account, told very personally, gives an indication of just how horrific the suffering of his people was. The account begins with his recognition of the willingness of others to put their well-being at risk in order to help his family. This is a recurrent theme throughout the testimony, reminding readers that, even during these terrible and uncertain times, there were good people who overlooked government directives or the dictates of apparent difference. One of the major factors contributing to the Turkish campaign against its Christian minorities was the prewar commitment to the “Turkification” of the empire. Accompanying this was an Islamic incentive, whereby the Turkish national dimension could be wedded to an Islamic revival for the Caliphate. Accordingly, on October 11, 1914, Sultan Mehmet V (1844–1918; reigned 1909–18) declared jihad against all the Christians living within the empire. The call to holy war was reaffirmed on

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November 14, 1914 by the Sheikh al-Islam (the most senior Islamic cleric in the Ottoman Empire). While this was directed at all Christians, hitting particularly hard at all those of Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek descent, it is interesting that this did not apply to all non-Muslims: the empire’s Jewish population, for example, was overlooked in this call to jihad. Fr. Naayem alludes to this very anomaly in his account. While he refers to the Jews who were assigned the detestable duty of removing the dead bodies from the town, they were not the subject of genocidal action. This is not to say that Jews in the empire were left completely alone. Just as it was for the Armenians in advance of the Russian offensive in 1915, so it was also that the entire civilian population of Tel Aviv and Jaffa was forcibly deported on April 6, 1917 as the British pressed forward their own attack into Palestine. Although Muslim evacuees were soon permitted to return, Jewish evacuees were not allowed to go back until after the British conquest of Palestine in the summer of 1918. Fr. Naayem managed to effect his escape as a result of the assistance of others. Disguised as a Bedouin, he was able to pass relatively undetected among Turkish civilians and soldiers, even though, on the train that would ultimately take him to Aleppo, Syria, he was singled out and harassed as an Arab. The significance of this speaks for itself; while the Ottoman treatment of Christians was obvious, the Turks of this time were also aware of ethnic and racial differences among their fellow Muslims, and categorized them in a thoroughly negative light as a result. This account is important in another respect as well: it shows us how neither the architects of the genocide nor the perpetrators at “ground level” made any distinction between Christians, regardless of whether they were Assyrians, Armenians, or Greeks. For the Turks, all were “infidels,” deserving of their fate. In this lies an important clue as to why they behaved as they did. By combining all groups together without apparent distinction, they were showing their true colors as the destroyers of a specific religious group, despite the fact that their targets were from three distinct (and unrelated) ethnicities.

“Papayiannis” An ethnically Greek population traditionally living in the Pontus region in northeastern Turkey, on the southern shore of the Black Sea, the Pontic Greeks maintained a continuous presence in the area for three millennia. Between 1914 and 1923 they suffered innumerable cruelties at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, during which an estimated 353,000 died, many—like the Armenians and the Assyrians—on forced marches through Anatolia and the Syrian desert. When the Armenian Genocide began in 1915, the persecution of Pontic Greeks, which had already begun in 1913, increased dramatically. Greek businesses were boycotted on government orders, and, proceeding from the justification that the southern Black Sea coast was vulnerable to Russian attack, the government ordered mass

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deportations of Pontic Greeks to the south of the empire, far away from their ancestral lands. As it was with the Armenians and the Assyrians, many of the Greeks ended their lives in the Syrian desert. The city of Trebizond (Trabzon) lies on the Black Sea coast of northeastern Turkey, and was the site of one of the key battles between the Ottoman and Russian armies during the Caucasus Campaign of World War I. In April 1916, the city was captured by Russians, who permitted the area to be governed by local Greek religious and civic leaders. Many Pontic Greeks believed that the Russian presence would last, and that the area of the Pontus would become an autonomous state within the Russian Empire—perhaps even a Republic of Trebizond. Once the province was restored to Turkish control in early 1918 as a result of the Russian Revolution, many Pontic Greeks left Trebizond as the Russians departed. It was then that the whole region became a major killing ground of Armenians, the Greeks having been forced out in 1916. Not too far from Trebizond is the coastal village of Espye (Espiye), where the family of Tamama, headed by Papayiannis, had lived for as long as people could remember. The people of the village clearly had a strong identification with it, and the sense of loss when they were deported, and then saw it burning, is reflective of the importance of “place” to the victims of genocide. In the testimony reconstructed in the story of Tamama, in which we read of her father’s fate, we can understand why it is that the villagers—and, by extension, all such victims—find themselves so disoriented when forced to move so far and so fast from their homes. The account states that “the object of the plan” to deport the Greeks was “obvious.” Deportation of the entire population in the depth of winter, in circumstances of starvation, cold, and illness, continually lengthening the journey when it was expected to be over, was debilitating for those on what rapidly became a death march. Added to this were continual attacks from the feared “Tsetses,” not regular Turkish troops but unsupervised guerrillas. Behind Espye the land rises sharply to the south up into the Giresun Mountains, but there was to be no escaping in that direction. On the morning of Sunday November 16, 1916, “on the way to Golgotha,” the town crier “went around the Greek houses and summoned all the Greeks to gather shortly in front of the church, bringing with them only what they could carry.” At 11 o’clock that morning, the entire population of 480 then began their trek out of the village. As they left, they were able to look back at Espye for the last time. Once they were over the first mountain, and then the next, the sea disappeared. As they turned towards where their village had been, some felt the end had come, the more so when they saw smoke billowing from that direction. Papayiannis took up the rear, as he had waited behind to stay with his sick brother, Kostas. Zaptieh policemen guarded the caravan as they headed south of Espye, but before they had progressed too far, Papayiannis attempted to negotiate with an officer over the fate of Kostas. This was to no avail: everyone from the village was forced to

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leave, even his sick brother who, we learn through the testimony, died as a result of his treatment on the march. The account notes that “The road they had taken was a road without return.” Unfortunately, the events swirling around the children were largely inexplicable. Their vulnerability in circumstances such as war and genocide has always made their situation especially touching, and throughout history they have been among the earliest victims. All too often, children have been deliberately targeted in order to destroy the next generation, and their confusion regarding genocidal violence only serves to enhance their wretched status. On the road out of Espye, “the children could not understand anything.” All they knew was that the road on which they were traveling was where they usually went for their summer holidays—and “they knew it was a road of joy and feast every summer.” The destruction of the Pontic Greeks, and the forcible deportation that followed, had but a single planned outcome: the removal of all Greeks from Turkey. The case of Papayiannis, his family, and his village, is but a cameo in a much bigger drama, but it is illustrative of thousands of similar cases that made up the whole throughout the Greek areas of the Ottoman Empire. Ultimately, the Turkish campaign was successful in that it destroyed forever the ancient Anatolian Greek community. Those who survived were exiled: the largest surviving Greek community, centered on the city of Smyrna (Izmir), was literally pushed into the sea in 1922, with the city razed and thousands killed by the advancing Turkish Nationalist army. By then, though, Papayiannis and most of the villagers of Espye were already long dead.

Assessing Survivor Testimonies A few thoughts on the distinctive quality of survivor testimony are in order at this point. For a start, we must ask whether (and to what degree) we can utilize survivor accounts as though they are accurate pieces of history. For many, this is far from a clear-cut issue; most considerations of survivor testimony actually situate their discussions in the category of literature rather than memoir or autobiography, oblivious to the fact that literature (in the sense of fiction) is precisely what testimonial accounts are not. We therefore need to examine how testimonies may be assessed as sources of history. After all, testimonial accounts are related after the fact, presumably when people such as Sevly, Fr. Naayem, and the narrator of Papayiannis’s account are safely away from the site of persecution. Moreover, such accounts are for the most part not recounted by practiced writers. Usually, a sifting process has taken place in an author’s mind or by an editor’s hand; some elements of memory are sacrificed for the sake of publication, while others are retained and possibly even enhanced for the same reason. This is the nature of survivor testimony, particularly when the objective is to relate the account for the benefit of others.

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Such considerations alert us to a type of memoir that needs to be read differently from other forms of historical documentation. Published survivor accounts are quite clearly “subjectively true,”4 in that they chronicle events either directly witnessed by their authors or told to them by others at the time of their incarceration. It is this truth, and these events, that genocide survivors attempt to impart. What is the historian, coming onto the scene much later, to do with such material? In a celebrated study published in 1976, author Terrence Des Pres addressed this very issue.5 As he saw it, there is a certain dimension of truth in survivor testimony which is absent elsewhere. Once the dry statistical data of a victim’s experience are known—the “why” and “where” elements of an experience, which generally differ from one person to another—the contours of a victim population’s experience can appear remarkably uniform. Survivors aim to tell their stories in as clear a manner as possible, the better to be able to convey to their audience the essence of what they went through. It is quite true that every account should be verified where possible, but often it simply is not possible. During the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews during World War II, an immense amount of historical activity took place. Referring to Jewish communities during that time, historian Jacob Robinson observed, as far back as 1966: The usual course of any particular community is even and uneventful; ordinarily, little of historical significance takes place, except in those rare times when a peak of military, political, intellectual, and moral activity is reached. Thus, on a continental scale, each year brings a few people, a few ideas, a few groups, to the fore. But the era of Nazi oppression was quite different. Then, in the span of only twelve years, every single Jewish community in Europe perforce was faced with the greatest crisis possible to a group—the crisis of existence. Every single Jewish community perforce reached its peak of activity, called upon its deepest spiritual resources, brought forth its ultimate answers to the questions of life and death, of relations between man and God.6 The challenge for the Holocaust scholar—and, by extension, to all scholars of genocide—is thus “to rescue from oblivion a history as eventful and rich as that of a thousand years.”7 In a court of law, such evidence serves a different purpose from that of the historian. To those who would argue that the only standard of proof to be adopted by a scholar should be that found in a courtroom, it must be pointed out that the evidence a judge is looking for is altogether different from that of the historian. In a courtroom, the prosecution, defense, judge, and jury are all looking for specific evidence of a precise type—the kind of evidence that will either acquit or convict a person against whom a certain charge has been brought. The questions asked, therefore, are of a very special nature; generally speaking, they do not look for the textures, smells, sights,

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and contours of a person’s experience, nor do they explore the wider contextual backdrop against which things occurred. The historian of genocide and massive human rights violations not only uses all these things in an effort to reach an understanding of the past; he or she will also permit the survivor to discuss “what made a special impression … at the time.”8 Such testimony is thus based on “an entirely different attitude to events” than that found in a courtroom, and even if it would not always pass for “the truth” as a court would require it, it is nonetheless often more valuable for the historian than the kind of response that questions from a judge or attorney might elicit.9 That said, a point of clarification is in order. As Kurt Y. Ball-Kaduri wrote in an important essay over fifty years ago, “it is impossible to set down theoretical rules for such a selective process” as assessing the value of survivor testimony.10 The historian cannot dismiss a survivor’s impressions of an incident once it is firmly established that the survivor saw it take place. Especially in the field of genocide, there are cases where only one witness has survived, and nevertheless, or even because of this fact, the evidence that person brings is of value, often immensely so. What may we know of such things where no one survived to tell the tale? How does one establish what happened in a community where a population once numbering several thousand has been completely obliterated? From whom does one obtain eyewitness testimony, if all the eyewitnesses have been killed? How does one examine written records, where none were kept? How did genocide manifest itself in these communities? We might never know, but the use of testimony, however fragmentary it might be, will start the process of rescuing history from oblivion, and for this alone, all testimonial accounts are of use. Above all, survivors are mostly interested in conveying to their readers a sense of what happened to them, as they remember it. Do they wish to be seen in a particular light? Perhaps. Is their intention to tell the “truth,” as they understand it? Certainly. Do they hope to compose a particular set of images concerning their persecutors, or humanity in general? Yes. Overall, however, the reflections and reminiscences of genocide survivors are intimate accounts of individual experiences which the survivors wish to share with others. Implanted within this need to tell the story as they know it is a particular consciousness of what surviving is all about. Where genocide survivors are concerned, the need to bear witness is often part and parcel of the reason for survival itself. Survival is a specific kind of experience, and surviving in order to bear witness is one of its forms. It permits the survivor to allow the dead their voice; it serves as a call to humanity, a signal to all those observing of the power of radical evil, a warning for the generations of the future. Thus, many survivors identify a powerful duty to get their story down as accurately as possible. As professor of literature Shoshana Felman has put it, “to bear witness is to take responsibility for the truth.”11 Except in rare cases, survivor accounts do not ask us to try to “imagine” their experience; for the most part, that is not what they are attempting to achieve. For

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many, it is sufficient simply to tell their story, to record, to bear witness, to show that the world in which they lived was in fact all too real. The challenge is not one of “imagining.” Rather, it is of conveying to the world an understanding of what the survivor went through, of explaining the essence of the evil that one group of people inflicted upon another, as seen from the perspective of one who was there as a participant-observer-victim. It is thus necessary to consider every piece of survivor testimony individually, and to assess each on its merits as determined by the historian. What historians make of these accounts must be up to them. This says more about the skills of the historians than it does about the veracity of the survivors, and any scholar contemplating the study of genocide, when utilizing survivor accounts, is counseled to treat the subject with a combination of both rigor and respect. If all we have to go on as we attempt to reach an understanding of the experience of genocide are the personal accounts of survivors, then we must treat these accounts seriously. Lawrence L. Langer, the pre-eminent scholar of survival literature relative to the Nazi Holocaust, takes a different approach. He does not look at survivor testimony from the same perspective as the historian. His major interest is not to consider testimonial accounts as historical documents, but as triggers for the imagination: …the ultimate focus, the one requiring our constant collaboration, must be unambiguous—such art is deceptive and unfaithful if it does not bring us closer to the worst, and beyond the worst—to the unthinkable. Not in tribute to the dead, not to redeem them—but in agonizing confirmation of the catastrophe that consumed them.12 Most importantly for Langer, this confirmation must be recognized and understood by the generations of the future, who will have only published survivor testimonies from which to learn what happened. Elsewhere, Langer has broadened his discussion as follows: The implications of the Holocaust are so bleak that we continue to wrestle with the desperate issue of how best to represent it. That problem still needs to be solved. Literature, history, testimony, commentary, theological speculation—many avenues exist for entering its vestibule, but no two approaches offer identical visions to those who cross the threshold into the landscape of the Holocaust itself.13 There is no “right” or “wrong” way for survivors to remember their experience. Unless one is exploring survivor accounts as literature, I do not think it appropriate to take one or two (or even half a dozen) testimonies as the last word on the subject, unless (as expressed earlier) we have nothing else to go on. As every survivor’s experience was unique and intimate to themselves, we must look at the totality of their experience alongside those of as many of their fellows as we can find, and ask broad questions that might be capable of being narrowed down later.

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How, therefore, may we best employ survivor testimonies when trying to understand the genocidal experience? One way, as I have used in this chapter, is to build a composite picture focusing on certain themes, such as deportation, fear, longing, observation, and the omnipresence of death. These were common to all three of those whose accounts are recalled here. In addition, we can broaden the images out: the maintenance of morale, the trauma of arrest, separation from loved ones, exposure to horror, ways of coping under the terrible strains generated by persecution, the nature of interpersonal relationships, mutual assistance and cooperation, and the struggle to maintain life in the midst of degradation and brutality. In the accounts relating to Sevly Krickorian, Fr. Naayem, and Papayiannis, we see all of these at one time or another, and in this we find a comparative element that links all three through the shared experience of genocidal persecution. Testimonial literature does not attempt to make magic, nor to imagine the unimaginable. Survivors simply try to tell the story from their own individual perspectives, as we see in the examples of Sevly, Fr. Naayem, and Papayiannis. In different ways, each has provided us with a searing account of a hideous encounter with the vilest expression of human malevolence, and in so doing they have enhanced our understanding of the genocidal experience the three communities underwent at the hands of the Ottoman Turks during and after World War I. Paul R. Bartrop is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers and has served as the Ida E. King Distinguished Visiting Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey. His published works include Encountering Genocide: Personal Accounts from Victims, Perpetrators, and Witnesses (2014); Genocide: The Basics (2014); An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Genocide Biography: Portraits of Evil and Good (2012), which was awarded recognition by Choice as “Outstanding Academic Title 2013”; Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide (2010), The Genocide Studies Reader (2009); and A Dictionary of Genocide (2 vols) (2008). In addition, he has published numerous scholarly articles in journals and books. Among his honors and awards are “Friend of the Armenian Community, 2008” and “Assyrian Community of Victoria Excellence Award, 2011,” both in his home country of Australia.

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Appendix: The Three Accounts Sevly Krickorian At the start [of the genocide] I was only a small girl, about four years old. I remember that a Turkish lady came to my mother and said to her: “Give me this child so I can look after her when you go. When you go ‘there,’ you’re all going to die, but at least this child won’t die.” This much I know. It was towards evening; my mother picked me up and gave me to this lady. The lady put me on her back and took me to her village. Four days later, I got the measles. The lady had two sons who were older than me. They said to her: “We don’t want this gavur here. We’re going to take this gavur and throw her into the Euphrates.” The lady said: “She’s sick. Wait until she dies, and then you can throw her in.” They said: “No, we’ll throw her in now.” The river wasn’t far away from the house, and so the lady told her sons: “Give her back to me, and I’ll give it [her] to someone else.” She fought with them to take me back, and then hid me in a little alcove in some rocks, just big enough for me to fit into. She put down hessian for me to sit on. To cover me, she put some rocks in front as a “door,” so no one could see me and so that stray dogs could not get to me. I remained there but at the time I didn’t know how long I would be there. The children of my father’s sister lived in the same village. My cousins were older than me, and knew where I was. They said “Let’s go and see if Sevly’s still alive.” They came to the alcove; not only did they find me alive, but there were two dogs with me, licking my face! Seeing that I hadn’t died, my cousins returned home. The next day the Turkish lady came and put ointment onto my measles spots. She said “You’re still alive. When you’ve died I’ll throw you into the river.” I stayed there for a month. My cousins told me this afterwards; this is how I know how long I was there for. One day the Turkish lady came to see me again. Seeing that I was still alive, she decided to take me back home with her. But her sons still didn’t like me being there. She had a small kitchen with no windows and no light. She wrapped me up in that place in potato sacks. I was still sick; altogether I remained sick for about a year. After this, wherever the Turkish lady went, she would put me on her back and take me with her. This kept me away from her two sons. She must have been a God-fearing woman; I don’t know. But from then on, I would help her in her daily chores, while she would always protect me. When I was about seven years old she said to me: “Go and get me some water from the Euphrates.” I went down to the river with a little bucket, and saw things floating in the river. They looked like people floating, but that didn’t register. There was another little girl next to me, and in Turkish I said to her: “What are these?” She responded: “These are gavurs.” She said that when the Turks threw gavurs into the river, or people threw themselves in, they came floating down to here. The

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Turks would stand on the bank of the Euphrates with a hook on a stick, and drag the dead bodies to the shore to loot them. I saw this. If there was any gold, they would take it and then throw the bodies back in. After seeing this, I dropped my little bucket and ran into the water. The little Turkish girl said: “All the gavurs are going, you should go there too.” She motioned with her hands the direction I should go. So I screamed, and ran back crying to the Turkish lady. I just left the bucket somewhere in the water. When I told her I had lost the bucket, she came down with me to retrieve it. Pointing to the bodies, I said to the Turkish lady: “Mama, what are these?” She said: “These are gavurs.” Then she took me home. When I was eight years old, I had been there for four years. By this stage I didn’t remember anybody from my family. I didn’t know my mother or father or anyone else. One day I saw a lady come to the house. She wanted to hug me; she said: “I am your mother.” I said: “I don’t know you. This is my mother,” pointing to the Turkish lady. She tried very hard to get me to come to her and hug and cuddle her, but I kept running back to the Turkish lady’s side. My mother came back three or four times, but the Turkish lady didn’t want to give me up, either. When my mother came back the fourth time, the Turkish lady said: “She was sick for a year and I took care of her. Now she belongs to me.” My natural mother’s name was Goldie. The next time she came, she brought some candy with which to try to bribe me. She told the Turkish lady: “I concede that she’s yours. But can I take her for a couple of days? I’ll bring her back.” The Turkish lady said: “Since you’re desperate, you can take her for a couple of days and then bring her back.” Remember, I’m eight years old. I know what’s happening. I said to my natural mother in Turkish, “Are you going to bring me back in two days’ time?” Goldie said, “If you can see behind your ear, I’ll take you back home.” The Turkish lady let me go for a couple of days. I was crying, and tried to look behind my ear so I would go back. Then I was on the road out of the village. When I realized that I was not going to go back, I cried. Goldie took me to her little house. There was nothing in it. The Turks had taken away everything. We slept on grass matting. The next day the Turkish lady and her two sons came to take me back. Goldie convinced them that I would only stay with her for a couple of days, so they went away again. In Aintab, where we were, there were donkey-drawn carts going back and forth all day carrying people; there were no buses in those days. Goldie, looking for a way to escape with me, sent word to my step-brother Jack (Hagop), saying: “I rescued your little sister from these people. They are trying to take Sevly away from me. I need to find an escape route to get her out of here.” Jack immediately wrote back: “Don’t dilly dally, send her here to the Aintab orphanage.” My godfather then tried to smuggle me onto a donkey taking a load through Aintab, but it didn’t work—so he agreed to take me on his back to the orphanage in Aintab.

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This was a two-day journey from the village where we were. But when we arrived and he handed me over to Jack, he learned that all the orphanages were already full of displaced children. After a desperate search, he found a refuge (not an orphanage) for women and children who had been ravished by the Turks. This was a reception center for displaced people. You only got food once a day, and the camp was packed to the brim. Many of these people had come from previously affluent families, but they were now crammed into this awful space. Jack managed to leave me there for safety’s sake. Fortunately, the doorkeeper was a relative, a cousin. Jack entrusted me to the care of an older Armenian woman, a widow, and left. I don’t know how long I was in that camp. One day Jack arrived and said to me: “Come with me, little sister. I’ve found an orphanage for you.” In that orphanage I was safe and happy. We eat, we drink, we sleep comfortably. We know we’ve been rescued from the atrocities. Then, out of the blue, bombs came. Aintab was attacked. The war against the Armenians had arrived in Aintab, as the Turks began dropping bombs onto the orphanages. The Turks knew the orphanages contained women and children, and they were trying to kill us in order to make sure the Armenians wouldn’t breed into the next generation. We children were herded into underground cellars for safety. Here, there was little food. All we had were small quantities of raisins—and a single walnut for each child. The baking kilns were outside, so we couldn’t get any bread, nor could we get any water. I don’t know how long we stayed in these bunkers. Soon after this it was decided to evacuate Aintab. We had to wait until sunset. They gave us special sandals for our feet and on our backs a sling bag, into which they put food which we were to eat on the road: koftas, walnuts and some raisins. Our transport was carts used by stonemasons, into which were placed ten girls and one adult for supervision. We had to travel through a cemetery, each of us in a line as we passed through. It was very emotional, but we sang a made-up song to keep our spirits up and give us courage. I don’t remember it exactly, but the gist of it was “Bad Turks, go away,” or something like that. We had gone some distance when we got word that the bridge we had to cross into safety had been pulled down, and we were surrounded. We were taken out of the carts and sent up a nearby hill to hide. With us were other families, including men. By daylight the able-bodied men had repaired the bridge enough to enable us to cross, carts and all, with us inside them again. The Chetes, local militia forces employed by the Turks, were now after us, too. We knew the Chetes were out to kill us. Then we saw four Allied planes above us; they bombed the Chetes, and we managed to continue our journey. We went to Kilis, a village in Cilicia, and they put us in a church—there were no beds and nothing to cover us, but we got lovely fresh bread and cheese, brought by the Armenian townsfolk of Kilis. That night we slept under the columns of the Armenian church.

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In the morning we woke up and were told we would be catching a train to Aleppo. Two days later, we boarded the trains, but we didn’t travel in the carriages; we were in the wagons set aside for donkeys and cattle to travel in. It was about dawn when we arrived in Aleppo. We thought that would be our final destination, but, staying only one night, we passed through it instead en route to Beirut. When the people of Aleppo heard that the orphanage children had been saved, they came out to greet us with lots of food for the trip. We ate with happiness. We didn’t know how much food we could consume; we were just so happy to eat. The next morning, we continued on to Beirut. When we got there, there were no houses for us, just big tents. Each and every one of us was given something to drink (I didn’t know what it was, but we had to drink it; I think it was a medicine of some sort). For the next twenty-four hours, we all slept. Maybe that’s what the drink was, a sleeping potion of some sort. We were all so scared, all nervous and frightened, that we needed something to calm us … Soon we moved to a proper orphanage… This is my life. But what my mother went through was tenfold worse. Source: Interview by Hasmig Ziflian with Sevly Krickorian, Chatswood (Sydney, Australia), 1972, in the possession of Mrs Krickorian’s granddaughter, Silva Nercessian; translation by Silva Nercessian, July 8, 2012.

Joseph Naayem We received the news of my father’s murder early in August 1915. That very evening one of my brothers, Djemil, who had come from Aleppo to Urfa some days before, fled on horseback with some companions back to Aleppo in fear. At Tell Abyadh he encountered Sallal, the son of an Arab Sheikh who was a friend of the family, whom he begged to return to Urfa with our horses and rescue the rest of the family. Three days later some English civilian prisoners employed at the Ottoman Bank in the Administration of the Public Debt, obtained permission to leave the town, and despite the risk they ran, very kindly took with them in their carriage two of my brothers, George, aged thirteen, and Fattouh, who was two years older. Thus there remained in Urfa only my two youngest brothers and my mother. Soon after Saltal, accompanied by Aziz Djenjil, a very brave and devoted Christian employee of ours (dressed as a Bedouin) arrived, and took the rest of the family, excepting Emine and me, to Tel-Albiad. The stationmaster, another friend, put them in the train for Aleppo… My brother Emine and I remained at Urfa, where the arrests continued, several of my friends and acquaintances being taken and massacred. On August the 19th a police agent with some soldiers went to the house of an unfortunate Armenian to take him into custody. Determined not to be trapped without making an effort to defend himself, the man knowing that arrest meant death, shot and killed the policeman and two soldiers. Armed Turks rushed through the markets and streets, killing all the Christians they encountered. Some managed

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to save themselves by hiding. Many took refuge in the presbytery. My brother Emine, who had been obliged to go to the bank, had the greatest difficulty in reaching me. The streets were strewn with the bodies of the six hundred Christians killed that night, and their blood literally ran in the streets. The murderers steeped their hands in the steaming gore and made imprints on the walls that bordered the streets. In this frightful orgy English and French civilians, some of whom had been interned at Urfa a month previously, also perished. Several of them who happened to be in the streets at the moment of the outburst were taken back by soldiers to their homes, lest the populace should fall upon them by error. One of them, a Frenchman of Aleppo, M. Germain, had his throat cut by the ruffians. A Maltese who was pursued and stoned took refuge in the house of a Christian and was saved. Two hours after the firing had ceased, I mounted to the roof to see what was happening in the streets, and noticed that the police, instead of calming the fanaticism of the Turks, were inciting them to renew the massacre. Not until all the Christians who were discovered in the shops or in the streets had been killed was an order issued to end the carnage. In the evening, all was quiet, but no Christian dared show himself and the Armenians prepared to defend themselves, barricading their premises. But the cowardly murderers were afraid and attempted no further harm. The next morning I heard cries in a little lane near our house where there was an oil press. A moment later I saw a Turk named Moutalib leave his house and make off in the direction of the cries. Half an hour later I saw him return with his dagger stained with blood, proud of his work, laughing and shouting: “Hiar Guibi Kestim” (“I chopped him up like a cucumber!”). The victims were two workmen who had hidden themselves in the oil press. The Turks, under pretence of saving them, had succeeded in making them come out into the streets, where they cut their throat, stamped on their heads and dragged their bodies along the ground. It was the duty of the Jews to drive carts and pick up the dead bodies and throw them outside the town to the dogs and birds of prey. (This sinister duty had been imposed upon the Jews by the Turks during the massacre of the Christians.) In the afternoon, a soldier, accompanied by the porter from the Bank, came by order of the Manager, M. Savoye, for my brother, Emine, who returned to the Bank, where he resided. There he was safe, the establishment being guarded by the police. Towards ten o’clock I saw the Governor himself, Haidar Bey, passing through the streets with the Chief of Police, to show that he had no official cognizance of any disturbance, and to prove to the Christians that order had been restored, and that they could come out without fear. M. Savoye, I should like to state, displayed the highest courage during these terrible days in the way he helped our family in our extremity. We owe him the warmest debt of gratitude.

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Sallal, our Bedouin friend, had promised to return as soon as he had taken my mother and brother to a place of safety and the day after the massacre he came to see me at the Presbytery. Being now alone, I was in danger of arrest every moment, and decided to take to flight. It was a hazardous undertaking, but I was determined to make the attempt. Urfa had become a very hell! Muffling myself in Bedouin robes, I prepared to leave with Sallal. The town was not yet quite calm, and Christians remained shut up in their houses, fearful of new out-bursts, although every one of prominence among them had already been executed. About five hundred Christian soldiers employed on the construction of roads near the town had also been put to death. One alone escaped. In giving me an account of his experiences, he declared that the officers were keeping in their tents young Christian girls, stolen from the convoys. He spoke in particular of one very beautiful Chaldean girl from Diarbekir, kept as a prostitute, and passed from one Turk to another. By a miracle the girl survived and is living today in Urfa. At seven o’clock of the evening of August the 21st, 1915, Sallal came, and I bade farewell to my friends, including Father Emmanuel Kacha, who stayed behind with his family. Hurrying through the almost deserted streets, we reached the house of one of my relatives, where I donned the costume of a Bedouin. This consisted of a long widesleeved shirt of white linen, an “aba” (a sleeveless cloak of camel hair) and on my head I wore a “tcheffie” (a headdress, square in shape, with long fringe, surmounted by an “agal” a kind of camelhair crown). As I spoke Bedouin a little, I was not likely to be recognized. Near the edge of the town we met a police agent and two soldiers, who seemed to be waiting for us. The valiant Sallal, who was armed with a large sword and a revolver and was a man of great height, advanced fearlessly. We both salaamed profoundly and passed on, our salute being returned. A hundred yards further on, my companion remarked that we had just had a very narrow escape. At the house of a friend outside the town we found our two horses, and took the road to Tell Abyadh… [W]e rode at a gallop to Tell Abyadh. There I met several of my parishioners, who were in the service of the Baghdad Railway Company, and was taken to the house of one of them, M. Youssouf Cherchouba, who received me in a very friendly spirit… I knew the telegraph operator of the Railway Company, M. Dhiab, and on expressing a desire to see him, was taken to his office by George Khamis, one of my Chaldean parishioners. Circassian Guards, of whom the Railway employees were in deadly fear, were posted at the station. Had they suspected me, I should have found myself in considerable danger. The operator was very much astonished to see a Bedouin, and wondered what one could want with him. He was still more astonished when he found that the Bedouin spoke and understood French. He was

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the friend who had assisted to smuggle my mother and brothers through, and it might be compromising for me to remain in his office dressed as a Bedouin [who] was unable to change, as Sallal had left my clerical dress on the road, so I hid until the evening train left. An Arab had been notified, and for baksheesh (a bribe) hid me in a neighboring village … When night came the Arab took me back to the station, where I hid in a building until the arrival of the Aleppo train. My friend, the telegraph operator, came to an understanding with the conductor, receiving a guarantee that I should be taken safe and sound to Aleppo for a stipulated sum of money, which I readily paid. I was put aboard a cattle truck, which had not been cleaned since its prior load had been unshipped, so gave off a very disagreeable odor. The train stopped and through the crack in the doors I saw a guard approach my truck. It was the conductor to offer me a place in a first-class carriage. Because of my dress, I asked him to let me travel third-class, but a brakesman, who noticed us conversing and who suspected our agreement, at Arab Punar forcibly put me into an open truck, during the absence of the conductor. At this place we took on deported families of English and French civilians, going from Urfa to Aleppo. At the next stop, the first guard returned me to my compartment in the coach, which was shared with some invalid soldiers and some Turks from Urfa. The latter commenced to make fun of me, as is their custom with Bedouins, but I pretended to be asleep. We arrived in Aleppo at ten o’clock the next morning. Source: Joseph Naayem, Shall This Nation Die? (New York: Chaldean Rescue, 1920); republished by Assyrian International News Agency, http://www.aina.org/books/stnd.htm

“Papayiannis” When you deliberately deport a whole population in the depths of winter and you drive them to annihilation through starvation, cold and illness. When on top of this, the fifty kilometres, become two hundred, then the object of the plan is obvious. And the plan is proved to be even more despicable when in places every 20 kilometers along the expected route along which the procession of the deportees is travelling, hidden tsetses are waiting in ambush, as if by chance and fall on hapless Christians to slaughter them. Ten such deportations took place at different times from Samsun towards the south. They were waiting for them at Seytan Deresi (Devil’s Valley). Screams and shouts rent the air. Very few escaped and these were the seriously injured, who were assumed to be dead, or some who succeeded in escaping into the mountains around there. Human wrecks, eye witnesses to the crime, arrived in Mersin on the south coast of Turkey and made their way from there to Greece after having crossed the whole of Turkey, after months of wandering. The villages of Kavak and Havza outside Samsun were burnt to the ground. Houses with people in them

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were burnt and the two villages were wiped out. In total 350,000 people lost their lives prematurely, due to various causes, before the exchange of populations. That is half the Greeks of the Black Sea. The news reached Espye on the morning of Sunday 16th November. The town crier went around the Greek houses and summoned all the Greeks to gather shortly in front of the church, bringing with them only what they could carry. Turkish drovers with beasts of burden would undertake the transportation of more belongings, for those who could pay. The Christians gathered a short time later. Papayiannis arrived last, because his brother Kostas had been ill for two days with a fever and wanted his help. Grim looking zapties who were strangers stood on the steps of Saint George’s church and they were to accompany the deportees for a distance of 50 kilometers south of Espye, according to the plan. The Turkish drovers bargained with those who had money to pay their demands for the carriage. Papayiannis went directly to a mounted officer, who seemed to be in charge of the whole affair. He told him that his brother Kostas was ill with a fever and asked if he could stay at home with his wife, Eleni. The officer did not even look him in the eye but said grimly that Kostas must come at the double, so that they could set off before noon to be in time to get to their first stop, before nightfall, for their first overnight stay. The days had already shortened and it went dark early. With his head down, Papayiannis went to his brother’s house, lifted his sick brother out of bed and with his sister in law Eleni, arrived in the church yard. All Christian Espye was there. 480 souls who set off at 11 o’clock on Sunday 16th November 1916 on the way to Golgotha. The road they followed, ironically, was the road they used to follow on their journey to the summer huts, every June. The road of joy and pleasure was to become the road of martyrdom. Bent under the weight of the burdens they were carrying, old people, sick people, children, all together and next to them the beasts of burden and the gendarmes. The latter had come along to ensure safety in case they should pass through Muslim villages, where the enraged Muslims might commit acts of vengeance for the evil that the Christians had done to Turkey. In all this tragedy, things looked innocent enough. As he left Espye, Papayiannis was weeping. He did not know where they were being taken and they all expected him to keep them informed. As they went up the southern slopes nobody looked around at Espye and the sea. They had not even gone half an hour’s journey from Espye when the sound of a shot in the village was heard. Then silence. They stopped momentarily and then carried on with their march. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon. They had already walked for more than 20 kilometers. Then, they stopped at a lovely spring. This was the spring at which they always stopped on their way to the summer huts. Cheerfully and to the sound of the kementze, they would drink water, freshen their faces and carry on. But now, neither cheers, nor kementzes. It was cold and nobody was in the mood. From this spot you could see Espye for the last time. After this the mountain sloped away and then one mountain followed the other and nobody could see the sea

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any more. They all turned their eyes towards Espye, instinctively. They were seized by a vague fear, that perhaps they were never to see Espye again. For the ones who were old, or ill, this fear was certain. The sun had already gone down and set in the Black Sea. And what did they see? The whole of their neighbourhood had gone up in smoke. Their Espye was on fire. Their world was on fire. Papayiannis wept, turned his head forward and never looked back again. What had happened? The Christians had taken whatever they could carry with them and then double locked their doors and windows. The officer had reassured them, that there was no reason why they should be anxious about their property. Only they should take with them what they needed. The state would look after their houses and their property. Besides they would not be going very far. Only fifty kilometers and just for the short period till the war was finished with the drunken Russians. He did not tell them that they would be going more than 200 kilometers over the mountains to Sivas, the old Sevasteia, that their belongings would be stolen and their houses burnt. God knows if he even knew these things himself. Anyway, he reassured them about everything and so they set off from Espye… The road they had taken was a road without return. The adults understood a lot, but the children could not understand anything. Without care they followed the crowd. The road they were on was their familiar road for the summer huts; they knew it was a road of joy and feast every summer. Why is nobody celebrating now, why are the adults crying and with tears in their eyes they look back at Espye now that we are at the spring? These things are inexplicable to the young children. But fear had entered their young souls, because on this occasion something strange was happening. The gendarmes, who accompanied them had become fierce and pushed the villagers with their guns to make them hurry up and set off, so that they would arrive in time at their destination for that day. Their destination was an inn, a short distance from the road to the summer huts, about seven hours’ travelling distance from Espye. When they arrived at the inn, they were all exhausted, hungry and frozen. They built rough fires to get warmer while outside the sleet continued to fall. They spread out their wet clothes round the fires. They ate dry pieces of bread and whatever they had ready with them and bundled up they lay down to sleep on the floor inside the inn. First they settled Uncle Kostas, who was exhausted from his fever and only wanted to drink some water. Because of their great exhaustion, they fell deeply asleep at once. Not even two hours had passed when a loud noise awakened them. The children did not wake even with the noise. The adults went outside the inn to see what the noise was. Papayiannis went outside with them. Kostas did not even open his eyes in his exhaustion. His wife moistened his lips with a little water. It was chaos outside the inn. Christian deportees from the villages around Tripolis had arrived in convoys from their exile. Where could so many people be accommodated and outside the cold and sleet continued. Fortunately tiredness cut short the noise and quarrelling. Everybody lay down wherever they could and in a short time a deadly hush prevailed.

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The morning of 17th November dawned with clear skies and shining sun. Everybody knew that they were exiled 50 kilometers. Courageously, they faced the sun, which would help them a great deal on the remaining fifty kilometers of their journey of exile. The zapties shouted to wake the children until the march of the exiles started again. Suddenly screams were heard inside the inn. It was Aunt Eleni, the wife of Kostas. When she had gone to waken her husband, it was too late. Kostas was not alive, that same night he departed for ever breathing his last in the inn. He was the first victim from Espye on the Golgotha of exile. Papayiannis wept for his only brother. The zapties allowed a short delay for the burial of luckless Kostas. Fifty metres away from the inn, on the slope of the mountain, where the soil was softer, they opened a makeshift grave and Papayiannis read the funeral service in tears and then they covered him with earth. As they were leaving the inn Papayiannis, with tears in his eyes, looked back, once more at the grave of his beloved brother. Source: George Andreadis, Tamama, the Missing Girl of Pontos (Athens: Gordios, 1993), 78–86.

Notes 1. Interview by Hasmig Ziflian with Sevly Krickorian, Chatswood (Sydney, Australia), 1972, in the possession of Mrs Krickorian’s granddaughter, Silva Nercessian; translation by Silva Nercessian, July 8, 2012. 2. Joseph Naayem, Shall This Nation Die? (New York: Chaldean Rescue, 1920); republished by Assyrian International News Agency, http://www.aina.org/books/stnd.htm. 3. George Andreadis, Tamama, the Missing Girl of Pontos (Athens: Gordios, 1993), 78–86. Every effort has been made to obtain permission from copyright holders to reproduce this material. Given the resources available to us, this has not been possible at this time. We have acted in good faith at all times, and any queries relating to copyright in this content should be referred to the editor of this volume for immediate attention. 4. Kurt Y. Ball-Kaduri, “Evidence of Witnesses, Its Value and Limitations,” Yad Vashem Studies 3 (1959): 79. 5. Terrence Des Pres, The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). 6. Jacob Robinson, “Research on the Jewish Catastrophe,” Jewish Journal of Sociology 8, no. 2 (December 1966): 192. 7. Ibid. 8. Ball-Kaduri, “Evidence of Witnesses,” 82. 9. Ibid., 82–83. 10. Ibid., 89. 11. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York: Routledge, 1992), 204. 12. Lawrence L. Langer, “The Writer and the Holocaust Experience,” in The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Genocide, ed. Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton (Millwood, NY: Kraus International, 1980), 322. 13. Lawrence L. Langer, Admitting the Holocaust: Collected Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 180.

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Bibliography Andreadis, George. Tamama, the Missing Girl of Pontos. Athens: Gordios, 1993. Ball-Kaduri, Kurt Y. “Evidence of Witnesses, Its Value and Limitations.” Yad Vashem Studies 3 (1959): 79–90. Des Pres, Terrence. The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge, 1992. Langer, Lawrence L. Admitting the Holocaust: Collected Essays. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. ———. “The Writer and the Holocaust Experience.” In The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Genocide, ed. Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, 209-322. Millwood, NY: Kraus International, 1980. Naayem, Joseph. Shall This Nation Die? New York: Chaldean Rescue, 1920. Robinson, Jacob. “Research on the Jewish Catastrophe.” Jewish Journal of Sociology 8, no. 2 (December 1966): 192–203.

CHAPTER FIVE THE ASSYRIAN ISSUE 1914-35 Australian Documents and Press Stavros T. Stavridis

The Assyrians are an ancient people with a long and proud history stretching back to the dawn of human history. Their modern compatriots, however, endured persecution, discrimination, deportation, massacres, and forced Islamization during the time of the Ottoman Empire. Their greatest period of suffering occurred during World War I, and they did not fare any better with the creation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, or the establishment of the Iraqi state in 1932. Assyrians lived in the Mardin, Diyarbakir and Hakkari regions located in eastern Turkey, Mosul in northern Iraq, and Urmia, Tabriz, and Hamadan in northwest Persia (Iran). Thousands ended up as refugees in Baqubah, situated south of Baghdad, at the end of the Great War with the assistance of British, Canadian, and Australian officers. The British imperial force helped them reach safety, thus avoiding reprisals from the Turkish army and Kurdish tribes in northwest Persia in 1918. The Assyrians are identified by their religious denomination, such as Chaldeans, Nestorians, Jacobites, Syriacs and Mandeans, rather than their ethnicity. The terms “Assyrian” and “Syrian” will be used interchangeably, as they appear in both official Australian sources and newspaper accounts during World War I and to a lesser extent in the post-1919 period. Some Assyrians who belong to the Catholic Maronites and Melkites registered their place of birth as Mt Lebanon in Syria.1 For convenience, they will be referred to as Assyrians in order to avoid confusion in terminology.

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This study is based on official documents from the National Archives of Australia, Australian War Memorial (AWM) collections in Canberra, and Australian press reports outlining how the Assyrian issue unfolded in Australia and overseas during the turbulent years 1914–35. The thoughts and actions of important individuals, along with the political, military, diplomatic, and strategic decisions of the interested governments of Great Britain and Australia, and also the League of Nations, which had an interest in the Assyrian issue, are examined. During World War I, Assyrians in Australia were designated as Ottoman subjects who were required to register as enemy aliens under the War Precautions Act. This regulation greatly restricted their movement throughout Australia. Failure to notify and gain the permission of Australian authorities when traveling outside their district would result in a fine and even possible incarceration. They were spared internment if they pronounced loyalty to the British Empire and Christianity. The chief issue that preoccupied Assyrians from 1919 to 1933 was the creation of an autonomous enclave in northern Iraq under the protection of Great Britain. This dream was never realized, as Great Britain was more interested in strengthening and maintaining its political, economic, strategic, and commercial interests in Iraq. The Assyrians felt betrayed by the British, whom they had assisted during the Great War. An appeal by Sydney-based feminist and humanitarian Edith Glanville to allow displaced Assyrians to migrate to Australia after what they had endured since 1914 was rejected by Canberra. Australia could have provided a safe haven for them by filling the vast empty spaces of northern Australia, but instead chose not to accept them on economic grounds.

An Overview of the Australian Press The Sydney Gazette (1803–42) was the first newspaper published “By Authority” in the colony of New South Wales. The colonial authorities were able to use direct and indirect methods to overcome press opposition. The direct method involved demand for securities, libel actions, and contempt of court or Parliament. With the indirect approach, the government could punish or favor the press by the manipulation of press contracts. It could also withdraw or grant government advertising or contracts. The removal of censorship witnessed an increase in the number of newspapers during the 1830s, and generally the Australian press was “unburdened by newspaper and advertisement taxes, permitting Colonial newspapers [to start] off with advantages denied to their British counterpart.”2 The only other time that restrictions applied to the Australian press in the period studied here was during World War I. The War Precautions Act of 1914, modeled on the British Defence of the Realm Act, gave the Australian government wide-ranging powers for “preventing individuals from communicating with the enemy,” “securing the safety of communications,” “deporting or interning of aliens,” and “inspecting,

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impounding, or retention of books, documents and papers.” This empowered the Commonwealth to censor newspapers for the duration of the war.3 Reuters had the monopoly on providing news services and information for the entire British Empire, which shows the dependence of the Australian press on British news sources until the 1920s.4 The submarine cable linked Australia to the outside world in December 1872, after the proprietors of The Argus and Sydney Morning Herald attended a Reuters board conference in London. They stated that they wanted to receive British news direct from London and not from the Reuters agent in Sydney.5 From this emerged the Australian Associated Press (AAP), with The Argus, Sydney Morning Herald, and Adelaide Register being its founding members. Sir Lachlan Charles Mackinnon of The Argus returned from London in May 1877 having failed to convince The Times (London) management to have its news cabled to Australia. This failure, however, gave Reuters through AAP the means of supplying world news to the entire Australian press, which assisted in reducing the isolation of the Australian colonies and the future Commonwealth of Australia.6 In order to overcome their differences, members of the AAP in 1895 concluded an agreement with rival syndicate companies The Age, Daily Telegraph, and Adelaide Advertiser, which established the United Cable Association (also known as the Australian Press Association). This paved the way for news to be sent by Australian representatives in London back to Australia, which served three purposes: firstly, the representatives reported on news affecting the British Empire; secondly, they sent news items that were important for each colony and later the Australian Commonwealth, which portrayed British decision-making in a favorable light; and finally, they sent reports expressing loyalty towards and sympathy for the British point of view in world affairs.7 During the course of World War I, The Argus sought to reduce its dependence on Reuters by concluding agreements with the Morning Post, Central News and Exchange Telegraph, United Press Service, and New York Times, which gave it greater access to news sources.8 L. L. Robson, in his book Australia and the Great War, uses The Argus a good deal. He says, “this is because the paper was comprehensive and because it was published in Melbourne, the seat of the Federal Government and Defence Department. Much material published in the Argus was in the form of official statements which appeared in most dailies.”9 For a time, The Argus was Australia’s most eminent newspaper, before its final demise in 1957.

World War I, 1914–18: The Assyrian Experience in Australia When the Ottoman navy shelled Russian naval fortifications in the Black Sea during late October 1914, it signaled the former’s entry into World War I on the side of the Central Powers: Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Entente—Britain, France, and Russia—responded in early November by declaring war on Turkey. On November 7, 1914, Governor General Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson issued a proclamation that all

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Ottoman subjects resident in Australia had to report to the police. This meant that the police had to report “the names, addresses, occupations and apparent ages of all Turkish subjects in their districts.”10 All Ottoman subjects—Greeks, Assyrians, and Armenians—were to be treated as enemy aliens. If they demonstrated to Australian authorities opposition to the Ottoman state, then they could be exempted from internment, whereas other enemy aliens such as Germans, Austrians, Turks, Hungarians, and later Bulgarians were interned for the duration of the war.11 There are, however, Australian press reports highlighting the release of Assyrians from internment by order of the Minister of Defence, George F. Pearce, in late January 1915.12 Assyrians were later exempted from internment but still required to register under the War Precautions Act 1914 as enemy aliens and could not freely move around from one locality to another without previously informing Australian authorities. The Australian government introduced a variety of forms, such as Forms A (Application for Registration), B (Certificate of Registration), and E (Notice of Change of Abode), to monitor the movement of Assyrians during the Great War.13 For instance, if an Assyrian changed his/her address in Melbourne or Sydney or simply visited someone outside their district without informing the authorities, they could be fined and imprisoned under the wartime regulations. Two examples will be cited to highlight the application of these regulations. First, a clergyman named Nicola Shlade was fined five shillings at Redfern Police Court (Sydney) for failing to register as an alien (Form A) and failing to notify a change of address (Form E) in October 1917.14 Second, Michael Mansour Fakhrey was arrested for traveling to New South Wales from Victoria without a permit in August 1918. He failed to notify the military authorities or police of his movements and was “fined £2 or one month hard labour at Wagga Wagga Police Court on 15 August 1918.”15 For the entire 1914–18 period, there were four press accounts, published on March 29 and 30, 1915, and April 18 and May 1, 1916, that describe the suffering of the Assyrians. On March 29 and 30, 1915, the Warwick Examiner and Times and Clarence and Richmond Examiner mention Dr Packard of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, who risked his life unfurling the American flag, saving some three thousand Assyrian lives. It is also stated that some fifteen thousand sought refuge in the Urmia mission to escape the brutality of the Turks and Kurds. There is no mention in the news report of the Russian force being withdrawn from Urmia, but readers were alerted that some twelve thousand Assyrians sought refuge in the Caucasus. These fortunate Assyrians were able to leave with the Russian army.16 On April 18, 1916, the West Gippsland Gazette, quoting the San Francisco Examiner, revealed that fifty thousand Nestorians and other Assyrians were slaughtered by Kurds because they happened to be Christians. Australian readers were told that the Nestorians, a Christian sect, lived in the mountainous regions of Persia which afforded them protection from Muslims. Furthermore, Nestorian suffering was hidden from the international community, compared to the extensive reporting of Armenian

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deportations and massacres. This news report makes it very clear that the Russian withdrawal placed the Assyrians at the mercy of the Kurds. Some thirty-five thousand Christians fled to the mountains to escape and defend themselves from their enemies. Dr A. Shedd, Foreign Mission Board, and Macdowell, Presbyterian Church in Persia, stated that one half of the Christians sought to defend themselves whereas the others in the cities sought refuge in foreign legations.17 Another published account citing a letter written by Rev. Joshua Khamis from Tabriz, Persia, describes the massacres carried out by Kurds and Turks in Urmia, Salamast (Persia), and Kurdistan. Khamis provides graphic detail of Nestorian suffering, such as “some skinned alive [and] others burned alive,” while others were starved, beaten, and killed by their captors. Moreover, he points out “villages, churches, with their relics and ancient Syriac literature [being] plundered and burned” and women and children “[being] forcibly converted to the Moslem faith.” Khamis appealed to Great Britain to assist his people at this critical moment in their history. This last news story reveals that the Nestorians were on the verge of being exterminated by their enemies.18

Paris and London Peace Conferences, 1919, 1920–21: Territorial Claims and Resettlement The victorious Allied Powers and their associates, Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, gathered in Paris to impose their terms on the vanquished—Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria—in 1919. This also gave smaller nations like the Assyrians an opportunity to present their cases before the peace conference. Overall, Australian official sources and news accounts dealing with Assyrian aspirations are almost non-existent.19 On January 13, 1919, the Australian press reported briefly that Assyrians from Mesopotamia living in the United States had appealed to the State Department hoping that the United States, Britain, and France would protect Mesopotamia. This is the only news report in 1919 that deals with Assyrian territorial claims, with British official and American sources being used to fill in the gaps in the news accounts.20 The Australian press reports are correct regarding the Assyrian petition being filed with the United States government and point (3) below, without revealing the actual contents of the document in question. Acting Secretary of State Frank L. Polk forwarded the petition on January 7, 1919 to the US delegation in Paris for its consideration. The petition listed nine points that the peace conference would guarantee to protect the rights of residents in Mesopotamia. These included: (1) abolition of Turkish and Arab rule from Mesopotamia; (2) Kharput and Diarbekir to be included in Mesopotamian territory; (3) Mesopotamia to be placed “under America, England and France until such time as the natives shall be able to govern themselves independently”; (4) Assyrians should receive war reparations due to destruction of their churches, properties, schools and the restoration of women and children to their families who had been kidnapped during the war; (5) punishment for those respon-

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sible for wartime atrocities; (6) it was envisaged that Syriac would replace Arabic as the official language; and (7) that Mosul would be “the capital of Beth Nahrin [Mesopotamia].”21 The position of the Assyrian Patriarch of the Church of the East, Mar Poulos (1918–20), regarding Assyrian aspirations, had similarities to the petition of his Assyrian American counterparts. However, the major difference between them was that Mar Poulos focused on Persia, whereas the Assyrian Americans on Mesopotamia. Mar Poulos sketched out the area of Mosul-Jezireh-Bashkala-Urmia to form the future Assyrian state under the security of Britain. He wanted a sufficient armed force to protect his people from Turkish, Persian, and Kurdish attacks. Furthermore, he insisted that all Christians held captive by Persians and Kurds be released immediately in Persia. He named three Kurdish chieftains, Simko, Reschig Beg, and Sut, for punishment for their involvement in wartime atrocities perpetrated against the Assyrians.22 The newspaper accounts do not report on Assyrian Americans seeking to send delegates to the Paris peace conference, or the position of the Mar (Patriarch) Poulos Shimun. On December 20, 1918, Mar Poulos raised the issues of Assyrian representation at the peace conference and separation from the Armenians. He argued strongly that he did not want his people lumped together with the Armenians as they had their own ethnic and religious identification. The British Civil Commissioner and Military Command in Baghdad sympathized with the Assyrians but referred the matter to London for its decision. On January 26, 1919, the British government rejected the Assyrian demands by stating that the Civil Commissioner in Baghdad would be the channel for official submissions of such issues.23 Mar Poulos would have been disappointed with the British government’s rejection of Assyrian representation from Mesopotamia at the peace conference. Mar Poulos received a cable from the Assyrian Association in America via the United States Consul in Baghdad, which he forwarded to the British authorities. The Assyrian Americans were going to send a delegation to Paris and requested Mar Poulos “to wire at once stating the wishes of the Assyrian people as to the government under whose protection they desired to come in the future.” While the Mar Shimun would have been pleased about his American compatriots going to Paris, he was worried about his own position as the temporal and spiritual leader of his people. He was concerned about the French and Americans using the Roman Catholic Church and Presbyterian missionaries as vehicles to proselytize among his people. He chose Britain, which was a disinterested power in the matter. Mar Poulos’s influence was largely confined to mountaineers who might join the Catholic Church should Turkish territory come under French control, whereas the Persian Assyrians might join the Presbyterians.24 Ruling over a divided nation made it difficult for him to exercise his worldly and religious powers over his flock. The next article on the Assyrians appeared some eighteen months later in the Hobart Mercury on July 3, 1920. This was the only Australian newspaper to run the

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story. Reproduced from the London Observer of April 11, 1920, the journalist interviewed two members of the Assyro-Chaldean delegation, Said A. Namik and Rustem Nedjib, who attended the peace conference. They claimed they were descendants of two great ancient empires, Assyrian and Chaldean, seeking to revive past glory by displaying their ethnic unity as Assyro-Chaldeans. Even though they were an ancient people having suffered numerous invasions, they had a proud history stretching back to 4500bc. They wanted their independence in due course but sought “to be administered by a mandatory power for several years.” The Assyro-Chaldeans had shown their loyalty by fighting alongside the Allies during the recent war. They mapped out the geographical borders of their state to be located “in a large tract of country midway between the Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas, in the east of Turkey, the west of Persia, and the north of Mesopotamia. They have mapped out this district, in which the chief cities are Mosul, Diarbekir and Urmia.” Within the confines of this area, some twenty-four nationalities lived, according to Namik and Nedjib.25 There are three issues that emerge from the article above. First, the mandatory power is not identified, but Britain was in occupation of Mesopotamia, which included Mosul. There was no way she would give up or cede this important city to satisfy Assyro-Chaldean territorial ambitions. Britain wanted Mosul for strategic and economic reasons, including its very important oilfields. Neither would the Turks and Persians surrender Diarbekir and Urmia to the Assyrians. It would be a difficult task for the Assyrians to govern some twenty-four nationalities without the assistance of a major power.26 Second, the article does not provide a population figure for the Assyrians domiciled in the area being claimed. It must be stressed that this region also contained Muslim Turks, Arabs, Kurds, and Persians. In southern and central Mesopotamia, the Arabs were the largest group, whereas the Kurds lived in substantial numbers in northern Mesopotamia, eastern Turkey and northwest Persia. The Turks and Persians were by far the dominant ethnic groups within their respective territories.27 Finally, there is no mention as to whether Britain would actually assist the Assyrians to achieve their independence after siding with them during the Great War. The Assyrians were not allotted their own autonomous zone under Article 62 of the Treaty of Sèvres, receiving assurances that their rights would be fully maintained and protected in Kurdistan. It can be argued that the Assyrians would have felt betrayed by Britain.28 The Australian press shifted its focus from territorial desiderata to resettlement of Assyrian refugees in various countries. This story emanated from Reuters and United Service Baghdad correspondents, who reported that the Archbishop of Canterbury, along with the United States, Australian, and Canadian governments, was “being consulted regarding the possibility of finding homes for 10,000 refugee Assyrian plainsmen who are unable to return to their homes in Persia.” They were “described as white colonists.” Furthermore, their position was dire as Britain would stop “supply by the first of next month.”29

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Commenting on this news story, there are four issues requiring explanation. First, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as head of the Anglican Church, would have been very interested in the fate of these people, as his church “established an Assyrian mission to aid Nestorians and chose to place this mission at Urmiah” in 1886.30 The Anglicans founded schools for boys and girls, a printing press to supply student textbooks, and a seminary for clergy, but the mission ceased with the intervention of World War I.31 Second, the Australian government preferred immigrants from Britain, whereas Assyrians “from Asiatic countries in the near East require[d] to obtain special permission before entering Australia.” Authorization could only be granted if the applicant had relatives or friends in Australia who were prepared to guarantee “maintenance or employment.” The idea of admitting ten thousand Assyrians would have caused a furor in Australia, which was a white Anglo-Australian society. However, being depicted as “white colonists” could have made it easier for them to enter, if they had relatives or friends in the country.32 Thirdly, the article is correct that these “Assyrian plainsmen” could not return to their homes in Persia, escaping to Baqubah to avoid reprisals from their enemies in 1918. There was a lot of hatred between the Assyrians and their Muslim neighbors. According to British documents, Kurds had occupied the homes of Assyrian refugees and were not keen to see them return. The British High Commission in Baghdad was concerned that the return of these refugees to Persia could result in serious problems. Eventually those refugees from Urmia were permitted to return to their homes with the agreement of the Persian government.33 The Baqubah refugee camp was closed down by the British government in the summer of 1921 because “it is quite impossible, with financial constraints as they are at present to find any more money from public funds for these refugees.”34 Finally, it is interesting that this story was published in a small number of Australian country newspapers rather than in the capital city dailies.35

The Lausanne Conference and the Settlement of the Mosul Question, 1922–27 In the aftermath of the Greek–Turkish conflict, 1919–22, the Allied Powers along with Greece, Italy, and Kemalist Turkey gathered at Lausanne to establish peace in the Near East. During the conference the most contentious issue was the future of Mosul, with Britain arguing for its inclusion within Iraq, whereas Turkey demanded its return. Agha Petros, Commander-in-Chief of the Assyro-Chaldeans and President of their Executive Council, submitted a memorandum to the British prime delegate and Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, on December 11, 1922, arguing that the Assyrians ought to be granted an autonomous region around Mosul under British protection. He pointed out that his people wished to live “in peace in [their] own country” and also that they had assisted the Allies during the Great War. Agha Petros concluded that, “by granting this you will have a Christian and warrior nation as a buffer state, separating the Turkish Empire from Persia, Kurdistan and Mesopotamia,

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A NATION DEVOTED TO YOUR CAUSE.”36 This was a repetition of past Assyrian demands conveniently ignored by Britain. On December 14, Curzon presented a memorandum to the prime Turkish delegate, Ismet Pasha, rejecting Kemalist demands for the return of Mosul. British rejection was based on racial, political, historical, and economic grounds. Curzon pointed out that there had been an increase in the population from 703,000 in 1919 to 785,000 in 1921. He offered three reasons for this increase: 1. The return of large numbers of the population from the Turkish or Arab armies. 2. The return of still larger numbers of families to villages which, owing to the state of starvation resulting from war conditions, had been abandoned before the British occupation. 3. The settlement of a large number of Assyrian refugees.37 Some 62,225 Christians composed mainly of Assyrians, including Nestorians and Catholics, lived in the vilayet of Mosul, concentrating in the cities of Mosul (57,425), Erbil (4,100), Kirkuk (600), and Suleimaniyah (100), based on the 1921 estimate. The other ethnic groups included 185,763 Arabs, 65,895 Turcomans, 16,685 Jews, and 454,763 Kurds, including 30,000 Yezidis domiciled in the city of Mosul.38 The population statistics do not provide an actual breakdown of the different religious denominations that made up the Assyrian nation living in towns and cities of the vilayet of Mosul. At a political level, Curzon outlined that the Assyrians in the Diarbekir-Mardin-Jazireh line and Nestorians in the Julamerk area near the Persian border had been driven out by Turkish forces during World War I. Many Assyrians perished, but the lucky ones escaped to Iraq to avoid Turkish reprisals. The Assyrians were prepared to fight to the death, rather than submit to oppressive Turkish rule.39 Agha Petros thanked Lord Curzon for his presentation on December 12 regarding the future of Mosul and expanded the issue of autonomy. He argued that Assyrian autonomy would allow Britain to reduce its military and financial aid by having a loyal ally to serve its interests in this region. It was important that all Assyrians “scattered in Constantinople, Tabriz, Hamadan, Kermanshah, Baghdad and Marseilles” be allowed to return quickly to “rebuild their homes in the north part of the Vilayet of Mosul, under British mandate and Iraq Government, but as a separate Christian state.”40 Otherwise the Assyrians faced a bleak future; they dismissed Turkish promises. If autonomy could not be achieved, Agha Petros hoped that his people might be resettled in Europe, Canada, Australia, or South America. He alluded to the fact that Assyrians were “intelligent, hardworking, good agriculturists and expert vine growers.” Such skills would prove a great benefit “to fill up [the] vast empty spaces” in Australia.41 The resettlement of Assyrians to other countries, including Australia, would be taken up by the League of Nations during the 1930s.

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Australian newspapers The Argus, The Daily News, Sydney Morning Herald, Examiner,The Mercury, and The West Australian printed a news report indicating that Agha Petros had forwarded an ultimatum to French Premier Poincaré, announcing “the formal independence of [his] people,” claiming that the Assyrians were capable of protecting themselves against their enemies and that “all the oil centers were protected by Syrian troops.” Agha Petros expressed sympathy for Britain but was not prepared to see his people “used as political pawns.”42 It is interesting to note that the press accounts mention “oil centers,” something Britain considered important to her strategic and economic position in Iraq. The retention of Mosul was crucial to the defense of Baghdad.43 On July 24, 1923 the Treaty of Lausanne, signed between Greece, Turkey, the British Empire, France, and Japan, established peace in the Near East. The Assyrians were not even mentioned, and the future of Mosul was left unresolved in the final treaty. However, Article 3(2) of the treaty stipulated that Britain and Turkey would resolve the Turco-Iraqi frontier in an amicable manner within nine months, with both parties refraining “from taking military action or encroaching on the disputed territory.” If no agreement was reached, then it would be referred to the Council of the League of Nations for adjudication. While the Assyrians were not mentioned in the final peace treaty, their minority rights were to be guaranteed and protected in Articles 37–45 on the same basis as Muslims.44 The two parties met in Constantinople in May–June 1923 to resolve the thorny Mosul question, without reaching an agreement. The British delegate, Sir Percy Cox, raised the Assyrian issue with his Turkish counterpart, Fethi Bey, claiming that this minority should be accommodated into a compact community in the Hakkari region that should be transferred to Iraq. Fethi Bey responded that the Assyrians would find the “tranquility and prosperity they enjoyed for centuries, provided they did not repeat the errors which they committed, with foreign encouragement, at the beginning of the Great War.” Cox dismissed the Turkish argument that the Assyrians would enjoy “tranquility and prosperity” on Turkish soil. Meanwhile Turkish regular and irregular forces crossed into the disputed territory, with the British repulsing them with machine gun fire from airplanes. They accused each other of border violations. In August, Britain referred this dispute to the League of Nations for discussion and resolution. Both parties agreed to accept the mediation of the League of Nations to secure a peace deal that would finally resolve the matter. On October 31, 1924, the Council of the League of Nations nominated a threeman commission of inquiry composed of Count Teleki, former Prime Minister of Hungary, M. de Wirsen, Swedish Minister at Bucharest, and Colonel Paulis, a retired Belgian officer, to investigate the Mosul dispute and to report back to the Council. After they had completed their report in July 1925, Turkey and Britain accused each other of frontier violations with villages burned and civilians killed. Britain accused Turkey of deporting some eight thousand Christians who fled to Iraq, whereas Ankara dismissed the charges as unfounded.45

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The League of Nations appointed General Laidoner, an Estonian, to investigate reports of the deportation of Christians. His report substantiated the British claims of deportation and massacres of Christians, destruction of villages, and the efforts of Iraqi authorities to accommodate them in “a simple army tent[s] or a mud hut[s].”46 The Turks insisted that Mosul belonged to them. In September 1925, the Council referred the Mosul issue to the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague for a legal opinion. Two months later, it handed down its judgment, stating that Article 3(2) of the Treaty of Lausanne was binding on both parties and established “a definitive determination of the frontier between Turkey and Iraq,” and a final decision rested on a unanimous vote.47 In December, the Council accepted the provisional Brussels line of October 1924, which handed Mosul to Iraq so long as “Britain assumed responsibility for twenty-five years or for a lesser period, if Iraq be admitted to membership of the League.”48 The British Ambassador in Constantinople, Sir Ronald Lindsay, was instructed by the Foreign Office to open negotiations with the Turkish government to settle all outstanding issues regarding Iraq. In the ensuing discussions, the Turkish government “was prepared to waive her rights over Mosul and recognize the sovereignty of Iraq over the whole area south of the Brussels line if some arrangement could be made giving her participation in Iraq oil.” Britain decided to offer Turkey a lump sum payment or royalties on the proviso that she did not seek additional territory, and Lindsay was authorized to conclude a deal along these lines with the Turkish Foreign Minister, Tewfik Rustu Aras. Both deals suited British interests in Iraq, settling the frontiers issue and securing its oil supplies.49 On June 17, 1926, the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs cabled the Governor General of Australia regarding the outline of a treaty signed by Great Britain, Turkey, and Iraq. It mentioned that Articles 1 and 3 delimited the frontier between Turkey and Iraq, whereas Article 3 assigned a boundary commission to trace the frontier line. Upon ratification of the treaty, Article 14 would grant Turkey a 10% share of royalties “of oil by-products produced in the area covered by the Turkish Petroleum Company’s concessions (viz., the whole of Iraq with the exception of the former Vilayet of Basra and territory transferred by Persia to Turkey in 1914).”50 The Sydney Morning Herald editorial of June 9, 1926 concluded that the Mosul settlement would strengthen British–Turkish relations and “promote harmony in the Middle East.” On the other hand, The West Australian thought that granting Turkey a share of oil revenues would pacify its suspicion of British intentions around Mosul and would add revenue “to the not over replete Angora Treasury.”51

Anglo-Iraqi Relations, 1927–32: Treaty of Alliance The resolution of Mosul allowed Britain to begin the process of changing its relations with Iraq by drawing up a new treaty to replace those of October 1922 and January 1926. The new treaty, signed in London on December 14, 1927, was never ratified.

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Article 1 would make Iraq an independent state, whereas Article 8 stipulated that so long as Iraq continued on its “present rate of progress” and “in [its] internal affairs” that “Britain would support [Iraq’s candidature] for admission to the League of Nations in 1932.” Articles 12 and 13 dealt with concluding individual military and financial accords to regulate their relations.52 In November 1929, the Colonial Office issued a memorandum outlining British policy in Iraq, with special emphasis on the latter’s admission into the League of Nations. Iraq was suspicious that Britain would use its four-year review period as an excuse for not supporting Baghdad’s candidacy for League of Nations membership. Despite assurances from Sirs Gilbert Clayton and Henry Dobbs, Iraqis still believed that Britain was not sincere in its intention to grant them “full independence,” with the real motive being “to colonize” the country. Britain was ready to honor “their promise to support Iraq’s candidature in 1932.” This memorandum had a positive effect in Iraq dispelling all previous notions of “distrust and suspicion,” leading to “mutual confidence and good will.” Iraq had made significant progress in its internal security, public finance, and administration, and the time had come for it to be admitted into the League in three years’ time. Article 3(1) of the Anglo-Iraq treaty of January 1926 was used as the basis for Iraq’s admission into the League of Nations in 1932.53 On June 30, 1930, Britain and Iraq signed a new treaty of alliance at Baghdad. This would pave the way for ending the British mandate and would come into force upon the formal admission of Iraq into the League of Nations. This treaty was to last for twenty-five years, allowing both parties to renegotiate a new one. Under Articles 4–5, Britain, in consultation with Iraq, would protect the latter from an external aggressor by being allowed to maintain airbases at selected locations, with Basra identified as the chief base. However, there was also an annex attached to the treaty of alliance, in which Article 1 stated that upon ratification, Britain would be permitted to maintain forces at Hinaidi and Mosul for a period of five years. After that time Britain would withdraw them.54 Furthermore, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said and British High Commissioner 1929-32, Sir Francis Humphrys exchanged notes representing the separate agreement on financial matters referred to in the second exchange of notes attached to the Anglo-Iraq treaty of June 30. One of the interesting provisions was that when Britain withdrew its forces from Hinaidi and Mosul and considered creating an airbase near Habbiniya, the “Iraq Government shall take all possible steps at no cost to either Government to arrange for the construction of a railway to connect such air base with the railway system of Iraq.” This treaty, and subsequent exchange notes, was ratified by both parties on January 26, 1931.55 While Britain sought to terminate its mandate in Iraq, at the same time a new treaty of alliance would allow her to maintain air bases at strategic locations to protect her vital communications in that country.

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Iraq’s Admission into the League of Nations, the Simele Massacre 1932–33, and Resettlement The Assyrians were apprehensive regarding Iraq’s independence and termination of the mandate. As a Christian minority, they desired an autonomous region within the Iraqi state under the protection of the Council of the League of Nations. In October 1931, the Assyrian Patriarch, Mar Eshai XXIII Shimun, petitioned the Permanent Mandates Commission, stating that “the Assyrian nation desired to emigrate en masse from Iraq, and requested that arrangement be made for their reception in one of the western nations or in Syria.” The Mar Shimun was prepared to moderate his demands so long as the minority rights of his people were protected and guaranteed by Britain and the League of Nations. His petition was brought before the League towards the end of 1932 for consideration.56 On June 2, 1932, Assyrian officers in the levies forwarded a manifesto stating that Britain had failed to protect Assyrian interests and the entire force would dissolve itself. The British intention was to incorporate 1,200 levies into a new special force to protect airports, with the remainder being incorporated into the Iraqi army and police after the termination of the mandate. The British took steps to communicate their displeasure at the proposed disbanding to the Mar Shimun. It appears that the manifesto received the backing of the Mar Shimun, Lady Surma, and other Assyrian leaders, with its chief intention of creating an Assyrian enclave in the Amadiya region. At a meeting that took place in Amadiya on June 17, 1932, the Assyrians addressed their petition to the British High Commissioner in Baghdad, and a copy of it was also forwarded to the Chairman of the Permanent Mandates Commission in Geneva. The Assyrian demands are reproduced in full below:^ 1. That the Assyrians should be recognized as millet (nation) domiciled in Iraq, and not merely as an Iraqi religious minority. 2. That the Hakkiari Sanjak in Turkey, in which some of the Assyrians formerly lived, should be annexed to Iraq and its villages restored to the Assyrians. 3 (a) That if this could not be done, a national home should be found for the Assyrians which should be open to all Assyrians scattered in Iraq and to all other ex-Ottoman Assyrians from all over the world. (b) That this new home should be arranged to include the whole of the Amadiya district and the adjacent parts of Zakho, Dohuk, and Aqra districts and that it should be made into a sub-liwa under the Mosul liwa with its headquarters at Dohuk under an Arab Mutessarif and a British adviser. (c) That existing settlement arrangements should be wholly revised by a committee provided with adequate funds, and that the land chosen for Assyrian settlement should be registered in their names as their own property. (d) That preference should be given to Assyrians in the selection of officials for this sub-liwa.

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4. That the temporal and spiritual authority of the Patriarch over the Assyrian nation should be officially recognized and that an annual subsidy should be given to him. 5. That the Assyrians should have a member in the Chamber of Deputies nominated by the people and the Patriarch. 6. That the Iraqi government should establish schools in consultation with the Patriarch, in which the language of the Assyrians should be taught. 7. That the League of Nations or the Iraq government should make a gift of five million rupees for the creation of a church waqf for the Assyrian church. 8. That a hospital should be established at the headquarters of the sub-liwa and dispensaries at other places. 9. That the rifles earned by the Assyrians by their service in the levies should not be confiscated. The Assyrians wanted a response to their demands by June 28. Such a deadline from the standpoint of the British High Commission was impossible. The Mar Shimun and other religious leaders insisted that the nine demands be honored in full. However, they made one concession, “excepting the Hakkiari, as the condition of withdrawal of the levy manifesto of the 1st June.” There was no way Britain would accede to the Hakkari region located on Turkish territory being annexed to Iraq. The treaty between the UK, Turkey, and Iraq, signed on June 5, 1926 in Angora (Ankara), finally settled the frontier between Turkey and Iraq.57 King Faisal thought the Assyrians were bluffing and was concerned about a potential clash between Assyrians and Kurds, especially at a time when the Iraqi army was fighting the Barzan tribes. The Iraqi sovereign did not wish to be engaged in fighting simultaneously on two fronts as Iraq’s independence approached. On the other hand, the British shared the same fears as the Iraqi King as the Assyrians had three thousand armed men with levy experience.58 As the negotiations proved fruitless, Britain adopted a military and political approach towards the Assyrians. She displayed her imperial power by flying an infantry battalion using the Royal Air Force (RAF) from Egypt to assume the duties of the levies. These troops were finally distributed to levy stations at Mosul, Diana, Suleimaniya, and Hanaidi. The British action had a salutary effect on the Assyrian religious and political leadership. An encyclical issued by Mar Shimun on June 29 to the Assyrian officers and men of the levies urged them to continue “[the] loyal and obedient service in the force until the national petition of the 17th June had been considered by the League of Nations and an answer given,” adding that if they then wished to take their discharge, “they must do so in accordance with the orders of British officers.”59 The Assyrian levies at Diana, Suleimaniya, and Mosul submitted without trouble to the Mar Shimun’s injunction, whereas at Hinaidi they were less compliant and behaved in a rebellious manner. Some 250 men were discharged from the levies.60

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At a political level, the British High Commissioner “promised that the levies would be maintained at their present strength until an answer was given to the Assyrian petition, or until the 15th December which ever was the earlier. He also informed [Mar Shimun] that certain questions raised in the petition, such as the recognition of the Patriarch, land resettlement, schools, dispensaries and the retention of rifles, were recognized by him to be reasonable subjects for consideration, and that the earliest and most sympathetic attention to them would be pressed by him on the Iraqi Government and through Her Majesty’s Government, on League of Nations.”61 The Permanent Mandates Commission met in early December 1932 to discuss the Assyrian petition. It supported the concept “for a compact and homogenous settlement [for Assyrians] in Iraq” and favored dispatching a League Commissioner to discuss Assyrian grievances with the Iraqis. The British Ambassador in Iraq 193235, Sir F. Humphrys, urged the Iraqis to avoid discussing the idea of an autonomous Assyrian enclave. King Faisal and the Iraqi Prime Minister told Humphrys of their opposition to a League Commissioner being dispatched to Iraq. The Permanent Mandates Commission handed its report to the Council of the League of Nations regarding the Assyrian petition. It adopted a resolution at its meeting on December 5, 1932 stating that: The Council notes with satisfaction the declaration by the representative of Iraq of the intention of the Iraqi Government to select from outside Iraq a foreign expert to assist them for a limited period in the settlement of all landless inhabitants of Iraq including Assyrians, and in carrying out their scheme for the settlement of the Assyrians of Iraq under suitable conditions and so far as may be possible homogenous units, it being understood that the existing rights of the present population shall not be prejudiced.62 As a new sovereign nation, the Iraqis wanted to demonstrate that they were quite capable of appointing an outside commissioner of their choice, and also wanted to be seen to be cooperating with the League Council. It gave them the opportunity to address Assyrian grievances on their own terms. The Assyrians were apprehensive of Iraqi intentions regarding their future and minority status in this new independent state.63 There were two issues confronting Iraq since becoming independent, including “settlement of Assyrians on the land and drafting of community law defining Assyrians’ rights and privileges.” The Assyrian Patriarch was summoned to Baghdad in May 1933 and forcibly detained for his refusal to agree to the demands of the Iraqi government. It appears that his detention was due to “assurances renouncing his claim to temporal power and promising to abandon his obstructive attitude towards land settlement scheme.”64 The continued custody of the Mar Shimun angered the Assyrians. Some 1,500 of his personal followers vacated their village in northern Iraq and “crossed over to

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Syria with their arms, about 22nd July.” The French authorities told them that they could return to Iraq so long as they surrendered their weapons. “On the night of 4th5th August, a large party of Assyrians crossed back into Iraq wiping out the Iraqian frontier post,” something that displeased the Iraqi government. After this clash, the Assyrians defeated a detachment of Iraqi forces, with many casualties on both sides and the Assyrians making it back into “their own hill country.”65 Australian External Affairs officer in London, Keith Officer, forwarded a memorandum to the Secretary of the Department of External Affairs in Canberra on August 17, 1933, providing details of the Assyrian assault on Iraqi forces and the subsequent events. The document mentions that the Iraqi army, along with Kurdish and Arab irregulars, “would be guilty if unnecessary slaughter have apparently been realised, for at least 500 Assyrians are reported to have been killed, including some 200 who were not concerned.” Kurdish irregulars attacked “defenceless Assyrian villages and worst of all 14 Assyrian prisoners have been summarily shot by order of the Iraqi commander of the affected area.” It should be noted that Officer updated the casualty figures to 700 Assyrians killed and some 1,700 women and children made destitute.66 Simele was the main location where the massacres occurred but the actual number of Assyrians killed is open to interpretation. R. S. Stafford, a British officer stationed in Iraq, estimated that no more than six hundred were killed, and the initial Iraqi death count of one thousand was on the high side. He argues that the Iraqi ministers “did intend a severe lesson should be given to the Assyrians.” On the other hand, Khaldun S. Husry criticized Stafford for his myopic view of blaming everything on the Iraqis and not showing the same diligence for atrocities committed by Assyrians. Husry also mentions that some Assyrians asserted that three thousand Assyrian men, women, and children were slaughtered at Simele. Furthermore, he asserts that the evidence surrounding the Simele massacre is circumstantial and it could not have been planned or considered as a premeditated act.67 The British Ambassador was instructed to inform King Faisal that those responsible for the Assyrian massacres should be punished for their crimes. Bekr Sidqi was viewed as the main culprit answerable for these atrocities, seeking vengeance “for the alleged mutilation of Iraqi dead and wounded after the Assyrian attack on 4–5th August.” On August 12, an Iraqi government proclamation gave the Assyrians just over two days to surrender their weapons; some of them complied with the official order. Attempts were made “to persuade the [Iraq] Government in view of the number of Assyrians killed a general amnesty be granted to the remainder.”68 Keith Officer pointed out that King Faisal had proved inept in dealing with his ministers, particularly with Yasin Al-Hashimi , who was a strong Anglophobe, and Bekr Sidqi. One of the main issues confronting both Iraqis and British was that the Assyrians could easily summon fifteen thousand men, thus making it awkward for the Iraqi army if conflict occurred. Britain was worried that “any massacre or ill-treatment will arouse great indignation both in the League of Nations [and in Great Britain],” thus giving her critics an opportunity to question her judgment in terminating

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the mandate. The other British concern was the dependability of Assyrian levies “on whom the ground defense of the RAF bases depends.”69 Mar Shimun and his relatives were deported from Iraq and taken by the RAF to Cyprus in August 1933. He took the opportunity to accuse the Iraq government of the Simele massacre and hoped that the plight of his people would be discussed at the next Council meeting in Geneva.70 There are Australian press reports indicating that a massacre occurred in northern Iraq, carried out by the Iraqi army, Kurds, and Arabs. On the other hand, denials by King Faisal and the Iraqi government were also reported in the Australian press.71 Obviously the Iraqis were seeking to downplay the massacre as a way of showing the international community that they could maintain law and order within their own territory. The Iraqi Foreign Minister, Nuri Said, visited Paris to negotiate with the French government regarding the possibility of Syria accepting “the entire Tiari and Tkhuma” from Iraq. Nothing came of this. Moreover, the French did not want any more Assyrians and was prepared to use force in expelling them from Syrian soil. There was an unconfirmed report of Assyrians seeking to enter Syria, which the British Ambassador in Baghdad considered a serious matter requiring his urgent attention. He would seek the permission of the Iraqi government to use British officials in northern Iraq to convince the Assyrians not to take such a course of action. On October 24, the League Secretariat compiled a report on the resettlement of Assyrians outside Iraq. The report was divided into three parts. First, it was difficult to estimate the number of Assyrians domiciled in Iraq; estimates varied from nineteen thousand to thirty-five thousand. Second, the Assyrians wanted to leave Iraq, and their departure had to be concluded in an orderly manner. Their human rights needed to be protected. Finally, emigration to the United States, Canada, Brazil, or Ecuador was considered as a solution. However, the United States and Canada were not interested in receiving Assyrian refugees. It was hoped that the settlement of twenty thousand Assyrians in Brazil living in a compact community “under the auspices of the Parana Plantation Company (Limited), a British company owning land near Sao Paulo,” would resolve the issue.72 On December 7, Stanley M. Bruce, the Australian delegate at the League of Nations, cabled Australian Prime Minister Joseph Lyons, informing him that the League of Nations would be grateful to see Assyrians resettled in Australia. Bruce proposed that Australia’s response should be: “in view of unemployment consequent on economic depression, Commonwealth Government have found necessary to greatly restrict admission of aliens into Australia and regret not practicable to absorb Assyrians in question.” His response was approved by the Australian government.73 The Brazilian government had expressed an interest in January 1934 in accepting Assyrians under certain conditions, but later changed its mind due to strong opposition in Brazil. The Brazilian press waged a successful campaign against Assyrian resettlement, which led to a change in the Brazilian constitution, “stipulating that immigration from any particular country should not exceed in any one year 2 per

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cent of the total number of nationals who had settled in the country during the last 50 years.”74 With the collapse of the Brazilian scheme, the President of the Committee for the Settlement of the Assyrians of Iraq, Lopez Olivan, wrote to Joseph Lyons on June 11, 1934, hoping that Canberra might reconsider its decision in accepting Assyrians into Australia. Lopez argued that the Assyrians were mainly an agricultural and pastoral people, who could be accommodated possibly on undeveloped land, in a manner that would not impact on the prevailing labor market.75 The Department of the Interior commented on Olivan’s letter on August 8, spelling out four reasons why Assyrians could not be resettled in Australia. These were: 1. As an Asiatic race, their admission would infringe on the “White Australia” policy. 2. Economically, socially and culturally, they are on a lower plane than our people, and could not be assimilated except at the risk of lowering our existing standards. 3. It is unlikely that any State would be prepared to make land available for the settlement of these people, or, as they are practically destitute, to provide funds which may be necessary for their establishment. 4. The present policy of the Government is opposed to the mass migration of any race, and any suggestion to admit such a body of Assyrians would inevitably arouse a storm of protest.76 Obviously such reasons could not be included in an official Australian diplomatic response. The Minister for External Affairs, J. G. Latham, replied in more measured language that after “very careful consideration to your representations,” Australia was not in an economic position to assist these unfortunate people due to high unemployment.77 An Australian woman named Edith Glanville, President of the Quota Club in Sydney, believed strongly that the Australian government should have accepted Assyrian refugees from Iraq for resettlement in the empty spaces of the Northern Territory. “For a long time it has been very evident that a great deal of the potential wealth of Australia is to be found in the Northern Territory…. As it seems almost impossible for us to secure the necessary kind of people from Great Britain, I could not help but think of a race who are possessed of the necessary qualifications for pioneering a territory such as we have in the North. I refer to the Assyrians,” Glanville said.78 She wrote directly to the Prime Minister on February 23, 1937, urging him to reconsider Australia’s position on Assyrian resettlement, receiving an official response from Canberra to her letter, stating that “conditions there [Northern Territory] are not suitable for closer settlement.”79 Her efforts proved unsuccessful in the end. Another two schemes by the League of Nations to resettle these unfortunate people met with mixed success during the period 1935–38. Initially, the British Guiana plan seemed practical with a good chance of success. The League committee found

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the climate favorable, an adequate water supply, and good health conditions. They believed the Assyrians could easily adapt to the conditions in British Guiana. Further investigations revealed some shortcomings, however, that would make it unprofitable. The Assyrians possessed little knowledge about cattle and cattle ranching. It was even suggested that an experimental farm be created to train Assyrians in the use of modern farming techniques. A medical facility was to be created before their arrival due to the prevalence of respiratory disease among the native Indian population and the rapid spread of malaria in the country. The committee recommended to the League of Nations that they decide against the British Guiana scheme going ahead.80 After the failure of the British Guiana scheme, the League looked at resettling Assyrians in the French mandated territory of Syria. A League commission visited Beirut, Mosul, and Assyrian villages in northern Iraq to see first-hand the living conditions of the Assyrians. The Iraq government was prepared to contribute £60,000 to the commission for the prompt transfer of Assyrians to the Khabur region of Syria. The commission visited the Ghab region, which they thought possessed political and economic advantages. Further discussions took place with French officials in Beirut who believed that fifteen thousand Assyrians could be accommodated at a cost of £800,000. The major impediment in relocating these refugees to Ghab was financial. This impasse could be resolved by requesting a larger contribution from Iraq. Baghdad claimed that it had already contributed £60,000 and promised that an additional £125,000 would be forthcoming. Back in January 1934, the Council of the League of Nations had issued a general appeal to member states and private organizations “to consider participating in the financing of a settlement scheme, having regard to its humanitarian aspect.” The Australian government did not provide any funds but supported a press campaign to draw the attention of private organizations “that may be interested.”81 The Sydney Morning Herald, The West Australian, and The Argus printed articles on the League’s appeal seeking financial assistance from private charities to resettle the Assyrian refugees.82 In the end, the Ghab scheme was abandoned due to insufficient land for the temporary settlement of Assyrians, and Khabur became the preferred place of settlement, with the blessing of the League of Nations.83 There were 8,838 inhabitants domiciled in the Khabur region by the end of 1938 involved in agricultural and pastoral pursuits.84

Conclusion The Assyrians proved themselves to be patriotic and loyal citizens to Australia, despite being classified as enemy aliens during World War I. Overall, the Assyrians received a lot more coverage in the Australian press during the 1930s than they had during World War I, when they hardly rated a mention.

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Mosul and its oil reserves were the subject of both British and Turkish interests after World War I. British promises of Assyrian autonomy were never implemented. However, the Assyrians signed up as British levies who defended Iraq and Britain’s oil interests against Turkish aggression. The Lausanne Conference of 1922–23 allowed Britain to further consolidate its political, economic, and strategic influence in the Middle East at the expense of France and the United States. Agha Petros’s efforts to secure some kind of Assyrian autonomy under British protection proved unsuccessful. The settlement was a betrayal of the Assyrians and left them with no rights in Turkey. The remainder of the Middle East (Syria, Palestine, and Trans Jordan) was carved up by the colonial powers, with Iraq being established as a British “protectorate” for the sole purpose of providing Britain with oil. After the termination of the British mandate, Iraq became an independent state in October 1932 and a member of the League of Nations. Having been denied an autonomous state by the League of Nations, the Assyrians requested permission to leave Iraq and migrate to Syria. They distrusted Iraqi intentions, fearing that their rights and security would not be protected in the new Iraqi state. In an effort to take control of the restless Assyrians, the Iraqis foolishly detained the Mar Shimun in 1933. In protest, 1,500 armed Assyrian men crossed the border into Syria where, upon their return, they attacked an Iraqi border post. In retaliation, the Iraqi army, along with Kurdish and Arab irregulars, initiated the Simele massacre. There are varying estimates as to the number of Assyrians massacred in this tragic event. During the 1930s, Britain sought to resolve the Assyrian Question through the League of Nations. Proposals to resettle them in Brazil, British Guiana, and Australia were made and rejected. Australia’s official excuse at the time for not accepting the Assyrians was purely economic. With a lack of financial support, the League of Nations finally decided on settling the Assyrians in Syria’s Khabur region. Stavros T. Stavridis holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Political Science/Economic History and B.A. (Hons.) in European History from Deakin University, and an M.A. in Greek/Australian History from RMIT University. He has taught at university and community college levels both in Australia and the US and is currently self-employed as a historical/educational consultant. Stavros’s M.A. thesis titled The Greek-Turkish War 1919–23: An Australian Press Perspective was published by Gorgias Press in 2009. He has written many articles on the Greeks, Assyrians, and Armenians in Turkey covering the period 1914–23. Notes 1. I acknowledge Dr Racho Donef for providing me with the information regarding Assyrians from Mt Lebanon. For a discussion of Assyrian communities and their nomenclature, see Racho Donef, Assyrians

178 | Stavros T. Stavridis Post-Nineveh: Identity, Fragmentation, Conflict, and Survival (672 BC–1920) (Sydney: Tatavla Publishing, 2012). 2. Stavros T. Stavridis, The Greek Turkish War 1919–23 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2008), 44–45. 3. Ibid., 45. 4. G. Story, Reuters (New York: Greenwood Press, 1970), 53, 198. The Reuters monopoly in the British Empire was based on an agency agreement concluded by the four news agencies which included Havas (France), Wolff (Germany), and Associated Press (USA) in the late nineteenth century. 5. Ibid., 70. 6. Henry Mayer, The Press in Australia (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1968), 27–28; “Proprietors and Their Representatives,” in Men Who Made “The Argus” and “The Australasian,” 1846–1923 (Melbourne: Argus and Australasian Ltd.?, 1923?); Story, Reuters, 70–71. 7. R. B. Walker, The Newspaper Press in New South Wales (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1976), 205; Gavin Souter, Company of Heralds (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1981), 116; Mayer, The Press in Australia, 28. 8. Historical Records of the Argus, “Cable Service Rates,” 7; Robert W. Desmond, The Press and World Affairs (New York: Arno Press, 1972), 181; Robert W. Desmond, Window on the World (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1980), 126–27, 274, 277. 9. L. L. Robson, preface and acknowledgment to Australia and the Great War (South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1977), ix. Melbourne was the seat of the Commonwealth Parliament, federal bureaucracy and Governor General’s residence from 1901 to 1926; they all relocated to Canberra in 1927. 10. Stavros T. Stavridis and David Chibo, eds., The Assyrians in Australian Documents: 1914–1947 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010), 21, 26. 11. Ibid., 28–29; Ernest Scott, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, 7th ed., vol. XI (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1941), 111. On the day the Governor General issued his proclamation, November 7, 1914, all Ottoman Consuls resigned their positions as diplomatic representatives of the Ottoman Empire in Australia. See “Turkish Consulate Resignations in Australia,” The Mercury, November 7, 1914, 5; “Other States Turkey’s Representatives Resigned,” The Register, November 7, 1914, 10; Sydney Morning Herald, November 7, 1914, 14. 12. Sydney Morning Herald, February 1, 1915, 9; Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW), February 1, 1915, 2; Northern Star (Lismore, NSW), February 2, 1915, 3; The Advocate and Times (Tasmania), February 4, 1915, 2. 13. War Precautions Act 1914 and War Precaution Regulations, Commonwealth of Australia (Melbourne: Government Printer, 1914); War Precaution Acts 1914–16 and War Precautions Regulations, 1915, extracted from Year Book Australia, No. 11, 1918, 1034, retrieved December 20, 2013, from http://www. ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/free.nsf/LookupAttach/1301.0Publication01.01.17260/$File/13010_1918_ WarPrecautionsActAndRegulations.pdf; National Archives of Australia, Canberra, ACT, A1, 1928/1487, Registration of Aliens under the War Precautions Act 1914–28, Trumble, Acting Secretary, Dept of Defence to Secretary, Dept of External Affairs, Melbourne, September 25, 1916. The Argus (Melbourne), May 31, 1915, 10; The Mercury (Hobart), May 31, 1915, 6; Sydney Morning Herald, May 31, 1915, 10; The Register (Adelaide), May 31, 1915, 8; and The West Australian, May 31, 1915, 7 all published stories highlighting changes to the War Precautions Act and restrictions on enemy aliens. Ottoman Greeks, Assyrians, and Armenians were exempt due to their opposition to the Sultan and the fact that they were Christian. 14. “Syrian Clergyman Fined,” Barrier Miner, October 22, 1917, 2. An Assyrian named Richimon Shanimon domiciled in Ararat, Victoria was charged for a third time for failing to notify authorities of a change of address. See “The Assyrian and the Law,” The Ballarat Courier, July 5, 1917, 6; and “Assyrian in Trouble. Delay in Prosecuting,” The Ararat Advertiser, July 5, 1917, 2. 15. Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 186–89.

The Assyrian Issue 1914–35 | 179 16. “Wholesale Massacres. 20,000 Dead and Missing. Assyrians and Christians Killed,” Warwick Examiner and Times, March 29, 1915, 5; “Turks Murder Christians,” Clarence and Richmond Examiner (Grafton, NSW), March 30, 1915, 5. 17. “Persia Doomed! Faces Extinction as a Nation,” West Gippsland Gazette (Warragul, Victoria), April 18, 1916, 4. 18. “Turkish Massacres. Unspeakable Outrages,” Barrier Miner, May 1, 1916, 2. 19. While the Assyrians received little or no coverage in the Australian press, Armenian territorial claims, massacres, being placed under a mandatory power, and finally Armenia’s absorption into the Soviet Union were covered adequately. A small sample of news articles will be used for illustration purposes. See “Massacres of Armenians. Children Die of Hunger…,” The Brisbane Courier, January 6, 1919, 7; “Independent Armenian State under US Mandate. Trebizond as Port,” Barrier Miner, February 28, 1919, 5; “Armenian Pretensions, Excessive Claims,” Kalgoorlie Miner, March 3, 1919, 5; “Friends of Armenia Fund,” The Argus, August 21, 1919, 6; “America and the Armenian Mandate,” The Daily News, April 5, 1920, 2; “The Mandate for Armenia,” The Mercury, April 6, 1920, 5; “Armenia. A Soviet Republic,” The West Australian, January 26, 1921, 7; “Tragedy of Armenia. Turkish Massacres,” Sydney Morning Herald, June 21, 1922, 11. An ex-Australian army officer, Capt. E. D. A. Bagot, who had served with the wireless squadron in Mesopotamia during the Great War, argued that Australian businesses should seize the opportunity to trade with this region. In 1920, he went to seek commercial advantages in Mesopotamia and around the Persian Gulf for a company with £25,000 capital from South Australia and Victoria. See “Australia’s Opportunity,” The Argus, August 14, 1919, 9; “Australian Trade, an Immediate Market in Mesopotamia,” Barrier Miner, August 23, 1919, 8; “Trade with Mesopotamia,” The Register, May 7, 1920, 6. 20. “Mesopotamia, Anglo-French Protectorate Wanted,” The Mercury, January 13, 1919, 5; “Protection of Mesopotamia,” Examiner, January 13, 1919, 5; “Mesopotamia. Petition of Assyrians,” The West Australian, January 13, 1919, 5. 21. Record Group 59, M367 Records of the Department of State relating to World War 1 and its termination, 1914–29, 763.72119/3390, Frank L. Polk, Acting Secretary of State to the Mission of the US to the Conference to Negotiate Peace, Paris, January 7, 1919 and a copy of petition (to the International Peace Conference convened and organized to adjust matters arising from the Great War). Hereafter cited as RG 59. 22. National Archives of United Kingdom, Air Ministry, AIR 20/270, Presentation of Assyrians at Peace Conference, December 1918–December 1919, Memorandum, H. H. Austin, Brig-General Commanding, Jelus Refugee Camp, Baqubah to Civil Commissioner, Baghdad, February 21, 1919 and Aims and Objects of Assyrian nation, signed Polis Shimun, Patriarch of the East, February 21, 1919. 23. National Archives of United Kingdom, AIR 20/270, W. H. Beach, Brig General for Chief of General Staff, December 20, 1918; Political Baghdad to Secretary of State for India, London, December 25, 1918; Telegram from Secretary of State for India, London to Civil Commissioner, Baghdad, January 26, 1919. 24. AIR 20/270, General Headquarters, Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force, Extract from H. Q. Jelus Refugee Camp, January 16, 1919. Joel E. Warda, President of the Assyrian National Association of America and Capt. A. K. Yoosuf were two delegates to represent the Assyrian Americans in Paris; Paul Shimmon, an American citizen, was denied a passport by the US Department of State to go to Paris. See RG 59, 763.72119/3395 the Executive Committee of the Assyrian National Committee, New York to State Department, January 14, 1919; William Phillips, Department of State to Mr Robert E. Speer, Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, New York, April 3, 1919. 25. “The Assyro-Chaldeans 4500 bc–1920 ad, Interview with Peace Delegates,” The Mercury, July 3, 1920, 13; The Observer article of April 11, 1920, 16, was reproduced word for word in the Mercury; RG 59, 763.72119/9667, S. A. Namik and Rustem Nedjib, Delegation Assyro-Chaldeenne, Paris to President of US Senate, March 22, 1920 (in French and English translation); “Question Assyro-Chaldéenne devant la Conference de la Paix National Archives of United Kingdom” (in French), 15ff with tables showing population figures of Assyro-Chaldeans in 1914 and 1919 plus a map of their distribution.

180 | Stavros T. Stavridis 26. Marian Kent, Moguls and Mandarins: Oil, Imperialism and the Middle East in British Foreign Policy, 1900–1940 (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1993), ch. 5; David Styan, France and Iraq: Oil, Arms and French Policy Making in the Middle East (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), ch. 1; B. C. Busch, Mudros to Lausanne: Britain’s Frontier in West Asia, 1918–23 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1976), 181–82; Fuat Dundar, Statisquo, British Use of Statistics in the Iraqi Kurdistan Question (1919–1932), Brandeis University, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Crown Paper 7, July 2012, retrieved March 12, 2013, from http://academia.edu/1798486/Statisquo_British_Use_of_Statistics_in_the_Iraqi_Kurdish_Question_1919–1932; Houshang Sabahi, British Policy in Persia, 1918–25 (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1990); Robin Waterfield, Christians in Persia (New York: Routledge, 2011), chs. 13–14. 27. The population statistics have been confined to Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Persians, Armenians, and Assyrians. These figures need to be treated with some caution, as each group sought to inflate or deflate population figures to suit their respective political and territorial agendas. Population data for Persia were very difficult to locate; figures were based on guesswork or vague impressions. Based on Turkish official figures, in 1910 there were 8,192,589 Turks, 1,777,146 Greeks, 594,539 Armenians, 39,370 Jews, and 219,451 others (total 10,823,095) living in the Ottoman Empire in Asia. I have omitted the figures for Turkey in Europe as they are irrelevant to this study. The figures provided by the Greek Patriarchate in Constantinople are as follows: 7,048,662 Turks, 1,782,582 Greeks, 608,707 Armenians, 37,523 Jews, and 218,102 others. One interesting aspect of the data is that there is no breakdown of those constituting “others.” One can speculate that this figure included various religious denominations that formed the Assyrian nation. See Dimitri Pentzopoulos, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and its Impact on Greece (Paris: Mouton, 1962), 29–30 (republished in 2011 with new preface and index by Michael Llewellyn Smith). For Mesopotamia/Iraq, the 1919 figures are divided into religious and national distribution published in a League of Nations Mandates report of May 21, 1928. The figures are as follows: 1,494,015 Shi’ites, 1,146,615 Sunnites (including Kurds), 87,488 Jews, 78,792 Christians, and 43,302 others (total 2,849,282) under religious distribution. Under national distribution they are listed as: 2,206,192 Arabs, 499,336 Kurds, 79,908 Persians, 60,493 Turks, 3,061 Indians, and 292 Europeans (total 2,849,282). The Assyrians are not even mentioned in the statistics; one can only guess that they could be listed under national distribution as Persians. See League of Nations, Mandates, C.143.M34.1928.V1.[C.P.M.698],Geneva, May 21, 1928,p.2; Zvi Yehuda Hershlag, Introduction to the Modern Economic History of the Middle East (Leiden: Brill Archive, 1964), 228 and fn. 2; Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi’is of Iraq (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 13, fn. 2. According to the Statesman Year Book 1921, there were eight to ten million Persians, composed of three million nomads. Of these three million, 260,000 were Arab, 720,000 were Turks, and 675,000 Kurds. From a religious perspective, half belong to the Shia sect of Islam with the rest being 850,000 Sunni sect of Islam, 50,000 Armenians, and 30,000 Nestorians. See Sir John S. Keltie and M. Epstein, The Statesman Year Book 1921 (London: Macmillan & Co, 1921), 1164–65; There is a scholarly work which lists the ethnic structure of Iran in 1856 and 1956 with ten million and 18,945,000 respectively. For e.g. 6,375,000 and 8,200,000 Persians, 800,000 and two million Kurds, 400,000 and 567,000 Arabs, Assyrians 138,000 and 20,000, and Armenians 110,000 and 190,000 in 1856 and 1956 respectively. See Ervand Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 12. 28. Vahram Petrosian, “Assyrians in Iraq,” Iran & the Caucasus 10, no. 1 (2006): 130–31; His Holiness Mar Eshai Shimun, “The Assyrian National Petition,” presented to the World Security Conference in San Francisco, California, May 7, 1945, retrieved March 14, 2013, from http://www.atour.com/Assyrian_Nation. shtml; Treaty of Peace with Turkey, August 10, 1920 (Great Britain), Command Paper (Cmd 964), Treaty Series, No. 11 (1920), HMSO, 1920, 21. 29. “Assyrian Refugees. Plans for Relief,” Singleton Argus, March 5, 1921, 4; “Assyrian Refugees. Homes Wanted,” Northern Star (Lismore, NSW), March 5, 1921, 5; “Assyrians Flee from Persia, Blood Feud Prevents Return,” Recorder (Port Pirie, SA), March 5, 1921, 1; “Desirable White Colonists. Plainsmen of Assyria Are Looking for Homes,” Barrier Miner, March 4, 1921, 4. 30. Van Christian A. Gorder, Christianity in Persia and the Status of Non-Muslims in Modern Iran (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 135.

The Assyrian Issue 1914–35 | 181 31. John Joseph, The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 99; Denis Wright, The English amongst the Persians (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), 121–22. For missionary activity in Persia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Gorder, Christianity in Persia, ch. 5; David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006), 16–17; Waterfield, Christians in Persia, chs. 11–14. 32. National Archives of Australia, A1 1936/13639, extract from letter /6/26 from Secretary, Prime Minister’s Dept to A. N. A., Adelaide. A small sample of Australian news articles is provided regarding British migration to Australia. See “Immigration from United Kingdom,” Chronicle (Adelaide, SA), December 4, 1920, 32; “Immigration. British Policy Outlined. Dominion Approval Necessary,” The Argus, December 25, 1920, 7; “Immigrants for Australia,” The Register, December 27, 1920, 4; “Australian Immigration. Senator Millen’s Mission,” Examiner, December 28, 1920, 6. There is a large number of Australian news reports regarding restrictive immigration legislation introduced by the US and Canadian governments. A small sample of these is provided for the reader. See “Unemployment in Canada. Immigration Restrictions,” The Argus, December 3, 1920, 7; “Canadian Immigration Financial Requirements,” Kalgoorlie Miner, December 3, 1920, 5; “American Immigration Restriction,” The Daily News, December 4, 1920, 5; “Limiting Immigration. US Congress Passes Bill,” Advocate, February 28, 1921, 3. 33. Robin Bidwell, ed., British Documents on Foreign Affairs Pt. 2, Series B Turkey, Iran and Middle East 1918–1939, Vol. 16 Persia 1: The Anglo-Persian Agreement January 1919–June 1921 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1990), 36, 264, 356; Robin Bidwell, ed., British Documents on Foreign Affairs Pt. 2, Series B Turkey, Iran and Middle East 1918–1939, Vol. 17 Persia 2: A Troubled Year July 1921– June 1922 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1990), 33–34; Suha Rassam, Christianity in Iraq (Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2006), 138. 34. Rassam, Christianity in Iraq, 138; Peter Gatrell and Jo Laycock, “Armenia: The ‘Nationalization,’ Internationalization and Representation of the Refugee Crisis,” in Homelands: War, Population, and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924, ed. Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell (London: Anthem Press, 2004), 190. 35. The author checked the columns of main Australian newspapers: The Argus, Sydney Morning Herald, The West Australian, The Mercury, and The Register and overseas ones: The Times of London, Manchester Guardian, New York Times, and Washington Post for the period December 1920–March 1921, and found no mention of this story. 36. National Archives of United Kingdom, Foreign Office, FO839 series, FO839/23, Autonomy for Assyrian Christians (claims of Assyro-Chaldeans), no. 87993, General Agha Petros to Lord Curzon, December 11, 1922. 37. Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 217. 38. Ibid., 218–19. 39. Ibid., 220. 40. National Archives of United Kingdom, Foreign Office, FO 839/23 87993 Agha Petros to Lord Curzon, December 21, 1922. For a discussion of Curzon’s presentation at Lausanne on December 12, 1922 regarding the issue of minorities, see National Archives of Australia, A981 Tur25, Territorial and Military Commission, Draft Minutes of 13th meeting on December 12, 1922, 1–4. 41. National Archives of United Kingdom, Foreign Office, FO 839/23 87993 Agha Petros to Lord Curzon, December 21, 1922. 42. “Syrians Seek Independence. Declaration to France,” The Argus, January 3, 1923, 7; “Syria a Nation. Ultimatum to France…” The Daily News, January 3, 1923, 9; “Tigris Population Demand for Independence,” Sydney Morning Herald, January 3, 1923, 11; Examiner, January 3, 1923, 5; The West Australian, January 3, 1923, 7; The Mercury, January 3, 1923, 8. 43. Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 213–14. 44. Ibid., 251. For the text of the Treaty of Lausanne, see Great Britain, Cmd 1929, Treaty of Peace with Turkey and other instruments signed at Lausanne on 24 July, 1923, 15, 29–34.

182 | Stavros T. Stavridis 45. Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 252–57; David Cuthell, “A Kemalist Gambit: A View of the Political Negotiations in the Determination of the Turkish-Iraqi Border,” in The Creation of Iraq 1914–21, ed. Reeva S. Simon and Eleanor H. Tejirian (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 88; R. S. Stafford, The Tragedy of the Assyrians (New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2006), 78–79; National Archives of United Kingdom, British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Part 11, Series B Turkey, Iran and the Middle East, 1918–1939, Vol. 3 Turkey, July 1923–March 1927, ed. Bulent Gökay (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1997), 240–42. 46. Great Britain, Cabinet Office, Frontier between Turkey and Iraq. League of Nations, memorandum in the investigation made by General Laidoner’s mission, Cab 24/176 C.P.531 (25), C785(a).1925, V11, Geneva, December 14, 1925; Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 260–61. For a comprehensive treatment of the subject, see Racho Donef, Massacres and Deportations of Assyrians in Northern Mesopotamia: Ethnic Cleansing by Turkey 1924–25 (Nisibin, Sodertalje: Bet-Froso and Bet-Prasa, 2009). 47. Cab 24.175 C.P.494 (25), Advisory opinion no. 12, Permanent Court of Justice at The Hague, Foreign Office, November 24, 1925; Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 263. 48. Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 264. 49. Ibid., 266. 50. Ibid., 267–68. The text of this treaty is in Great Britain, Turkey No. 1 (1926), Cmd 2679, Treaty between the United Kingdom and Iraq and Turkey regarding the settlement of the frontier between Turkey and Iraq together with notes exchanged, Angora, June 5, 1926, HMSO, 1926. 51. “Mosul,” editorial, Sydney Morning Herald, June 9, 1926, 14; “The Mosul Affair Settled,” The West Australian, June 8, 1926, 6. 52. Great Britain, Cmd 2998, Treaty between the United Kingdom and Iraq signed at London, December 14, 1927, HMSO, 1927; Cmd 1757, Treaty with King Faisal, October 1922, HMSO, London, 1922; Cmd 2587, Treaty with King Faisal signed at Baghdad, January 13, 1926, HMSO, 1926. 53. Great Britain, Cmd 3440, Policy in Iraq, Memorandum by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, November 1929, HMSO, 1929. 54. Great Britain, Cmd 3627, Treaty of Alliance between the United Kingdom and Iraq signed at Baghdad, June 30, 1930, HMSO, London, 1930. 55. Great Britain, Cmd 3675, Notes exchanged with Iraq Prime Minister embodying the separate financial questions referred to in the second exchange of notes appended to the Anglo-Iraq Treaty of June 30, 1930 (Cmd 3627), HMSO, London, 1930; “Britain and Iraq. Treaty Ratified. The King’s Message,” The Mercury, February 7, 1931, 9. 56. Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 296. Parts of the analysis in this section originally appeared in “Britain, Iraq and the Assyrians: The Nine Demands,” Assyrian International News Agency, 2013. 57. National Archives of Australia, A981 IRA5 Iraq Annual Reports, 1932–40, F. H. Humphrys, Baghdad to Sir John Simon, May 18, 1933: Iraq Annual Report, 1932, 30–31. 58. Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 296–97; National Archives of Australia, A981 IRA5 Iraq Annual Reports ,1932–40, F. H. Humphrys, Baghdad to Sir John Simon, May 18, 1933: Iraq Annual Report, 1932, 30 and 34–38. 59. National Archives of Australia, A981 IRA 5 Annual Reports 1932-40, 31. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid., 33. 63. Ibid. 64. Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 300. 65. Ibid., 300, 303. 66. Ibid., 303.

The Assyrian Issue 1914–35 | 183 67. R. S. Stafford, “Iraq and the Problem of the Assyrians,” International Affairs 13, no. 2 (March–April 1934): 176; Khaldun S. Husry, “The Assyrian Affair of 1933 (1),” International Journal of Middle East Studies 5, no. 2 (April 1974): 176; Khaldun S. Husry, “The Assyrian Affair of 1933 (2),” International Journal of Middle East Studies 5, no. 3 (June 1974): 353. 68. Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 303, 306. 69. Ibid., 304–5. 70. Ibid., 306–7. 71. For a sample of press articles on Assyrian massacres, see “Counted 315 Dead. Assyrian Massacre. British Officials Investigation,” Nambour Chronicle & North Coast Advertiser, August 18, 1933, 7; “The Massacre in Irak. 700 Reported Killed,” The West Australian, August 19, 1933, 15; “Northern Iraq. Rebellious Tribesmen. 700 Assyrians Killed,” Sydney Morning Herald, August 19, 1933, 13. For denial of the Simele massacre by Iraqis, see “Assyrian Rebels. No Massacre in Iraq,” Sydney Morning Herald, August 22, 1933, 10; “Iraq Massacre Denied,” The Daily News, September 5, 1933, 4; “Massacre in Iraq?” Barrier Miner, August 25, 1933, 4. 72. Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 311–12. 73. Ibid., 327–28. 74. Ibid., 341–42. For Australian press reports on the Brazil resettlement scheme and its rejection, see “10,000 Assyrians to be Settled in Brazil,” The Advertiser, January 22, 1934, 5; “Assyrians Not Wanted. Brazil Refuses League’s Request,” The West Australian, April 2, 1934, 7; “Assyrians. Not Wanted in Brazil,” Sydney Morning Herald, April 2, 1934, 10. 75. Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 335–38. 76. Ibid., 342. 77. Ibid., 343. 78. Ibid., 372–78. 79. Ibid., 377–78. On May 4, 1937, the Sydney Morning Herald published a letter addressed to the editor from Edith Glanville regarding NT development and Assyrian settlement. She mentioned her correspondence with the Prime Minister and the official response from Canberra. 80. Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 351–54. 81. Ibid., 357–60, 363. 82. “Assyrian Refugees. League of Nations Appeal,” Sydney Morning Herald, December 19, 1935, 9; The West Australian, December 19, 1935, 23; “Plan to Settle Assyrians,” The Argus, December 19, 1935, 4. 83. Stavridis and Chibo, The Assyrians in Australian Documents, 367, 380. 84. Ibid., 388–89.

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The Assyrian Issue 1914–35 | 185 Foreign Affairs Pt. 2, Series B Turkey, Iran and Middle East 1918–1939, Vol. 17 Persia 2: A Troubled Year July 1921–June 1922. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1990. Busch, B. C. Mudros to Lausanne: Britain’s Frontier in West Asia, 1918–23. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1976. Cuthell, David. “A Kemalist Gambit: A View of the Political Negotiations in the Determination of the Turkish-Iraqi Border.” In The Creation of Iraq 1914–21, edited by Reeva S. Simon and Eleanor H. Tejirian.80-94 New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Desmond, Robert W. The Press and World Affairs. New York: Arno Press, 1972. ———. Window on the World. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1980. Donef, Racho. Assyrians Post-Nineveh: Identity, Fragmentation, Conflict, and Survival (672 BC–1920). Sydney: Tatavla Publishing, 2012. ———. Massacres and Deportations of Assyrians in Northern Mesopotamia: Ethnic Cleansing by Turkey 1924–25. Nisibin, Sodertalje: Bet-Froso and Bet-Prasa, 2009. Dundar, Fuat. Statisquo, British Use of Statistics in the Iraqi Kurdistan Question (1919– 1932). Brandeis University, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Crown Paper 7, July 2012. Retrieved March 12, 2013, from http://academia.edu/1798486/ Statisquo_British_Use_of_Statistics_in_the_Iraqi_Kurdish_Question_1919–1932. Gatrell, Peter, and Jo Laycock. “Armenia: The ‘Nationalization,’ Internationalization and Representation of the Refugee Crisis.” In Homelands: War, Population, and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924, edited by Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell, 179–200. London: Anthem Press, 2004. Gaunt, David. Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006. Gorder, Van Christian A. Christianity in Persia and the Status of Non-Muslims in Modern Iran. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010. Hershlag, Zvi Yehuda. Introduction to the Modern Economic History of the Middle East. Leiden: Brill Archive, 1964. Husry, Khaldun S. “The Assyrian Affair of 1933 (1).” International Journal of Middle East Studies 5, no. 2 (April 1974): 161–76. ———. “The Assyrian Affair of 1933 (2).” International Journal of Middle East Studies 5, no. 3 (June 1974): 344–60. Joseph, John. The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Keltie, Sir John S., and M. Epstein. The Statesman Year Book 1921. London: Macmillan & Co, 1921. Kent, Marian. Moguls and Mandarins: Oil, Imperialism and the Middle East in British Foreign Policy, 1900– 1940. London: Frank Cass & Co., 1993. Mayer, Henry. The Press in Australia. Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1968. Nakash, Yitzhak. The Shi’is of Iraq. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. National Archives of United Kingdom. British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Part 11, Series B Turkey, Iran and the Middle East, 1918–1939, Vol. 3 Turkey, July 1923–March 1927, edited by Bulent Gökay. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1997. Pentzopoulos, Dimitri. The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and its Impact on Greece. Paris: Mouton, 1962. Petrosian, Vahram. “Assyrians in Iraq.” Iran & the Caucasus 10, no. 1 (2006): 113–47. Rassam, Suha. Christianity in Iraq. Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2006. Robson, L. L. Australia and the Great War. South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1977. Sabahi, Houshang. British Policy in Persia, 1918–25. London: Frank Cass & Co., 1990. Scott, Ernest. The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918. 7th ed., vol. XI. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1941. Shimun, His Holiness Mar Eshai. “The Assyrian National Petition.” Presented to the World Security Conference in San Francisco, California, May 7, 1945. Retrieved March 14, 2013, from http://www. atour.com/Assyrian_Nation.shtml. Souter, Gavin. Company of Heralds. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1981. Stafford, R. S. “Iraq and the Problem of the Assyrians.” International Affairs 13, no. 2 (March–April 1934): 159–85.

186 | Stavros T. Stavridis ———. The Tragedy of the Assyrians. New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2006. Stavridis, Stavros T. “Britain, Iraq and the Assyrians: The Nine Demands.” Assyrian International News Agency, 2013. Retrieved March 18, 2013, from http://www.aina.org/articles/biata.htm. ———. The Greek Turkish War 1919–23. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2008. Stavridis, Stavros T., and David Chibo, eds. The Assyrians in Australian Documents: 1914–1947. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010. Story, G. Reuters. New York: Greenwood Press, 1970. Styan, David. France and Iraq: Oil, Arms and French Policy Making in the Middle East. London: I. B. Tauris, 2006. Walker, R. B. The Newspaper Press in New South Wales. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1976. Waterfield, Robin. Christians in Persia. New York: Routledge, 2011. Wright, Denis. The English amongst the Persians. London: I. B. Tauris, 2001.

Archives National Archives of Australia. National Archives of United Kingdom, Air Ministry. National Archives of United Kingdom, Foreign Office.

CHAPTER SIX ETHNIC CLEANSING, AMERICAN WOMEN, AND THE ADMIRAL Deep in Anatolia during the Turkish Nationalist Revolution Robert Shenk

When General James Harbord led the American Military Mission to Armenia through the length of the Anatolian subcontinent in the fall of 1919, he noted two American women, recent Smith College graduates, running an orphanage for seven hundred children in the Turkish city of Malatia. They were the only Americans in the city, they spoke no Turkish, and adding to the “delicacy of the situation,” when the fugitive city mayor fled to the hills with a band of Kurdish malcontents, he left his very young Turkish wife in the protection of the two Americans. Despite such an awkward situation, Harbord noted with admiration that the two young women seemed to be handling their work with total confidence and unconcern.1 These women were but two of many female American “Near East Relief ” workers (several of them missionaries who had spent years in the country) who, with a slightly smaller number of men, spread throughout continental Turkey, including Armenia, at the end of World War I. They had been attracted to the relief work because of the great human need resulting from what we know now as the Armenian Genocide, a vast program of massacres and death marches inflicted by the ruling Turks upon the

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Armenian segment of the Turkish population during World War I, particularly in 1915–16. This massive atrocity and the pitiable conditions of its survivors had been publicized throughout the United States during the war, and drew many Americans to volunteer to help those in need. For months, the American volunteers for the “Near East Relief ” who traveled to Constantinople and from there were sent throughout Asia Minor could settle into their relief work with assurance. But then Britain began to take its conquering troops home from Turkey. Meanwhile, France started to colonize part of southern Turkey (the south coastal area known as Cilicia), and after the Allies blundered by sending the Hellenic Greek army alone to occupy the great city of Smyrna on the Allies’ behalf (and not long afterwards sent them further inland), those Greeks began a war with the Turks, seeking on their part a “Greater Greece” to include, besides Greece itself, areas of Turkey that ethnic Greeks had inhabited for millennia. To fight off all such encroachments, ethnic Turks began organizing under the leadership of one Mustapha Kemal, and shortly the Turkish Nationalists began a revolution. Soon the relief work upon which the Americans had started at mission stations deep inland began getting very complicated. Sometimes enduring sieges, going through pitched battles, and bearing great fears, or tending wounded, dying, and devastated refugees during and after armed conflicts and especially on the deportation trails—often with no American men beside them—the American women characteristically manifested enormous courage and compassion. A brief survey of representative episodes will illustrate the magnificent character of these women in the direst of circumstances—circumstances in which they also would witness an ethnic cleansing inflicted upon ethnic Armenians and Greeks that seems to have been as terrible in nature if not in extent as the Turkish attempt to rid Anatolia of the Armenians during the Great War. As we will see, the American womens’ dilemmas were often exacerbated by the lack of understanding, demeaning attitude, and outright cover-ups perpetrated by the head American official in the region, Admiral Mark Bristol in Constantinople.

*** The tiny missionary Edith Cold was the leader of four American women tending a group of orphans in the remote city of Hadjin, some seventy-five miles northwest of Marash in Cilicia. Cold had been a missionary here during the war, and was now helping with the Near East Relief work in the same place. Not long after the Nationalists began their revolution by ridding the city of Marash of its French occupiers in January and February of 1920, a group of chette or bandit forces were sent to confront Hadjin. On February 11, a message that the desperate Americans in Marash had sent out by mountaineer during the siege in that city reached Hadjin. Duly sent on to Constantinople by telegraph, the message reported hundreds of men, women, and

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children being massacred daily. Also brought by the messenger was a heartbreaking letter from an Armenian pastor in Marash who had once served in Hadjin: his wife and two little boys were among those who had been slaughtered.2 These messages confirmed the fears of the Americans in the smaller city that before long their own lives would be endangered, for they had already heard that the Turks were gathering nearby with Hadjin as their objective. Why should the large city of Marash ask help from little Hadjin, the Americans wondered.3 The fact that, unlike Marash, Hadjin was completely unprotected by Allied soldiers (the French had taken control in name only) simply increased the Americans’ consternation. “Hadjin Home” mission was so remote that it could only be reached on foot or by horseback. The missionaries and relief workers there now faced the same kind of dilemma their fellows in Marash had confronted just a few weeks before: “Come to Adana while the road is still open,” they were advised. “No, our place is here,” they decided, among these terrified people.4 Cold had witnessed the deportations of 1915 in Hadjin. In a letter describing the “horrible darkness” of those earlier days, Edith had reported the sympathy of some Muslim women who wailed as their Christian neighbors were being driven out, of a Kurdish Sheik devastated at the loss of his Armenian friend, and of two gendarmes who had appealed to a fellow American missionary about their orders to send out an aged Armenian, his wife, and their bedridden son: “‘How shall we do this thing?’” They begged the missionary to beseech the authorities for mercy. These episodes were “faint gleams of light,” however; “Pages and pages might be written on the relentless cruelty of the many,” Cold had written.5 With such experiences in her memory, Cold now realized that “it is quite possible that six weeks from now we shall not be living.”6 In a diary intended for her family and written in place of her regular letters home, relief worker Alice Keep Clark reflected further: …if, by leaving now, we could save our lives, we should lose our souls. Life seems very sweet to me and I long to see you all again—but if the end is to come here in Turkey and at the hands of the Turks, then I must believe it is God’s plan for me. If death here is to be my lot then I pray that I may meet it with courage high.7 She penned a note to be sent by one last messenger, which contained a sealed farewell letter.8 Clark had traveled to Hadjin eight months before. After the war, to its church, school, and clinic the small mission had added orphanages and a work center, which was doing a great deal of critical relief work among the seven or eight thousand Armenians now in the city.9 Here, as elsewhere in Cilicia, the returning Armenians were destitute, verminous, and so disease-ridden that the Americans could not trust a single one to cook for them. In the mission compound, which lay a third of a mile outside Hadjin itself, the American women and their workers, students, and orphans were relatively comfortable. Conditions in the city, though, were worse than

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wretched. The fire that the Turks had set during the war while deporting twenty-five thousand Armenians from Hadjin had destroyed four thousand houses and left only five hundred standing. People who could not cram into these buildings now lived in caves and in holes in the ground.10 Nevertheless, in the very moment that Alice Clark first glimpsed the city under its mountain, she also glimpsed hope in the eyes of the “Hadjin Home” girls who were waiting on both sides of the trail. “They carried green branches in their hands and, as we walked our horses slowly, they sang a song of welcome and scattered roses….” Teary-eyed over this greeting, Clark would often be moved to pity and love in the months to come. She found that even the most ill-used and apparently stupid among her orphan charges improved both in color and wit from the solid food and the Americans’ kindness. Alice also delighted in discovering the Turkish countryside, including the mountain across from Hadjin: It was a beautiful ride, so wild and picturesque, past little waterfalls and fields of wild flowers—bright patches of color. The poppies bloom on Flanders fields, but they also blossom red on Hadjin hills. They are big and glorious. She was glad to be in such a far-off, politically unimportant place: “I feel that nowhere else could I have had a richer experience.” However, about the time she was comprehending how vital a work it was that the four American women had taken on,11 and how well they were dealing with it, the message from Marash arrived. With it began the time of dread, and the need for patience and great resolution. As in Marash, the Nationalists sent bandit forces, or chette, rather than regular forces. These bands stopped all road traffic and cut the telegraph wires too, but did not immediately appear in Hadjin. The delay gave the Armenians in the city a bit of time to organize, to make bullets (some rifles had been given to them by the French), to go through some very basic military drills, and to suggest that the Americans join them. The women refused. For their own safety’s sake and that of their orphans and other charges, the Americans decided to follow Admiral Bristol’s instructions to all Americans inland in Turkey and “stay neutral” by remaining at the American mission.12 While they attempted to keep up their relief work and teaching, much time was spent in anticipation, as the Armenians about them could only think and talk about their past suffering. Alice’s sewing woman, for instance, mourned her three children who had starved on the deportation trails during the war, and her husband, who had been buried alive. The schoolgirls had been planning a concert; now they came to the Americans asking why they should bother, since shortly they would all be dead.13 While dealing with these distraught people, the Americans listened to three Turkish women too. Some lawless Armenians in Hadjin (men whose families had been slaughtered by Turks during the Great War at Erzerum, and who now thought they should visit similar devastation on the Turks) had begun threatening the three hun-

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dred Muslims who remained there. The Turkish women feared for their own daughters: could the Americans take them in? They could. Also, from their own quarters inside the city, two Mennonite missionaries brought their orphans to the safer American compound.14 Mr and Mrs D. C. Eby were Canadians, but they had learned to pretend they were Americans, for anything “British” was an object of hatred to many Turks.15 Indeed, everybody in the city seemed to look with hope and trust to the four American women, who found the experience humbling. Often all they could do was keep smiling. Then a line of Turks appeared on the mountain, began firing at the city, and some bullets landed in the compound. Alice found she had no fear, but later recalled hoping she would be shot, rather than killed with a knife.16 The girls were led by Miss Bredemus in the Lord’s Prayer in Turkish; after that, they all said “the shepherd’s prayer” together. Then Edith Cold knocked from outside and asked them to let in two Turkish “friends.” Draped with bandoliers, guns in hand, “bombs” hanging from their belts (probably grenades), and knives stuck in their belts and boots, two bandits walked in, sat down on their couch and smoked. They claimed to be friends who were fighting neither the Americans nor the Armenians—but the French. They asked if the Americans had any weapons, and Edith Cold brought out the one gun in the compound: it had been given to her in 1915 by the Hadjin commandant. The Turk took it, and examined it. When he made no motion to return it, Edith drew herself up with great dignity—“You could hardly keep it, could you?”—and the bandit gave it back. He then said they had to search the premises, to make sure there were no armed men hidden there. As Clark reported, Edith again giving him a piercing look, said, “You touch my honor. I am an American—all you need is my word.” It was strange to see this wild looking man with his evil face draw back saying, “Yes, yes, I know.”17 Other authorities came and explained that the Turks would soon take the city, but this boast turned out to be groundless: the Armenian defenses were too strong. Before long the Turks threw up earthworks between Hadjin and the mission, which meant the compound was now a backdrop for Armenian bullets. A few days later the Americans and their charges “again faced death,” as Clark wrote. On hearing the children suddenly cry out, she found Turkish bandits had jumped the walls and were running at them. They would search the whole place, their leader stated, and “if three guns were found, every American would be shot at once.” Ordered to make a list of names in the compound, the women responded quickly, and then had everybody file by the Turks. Fortunately, the list tallied with the people. The Turks began to crawl into every impossible place, looking for weapons and for hidden Armenian fighters; later yet they would search for secret tunnels between the mission and the city. Discovering nothing, they began to leave. However, Edith could not let them depart in anger. “‘Achmet,’” she said to the leader, “‘…How can we go

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on if there is hatred in our hearts?’” Laying her small hand on his filthy shoulder, she stated, “‘By this touch I make you my brother. Now if you are my brother and I am your sister, we must do good to one another and not evil.’” Magically, Achmet’s face softened: “‘It is in truth so.’” In such a way, this threat also ended.18 For weeks the crisis continued. As they sustained the suspicion and threats of the Turkish chette, they worked endlessly to comfort the orphans during the bombardments of Hadjin itself (virtually all the orphans knew somebody there).19 The American women were grateful for the other work always at hand—bartering for food with Turkish farmers who lived outside the city, baking bread and preparing meals, and tending the ill. The American nurse Miss Super dressed the wounds of the Turkish soldiers and treated others with medicine. Once an Armenian boy who was tending their goats got lost on the hillside, and Cold successfully got her “friend” Achmet to help find him. On another occasion a bullet hit one of the boys who couldn’t resist jumping up and riding a donkey. As the boy was buried, Turkish bandits were amazed to see the American women weeping.20 In unguarded moments, some of the Turkish peasants among the bandit groups told the Americans they hated what they were doing: “We have friends in Hadjin among the Armenians. Why should we kill them?” They would have returned to their own wives and children, they said, except that their leaders threatened and beat them. The women found themselves pitying these men, too, as they did their own orphans.21 Occasionally the Americans wondered at seeing rows of rifles hung on a wall, and below them, some of the soldiers praying towards Mecca. And the frenzied war dances these men performed while shouting prayers to Allah and otherwise working themselves up for attacks left the Americans shuddering.22 More than once, Turkish leaders asked the Americans to intercede with the Armenians in the city. On one occasion, the Turks stipulated that the Armenians were to haul down the French flag (though there were no French there, the Armenians had been fighting under it) and deliver all their weapons and ammunition to a group of responsible Turks—“Are there any such?” Clark wondered. If they did so, the Turks promised, with a cliché, “Not so much as a nose shall bleed in Hadjin.” With grave reservations, the Americans agreed to carry the terms to the city. Later Clark was unable to describe her feelings as she watched the diminutive Edith Cold (she was called “The Little Lady” by the Turks) carrying a white flag and walking swiftly out of the compound along with the Canadian, Mr Eby, who carried the stars and stripes.23 Eby had reassured his wife of the calendar verse for the day: “The chariots of the Lord are twenty thousand, and thousands of angels, and the Lord is among them.”24 The two did not return as quickly as expected and the agony of suspense was very great. This time Clark and the others feared the Armenians. Not long before, when Cold had inveighed against the cruelties that were being inflicted upon Muslims in Hadjin (which included torture), her life had been threatened by one of the wilder Armenians there.25 However, the emissaries Cold and Eby were not harmed, and eventually they returned through the Armenians’ barbed wire and minefield and then across

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the battleground with its shredded trees and decaying bodies. They reported that the Armenians would not treat with the Turks; they had no trust in them. And indeed, even if the bandit leaders meant what they said—which was doubtful enough—they sometimes had little control of their men, especially when the men had been drinking. (The bandits regularly fired over the heads of the missionaries while they walked between houses or visited the well.)26 Over several weeks the Americans had gained the trust of the bandit leaders. But eventually things got completely beyond American control. Taunted by Turks across the firing line, who claimed to have taken the Armenian girls from the American compound, some of the more daring (and ruthless) Armenians from the city made an advance, killed some Turks, ran the others off and captured the mission. As soon as this occurred, the Americans knew it was a disaster. Once the Turks retook the compound (as they were sure to do), they would be certain to think the Americans had helped the Armenian fighters. The American women would no longer have any moral suasion, no power to protect a single child from the desperadoes about them. Of the Armenians who had made the raid, Clark reflected: “These poor deluded men don’t know what they have done.” All the Americans’ students, orphans, and Armenian teachers would have to be sent into the city for their own protection—such protection as the city could afford. Conditions in Hadjin had been wretched before the siege began; now they were horrible. It was an absolutely heartrending thing for the four women to see the Armenian children go: Just at dusk we started the sad procession. They all looked white and frightened as each one, carrying a bundle of clothing and a dish and spoon, came to us to make his or her salaam.27 When the Turks recaptured the American compound (as they soon did), one of the leaders who felt gratitude for the medical treatment that Miss Super had given him spirited the American women and the Ebys out of the city, despite plans of other Turks to kill them all. He had them led over the mountains, eventually to the American mission in Talas. There Edith Cold remained, to be in a position to go to the children if Hadjin were ever relieved. Alice Clark eventually got to Samsun, and from there rode one of Admiral Mark Bristol’s destroyers on its transit to Constantinople. Soon after, she traveled back to the United States. Eventually she learned that, although Hadjin had held out beyond all expectation, in October 1920 the Turks brought up heavy guns and broke down the Armenian defenses. The Turks then fired the city and used their guns, knives, and axes on the remaining thousands of inhabitants.28 Back in Constantinople, although Admiral Bristol once attempted to answer queries from the United States (Alice’s father had been concerned about her, for example), it was clear that all this time the thousands of Armenians under siege in Hadjin had not weighed on the conscience of any of the Great Powers, America included. In the end, nothing at all was done for them. According to his war diary account, when

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the opportunity arose for Bristol to address Hadjin at length, in an interview with Alice Clark after she returned to Constantinople, the entire interest of the admiral was on what the Armenians in Hadjin had done to provoke the Turks, that is, on their failure to come to an understanding with their enemy on their mistreatment of the Turks in the city, on their mistake in becoming allied with the French, and so forth. Conveniently ignored in the admiral’s version was the terrible suffering borne by the Armenians at the present moment, in the recent past since the war, and in the 1915 deportations themselves, events that might have had something to do with the Armenians’ belligerency. In contrast, the fact that the inhabitants of Hadjin would now probably “starve or be massacred” by the Turks was treated by the admiral as a fact of natural life, and not the deed of responsible human beings.29 Clark’s own sympathy is clear in her letters and diary published four years later. Though the Armenians had been wrong to mistreat the Turks in Hadjin (as Edith Cold had emphatically told them), the Armenians were hardly to be faulted for resisting the Turks’ offer of a truce: “They cannot accept the terms because they have known too many cases in the past when the giving up of arms has been the signal for a massacre.”30 Finally, in October, Edith Cold also came to Constantinople, and she too was interviewed by the admiral. At this point Cold was still fervently hoping to hear something from her former charges in Hadjin, although she had eventually realized that staying in Talas could serve no further purpose. (For a while she had gotten messages from Hadjin there, but they had stopped.) The admiral’s war diary account of this interview, like the longer one with Alice Clark, deals exclusively with the Armenians’ errors, i.e., that the Armenians “had … in a measure, brought down upon their own heads the attack that the Turks had made upon them.” (That the Armenians typically brought on themselves all the massacres and deportations they suffered was a standard Bristol position.) The interview was apparently very brief. At the end of his diary entry, Admiral Bristol dryly remarked, “It is evident that Miss Cold is in a nervous state.”31 In such a way, then, the tiny person who Alice Clark reported was ever the mistress of the situation; a woman able to soften the hearts of the most awful culprits in the remotest part of a lawless, anti-feminine country; a missionary just and courageous enough to chastise revengeful spirits on both sides of a deadly conflict; and indeed someone whose compassionate persistence would eventually succeed in finding twenty of her girls, former pupils, still alive in Turkish hands in a village near Hadjin, having somehow survived the massacre after all—in such a way, this magnificent human being was officially dismissed by the admiral.32

*** In 1970, a historical novel was published in the United States that featured a young American woman, married to an American correspondent, visiting Mustapha Kemal in Angora during the Greek–Turkish war and becoming his lover (The House of War, by Catherine Gavin). Actually, an American woman did regularly visit Mustapha

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Kemal in Angora about that time, but she was a very different sort of person than the one in the novel. Rather than romancing the Nationalist leader, she was one person who, at the height of the crisis, had personally sought to visit beleaguered Hadjin— but her request to travel there had been refused by the Nationalists.33 Back in March 1920, the British had put Constantinople under martial law. In response, the Nationalists had cut communications to Anatolia. After weeks with no contact, Admiral Bristol had worried about the safety of the American missionaries and relief workers at all their Anatolian mission sites, and so he sent his intelligence officer, Lieutenant Junior Grade Robbie Dunn, to the old capitol of Brusa, where a single telegraph line was open. “‘There’s an old-timer at an orphan school named Annie Allen—get in touch with her. The very girl for you, Bobby.’”34 Annie T. Allen had been born in Harput in 1868, where her father headed the mission. Once she had grown up, she was sent back to the United States to be educated at Mount Holyoke, but not long after she graduated she returned to Turkey to help her parents. Eventually, Allen became a missionary herself. After the Great War, she stayed on in Brusa instead of going on furlough back to the United States. “Miss Allen” was fluent in the local languages, and, what is more, was respected by the local people of all ethnic groups, as well as by missionaries, educators, and the American admiral. Slender, graying, and sprightly, she deeply loved all the people of Turkey, though, like many missionaries, she spoke of the Armenians with special solicitude as “my people.” She and Dunn got along. The telegraph clerk doubted that any messages would get further than Angora, so the lieutenant announced he was going on to Bilecik to see if he could get on the train to Angora there. Miss Allen was keen: “Lieutenant Dunn, I’ve never been to Angora. Can I go with you?” “Why not?” “I couldn’t think you’d mind.” And with schoolgirl pep she dashed upstairs to pack.35 While en route, Miss Allen sympathetically explained a Turkish peasant’s embarrassment at his oxen being unable to shift their car out of the mud, found a room for them in the house of an Armenian friend (the friend being Armenian, Dunn was reluctant), translated Dunn’s telegraphed request to travel further, and discreetly refused to translate Dunn’s occasional insults. Nevertheless, the lieutenant missed the train and had to return to his ship. Allen volunteered to travel on, accompanied by a Turkish courier. She was the only woman on the night train. A Turkish officer provided her a candle, and a bandit handed her some cakes. In the inn in Angora, she heard a disturbance in the night, and discovered that a murder had taken place. Yet Allen herself met only respect and consideration. On arriving in Angora, she inquired to see if she might see Mustapha Kemal Pasha, and (as word of her mission had preceded her) she was invited to travel by carriage to his headquarters.

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In imagination I had seen the old time Pasha brilliant with gold braid and sword hanging at his side, so that for a moment I was quite taken aback when I was ushered into the presence of a man rather short of stature, with quiet grey eyes, dressed in a brown civilian suit. (Sometime later, Dunn’s first impression of Kemal would be similar, though somewhat less respectful: “‘The well-trained, superior waiter.’”)36 On this occasion, Allen inquired about sending telegrams to the mission stations. Kemal consented, and she was shown to the office of the American-educated Turkish patriot and feminist, Halide Edib, who invited her to wait in Angora for responses to the telegrams. So she did. She learned later that Kemal had sent a message following hers to the officials of each place, asking for an immediate reply. After a few days, answers returned from all stations except two, though her message surprised some at the missions, who thought Annie must have been captured by brigands and had taken this means to let it be known.37 Her return to Brusa was uneventful, except for twelve Turkish soldiers deserting by jumping from the train, which was en route to the front. Three more times that year, Annie visited Mustapha Kemal in Angora. In May, she observed a meeting of Parliament. Watching Kemal preside, she noted the respect of the members. She was then invited to dine with Kemal and six or seven aides, including a former Turkish minister to Washington. At dinner she found five languages spoken, though mainly Turkish, and again she observed Kemal’s democratic spirit. “I was in their midst as one of them, for they discussed quite freely of all their doings.” By now she had become deeply interested in the Nationalist movement, having seen in Angora “a well organized body composed of some of the best of the Turkish nation.” She talked with several representatives. Upon her posing the Armenian issue, one of them blamed the “foreign finger” for stirring up the troubles.38 In July she again left Brusa for Angora, this time carrying money for the Angora orphanage. (She managed to get out of Brusa an hour and a half before the Greek army occupied it.) Now, while traveling, she was hailed as an old friend. By chance she met with Halide Edib on the train. Rather than be discouraged at the Greek advances, Edib was exhilarated to be fighting imperialism: “Thank God, imperialism in Turkey is dead.”39 Another interview with Kemal, and Allen’s positive impressions of the Turkish leader were further strengthened. She went on to Konia on this trip, and then had an adventurous return to Brusa through the Greek lines. (The American flag protected her through both armies). By this time she was regularly sending or carrying word of her meetings to Admiral Bristol, who regularly manifested great admiration for this uniquely able woman.40 Accompanied by a new relief worker, she traveled in September via Constantinople and Samsun to Konia, where she was to take over the relief work. In early October 1920, she and co-workers endured the Konia rebellion, a brief and unsuccessful armed movement against the Nationalists by a peasant army. As men were being killed on the main streets, and gunshots went whistling, she marched a procession of two hundred girls by back streets to a safer place. Then, stationing an Armenian

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matron at the rear of a column of young boys, Allen led fifty more orphans by side streets from their smaller house to the main orphanage. After lunch she got a porter and a cart to take foodstuffs to all these places.41 Twice on these journeys she met with peasant revolutionaries, but they let her party go by unmolested. After all, Allen was a respected American, and she also spoke their language and could be both shrewd and courteous. The next day, she traveled back and forth through the chaotic city and by judicious intervention got permission for a Greek surgeon to come out of hiding to perform operations at the American mission hospital, which was packed with wounded. She also made her own house into a safe haven for many other terrified people. That night (after yet one more procession of children), Allen found her assistant making more plans to move orphans, the cook working to get more supplies, and in fact everyone flying around like mad and working—“all except ‘father.’” I am “father,” and am sitting in my room writing out this little account for future reference and giving orders or signing necessary papers… Allen continued as “father” until the Nationalists returned, and the hangings began.42 Despite the consideration she herself had been shown, and precisely because she had begun to conceive such great hopes for the new government, Allen was troubled by much that she saw in the Turkish interior, actions that did not square with the ideals she had heard being expressed in Angora: summary executions, for instance,43 along with racial hatred and oppression, killings and lootings, and general great suffering. So, on her own initiative, she visited Angora yet one more time towards the end of October 1920. Traveling by train from Konia, in her compartment she overheard heated arguments between an Islamic teacher (a hodja) and one of several Turkish officers, the officer most strongly supporting the widely discussed concept of “Turkey for the Turks” (a doctrine that would eventually involve forced exile of the minorities), and the hodja, interestingly, taking exception “to such narrowness.” In the Nationalist capital, she again asked for an interview with Mustapha Kemal, and again her request was granted. Allen said she intended to pose problems “not concerning her organization,” but only concerns of her own. Kemal told her to speak as freely as she liked. Very diplomatically, then, Allen raised several issues: the ubiquitous looting after battles, for instance; executions meted out after revolutions without being careful to identify the guilty (this she had seen in Konia); acts of injustice towards Christian members of the population; restrictions against freedom of travel; rumored renewal of deportations—in sum, acts characteristic of the imperialists that the Nationalists claimed to be displacing. Through her talk, Allen made it clear how great her hopes were in this new Turkish government, and how she, like them, had suffered under the old Ottoman one, and, by one example after another, clearly demonstrating her love of all the Turkish people. However, Allen was also forceful. After her various challenges, she ended with this statement to the most powerful person in all of Turkey: “Friends!

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You at Angora are to blame for injustices and such acts. Either the order for them comes from you, or if it does not, you are all the more to blame if you make no effort to stop them.”44 How was she received? Kemal not only heard Allen out, but then showed her the greater respect of answering her questions point by point. They were attempting to punish the looters, often runaway soldiers, he said; there were two sides to racial hatred, but they hoped to moderate it; court martials had to be quick in putting down rebellion or they would be ineffective; deportations only took place on the frontiers, and there was no intention of a general Christian deportation. And so on. Overall, the government was very new, Kemal argued—no other government in history after only six months would have done so much, despite having to work as they did with so much “rotten machinery.”45 (One recalls here that many Turkish officials then working for the Nationalists had earlier helped to carry out the Armenian Genocide.) Kemal’s response about the deportations was problematic, as it turns out; even as Allen was speaking, another widespread deportation seems to have been in the planning stage, little of which could be justified by military necessity. But more of that later. Allen returned to Konia, but by May or June of 1921, she was more or less permanently set up in Angora, officially as the Near East Relief liaison, and unofficially as Bristol’s eyes and ears there. She regularly wrote the admiral of her good treatment, friendly contacts, and pleasant circumstances. Often serving as a translator, she facilitated an interview of Mustapha Kemal by Lieutenant Dunn, and helped the courtings of the Nationalists by former consul Lewis Heck, who was now working for General Motors. Allen also helped the Near East Relief begin an orphanage for Turkish children in the capital, probably Bristol’s idea. She forwarded to the admiral translations from Angora papers and sometimes wrote letters to their editors. Most importantly, she listened to parliamentary debates, complimented officials who spoke with moderation, and spoke with Nationalist ministers. Possessed of great confidence in this “apparently real democratic government,” Allen had hopes that even the unjustly closed American mission schools in Talas and Marsovan (for which she was fighting) could soon be reinstated.46 This was wartime, however, and many things were occurring in Turkey to disturb such happy daydreams. After some indecisive battles in the early part of the year, the Greek government determined on a great effort to win the war, and its army launched a major offensive beginning on July 10, 1921. The Turks suffered some significant defeats, so that Angora itself at one point seemed to be threatened. The possibility of Kemal being deposed was even being reported to Bristol.47 In September 1921, the Turks ended the immediate crisis by pushing the Greeks back from the Sakaria River. Sometime after this, Allen and Billings were invited by the Turks to tour the reoccupied warzone. From personal observation, the two Americans reported to Bristol that the Greek army had scorched the earth during its retreat: 130 Turkish villages (they wrote) had been burned, the houses pillaged, the livestock driven away, the crops destroyed.48

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But however much scorched earth she had actually seen on this front (obviously she was shown some, and took the Turks’ word for the rest), Allen apparently was not privy to the policies of the brutal Turkish general, Noureddin Pasha, who had been sent to the Pontus the previous December,49 nor of the great destruction and death being parceled out there—nor of the nature of the Pontus deportations, which had been initiated sometime in the spring of 1921, and would continue for a year. When relief worker Theda Phelps visited Angora for three weeks in September 1921, Allen assured her (based on what Allen had been told by the Nationalist government) that there would be no general deportation, but that the men whom the government would be sending away from their homes would be enduring a mere “military necessity.” Like Allen, Phelps was quite impressed with the Turkish officials she met in Angora, and so she was guardedly optimistic: I was shown every courtesy, entertained cordially, and felt a very friendly interest in the new Government…[I] told Miss Allen I was willing to believe in them if there were no Greek deportation and atrocities such as I had seen in 1915–16–17. Then Phelps was sent to Sivas. When she arrived in that city, she was dismayed to find a general deportation of Greeks from the coast “in full swing,” and, what is more, “It had been going on for months and was going on while I was being given promises in Angora that no such thing should occur.” Phelps did not blame Allen for her misinformation; as Phelps put it, Miss Allen simply “did not see….”50 Soon enough, however, Allen did see. Three months after Phelps visited her, Allen began a journey to Harput, to attempt to work out difficulties that had arisen in that city between Near East Relief and government officials there. En route, in Sivas, she met Theda Phelps again, who mentioned the deportations, and who pointed out that at that very moment Sivas was crowded with “hungry, cold, sick—almost naked vermin covered persons,” who were continually being herded on through. In particular, Allen learned of 120 desperate women from a Near East Relief shelter. That very day, they were threatened by deportation up mountain trails into a snowstorm. Allen joined the American relief director in an appeal to the Turkish governor, who gave his word not to order the women out. But even as the two were in the governor’s office (though possibly without his knowledge), the women were being sent on. The next day, with a trusted Turkish officer, Allen began her journey to Harput. They went on over the first mountain, and when they found the snow so high in one spot that they had to shovel it from under the carriage, they carried on from there—despite the bodies they discovered while digging under the snow.51 Allen’s faith had been shaken in Sivas, but she told Phelps, “‘I must believe in the Turks, if I lose my faith in them, I cannot go on.’”52 That faith apparently gave out just before her constitution did. Allen’s journey from Angora to Harput was a dreadful one on all accounts, from her seeing so much suffering, from having to deal with un-

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cooperative, heartless officials, and not least from traveling from Angora through the Anti-Taurus mountains in a carriage to what Consul Leslie Davis had called “one of the most inaccessible places in the entire world,”53 in the middle of winter, 150 miles each way as the crow flies. She visited Harput, and somehow on her way back she was thrown from her carriage. She then contracted a mortal case of typhus. Before becoming delirious and then succumbing, she talked freely with the Sivas relief workers. She apparently had gotten nowhere with the Turkish officials in Harput, who had also been less than civil to her. From seeing all the suffering and from being unable to stop it, Allen seemed heartbroken, according to relief worker William Hawkes. Whereas when she had started for Harput she felt the Angora government was trying its best, she now had concluded that the country must have some “political interference” or intervention, and that Americans must have more support or recognition.54 These words were brief and somewhat cryptic, but Allen’s disillusion was clear enough. So was the generosity of this terrifically dedicated American missionary, relief worker, and informal American ambassador.

*** Admiral Bristol published a tribute to Allen, marveling at her courage in working for the sick and destitute, and pointing out that she was sympathetic to all the people in Turkey “from the highest official to the lowest peasant,” as indeed she was.55 Veteran missionary Etta Marden wrote a short note to the admiral in response, thanking him again and again for his wonderful tribute to her beloved friend. In closing, however, Marden made the mistake of contrasting the great hopes they all had had in 1908 (with the accession of the Young Turks) versus the terrible conditions now. She had just heard of a Turk in town from Samsun who had apparently been reporting some deportations of Greek women and children there: “He told it as calmly as if he were mentioning the time of day and added that all the Greeks and Armenians were to be eliminated.”56 It never did any good to mention Turkish outrages to Bristol. In response to this woman’s simple note, Admiral Bristol responded with a five-page single-spaced diatribe insisting that the ethnic Christians committed atrocities that were just as bad, and indeed that American missionaries had helped to bring about the situation in the first place. Bristol claimed to have the advantage over Marden and others of not having seen as many terrible things as they had, and thus being able to keep an open mind.57 Thus, Bristol thought he alone remained above it all. Nevertheless, over those winter months, the admiral would have to confront many more ominous reports, especially from his destroyers, one of which was always stationed off Samsun. In early September 1921, a destroyer commander reported in his war diary that 1,500 women and children from nearby Greek villages who had recently been living in Samsun were now being deported. The commander also said that he had heard reports (which he believed) from the American tobacco men at the same port that de-

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portation of some six thousand women and children from the Bafra district was well underway. To be sure, at about the same time, a Greek band of nearly a hundred had attacked a Turkish village eight miles away, killed some villagers, and burned their houses. A similar Greek raid by Greek bandits from the mountains seems to have been made in early October.58 Bristol would mostly keep what he heard to himself (it would seem he sent only a few of the relief workers’ reports to the State Department, and nothing at all to the press), and his cover-up lasted for a year. Even when, well into the summer of 1922, Dr Mark Ward and F. D. Yowell came to Constantinople, having been exiled by the Turks from Harput, where they had been relief directors, Bristol insisted they not publish their very detailed and damning accounts of death marches of Greek civilians through Harput that had resulted (to their local knowledge) in the death of some fourteen thousand Greek women, children, and old men, at least, and the imposed great suffering of many thousands more. As I have outlined in detail elsewhere, with the private guidance and support of the Near East officials in Constantinople, Ward and Yowell soon defied the admiral and spoke out freely to the British press (instead of to Bristol’s sycophants among the American newsmen) about the Greek death marches they were recent witnesses of in Anatolia, and so the story finally broke.59 Some of the other American relief workers who had been deep “in country” spoke to Bristol about what they had seen and endured, but some did not and instead wrote to officials at the Near East Relief headquarters or the State Department on their return to the United States. These included several of the American women relief workers tormented by recollections of what they had witnessed. I will trace a few of their remarks (rather than those of the American men, though reports from Donald Hosford, Stanley Hopkins, and others also eventually got to Bristol and the State Department),60 so as to continue my study of the response of the American women across Anatolia to the ethnic cleansing they had seen. As we will see, several of these women also commented wryly or even bitterly about the attitude of the American admiral. In Samsun itself, while waiting many weeks for permission to proceed further inland, Gertrude Anthony and Ethel Thompson both saw what the ethnic Greeks in the city and in the villages outside of it were going through. Although measures had apparently been taken to see that the foreigners in this port city could not witness much first-hand (they were forbidden to leave Samsun), Anthony reported that during her two-plus months in the city, “there were reports of the destruction of Greek villages and massacre of the villagers in the Coast region … [These reports] were corroborated by the influx of Greek children at our orphanages.” Kadikeuy or Upper Samsun was close enough, however, that the Americans could see directly some of what was happening there. As Anthony noted, After the hurried removal of the people, the houses were stripped of doors, windows and boards and timbers … Numbers of Turkish villagers passed the hospital every day for several weeks carrying this loot on their backs or on donkey … Later still, an order was issued that all outsiders [inhabi-

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tants of nearby villages who had sought safety in Samsun] must now leave. Frantic women at times besieged the officials, the Americans and others for release from the order or for refuge. It is certain that not all obeyed the order, but many were driven out. No one in Samsoun, I think, doubts that they were destroyed.61 When Osman Agha’s remorseless “Laz” bandits arrived, warnings from friendly Turks about imminent deportations were passed on to the Americans. With other events, these warnings convinced Anthony to protest to Commander Joyce of the American destroyer at the port (the USS Overton). Joyce passed along her protest along with his own conclusions, and the admiral in response protested to officials in Samsun.62 (Probably partly because she knew of this particular action on his part, Anthony spoke with more respect of the admiral than other American relief workers did.) For a while—but not for long—the threat was called off. Ethel Thompson came to Samsun a couple of weeks after Anthony set off inland. In her report upon leaving Turkey, Thompson pointed out that while the young Greek men had been deported from Samsun before she arrived, soon afterwards, “the old men were notified and tramped away in the night. We were kept awake at night by the crying of the Greek women.” Burning villages seen in the distance caused Thompson to reflect about “what a hell on earth human beings could make of this really beautiful section of the country.” In August, the Greek women were told to follow the old men: Our house was surrounded by these poor women, hammering at our doors, holding out their children, begging us to take the children if we could not save the women. They threw their arms about our necks and we never felt so helpless in our lives. About this time the Greek fleet threatened to bombard the town and this saved for a time the women. But then Thompson got permission to travel inland towards Harput, and on that long journey was personally able to see what was happening to those who had been forcibly sent out previously. We crossed Anatolia under a blazing sun, passing groups and groups of the old men of Samsoun and the inhabitants of other Black Sea ports walking on, God knows where, driven by Turkish gendarmes. The dead bodies of those who had dropped during the hard tramp were lying by the roadside. Vultures had eaten parts of the flesh so that in most cases merely skeletons remained. Indeed, her haunting visions of what she saw over the next year were what convinced Thompson as she left the country to stop at nothing to tell the world of the horrors perpetrated “under the Kemalist government,” as she put it. They included visions like this one:

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When a woman with a baby died, the baby was taken from her dead arms and handed to another woman and the horrible march proceeded. Old blind men, led by little children, trudged along the road. The whole thing was like a march of corpses—a march of death across Anatolia which continued during my entire stay.63 Gertrude Anthony, in her report, noted that of four groups of younger men who had been sent out of Samsun before the older ones, many from the first and third groups had been massacred near Kavak, though the fourth group itself had only had “their money and blankets and most of the clothing, rings, watches and some gold teeth stolen by the gendarmes” who were guarding them.64 In Marsovan, when Anthony arrived there to work, she found “the same terror” she had been confronted with in Samsun, that is, word of nearby villages being destroyed and the people deported. Soon Osman Agha’s cutthroats arrived there and perpetrated a whole week of massacres—a reign of terror I have described at length elsewhere. It culminated in the setting of “four separate and distinct fires,” which burned four hundred houses in the city, the shooting of dozens of men in the hills nearby, looting by villagers that involved “cartload after cartload, for days” going by the mission house in which Anthony was staying, and the killing and burial of countless dead in five large pits in the Christian cemetery (some of whom, Anthony noticed as she watched through binoculars, were not yet dead). Anthony estimated that maybe 1,000 or 1,500 of the Christian population of Marsovan had been killed, although she admitted that no one could say for sure. To be sure, dozens and dozens had fled to the American college buildings and had been given protection there.65 Theda Phelps later wrote that, “When I was in Marsovan May 18, 1922, there were only 14 Armenians and Greek men left in the city. All the rest had been exiled or killed.” As for Osman Agha, she added (this in June 1922), he “is now Commander of 6000 men in Angora and his picture is on the new stamps.”66 Rather than burnings and murders, the atrocities that other American women testified to witnessing were the deportations, those murderous treks across much of the Turkish subcontinent of old men, women, and children—most of the adult men having either been massacred at the start, or placed in so-called labor battalions—where, according to relief workers in Arabkir, “slow starvation [was yet] another method for accomplishing their extermination.”67 Of the deportees Phelps saw upon the roads, she commented, “The Government makes no provision for food or care of any kind for these persons ‘safely conducted from the war zone’” [italics added]. Many pointed out that the gendarmes regularly forbade those being herded along to drink from the streams they crossed. One detail that points to the absolutely fearful situation of the deportees is the answer of a woman whom Phelps questioned at Sivas: I asked one woman from Bafra, how she managed to bring her two children over the mountains in the snow and she said “I forced them to walk

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all the way because I saw that the children who were being carried were freezing to death.”68 Bafra is on the coast near Samsun, some 130 mountainous miles from Sivas. One recalls here that it was Dr Mabel Elliott, on the terrible three-day trek through a blizzard from Marash to Islahiye in March 1920, who had had to tell each of perhaps fifty Armenian women, one by one, that because of the great cold, the child she carried on her back was dead.69 Phelps left Sivas for the United States in May 1922. Even this late, a year after the deportations from the Pontus had begun, not far from Sivas the vehicle in which she was riding came across a group of about two hundred women and children being herded on. Not long after that, the car in which Phelps was riding broke down. When the repair party came the next day, it reported that fourteen of those two hundred now lay dead by the road.70 The circumstances in Harput, 150 map miles on from Sivas, were similar, but worse. Ethel Thompson had worked there for a year, and remarked, “The heaviest winter weather, when a howling blizzard was raging, during a blinding snowfall, was the favorite time chosen by the Turks to drive the Greeks on. Thousands perished in the snow. The road from Harpoot to Bitlis was lined with bodies.” Several times, the American relief director in Harput had begged the Turkish officials to allow the Americans to take into their orphanages the Greek children whose mothers had died along the trails. [This request] was always refused. Finally, after many weeks of continual appeals, they promised that we could take an old building formerly belonging to German missionaries and keep the Greek children there. We did this and issued a week’s rations of food and gave them some clothes, but in a very few days the building was empty. The Turks had driven the children over the mountain. Thompson pointed out that the Near East Relief people here were helping ethnic Turks as well as ethnic Christians, but it made no difference. We were supporting the Turkish orphanage and helping the Turkish poor as well as supporting the Armenian orphanages and aiding with clothes and food, when we were allowed to do so, the ghastly lines of gaunt starving Greek women and children who staggered across Anatolia through the city of Harpoot, their glassy eyes fairly protruding from their heads, their bones merely covered with skin, skeleton babies tied to their backs, driven on without food supplies or clothing until they dropped dead, Turkish gendarmes hurrying them with their guns. She concluded, “Anatolia has been for the past year an open graveyard.”71

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The mission and relief station of Arabkir was so far off the beaten track that Bessy Bannerman Murdoch and relief director J. Herbert Knapp saw no other Americans there for a year and a half. But the deportees they saw were going through the same trials as all the others. Of one group, Murdoch commented: Many of the women were unable to carry their children along and they were obliged to leave them by the roadside, and we took in our orphanage about 20 of these who were left behind, and several of them were unable to survive the starvation and exposure they had undergone prior to reaching Arabkir. In general, as she went on to say, “The stories of robberies and extortions told us by the deportees were almost universal.” She was also convinced that the timing of the departures of the deportees was a concerted policy of the Turks, enacted precisely so that most of the deportees would perish. She was thinking in particular of a blizzard into which a thousand deportees were sent on: “the roads were left strewn with their dead bodies the next day.”72 At the mission of Malatia, Nurse Edith Wood apparently served as the only American through the winter of 1921–22. In Malatia, as opposed to Harput where she had also worked, she was allowed to take in and care for the Greek orphans. But that only prolonged the children’s agony, as only about half of those under twelve were temporarily saved. From four to seven of those who passed the initial test of being able to stand food and washing passed away each day after Miss Wood thought they might be pulled through … “The children would often be gone before I had taken their names. Forty to fifty of the older women passed on each day also. You see, starvation, exposure, exhaustion did their work before these deportees arrived at Malatia.” They had come to Wood in the very last stages. Bodies lay everywhere in Malatia, unburied. “And they receive us coldly in Constantinople when we want to tell what we know … and let it appear very clearly that my story is unwelcome and that I am a hysterical woman, exaggerating or falsifying—that is the way it is.”73 To counter devastating reports like these, Admiral Bristol sent to Washington statements from the relief directors in Diarbekir and Urfa. Clearly, Diarbekir, as relief director Emily Wade describes it (and as is corroborated elsewhere) was the exception that proves the rule, for in this city (even further on from Harput), not only was the Turkish governor sympathetic with the suffering people who reached there, but he aided the American relief work in every way, and even fired those subordinate officials who were guilty of cruelty.74 As for the mission in Urfa, somewhat further south, its relief director, Caroline Holmes, decried the Ward and Yowell reports, pointing out that, in her area, the Americans had been asked to help provide food for a deportation of Kurds, and that the local Turks with whom she worked were often abject in

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their subservience to her. Hence, Holmes argued that the local government in Urfa was “of the best in Turkey.” To be sure, one reason for the local Turkish officials’ subservient attitude was the guilt they felt for the massacre of the garrison of three hundred French in Urfa during the initial Nationalist uprising in 1920, something that had horrified Holmes at the time (the French troops had set off under Turkish safe conduct, and then had been slaughtered almost to the last man). Whatever her opinions, though, in her own right Holmes had performed so remarkably that, when she eventually left Urfa, the French general she met in Aleppo awarded her the Croix de Guerre.75 In the cover letter he sent with these two reports, Bristol comments in approbation particularly of Holmes, saying that “the success of our missionaries and relief workers depends in large measure upon the character of the local authorities and upon an ability to establish and maintain cordial relations with them.”76 Bristol’s former subordinate in Constantinople, Allen Dulles, now in the State Department, forwarded Holmes’ letter to his superiors, emphasizing “the different picture of the Turks than that we have received from Yowell, Ward and others.” Enhancing even the view found in Bristol’s statement, Dulles argues that “[t]he difference is partly to be ascribed to the fact that Miss Holmes is a woman of tact whereas our other reporters have been lacking in that quality.”77 Had she seen this, Theda Phelps would no doubt have been biting in reply. In her own report, Phelps had outlined in detail the enormous interference with and great taxes imposed upon America’s Near East Relief by the Turkish government in Sivas, where she spent most of her time. Of one demand that the American organization pay double again the amount they had already paid to help fix a watercourse, Phelps writes: This we refused to do. When a request is too glaring we have the courage to refuse. Though we know from past experience that refusal of demands very often brings unpleasant situations whereupon Admiral Bristol has told us we were undiplomatic and did not know how to get along with the Turk.78 Of course, Bristol himself had never been deep inland in Turkey,79 and certainly never had to deal with utterly soulless Turkish officials completely on his own in what must have seemed the very middle of nowhere (as many of the American women had to). Similarly, Allen Dulles had spent all his months of Turkish diplomatic duty in Constantinople, rather than anywhere in the hinterland, yet now he was quite comfortable in making his demeaning remarks about the character of relief workers on the front line (whom he had never met) from five thousand miles away in Washington. But what drove Bristol to his belittling of so many of the relief workers he dealt with (men and women, both) and to his policy of hushing up the widespread atrocities that were once again taking place throughout much of continental Turkey? It was not simple misogyny, for Bristol honored women who agreed with him; indeed, he had great respect for Halide Edib and Annie Allen. (He even sent Edib as guest of

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honor to dine with the officers of the cruiser Pittsburgh in Constantinople in January 1923.)80 As I have noted elsewhere, and as others have pointed out as well, it was his utterly short-sighted zeal for American commerce that he supported with alacrity from the start of his tour of duty in Turkey that so blinded him to other realities— like suffering humanity. Marjorie Dobkin has made clear that, as early as 1920, a full year before the Harding administration came to office, “the ‘open-door’ had become the official objective of American foreign policy.”81 However, upon his very arrival in Turkey in 1919, Admiral Bristol made the promotion of American commerce the cornerstone of his diplomatic and naval efforts, even to the point of frequently suppressing any information prejudicial to Turkey “in order to cultivate American economic and trade relations with her,” as a contemporary critic pointed out. This had the effect of biasing the State Department’s Near East policy yet further.82 What perhaps is most revealing is that it was the anticipated huge effect of the reports of Ward and Yowell on American commerce in Turkey that made Bristol so insistent to these men that they not speak to the press—no doubt believing that such damning documents would undercut all the progress in promoting American business that he had made over three years of concerted effort. In speaking to Ward and Yowell, Bristol told them he himself was for wide publicity of the facts, but not for “propaganda publicity,” although nowhere did he differentiate how his favored kind of publicity would differ from really being censorship or even a propaganda of its own kind.83 If by his form of publicity he was referring to his pleas to the Turks in Samsun and Angora to stop the deportations, by the time he spoke to Ward and Yowell, it had been at least ten months since he had made his complaints to Samsun authorities and once even to Mustapha Kemal in Angora—and nothing had changed with the death marches that were taking place everywhere inland. By the time of the events in Smyrna, there were virtually no Greeks at all left in Samsun, as a destroyer captain informed the admiral,84 so his two protests to Kemalist authorities there had had no permanent effect even at a port right under the noses of his destroyer captains. Bristol’s implicit policy of supporting American business at the expense of human lives was something of which the American women in Anatolia were quite aware. In summarizing her views, Theda Phelps asked, “Are we Americans now not thinking more about gaining commercial concessions than we are about standing firmly and squarely for the rights of small nations, not only the rights of the Armenians and Greeks but the Turks as well? This work of extermination is going on.” Ethel Thompson urged at the end of her report that “[t]rade interests, petty jealousies, greed for territory, etc., should be set aside for the cause of humanity.” And strikingly, during the very height of the calamity in Smyrna in September 1922, while regularly delivering babies everywhere on the Smyrna quay as hundreds of thousands suffered and hundreds died daily, Dr Esther Lovejoy spoke with an American locomotive salesman who had been sent to Smyrna by Bristol to do business with the Nationalists even at the height of the region’s greatest crisis: “[The salesman] said that he had been on the pier, but did not stay long, because he could not bear to witness the suffering of the

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children. ‘Besides,’ he added, as he turned away, ‘my business is to sell locomotives.’” Lovejoy concluded, bitterly, “That was the answer. That was the core of the whole wicked game. It was a case of every man for himself, and every company and country for that matter.”85 Finally, just as the admiral had continued to send his trade attaché, Julian Gillespie, to Angora during the year of Greek death marches from the Pontus, so even in the weeks just after the catastrophe of Smyrna had ended, Bristol was writing to contacts in the United States and talking to local businessmen about all the new opportunities for commerce in Turkey. Perhaps most illuminating in this respect is this comment to the Standard Oil representative in Constantinople, Bristol’s close friend L. I. Thomas, as recorded in Bristol’s war diary of October 14, 1922. Bristol here is reflecting upon what might fortuitously happen now that Kemal’s armies were threatening Constantinople itself: “even if the Turks came in and drove out all these Greeks and Armenians that have been here centuries bleeding the country and practicing all kinds of business methods I would not consider it the worst thing that could happen to Constantinople.” Considerable suffering and unfairness might be involved in such “cleaning out of the population,” Bristol admitted, but even that did not seem so bad, in comparison to the possibility of business then being built up on “more decent lines.” Bristol’s comments were qualified by his averring that he was not “advocating anything of the kind,”86 but actually, in Anatolia as opposed to Constantinople, the “cleaning out of the population” of which Bristol spoke hypothetically but favorably had in fact been taking place for a year, in the deaths and deportations of the Pontian Greeks (with Bristol’s cover-up helping it along), and that same “cleaning out” was now to be completed in the Nationalists’ total expulsion of the Christian minorities from all of Anatolia, yet another massive, heartless forced migration that continued a year or so after Smyrna, in which additional tens of thousands of ethnic Greeks and Armenians died. In marked contrast to the admiral in his pleasant life in Constantinople, who so blithely contemplated a wholesale cleaning out of the entire Armenian and Greek population of the capital, the American women scattered throughout the heartland of Anatolia were always terribly moved by the suffering and dying of tens, hundreds, and thousands that they encountered daily. They regularly did their best to help the suffering and destitute, they often suffered along with them, and once their tours of duty concluded—despite the admiral’s regular belittling of them and their opinions—many of these same stalwart American women went out of their way to tell authorities at the State Department and sometimes the American press and the world about the great calvary that throughout all these awful months they had personally witnessed. I will conclude with paraphrases of two brief comments made by other American women, themselves also relief workers in the Near East region. In the original, they spoke of relief workers who went to the Caucasus (far to the east) about the same time

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as the events I have described in this chapter, but their remarks are just as apt of the relief workers I have spoken of. This from Dr Mabel Elliott: “Every American who did relief work in Turkey is a hero.”87 And this from Elsie Kimball: “I have found the women the bravest of all.”88 Robert E. Shenk is Professor of English and Coordinator of Graduate Studies in the Department of English, University of New Orleans. He has written several books on naval history and naval literature. His most recent book, America’s Black Sea Fleet: The US Navy amidst War and Revolution (Naval Institute Press, 2012), gives a new perspective by describing the US navy’s involvement in rescuing Armenian and Greek refugees during the period 1920 to 1923. Many of his sources were first-hand documents of American naval and civilian personnel who found themselves deep in Anatolia throughout this period. Dr Shenk is a retired captain in the US Naval Reserve, having served on a destroyer and on river patrol boats during the Vietnam War, and later teaching as an English professor (in uniform) at two service academies. Notes 1. Maj. Gen. James G. Harbord, “Mustapha Kemal and His Party,” The World’s Work 40 (May 1920): 176–92, 180. 2. Mrs. D. C. Eby, At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands: A True Story (New Carlisle, OH: Bethel Publishing, 1922), 93–95; the message from Marash is quoted on p. 95. 3. Alice Keep Clark, Letters from Cilicia (Chicago: A. D. Weinthrop, 1924), 115, 117. 4. Ibid., 117, 120. 5. James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (1915–1930), an Interpretation (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 36–37. 6. Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 117-18. 7. Ibid., 117-18. 8. Ibid., 117–18. 9. Clark says seven thousand (Letters from Cilicia, 116); Richard G. Hovannisian says “some 8,000” (The Republic of Armenia, Vol. 3 [From London to Sevres, Feb.–Aug. 1920] [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996], 376). 10. Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 35, 26, 116. 11. Ibid., 27–28, 87, 37, 88, 45. 12. Ibid., 115, 131. 13. Ibid., 120, 119. 14. Ibid., 122–23, 128, 134–35. 15. Eby, At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands, 119–20. 16. On another occasion she found herself wanting to be killed sooner rather than later. Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 138, 177. 17. Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 138–40; see also Eby, At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands, 117. 18. Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 143–46; Eby, At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands, 195. 19. Eby, At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands, 164. 20. Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 149, 169–70; Eby, At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands, 157–58.

210 | Robert Shenk 21. Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 166–67; Eby, At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands, 140. 22. Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 149; Eby, At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands, 134–37. 23. Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 156–58; this name (with other shorthand names for the missionaries and relief workers used by the Turks at Hadjin) is from Eby, At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands, 117. 24. Eby, At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands, 167. 25. Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 158. 26. Eby, At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands, 170–71, 188. 27. Ibid., 216; Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 182–85. 28. Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 199, 200–201; Eby, At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands, 284, relates that some four hundred armed men and a very few women escaped to Adana. 29. Bristol War Diaries, July 8, 1920 and War Diary narration, week of July 11, 1920 (within the War Diaries). Bristol’s War Diaries from 1919 to 1923 are in Containers 1–5 of the Mark Bristol Collection, Library of Congress (hereafter MBC). Henceforth I simply refer to Bristol’s War Diary entries by date. 30. Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 158–59. That giving up the arms was a “most ominous sign,” that is, “a sure forerunner of an imminent massacre,” was widely testified. See Consul Jackson’s letter of March 23, 1920 to Bristol about the events of Aintab, National Archives (hereafter NA) 860J4016/25. 31. The Bristol War Diary entry quoted in this paragraph is from October 16, 1920. As for Bristol’s blaming of the Armenians, see also L. P. Chambers of Constantinople College for Women, Suzanne Elizabeth Moranian, “The American Missionaries and the Armenian Question 1915–1927,” diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994, 465. 32. Clark, Letters from Cilicia, 153. 33. “Mustafa Kemal Pasha and the Nationalist Movement at Close Range,” typewritten document (p. 3) in April 21 General Correspondence (hereafter GC), Box 34, MBC. 34. See Bristol War Diary statement of February 22, 1921 in March 21 GC; Robert Dunn, World Alive: A Personal Story (New York: Crown Publishers, 1956), 340; Allen, “Mustafa Kemal Pasha and the Nationalist Movement at Close Range,” 1–2. 35. Dunn, World Alive, 341. 36. Allen, “Mustafa Kemal Pasha and the Nationalist Movement at Close Range,” 2; Dunn, World Alive, 412. 37. Allen, “Mustafa Kemal Pasha and the Nationalist Movement at Close Range,” 3. 38. Ibid., 3–4. 39. Ibid., 4. 40. For instance, see the Bristol War Diary entry of September 4, 1920. 41. Typewritten account by Allen of “The Anti Nationalist Revolution in Konia,” mistakenly attributed in penciled heading to Dr Dodd, in April 21 GC, Box 34, MBC. 42. “The Anti Nationalist Revolution in Konia,” 4. 43. Dunn, World Alive, 408. 44. “Address of Miss Annie T. Allen, Angora, Anatolia October 1920,” April 21 GC, Box 34, MBC. The question as to rumored deportations is not in the notes for her prepared speech, but since an answer was found in Mustafa Kemal’s response in “Interview with Mustafa Kemal Pasha at Angora” (same folder), Allen probably brought it up extemporaneously. 45. “Interview with Mustafa Kemal Pasha at Angora,” April 21 GC, Box 34, MBC. 46. Dunn, p. 3 of draft letter to Sec. State, July 25, 1921, GC July 21, MBC; Bristol’s War Diary of April 20, 1921 (this includes Bristol’s instructions to Allen); Allen’s letters to Bristol of July 4 and July 31, July 21 GC, MBC; and her August 1923 letter, in August 21 GC, MBC. 47. It was reported by Florence Billings, Allen’s helper. See Dunn Memorandum for Bristol, August 25, 1921, “Dunn Papers,” Box 68, MBC.

Ethnic Cleansing, American Women, and the Admiral | 211 48. Bristol letter to Frank L. Polk, November 10, 1921, in November 21 GC, MBC. 49. Andrew Mango, Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2000), 329. 50. Theda Phelps, letter to Allen Dulles, with July 7, 1922 cover date but apparently sent earlier; NA 867.4016/582, 6. 51. Ibid., 6–7. 52. Ibid., 6, 8. 53. Quoted by Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 226. 54. Hawkes, “Report of Conditions in Sivas,” June 5, 1922, NA 867.4016/583, and Phelps, NA 867.4016/582, 8. See also Bristol War Diary, June 1, 1922. 55. News Release, February 22 GC, MBC. 56. February 9, 1922 letter, February 22 GC, MBC. 57. Bristol letter to Marden, February 17, 1922, February 22 GC, MBC. 58. War diaries of USS McFarland of August 31 and September 2, 3, 5, and 8, NA Record Group 45, Box 832, folder 2; USS Williamson serial 119 message to Stanav (Bristol) of October 9, 1921 in “Ottoman Empire, Military, 1921” file, Box 73, MBC. 59. See Robert Shenk, America’s Black Sea Fleet: The US Navy amidst War and Revolution (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2012), 113–19. 60. See ibid., 107 and 110–11, for a brief description of the experiences of these two men. Hopkins’ report is an attachment to NA 867.4016/432, while Hosford’s reports are at NA 867.4016/449 and NA 867.00/1500. 61. Anthony, NA 867.4016/448, 1–2. 62. Shenk, America’s Black Sea Fleet, 96. 63. Thompson, NA 867.4016/621, 1–3. 64. Anthony, NA 867.4016/448, 4–5. 65. Shenk, America’s Black Sea Fleet, 103–6; Anthony, NA 867.4016/448, 10–14; Carl C. Compton, The Morning Cometh: 45 Years with Anatolia College (New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1986), 36–43. 66. Phelps, NA 867.4016/582, 2. 67. Bessy Bannerman Murdoch and J. Herbert Knapp in their report on Arabkir, item #2 in NA 867.4016/588, 1. 68. Phelps, NA 867.4016/582, 7. 69. Mabel Evelyn Elliott, Beginning Again at Ararat (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1924), 123. 70. Phelps, NA 867.4016/582, 7–8. 71. Ethel Thompson, report filed in NA 867.4016/621, 1–5. 72. June 14, 1922 report by Bessy Bannerman Murdoch and J. Herbert Knapp, encl. 2 to Bristol’s letter to Sec. State of July 12, 1922, NA 867.4016/588, 1. 73. Herbert Adams Gibbons, “Near East Relief Prevented from Helping Greeks,” Christian Science Monitor, July 13, 1922, reprinted in Edward Hale Bierstadt, The Great Betrayal: A Survey of the Near East Problem (New York: Robert M. McBride, 1924), 204–12, 205. 74. See Shenk, America’s Black Sea Fleet, 118. 75. Ibid., 60, and Mary Caroline Holmes, Between the Lines in Asia Minor (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 1923), 221. 76. NA 867.4016/619. 77. NA 867.4016/768. 78. Phelps, NA 867.4016/582, 5.

212 | Robert Shenk 79. Bristol visited ports for a couple of days in the Pontus in 1919, but apparently spent his nights back on his cruiser; he did lead an investigatory panel in Smyrna late in that same year, but Smyrna at the time was a very cosmopolitan place. 80. Robert Shenk, Playships of the World: The Naval Diaries of Admiral Dan Gallery, 1920–1924 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2008), 172. 81. Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City (New York: Newmark Press, 1998), 83. 82. Bierstadt, The Great Betrayal, 104. In his quite nuanced and perceptive analysis of Bristol’s support of American commercial interests, Donald Bloxham argues that Bristol’s policy amounted almost to economic imperialism, rather than just support of the Open Door. Further, Bloxham claims that Bristol’s sophistry, and that of other contemporary American diplomats towards events in Turkey, contained many of the same elements of later denial of the Armenian Genocide. See Bloxham, “The Roots of American Genocide Denial: Near Eastern Geopolitics and the Interwar Armenian Question,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 1 (March 2006): 27–49. 83. Bristol War Diary accounts of May 3 (with Yowell), and May 24 (with Ward), 1922. 84. Shenk, America’s Black Sea Fleet, 102–3, 209. 85. Phelps, NA 867.4016/582, 8; Thompson, NA 867.4016/621, 6; Esther Pohl Lovejoy, Certain Samaritans (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 174–75. On the admiral’s subsequent meeting with the locomotive salesman, see Bristol War Diary of October 2, 1922. 86. Bristol War Diary of October 14, 1922. 87. Elliott, Beginning Again at Ararat, 178. 88. Letter to her family of October 31, 1920, Elsie Kimball Letters, Kimball Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA.

Bibliography Balakian, Peter. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Barton, James L. Story of Near East Relief (1915–1930), an Interpretation. New York: Macmillan, 1930. Bloxham, Donald. “The Roots of American Genocide Denial: Near Eastern Geopolitics and the Interwar Armenian Question.” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 1 (March 2006): 27–49. Clark, Alice Keep. Letters from Cilicia. Chicago: A. D. Weinthrop, 1924. Compton, Carl C. The Morning Cometh: 45 Years with Anatolia College. New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1986. Dunn, Robert. World Alive: A Personal Story. New York: Crown Publishers, 1956. Eby, D. C. At the Mercy of Turkish Brigands: A True Story. New Carlisle, OH: Bethel Publishing, 1922. Elliott, Mabel Evelyn. Beginning Again at Ararat. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1924. Gavin, Catherine. The House of War. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974. Gibbons, Herbert Adams. “Near East Relief Prevented from Helping Greeks.” Christian Science Monitor, July 13, 1922, reprinted in Edward Hale Bierstadt, The Great Betrayal: A Survey of the Near East Problem, 204–12. New York: Robert M. McBride, 1924. Harbord, Maj. Gen. James G. “Mustapha Kemal and His Party.” The World’s Work 40 (May 1920): 176–92. Holmes, Mary Caroline. Between the Lines in Asia Minor. Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 1923. Housepian Dobkin, Marjorie. Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City. New York: Newmark Press, 1998. Hovannisian, Richard G. The Republic of Armenia, Vol. 3 (From London to Sevres, Feb.–Aug. 1920). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Lovejoy, Esther Pohl. Certain Samaritans. New York: Macmillan, 1933. Mango, Andrew. Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2000.

Ethnic Cleansing, American Women, and the Admiral | 213 Moranian, Suzanne Elizabeth. “The American Missionaries and the Armenian Question 1915–1927.” Ph.D. Diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994. Shenk, Robert. America’s Black Sea Fleet: The US Navy amidst War and Revolution. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2012. ———. Playships of the World: The Naval Diaries of Admiral Dan Gallery, 1920–1924. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2008.

Archives Elsie Kimball Letters, Kimball Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA. Mark Bristol Collection, Library of Congress. United States National Archives. Washington D.C.

CHAPTER SEVEN FOUND IN TRANSLATION Eyewitness Accounts of the Massacres in Nicomedia as Reported by Greek Journalist Kostas Faltaits Ellene S. Phufas

Introduction The translation of original historical documents involves a number of complex issues. It becomes even trickier when the translation is intended to serve a wider purpose than simply providing information. In this case, I refer to the translation of These Are the Turks—First-Hand Survivor Accounts of the Massacres in Nicomedia by Kostas Faltaits (November 1921; trans. E. Phufas and A. Tsilfidis).1 This work was originally a collection of eyewitness survivor accounts in a vernacular Greek documenting their experiences during the genocidal frenzy that occurred in Nicomedia, in today’s Izmit region, in 1920 and 1921. The translator must consider the background and experiences of the author, the historical milieu of the era, the often obscure meaning of words that are rarely found in contemporary usage, the emotional costs and issues involved for both the survivor and the translator, the need for accuracy, and the goals of the translation, whether personal, social, or academic. This chapter will begin by focusing primarily on writer and war correspondent Kostas Faltaits and

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his background, and then discuss how his experiences in the Greco-Turkish War influenced his outlook and insight in light of the devastating events of the time. It continues by showing how his collection of first person eyewitness accounts in These Are the Turks—First-Hand Survivor Accounts of the Massacres in Nicomedia, as well as other unpublished journal writing, intersect and influence the translation of such documents.

Translation: A Theoretical Framework Traditional translation models have focused on sentence-level translations and grammatical deep structure respectively.2 However, translation falls far short of the meaning level when the translation is isolated at the sentence level. A more complete and semantically comprehensive translation suggests that an overall text and contextual approach is far superior for transmitting meaning and symbolic sense. According to Keenan,3 the factors that play a role in formulating a culturally, semantically, and symbolically satisfying transition of a text are the overall textual components, how sentences are interlinked, and how they depend on one another in a stretch of a text. All these factors were taken into consideration in the translation of the seminal work of Kostas Faltaits, These Are the Turks—First-Hand Survivor Accounts of the Massacres in Nicomedia. As translators, we were already familiar with the tragic genocidal frenzy of the era of the ethno-religious genocide perpetrated by Turks against non-Turkic Ottoman subjects, among them the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. We again familiarized ourselves with the region in which the Greek journalist and ethnographer Kostas Faltaits was embedded with the Hellenic army. Upon his arrival in Turkey in March 1921, Faltaits participated in the Asia Minor campaign as a war correspondent for the Embros [Forward] newspaper. He described the battles that the Hellenic army was engaged in at Nicomedia, Proussa, Ousak, Ada Pazar, Eskişehir, Karamusal, Kütahya, etc. In many cases, we (the translators) were unable to locate many of the sites as described by Faltaits, as they had been renamed, disappeared completely, or had their names changed to Turkish-sounding words. Translation requires not only a facility with word for word translation, but also historical research in order to bring to life the names of long lost communities that were deliberately obliterated in the Greco-Turkish War. A seasoned journalist and writer, Kostas Faltaits had hardly arrived on the scene of the massacres in 1920 when he came across survivors, whose harrowing eyewitness accounts of wholesale atrocities against innocent civilians aroused him to set down on paper all that he heard. The result is that some months later, after returning to Greece, the collection of accounts was published and then translated into French in preparation for the Paris Peace Conference talks. Before beginning any translation of a historical text based on events in a cultural milieu that varies greatly from the experiences of the translator/s, it is an obligation

Figure 7.1. Kostas Faltaits on horseback in Asia Minor. Courtesy Manos and Anastasia Faltaits Museum.

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on the part of the translator/s to become familiar with the context of the times and the identity of those who play a role in the narrative, and to gain an understanding of the purposes and goals of the author and/or narrators. As a starting point, let us introduce Kostas Faltaits, the author. The following section provides a brief outline of Kostas Faltaits’ professional background and his experiences leading up to becoming a war correspondent in Asia Minor during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–22.4

Background of Kostas Faltaits: The Anguish of an Eyewitness to Eyewitness Survivors It is now more than one hundred years since the start of a series of significant events that shaped and defined the course of Greece’s history: the First Balkan War and the liberation of Thessaloniki, the Second Balkan War, World War I, the annexation of Crete to Greece, the Asia Minor campaign, and more. Kostas Faltaits found himself at the center of many of these historical events, and thus his name has been added to the list of early modern war correspondents. Risking his own life in many situations, Faltaits laid the foundations for younger journalists to work in more humane conditions. Constantine (Kostas) Faltaits became a leading journalist, writer, and pioneer researcher of the period from 1913 to 1944. He was born in Smyrna (now Izmir), Asia Minor, in 1891 and raised in Skyros. He graduated from the prestigious Varvakeion School in Athens, and then studied law and literature at the University of Athens. After receiving his Doctor of Laws degree in 1910, at the age of nineteen, he began his career in journalism, a field that attracted him from a very early age. He continued to work in journalism until the end of his life, in 1944. He worked for numerous newspapers and magazines, such as Acropolis, Forward, the “Free Speech, Athenian,” The Parnassus, The Free Man, The Bouquet, and Naval Greece, publishing news articles, articles of folklore, historical and ethnological studies, novels, short stories, poems, translations, and so on. He used a variety of names, including pseudonyms such as F., K. F. Costas Faltaits, Danaos Marcellus Costas, and “a Greek.”

The First and Second Balkan Wars During the First and Second Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, Faltaits served in the Naval Fleet of Greece, on the destroyer battleship Averoff. He took part in the Battles of Elli and Lemnos, in the Straits of the Dardanelles, and on other islands of the Aegean. During this period, Faltaits was already working for the newspaper Acropolis, sending descriptions of the navy and its battle operations, which according to Acropolis publisher Vlassis Gavriilidis, “are admired by the best of our writers, for their poetic strength and objective veracity.”5 These descriptions were published in a variety

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of communiqués, which Kostas Faltaits signed as “F,” “K. F.,” “Danaos,” and “Costas Faltaits,” and were republished in 1915 in the Acropolis. In 1919, The Chronicles of the Naval Battle of Eli was published, which was nominated for the Excellence in Humanities award.

The Asia Minor Campaign In April 1921, Kostas Faltaits arrived in Turkey to observe and report on the Asia Minor campaign, as a war correspondent for the newspaper Forward. He accompanied the Greek army as it battled the Turkish forces at Avgin (better known as the Second Battle of Inönü), Izmit, Bursa, Ousak, Ada Pazar, Eskişehir, Karamusal, Kütahya, and so on. In August of the same year, following the Battle of Sakarya, he was injured during an air raid. His last correspondence from the war front of the Asia Minor campaign was in November 1921 from Kopru Hisar. Immediately after returning from the battlefront in November 1921, he wrote and published Autoi einai oi Tourkoi—Aphegemata ton sphagon tis Nikomideias [These Are the Turks—First-Hand Survivor Accounts of the Massacres in Nicomedia]. The book was translated into French by the Greek Foreign Ministry the following year (1922) and used by the Greek government in support of Greek policy in negotiations with international organizations.

The Private Journal of K. Faltaits Perhaps the best source of information about how the Asia Minor campaign and the genocide of the Asia Minor Hellenes affected Kostas Faltaits psychologically is his journal of notes, which remains unpublished; only a small part has so far been transcribed.6 From these autobiographical notes, his disappointment and rage about the handling of the issue by the Greek state becomes tragically apparent. Faltaits believed that the Greek state acted as if the territories of Asia Minor were not Greek, and arrived as a conquering power. In the journal entry of August 26, 1922, he stated: The Government has fallen since yesterday. It was a government of indifference to anything that concerns us in the Asia Minor issue. No sense of emotion drives it. What is required in order to win the Anatolian War? The love of the struggle. To consider it Our ethnic struggle. The state, however, had considered it a colonial struggle and was never able to discern that it was our own struggle for God and country. Their actions were not motivated by incurring pain for the struggle. No desire was planted in the people for the struggle.

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He saw that the Greek state refused to do the obvious (such as motivating Kemal by threatening the Turks, who lived on Greek territory). Monday, August 29, evening Alas, how many of all the rulers and the military officers only consider their own security when they think about the salvation of a people, and how fearful they are that they might receive a diploma of misconduct from Europe by threatening to slaughter a couple of hundred Turks of Macedonia in order to save hundreds of thousands of Greeks! The sense of urgency and frustration can be clearly seen in another of Faltaits’ entries when he relates his experience in a town near Smyrna, on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor: Today, Saturday, August 27 the other children of my uncle and aunt came too. They were all talking loudly and angrily. They were upset with Hatzianestis and Stergiadis.7 Good thing they realized that they had to leave. Uncle, however, stayed behind to guard the house. To do what with it? I was told that Stergiadis told people not to leave because there was no risk. This man boarded a ship, however, ready at any moment to be first to leave. I speculate that populations who were tricked in this way by those who had secured safety for themselves would all have been saved if Stergiadis himself felt he faced the same risk, unable to leave, while the population was at risk. In the afternoon I ran to Staff Headquarters together with the head of the evicted homeless residents, Mr. Chatzigiannis. With great reluctance they allowed us to enter. I announced to all my very real fears about the populations, and I said that the people are being reassured that they can stay without anything happening to them and that the General Staff should have told them to leave overland to Çeşme [a port on the Aegean coast] They told me that they cannot do anything, and that the people could not be saved. I started sobbing. Another excerpt displays Faltaits’ increased exasperation with the Greek authorities: In the evening I had told Lachanokardis [the editor at Embros] to write about how the Greeks could be saved.8 What was the way? To immediately telegraph to Smyrna that the populations should not believe that they can be saved by Kemal and to listen only to that which will be announced to them. That they do not have any hope and they cannot do anything else but to go overland to Erythrea [at the time a town on the Erythrean Peninsula, now called Karaburun Yarımadası in Turkish].

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For days now I cry out weeping at Mr. Lachanokardis to write about the question of Erythrea and he does not want me to. I tell him to write to bring Venizelos. He does not want to. We can only imagine the anxiety and frustration that Faltaits experienced in dealing with his editor, knowing what he knew of the Kemalist ulterior motives. He realized that the army had no “plan B” to exit the Asia Minor campaign. (Indeed, he had proposed exit from Erythrea, a proposal that was even mentioned by senior officers of the Greek army.) With the former Chief of Staff Mr Gouvelis, Faltaits recollects the following: August 26 [old calendar—ESP] Sharing in my pain, he spoke to me about the reasons for the defeat last March at Eskişehir9…by the stupid indifference, the criminal sickness or laziness on the part of Mr. Gounaris’ resolve [Greek Prime Minister]… Faltaits continues to describe what was said during the conversation by asking the general if he knew about Erythrea, the area from which refugees fleeing from the Turkish army would escape by sea: “What is that?” the General asked surprised. “I wanted to ask you, my General, if there is any plan by the Staff regarding the administration of the Erythrean peninsula in the event of our army’s defeat,” Faltaits responded. “Of course not,” the general replies. “We have not had any cause to consider that.” Stunned, Faltaits then writes about his exasperation with the fact that the Greek military had not formulated any contingency plans in case the army was forced to abandon its positions in Asia Minor, leaving the Greek civilian population at the mercy of the Turkish forces. An increasingly anxious Faltaits could see that both the Greek government and its political and military apparatus were dangerously unconcerned and ill prepared to manage their occupation of Asia Minor and to protect the Greek and other Christian minorities there. Faltaits made a final point about the reasons leading to the disaster of 1922. He saw that the news publications of the time did not inform the Greek public truthfully about the actual developments in Asia Minor and even characterized the testimony of survivors as being “exaggerated.” He noted that the indifference on the part of the general public regarding the situation in Asia Minor was changing, in that people were starting to realize that danger was approaching, and it was a danger that could affect everyone. At the same time, the concern was not what it should have been. Newspapers were more concerned with other matters and were filled with stories of inane and silly matters instead of focusing on the very real threats to the Greek people, both in Asia Minor as well as in the homeland. Even the newspapers he wrote for did not want to publish anything about the tragic events in Asia Minor.

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At one point he described his editor’s stunning reaction to General Chadzianestis’ indifference to the Erythrean escape route. “But Erythrea is the salvation and the honor of the motherland at this moment,” Faltaits told his editor. “I’m not at all interested about the salvation and honor of the homeland. I am only concerned as a journalist what Chadzianestis says to the Army,” the editor replied. Lachanokardis then angrily tossed the articles Faltaits had written about the massacres that followed the capture of Smyrna into the dustbin. “They are lies,” he tells Faltaits. “Passengers on board boats in the harbor of Smyrna who could see the massacres told me these things!” Faltaits responded. “The government denies all. It says almost nothing of this has happened.” Faltaits then asks the editor whether any government officials have been to Piraeus (Port of Athens) to find out what happened from those who had arrived before denying the reports of massacres. Of course we know the answer was a chilling “No!” Faltaits then notes the following in an eerily predictive entry: We will become like the Armenians and the Jews who are without a homeland and there is nobody to wake up the Greek soul. From this small sampling of the private notes of Faltaits, we can see emerging a profound level of frustration and horror at the indifference and deliberate desire to avoid facing reality on the part of the military, government officials, and the press alike. There can be little doubt that these experiences motivated Faltaits to undertake the collation of his written material—interview notes, descriptions, and so on—and publication of the book which he titled These Are the Turks—First-Hand Survivor Accounts of the Massacres in Nicomedia later in the same year, 1921.

These Are the Turks—First-Hand Survivor Accounts of the Massacres in Nicomedia While in Asia Minor, Faltaits was embedded with the Hellenic army. He was thus in the right place at the right time to encounter the survivors who made it to the Hellenic lines. The descriptions of what the survivors witnessed are breathtakingly brutal and emotionally laden. Faltaits did not find it necessary to embellish, change, delete, modify, or mollify the words that he heard and took down on his writing pad. We can only imagine his immense sorrow and speechless anger upon hearing the words that tumbled out of the mouths of the massacre survivors. A civilization of several millennia completely lost. A whole people reduced to tatters and fragments of themselves. A people exposed to a brutal heinousness that few can begin to imagine. Faltaits carefully noted the words and unflinchingly categorized and put into order the notes he collected. Published in late 1921, the chronicle shocked Greek readers with the full and sordid details of how Turks annihilated Christian populations in different areas

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of Asia Minor. As the author’s son, Manos Faltaits, writes in his introduction to the book: “It was pure genocide.” Here is where the crossroads of past and present intersect for Kostas Faltaits: his experiences of incompetence and ineptitude on the part of the official Greek establishment colliding with the brutal reality of the battlefront and innocent victims he encountered in 1921. The only escape for his existential torture was to publish as many of the accounts as he could. Included in the book is a very brief foreword, in which Faltaits attempts to summarize the rationale for the book. He does this masterfully. After obliquely describing the arrogance of British officials in dealing with the survivors, he slams us with reality. An excerpt: In the province of Nicomedia—a region of almost 45 Greek villages and towns with almost 40 Armenian villages and towns, and about the same number of Circassian ones—there is nothing left today except ashes and ruins, and the 100,000 human beings slaughtered in the most heinous ways that the history of humanity has ever shown us, and the endless corpses of human skeletons that are scattered in the mountains, in the fields, in the forests, and in the ravines of Nicomedia tell us in a brutal rhetorical form who the Turks really are. As if ensuring his readers of his objectivity and sensitivity, a mark of the consummate ethical man he was, Faltaits writes: The narratives that are published in the pages of this book, the contents of which have been verified with great care, portray an inadequate image of the great tragedy of Nicomedia, an image, however, in all its inadequacy, that can cry out to us the following again and again: “These are the Turks.” Due to the nature of translation as a tool of communication, the “crossroads of past and present” referenced above must also be breached by the translator. Almost a century has passed since the tragic events occurred that resulted in the publication of this book. As we know, translation involves much more than a language operation. There must be a sense of knowing the writer, of knowing about the events, of having a certain level of familiarity with the cultural and political environment of the time, and so on. I venture to say that many other factors also play a role in communicating an accurate sense of what the author desired when he compiled this book for a Greek reading public. What was shared knowledge at the time is not even known today. An example is the names of towns and regions in Asia Minor, once commonly known but now largely forgotten. In 1921, towns, regions, and other locales in Asia Minor had been known for hundreds of years, in some cases millennia. Today, few original names remain; they were wiped out and replaced with Turkish-sounding names when the Kemalists formed the modern Turkish state. Here is an example of a toponym: Konzes, which does not even exist today—I cannot find any reference to its past—in a chapter titled “Konzes.” The reader will also notice the changes in other place names as well:

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On the right shore as we enter the Gulf of Nicomedia (today Gulf of Izmit) the burned out ruins of Greek Konzes are found now. A miracle of beauty, gentility, and happiness, 220 Greek well-to-do and kind families lived in Konzes, and in summer it served as a holiday home to the wealthy residents of Nicomedia, of Ada Pazar, of Bahtsezik (Bahçecik today), of Kiouplion (Küplü today), of Eski-Sehir (Eskişehir today), and even of the capital, Constantinople (Istanbul today). The fruit grown in Konzes were among the most famous sold in the markets of Constantinople, and its waters were among the coldest and most refreshing that could be drunk. A seaside paradise, with its tall and well-built homes with its ancient Byzantine mosaic Church of Saint Gregory, Konzes was the joy of the Greeks and the envy of the Turks in the surrounding villages. The book is replete with names of places that have been changed, and which the translator must note. In fact, while many Armenian and Assyrian place names were also changed, etymologist and author Sevan Nişanyan has noted that 4,200 Greek geographical locations have been changed in Turkey, the most of any ethnic minority.10 Any author’s writing style must be respected as much as possible, and the writing style of Faltaits is such that it would be senseless to alter it. He effortlessly transitions from a description of a place of beauty to the stark and dark reality of the visual, then to capture the voice of a survivor. The translator must respect the style—the flow, the balance, and the movement of the writing such as it is. In the description of Konzes above, the reader can visualize the beauty of a place which at the time had been known throughout the region for many years. Faltaits then abruptly switches to the plural “we” to capture the personal vision of reality as seen from the ship: …we could see all of Konzes and the carnage on the beaches of the Gulf of Nicomedia. We froze to a standstill as we looked on in horror facing the ruins and the ashes of razed Konzes because the strong odour coming from the ruins and cinders of homes was evidence that the corpses of the unfortunate inhabitants of Konzes had not yet completely decomposed. From the information given previously to me in Nicomedia by K. Theodorou and a few other survivors from the catastrophe in Nicomedia, I will attempt to provide here a somewhat watered down representation of the catastrophe. The narrative of the survivor begins thus—no introduction and no time for the reader to transition to the first person account. Faltaits seems eager for the survivor, K. Theodorou, to speak, and the reader can only listen to his words interspersed with Faltaits’ brief comments, so that the reader knows every detail of the interaction:

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I came down to the café of Th. Moschos on that morning—it was the 18th of February 1921—K. Theodorou, a married, well kempt man of 60 years of age was saying—and I saw Jemal of Nicaea, wearing a leather military uniform with an angry dark face watching there from outside. “Sabaahlaerolsum,” I said to him even though I did not really want to say good morning to him. “Sabaahlaerolsum,” he said and pretended to be looking away somewhere else with indifference. Inside the café there were three or four armed Turkish peasants grabbing the store property while the cafe owner Th. Moschos had lit the fireplace and was trying to prepare coffee for them. “Why are they doing that?” I asked him in Greek. “Be quiet or we’re in for it,” he said. “Have they surrounded Konzes?” And he continued bending over the fireplace … I started to leave but one of the Turks, Husni Aga from the neighbouring Turk village of Lasi, grabbed me by my chest and said: “Take off your clothes.” He was an acquaintance so I thought he was kidding. That’s why I chuckled. “What are you laughing at Giaour (infidel)?” he said and started searching me. He took 15 liras I had with me, my watch, my pipe, and then he said: “Take off your shoes.” I took off my shoes, he put them on and threw away his clogs, and then again he ordered me: “Take off your pants.” My pants were patched and the Turk preferred my underpants and shirt which were new. Jemal who was looking on shouted: “Take them.” In this chapter, K. Theodorou describes his experiences with the Turks, and later explains how he escaped and reached safety with the Hellenic army. With them, they march and he describes it thus: The Hellenic battalion continued 4 kilometers west towards the road to Karamusal and observed the land covered with corpses, men’s and women’s clothes, hands, feet, noses, ears and fingers. The chapter does not end with commentary by Faltaits. It ends instead with a brutal and frank assessment by the survivor, L. Theodorou: On that road the Turks had executed those they had captured in the most brutal way and when the Hellenic Army battery left Konzes, the Turks returned and burned it down.

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This is a pattern that the book follows from start to finish. We as translators respected that brilliant design as much as was possible. One exception is remarkable in its uniqueness: the chapter titled “The Armenians” differs in that Faltaits includes no introduction and ends with no commentary. It is an amazing interview (or rather a conversation) he had with the Armenian Metropolitan of Nicomedia, Stephan Hovakimian. In fact, his Eminence directed the conversation, and Faltaits followed along quietly, respectfully, and thoughtfully taking down every word. The following shows how Faltaits recorded the start of the meeting with the Metropolitan, a man who somehow survived a hell of his own and was determined to tell of the hell that others had experienced and not survived: He welcomed and received me with the most gentle and sincere of manners, just as people of more chivalrous times would when meeting with a visitor at their premises, and he offered me a mulberry from the plate he was eating from. Then, when Faltaits asks the Primate to speak about the history of his people, he responds: You want the history of my flock! A history exists, indeed a very long history, however, a flock doesn’t exist any longer. Of the 80,000 Armenians belonging to my ecclesiastical diocese of Nicomedia, 70,000 have been lost. And of the 10,000 of us who returned, the Turks found ways to reduce this number as much as they could. The reader can imagine the two men sitting there in a room with a table and chairs, and the journalist saying: tell me of your people. He may have not known all the monstrous details of the Armenian Genocide. But certainly the Metropolitan did. He was surprised at being asked the polite and simple question, which could have been asked at a dinner party in a more pleasant time. Yet Faltaits does not gloss over this incident, does not make excuses for asking, but rather directly allows the Metropolitan the opportunity to speak from his heart, even while stunned that the facts of genocide may not have reached the ears of Faltaits (although we know that Faltaits knew that the Armenian people had been all but annihilated). This is a powerful example of how the translator of such documents must be attuned to subtle issues far beyond a familiarity with the language being translated. Ellene S. Phufas is on the English Humanities faculty of the State University of New York/Erie Community College and has taught in Estonia, the Czech Republic, and Greece. Her specialty is translating and editing literary and historical works from Greek into English.

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Notes 1. Autoi einai oi Tourkoi—Aphegemata ton sphagon tis Nikomideias [These Are the Turks—First-Hand Survivor Accounts of the Massacres in Nicomedia]. Published in November 1921; translated into French in 1922; first English edition published in 2016 by COSMOS Press. 2. E. Nida, “A Framework for the Analysis and Evaluation of Theories of Translation,” in Translation Application and Research, ed. R. W. Brislin (New York: Gardner Press, 1975), 47–91; R. Hartmann, Contrastive Textology (London: Longman, 1980); J. C. Catford, A Linguistic Theory of Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965). 3. E. L. Keenan, “Logic and Language,” in Language as a Human Problem, ed. Einar Haugen and Morton W. Bloomfield (London: Butterworth Press, 1973), 185–94. 4. This section is adapted from Anna Faltaits’ essay, written in Greek, retrieved August 27, 2013, from http://arxiokallari.blogspot.com/2012/03/blog-post_8363.html. 5. Acropolis newspaper, Athens, Friday January 9, 1915. 6. The author expresses her gratitude to the family of Kostas Faltaits and the Faltaits Library in Skyros, Greece for allowing the use of the unpublished notes from his diary in this chapter (August 26, 1922). 7. George Chatzianestis (1863–1922) was a Greek artillery officer, lieutenant, and leader of the Greek Asia Minor Campaign Headquarters from May 1922 until August 24, 1922. Upon his return to Greece, he was found guilty at the “trial of six” surrounding the events of the Asia Minor disaster and thus sentenced to death and executed on November 15, 1922. Aristides Stergiadis (1861–1949) was a Greek politician who served as High Commissioner of Smyrna from 1919 to 1922. He abandoned Smyrna on a British ship and lived out his life in Nice, France. 8. Interestingly, only one news story from the battlefront in Asia Minor was ever published in Embros, a royalist newspaper. It is an incredible article documenting the horrors the Greek victims were experiencing at the hands of Kemalist soldiers. A mother relates her experience in this brief excerpt: “at the summit of the Kran Mountains I wrapped myself and fell asleep weeping for my dead child and left it in the forest. Ten days later I went back and saw my dead child. Flies and worms had infested my child’s body and all around there I could see Turkish soldiers sitting around and oiling their weapons.” This excerpt is from These Are the Turks—First-Hand Survivor Accounts of the Massacres in Nicomedia by Kostas Faltaits. 9. Eskişehir (Dorylaeum in the ancient Greek era) was the site of the Battle of Kütahya–Eskişehir during the Greco-Turkish War. 10. “Geographical Name Changes in Turkey,” and note 14, Wikipedia, retrieved August 28, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_name_changes_in_Turkey#cite_note-Tesev-14. See also Nişanyan’s online Index Anatolicus, retrieved August 28, 2013, from http://www.nisanyanmap.com/.

Bibliography Catford, J. C. A Linguistic Theory of Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. Faltaits, Kosta. The Chronicles of the Naval Battle of Eli. Published serially in Navy of Greece Journal, 1919. Hartmann, R. Contrastive Textology. London: Longman, 1980. Keenan, E. L. “Logic and Language.” In Language as a Human Problem, edited by Einar Haugen and Morton W. Bloomfield, 185–94. London: Butterworth Press, 1973. Nida, E. “A Framework for the Analysis and Evaluation of Theories of Translation.” In Translation Application and Research, edited by R. W. Brislin, 47–91. New York: Gardner Press, 1975.

CHAPTER EIGHT The Destruction of Smyrna in 1922 An Armenian and Greek Shared Tragedy Tehmine Martoyan

Nearly a century has passed since the extermination of the peaceful and unarmed Armenian and Greek population of Smyrna and the destruction of the Christian districts of the city. The passage of time, however, cannot bury in oblivion the tragedy in which human beings’ fundamental right to life was violated. The numerous innocent victims of the criminal Turkish policy included the elderly, women, children, and infants. The descendants of the survivors still continue their struggle for historical justice. The Smyrna tragedy made such an impression on contemporaries that it continues to attract the attention of researchers today. Much research and many valuable publications continue to be published on the events that took place in Smyrna. The aim of this chapter is to show how both the Armenian and the Greek peoples suffered from this gravest of crimes, planned in advance and committed intentionally in Smyrna against the Christian population there. The method of this research is content analysis of the orders adopted by the perpetrator state, as well as the valuable testimonies of the diplomatic representatives settled in Smyrna during that period— diary records of the eyewitnesses. The destruction of certain nations as a manifestation of the Turkish state policy was their choice, but not their right. Here such a policy collides with the norms of international law, according to which such actions are qualified as a crime against humanity.

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Figure 8.1. Greek army units landing in Smyrna, May 1919. Courtesy Athens War Museum.

Figure 8.2. Final moments of Smyrna. Courtesy Athens War Museum.

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Figure 8.3. Final moments of Smyrna. Courtesy Athens War Museum.

Smyrna, which had been called the “Star of the East,” “Little Paris of the East,” “Queen of the Ionian Sea,” and other names, was a city of huge fame. Armenian residency in Smyrna was first mentioned in 1179. After the fall of the Cilician Armenian kingdom, in the 1380s, the Armenian colony in Smyrna grew denser with the arrival of Armenian newcomers.1 The third Armenian migration to the coastal, commercial city of Smyrna happened during the reign of Persian Shah Abbas the First (1587–1629). Another flow of Armenians to Smyrna and the neighboring regions took place in 1730–40, as a result of the Ottoman–Persian wars and then mistreatment by Nadir Shah.2 In the 1750s, a new group of Armenians migrated to Smyrna from Western Armenia, and in the 1790s the territory was increased by over a hundred households of Catholic Armenians who had migrated from Galatia.3 The Armenians of Smyrna had launched scientific-educational works, scientific publishing, cultural activities, as well as various crafts. There are many examples of their social, educational, and intellectual developments. Nearly all Armenians acquired the Turkish language, many of them knew Greek, and the elite communicated in French, Italian, and English.4 Smyrna’s multinational and multicultural existence promoted the development of the Armenians, the Greeks, and other nations living in Smyrna.5 The Greek com-

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munity had developed due to the initiatives of both local Greeks and those living in Greece. The Greek population of Smyrna grew at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They gave great importance to culture, educational development, and the role of the church.6 Historical-cultural ties between the Armenians and the Greeks are visible in their religion, material culture, traditions, lifestyle, legends, and background, and were manifested by the peaceful and creative existence of the Armenians and the Greeks of Smyrna. The Armenian colony of Smyrna had a huge role in the creation of national values and was the bearer of Armenian cultural, historical memory and national identity. The success of the Armenians of Smyrna in the protection of Armenian values in education, culture, literature, and the press is priceless.

The Exile of the Armenians and Greeks in Smyrna to the Greco-Turkish War (1919–22) What is an exile in general? How do the deportees and those who enforce the exile perceive it? What are the reasons for mass exile? What aim does it pursue? Exile is deportation, expatriation from home, residence, homeland; it is an intentional action planned in advance. As a rule, exile signals the beginning of the realization of the state’s political aims. The deportee unwillingly gets confused, asks incomprehensible questions, and hears senseless answers. The one who enforces the deportation executes the commands of the ruling regime. The aims of exile are several: • to empty the areas populated by unwanted local national elements; • to force the exiled population to retreat to the farthest parts of the country or outside its borders; • to populate the area with the country’s preferred people, that is, its own people; destruction. Why is acceptance of the law on exile obligatory? The answer is clear— to legalize the crime. To gain a more explicit idea about the real aims and meaning of mass exile, it is necessary to touch upon the memories of the “inspector of the Armenian deportees,” Hasan Amja (Hasan Vasfy), appointed by Cemal Pasha. As a witness to the implementation of the policy of the Armenians’ extermination, Amja gives detailed information about the real aims of the exile.7 In this regard, the following commentary in the April 5, 1919 issue of Alemdar newspaper about the law concerning exile is noteworthy: I am sure that few citizens can give the brightest and the simplest explanation of the law besides you. To make you understand it, the law named

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exile by you should be first of all applied to your family. In that case in order to understand the meaning of the application of the law you will have the strength to make deep philosophical conclusions that are to correspond to God’s laws, conscience and logic. You will be able to conclude that there are hundreds of ayahs of the Holy Quran and constitutional articles disclaiming and cursing this crime.8 It is particularly worth mentioning that the solution to the problem of the exiled Armenians has been considered to be “cleansing,” that is, their extermination.9 It is naive to think that exile is simply resettlement. In a message presented to the patriarch of Constantinople regarding Smyrna on December 13, 1919, it is written: The deportations in Smyrna were partially realized; on November 15, 1915 and November 16, 1916 in the nearby residences of the city Gushata, Dikili, Krkaghaj, Aydemish. During the exile, 10,205 Armenians lived in Smyrna, 1,828 in Manisa, 1,336 in Aydemish, 850 in Krkaghaj, 1,350 in Denizli, 510 in Aydn, and in the whole vilayet the number of the Armenians reached more than 19,000 people.10 It is known that the deportations were organized and realized by the governor of Smyrna, Rahmi Bey, chief police officer Yenisehirli Hilmi Hilen, the mayors of Kusada and Bergama, and others. As a result of the deportations, the population was banished to Afyon Karahisar, Karaman, then to Aleppo and Der-Zor.11 There is information about the exile of the Christians in the following notice sent from Pera (Constantinople) to the German Embassy on November 13, 1916: As the Imperial Consulate of Smyrna informs, the exiles of the local Armenians [deportations—TM] have already begun. The cause was the following: several weeks ago in the Catholic cemetery there were found bombs and other things that were hidden by the Armenians. Then the vali demanded from the Armenian bishop that he hand over the names of the suspicious persons and the weapons. The bishop explained he didn’t know such people and they had no hidden weapons. The following day three hundred Armenians, regardless of age and sex, were exiled by train. Further deportations will continue. The exiles will be guided by the police of Smyrna, who have been granted a free hand by the vali. At that time Marshal Liman von Sanders was in Smyrna and drew the vali’s attention to the fact that those deportations would harm the military interests of the country and for that reason he would not tolerate further imprisonments and deportations.12 A note sent by the leader of the German military mission in the Ottoman Empire, Liman von Sanders, to the German Embassy in Constantinople on November 17, 1916, states: I made observations on November 4–11 in the newly formed 56th Division and in the 16th Division that was being taken to Smyrna after the

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European theatre of war. Friday night, on November 9, when I returned from the observations of the Austrian battery near Phocaea, consul Count von Spy informed me that on the 8th and the previous day numerous Armenians were arrested and transferred to the farthest parts of the country by train. I received information from different sources. It was obvious to me that with the help of the police and partly using brutal means, old women and sick children were made to get up at midnight and immediately moved to the railway station from where the train crowded with Armenians was transferred. Great discontent reigned in the city. On the morning of November 10, I sent the chief of staff of the fifth army, colonel Kâzım Bey, to inform the vali that such mass imprisonments and deportations that threaten the city with danger are impossible to tolerate any longer. If, regardless of that, the police continue their actions, then I will forbid them with the help of weapons and with the army at my disposal. I gave the vali until midday of the same day to decide his actions. I explained the aforementioned message to the commander of the army of Smyrna, colonel of the kingdom of Prussia Tromary, with the help of the mayor, Pregae, and demanded of him to take urgent measures. After midday, at 1:30 p.m., Kâzım bey came back from the vali who was in Burnabad and informed me that arrests and deportations will stop and will not happen again. At midday, the chief of the department of the vali, K. Kara Bieber Bey, visited me. I had a thorough counsel with him about the present state of affairs. In the evening of the same day, three Greeks came from Urla, situated near Smyrna, with a population of 25,000 people. They asked me to help them, as ten statesmen passengers were arrested without any interrogation and sent to prison in Smyrna by thirty policemen sent to Urla. On November 11 until midday, I made observations in Urla. The facts were affirmed, and I received a message from the command of the district. On November 11 after midday, the vali looked for me personally. During long negotiations, the vali summed up the reasons for the mass arrests of the Armenians. I didn’t accept those justifications, as they weren’t satisfying at all. I demanded to conclude a truce for the Armenians living in most parts of Smyrna, to create a peaceful state. I immediately demanded to make examinations of the innocent arrested people. I left in the evening. The vali was at the station. Returning to Panderma, I received a letter from the supreme command of the vali, which said that those Armenians who were innocent would return to Smyrna.13 The answer of the ambassador of Germany in Constantinople, Kuhlmann, concerning the deportations of the Armenians on November 25, 1916, was: “The exiles of the Armenians in Smyrna ceased during that period. The case was finished by then.”14

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Turkish historian Jelal Bayar, touching upon the policy of “national clearing” and “Turkism” in his memoirs, and as an example separating Smyrna and its suburbs, indicates the important role of the government, the army, and the party.15 The exile of the Armenians and the Greeks was not a contingency plan. They were planned actions to hinder the progress of the Christian population of Smyrna, the Armenians and the Greeks—actions proclaiming the tragic end of the two founding nations with thousands of years of history. During this period of historical development, the political events were unfavorable and destructive. In summarizing the above exposition, it should be mentioned that the exiles that shattered the peaceful coexistence of the Christian Armenians and Greeks of Smyrna were actions taken to exclude the future presence of these two groups.

Kemalism and the Christian Minorities In 1918, after the Armistice of Mudros, the Entente countries began the realization of the policy of dividing the Ottoman Empire, which would contribute to the liberation of the Greeks, Armenians, and Arabs from Turkish rule, and to the creation of their independent states. Greece was granted the right to reclaim Thrace (except for Constantinople) and the eastern parts of Asia Minor. On May 15, 1919, the Greek army liberated Smyrna. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk opposed the policy of dividing Turkey.16 From July 23 until August 7, 1919, the assembly of the Turkish nationalists took place in Erzerum, and the plans approved by it were directed against Armenia, the Armenians, and the Greeks. The assembly proclaimed Western Armenia and Trebizond as Turkish territories. Preserving the Armenian districts within Turkish territory and banning “the creation of an Armenian state” were considered necessary and the solution to that problem a “sacred act.” In the second article of the resolution it is written: “As all occupation and interference will be considered undertaken in behalf of establishing Greek and Armenian states, the principle of united self-defense is resolved.”17 In the same article, it is stated that the Christians living in Turkish territory are considered visitors who “live on the soil of the ancestors of the Turks” and since the times of the sultan the safety of their property, life, and honor has been secured, and will be secured in the future as well. “We will never allow the Armenians and Greeks to take up such a role that will endanger their existence, the rights of Muslims and Ottoman sovereignty, no matter how it is expressed.” Consequently, every means will be exerted to prevent “each attempt of the Armenians and Greeks that aims to harm the Turkish fatherland.” “Any kind of intrusion of the Entente countries” is also denied; it will be considered an attempt “to contribute to the realization of such plans and projects that are denied by them.”18 The declaration accepted by the assembly concerns the Greeks and the Armenians, the occupation of Smyrna, the attempt to create the state of Pontus, as well as the inflow of the Greek refugees of Pontus.19 According to one sub-point of the seventh article of the resolution, which had an anti-Christian bias, all the compatriot

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Muslims were considered natural members of society. The Christians naturally could not be compatriots or members of society, hence did not have equal rights.20 Carrying on its propaganda, Turkish official ideology regarded the peaceful existence of the Armenians and the Greeks as a threat to Turkish security. To address that concern, from September 4–11, 1919, an assembly was held in Sebastia (Sivas) that developed and defined the terms of the Erzerum Congress. One of the decisions of the Sivas Congress states: “If the European countries wish to serve humanity and not allow there to be bloodshed they should accept our [the Turks’—TM] terms and give real guarantees of security that they will immediately leave Adana, Smyrna and other vilayets and the forces of occupation will be withdrawn from the territory of the Empire.”21 It is known that the aforementioned congress announced the beginning of the creation of the Turkish national state. On December 31, 1919, Mustafa Kemal Pasha declared: No other nation has ever displayed such respect towards people having other religions and customs as ours. It can even be said that our nation is the only one that respects the peoples who have other religions. Therefore, it is impossible for such a nation to exterminate other peoples. All that happened to the non-Muslim people in our country was the consequence of the separatist policy realized by those people and was provoked by foreign intrigues, and they abused the privileges given by us.22 In the “National Oath” on January 28, 1920, it was stated that Turkey did not recognize those international legal deeds and contracts that could “hinder the development of political, legal, financial and other spheres.”23 During April 1920, the Kemalists resorted to the help of Soviet Russia, which recognized their government in June of the same year. In order to suppress the Turkish nationalist movement, the Entente countries used the Greek armed forces of Asia Minor. In 1920 the Greek army attacked and occupied Balikesir, Brusa. Another army entering eastern Turkey captured Adrianapolis.24 On August 10, 1920, the Ottoman government in Istanbul signed the Treaty of Sèvres, according to which Smyrna belonged to Greece. The rival nationalist government of Ankara did not accept it, however.25 Not accepting the situation created after the war, Turkey took a political and diplomatic step in cooperating with Russia against the West. With this in view, A. Kharatyan mentions: “The cooperation with Turkey created the illusion of world revolution for the Soviet power; in return Turkey acquired real material assistance, weapons and ammunition mainly in the war against Greece.”26 The Kemalists carried on military actions against the Greeks in the western part of Turkey, and against the Armenians in Cilicia and the Republic of Armenia in the east. The Treaty of Moscow, signed on March 16, 1921, between the Kemalist Turks and Bolshevist Russia, contributed to their success. On January 10 and March 31, 1921, the Greek army lost battles near the village of Inönu, but in the summer of

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the same year waged a new attack; in July they occupied Eskishehir, Afyon, and in August they reached Ankara. Leaving Smyrna and, consequently, breaking away from its main bases and also losing the assistance of the European countries, the Greek army lost the battle that took place along the Sangarius (Sakarya) river from August 23 to September 13, 1921. Taking advantage of the inaction of the Greek army, the Turks launched an attack and defeated the Greek army in Dumlupinar on August 30, 1922.27 Thus, Mustafa Kemal and his supporters were in a position to legalize the abuses and persecutions against the Christians. Simultaneously declining its international laws and contracts, Turkey made an attempt to liberate itself from international obligations and responsibilities. The decisions of the Erzerum and Sebastia (Sivas) congresses containing warnings and even threats were intended also to justify further actions.

The “Peaceful” Penetration of the Turkish Cavalry into Smyrna: Mass Killings To dissolve any remaining doubts among the population of Smyrna, and to inspire trust in the Turks, parallel to the arrival of the Turkish first military unit, on Saturday morning an announcement with the signature of Mustafa Kemal Pasha was fastened to the walls of the city proclaiming that all those who acted violently towards the Christians would be sentenced to death. However, on Monday the Christians were surprised to discover that the words “death sentence” had been replaced by the term “punishment.”28 A priest of the Armenian Evangelical church, Abraham Harutyunian, recounted: “Mustafa Kemal has given strict orders to the soldiers to harm no one. Those who disobey these orders will be punished by death. Let the people be assured of safety…”29 On Saturday September 9, at 11:00 in the morning, Turkish mounted troops entered Smyrna.30 Regardless of the promise of the Turkish commander that “life and property should be respected,” the population of Smyrna was exposed to robbery, violence, and massacre. “They crossed the river in strict discipline. Only in front of Basaport a stranger threw a bomb hurting a Turkish soldier and it was as if this accident served as a sign for starting killings and robbery.”31 Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek History at the University of London (Royal College), Doctor Lysimachos Oeconomos, described how the Turkish irregular troops entering the Armenian district slaughtered the people with knives and bayonets.32 In this regard the following report of the Armenian bishop of Smyrna, Ghevond Duryan, is noteworthy: On Saturday morning—September 9, knowing that the Kemalist army was very near, the crowd fully armed went down to the market; on the same morning numerous Christians who passed through the market were

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fustigated, wounded and some of them were tortured to death. That day from 10 o’clock the penetration of the Kemalist advanced detachments from different parts of Izmir encouraged the Turks, moreover, who started to go round the city with Turkish flags. The Turkish crowd that gathered in the opposite boulevard of Pasmakhan started to fire in the direction of the Armenian district; this fusillade, which lasted a quarter of an hour, served as a reason for the population of the Armenian district to take refuge in St. Stephanos church … Among the refugees there were almost 2,000 children.33 The presence of the Greek army was an excuse; it quickened the process that was realized in parallel with the military actions and sometimes independent of them.34 Gh. Duryan wrote: On Tuesday, September 12, all the houses of the Armenian district were robbed and emptied; in most of those houses there were 1–4 people killed in each; among those wretched humans was ex-assessor and great lawyer…Nazareth Nersessian, who was also a highly respected person among the Turks [but] became a victim of the rabble with his wife and child… The robbery was committed first in the Armenian shops, among which were Pabrdzyan, Sivrisyan, Iplikdzian, Aznavourian, Nikotian, Godzamanian, Topalian and other shops possessing manufactory with a value of 200–300 English gold, and gradually spread to the Greek shops which also possessed large capital. All the Armenian and Greek small and big shops of the market were emptied. The sorrowful cries of mothers who lost their children, the screams of the children and the yell of the terrified people formed the heartbreaking tragedy; in such a hellish slaughter, the ferocity of the Turks and the Europeans’ insufficient means of liberation were competing with each other.35 It is worth quoting the following statement from member of the central committee of the Committee for Union and Progress, Doctor Nazım: “Cruelty is the law of nature; it can be accepted or denied only by judgments. Don’t the living creatures, even the plants, survive by eating or destroying each other? Perhaps you will say, ‘Forbid them, it is a barbarism?’”36 Religious man Hasan Fehmi refers to Western science and sacred law, according to which all that is harmful should be destroyed.37 According to this imaginary theory, the instinct for self-defense was invoked not only to justify the extermination of the Christians, but also to make it a necessity. If the guarantee of success of any act is the possibility of the human mind to imagine, then in this context the Turkish imagination passed all possible bounds of the human mind. A characteristic of the human psyche that functions in an individual as well as with social-psychological groups under different circumstances and in various condi-

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tions visits the human being and wakes the barbarian or the savage residing in the depth of his soul. In psychology this phenomenon is known as a psychological retreat (regression). In the case of groups, the phylogenetic (evolutionary) regression possesses more active manifestations, the essence of which is the spiritual return of the civilized person or group of people to a certain extent to the primitive communal level.38 This phenomenon arises particularly in cases of mass aggression, the manifestation of which is genocide. In this context it is necessary to distinguish the most ferocious type of aggression—authoritarian aggression.39 The tragedy of Smyrna was a consciously organized, prepared, and realized state policy that could not secure its desired result without the elimination of subordinate groups. It is necessary to state that the individual aggressor plays his part in the act unwillingly, becoming a participant and an accomplice in the crime realized against another human being, considering the interests of the state to be more important in accomplishing the assigned task. Meanwhile, as psychologist K. Nalchajyan states, human beings feel an inner demand to find justification for their aggressive conduct and this is satisfied by compromising the victim. This mechanism helps the aggressor greatly in ascribing inhuman features and dangerous intentions to the future victim. These features are also ascribed to a group of people in parallel with discrediting the victim; this equalization becomes necessary to render everyone—men and the old, women and children—similar, without distinction.40 It is interesting to note that in working out the criminal plan for the elimination of the Christian population of Smyrna, the perpetrators used different psychological factors as a guarantee for their actions, the most elementary among them being to take the Christian population unaware. That is, the population should not have believed or did not wish to believe in the violent actions taking place and doing so very rapidly. George Horton, the US consul at Smyrna, expressed the belief that: Looting and pillaging and rape and massacre went on a large scale immediately after the entry of the Turks, their vengeance first breaking upon the Armenian population, who were accused of having thrown bombs … This was no excuse for a hunting, night and day for three days, of Armenians by squads of regular soldiers and their killing in the most revolting manner by being shot, stabbed, hacked to death or having their throats cut publicly in the streets…No pro-Turk propaganda can obscure what actually occurred in Smyrna—there were too many reliable witnesses—the truth is sure to come out.41 Ambassador of the USA in Constantinople Henry Morgenthau wrote: The Smyrna disaster of 1922 needs be only briefly mentioned here. It was the cause of the great exodus of all the Greeks of Asia Minor, but it happened so recently that many of the details are still fresh in the public

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memory. Let me itemize a few of these details: The systematic burning of the Greek quarter of Smyrna by the Turkish troops under the very eye of Kemal; the systematic slaughter of Greek men, women, and children; the organized looting of houses and churches; the unchecked, wholesale raping of women and young girls; the segregation of all able-bodied Greek males from sixteen years of age to fifty, who were then driven inland, where practically all perished of forced labor, their destruction being hastened by starvation and assassination; the deportation of the remaining women, children, and old men to Greece. All these atrocities were clear evidence of the deliberate intention of the Turks to remove utterly all Greek population from Asia Minor, in pursuance of the program of the Turkish Nationalists under Kemal, by which Asia Minor was to be completely “Turkeyfied.” This plan to deport or exterminate the Greek population, thus made plain by the horrors of Smyrna, caused the immediate flight of thousands of Greek families from the other ports of Asia Minor. In many cases they were pursued out of their houses by their Turkish neighbors … These thousands likewise poured in upon the seaports of Greece proper, swelling the flood of destitute refugees that was overwhelming the ancestral land.42 American author and journalist E. Hemingway, who had been in Smyrna at the time, noted later in an article entitled “On the Quai at Smyrna”: The worst, he said, were the women with dead babies. You couldn’t get the women to give up their dead babies. They’d have babies dead for six days. Wouldn’t give them up. Nothing you could do about it. Had to take them away finally. Then there was an old lady, most extraordinary case. I told it to a doctor and he said I was lying. We were clearing them off the pier, had to clear off the dead ones, and this old woman was lying on a sort of litter. They said, “Will you have a look at her, sir?” So I had a look at her and just then she died and went absolutely stiff. Her legs drew up and she drew up from the waist and went quite rigid. Exactly as though she had been dead over night. She was quite dead and absolutely rigid. I told a medical chap about it and he told me it was impossible.43 George Horton’s judgments are those of a person and a diplomat who had been disappointed. …I have the honor also to point out to the Department that all massacres on a large scale perpetrated by Turks, and the history of the Turkish empire is largely a history of massacres, are always ordered by higher authorities. Anyone who believes that the forces of Mustafa Khemal got out of hand at Smyrna and that he controlled them as soon as he could, knows

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nothing about the history of Turkey or events in the Near East. I believe also if the Allied fleets in Smyrna harbor, the French, Italians, British and Americans, had emphatically told Mustafa Khemal that there must be no massacring, none would have taken place…44 The following address by Horton is an accusation against the great states and state departments of that time: …But when he sees the great powers of the world sitting by in security on their battleships watching his fearful procedures, he is emboldened to greater and still greater excesses. The sight of a massacre going on under the eyes of the great powers of Europe and with their seemingly tacit consent, is one that I hope never to see again. I believe that when the real truth is known of what happened in Smyrna and what has been happening in the Near East, all decent people in Europe and the United States will feel as I do…45 Presenting his thoughts and judgments, Horton noted: …Long observation has convinced me that the Turk is incapable of governing Christian populations. Such may have thrived under the old Turk in a general way, despite the numberless massacres which are a blot upon Turkish history, but the policy of the New Turk will render the life of the Christian element impossible … The men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, who are today being torn from their wives, sisters, mothers and children, amid pitiful scenes that only a DeQuincey could describe, and being driven away by the Turks to perish by slow starvation and exposure, are the peaceful farmers of Asia Minor and the citizens of Smyrna who were never in sympathy with the government of Constantine and who are in no wise responsible for the fearful fate which has befallen them. This unrighteous act is being carried out without even a word of protest by any civilized government.46 The loss of the Archbishop of Smyrna’s Greek community, Chrysostom Kalafatis (1867–1922) is remembered by witnesses with great grief. First of all, we must note that the murder of Chrysostom was an expression of religious hatred and was committed with inhumane brutality. It is one of the darkest moments of the annihilation of Smyrna’s Armenian and Greek population. Researchers of different nations turn to his murder in their studies. In this context, it is appropriate to quote the French historian and journalist Rene Puaux. The brutal spirit of the Turkish authorities—above all the alleged irregulars, whom in desperation we charge with all misdeeds—is completely revealed by the murder of Monseigneur Chrysostom, the eminent and

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venerable Greek archbishop of Smyrna. General Noureddin pasha gave orders to look for him in the monastery. On his arrival, he covered him with insults, reproached him for having a philhellenic attitude during the Greek occupation and informed him, at last, that the revolutionary Court of Angora had sentenced him to death a long time ago. Noureddin added that it only remained for him had to hand him over for the judgment of the people.47 According to George Horton, the only fault of Archbishop Chrysostom was that the patriot and eloquent Greek believed in the prosperity of his nation. Horton described his last meeting with Chrysostom before his tragic death: At least twice in my life I have seen that shadow upon a human visage and have known that the person was soon to die. Monseigneur Chrysostom believed in the union of Christian churches, in a united effort in the cause of Christ and the better education of the Eastern clergy. Neither he nor the Armenian bishop spoke to me of their own danger, but they asked me if nothing could be done to save the inhabitants of Smyrna.48 To find out how the metropolitan appeared in the crowd of maniacs gathered at Noureddin Pasha’s house, the site of his murder, we will refer to Puaux again. The escort had just left the archbishop when a car, containing an officer and two Turkish soldiers, armed with bayonets, stopped in front of the archbishop. The officer went up to the archbishop and ordered him to follow him to the army commander, Noureddin pasha. When I saw they were taking the archbishop out, I told the escort to follow the car. We stopped by the Great Barracks, where the commander of the army, General Noureddin, was. The archbishop was taken by the officer who brought him before Noureddin. Ten minutes later, he came back down.49 The crowd started torturing Chrysostom in an extremely brutal ritual. First, they beat him with fists and sticks, then started spitting on him, then gored him with knives, tore off his beard, took out his eyes, and cut off his nose and ears.50 His quartered body was taken to the Turkish block and fed to the dogs.51 Refusing the chance to escape and ensure his survival, he had told Horton earlier, “I am a shepherd and must stay with my flock.”52 How could the mob engage in such extreme violence? Theologian Sh. Khachatryan explains: In the case of Muslims, saying “a person,” one understands “a Muslim”; hence murdering a Christian is not considered a sin. Such murders are sacrifices. The embarrassing murder of a heterodox religious leader is a “Tribute” to their God, proof of complete devotion. Metropolits were

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“inspectors,” who were responsible for their district and were an example for them. By murdering the leader, they first of all divested the district of their “head” and then caused panic among the believers, a circumstance which eased the process of a planned crime.53 Such brutality was not applied only to the Archbishop. Such scenes were seen everywhere in Smyrna: beheaded bodies of children, butchered families, amputated breasts.54 The rape of women and young girls was also prevalent. Puaux noted: “Abducting women and girls is an old tradition among Turkish military and evidences are many and shocking. Women were raped in front of their husbands or fathers, who were killed if they tried to interfere.”55 A well-known American missionary, Bertha Morley, who had just left Smyrna, wrote in a letter from Piraeus, Greece, on September 18, 1922: “…There was a good deal of looting and massacre that night as we have since learned, especially in the suburbs, in Karantina and Kara Tash. One of our girls was hidden in a house in the Armenian quarter of the city.” She says, “Bands of men entered that house four times that night. The first band pried open the door, demanded guns and took the girl’s brother. The second band demanded money. The third band demanded the girls and killed three women. The fourth band also dishonored the girls and left them there…”56 George Horton stated that “wholesale violation of women and girls was one of the outstanding features of the Smyrna horror.”57 Doctor Mabel Elliott, who had worked in the Middle East for many years, said that she had never seen a raped Muslim woman. Her letter to Horton on June 2, 1923, sent from Athens, is very significant: My dear Mr. Horton, how true Gladstone’s famous statement was in regard to the Turk’s character has been most amply proved in the late Smyrna disaster. My position as a woman physician makes me peculiarly well placed to know about the treatment of young girls by the Turks. In my four-year experience in Turkey I think it is a rather remarkable fact that I have yet to see the Turkish girl or woman who has been ravished. As a marked contrast to this I have seen hundreds of Christian girls who have been in the hands of Turkish men. The late Smyrna disaster was no exception to this and I can justly come to the conclusion from what I have seen with my own eyes that the ravishing of Christian girls by Turks in Smyrna was wholesale…58 Premeditated and swift developments of planned events promoted the realization of the depopulation of Armenians and Greeks, as well as unspeakable brutalities used against the victims. Fortunately, the Armenian and Greek populations of Smyrna survived, but full of guilt, considering their lives to be a sin and a betrayal of those who had perished. Outcasts of Smyrna found shelter in Athens and other cities, as well as the eastern islands of Greece.

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Who Set Fire to Smyrna? Why Did the Fire Not Reach the Turkish District? The answer to the question, “Who set fire to Smyrna?” is provided by witnesses of the time, contemporaries of the events. Researchers have also tried to answer this question. Opinions can be divided into two opposite groups. According to the first viewpoint, the Turks set fire to the city intentionally as a military operation against the enemy for the purpose of destroying one of the last bases of civilization created by the Greeks in Asia Minor and marking their newly created statehood as a monument to the Turkish victory. According to the second viewpoint, the city was set on fire by the Armenians and the Greeks. Thus, for example, Doctor K. Khacheryan writes: …If the Armenians had such an intention, they could have set fire first to the Turkish districts instead of their own before the departure of the Hellenic army and even after that … By the way, after the Turkish occupation the Armenian district was emptied for the most part and that very night the Turks began the robbery, slaughter and every kind of violence. By Wednesday, the day of the fire, nobody dared even to enter the Armenian district, let alone set it on fire at different parts.59 In this context, the following statement by E. Bierstadt is noteworthy: Why should the Greeks and Armenians burn their own homes, to which they still hoped to return? The Turks had a reason. They wished to hide forever all trace of sack, massacre, and rapine that had been going on for four days. And more, they had determined that Christianity should be obliterated from the Christian capital of Asia Minor, that it should be wiped out utterly with fire and sword…60 George Horton brings up the following facts about the fire: The streets leading into the Armenian quarter were guarded by Turkish soldier sentinels, and no one was permitted to enter while the massacre was going on. Armed Turks, including many soldiers, entered the quarter thus guarded and went through it, looting, massacring and destroying. They made a systematic and horrible “clean up,” after which they set fire to it in various places by carrying tins of petroleum or other combustibles into the houses or by saturating bundles of rags in petroleum and throwing these bundles in through the windows. They planted small bombs under the paving stones in various places in the European part of the city to explode and act as a supplementary agent in the work of destruction caused by the burning petroleum which Turkish soldiers sprinkled about the streets. The petroleum spread the fire and led it through the European quarter and the bombs shook down the tottering walls. One such bomb was planted near the American Girls’ School and another near the American Consulate.

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They set fire to the Armenian quarter on the thirteenth of September, 1922. The last Greek soldiers had passed through Smyrna on the evening of the eighth, that is to say, the Turks had been in full, complete and undisputed possession of the city for five days before the fire broke out and for much of this time they had kept the Armenian quarter cut off by military control while conducting a systematic and thorough massacre… The fire was lighted at the edge of the Armenian quarter at a time when a strong wind was blowing toward the Christian section and away from the Turkish. The Turkish quarter was not in any way involved in the catastrophe and during all the abominable scenes that followed and all the indescribable sufferings of the Christians, the Mohammedan quarter was lit up and gay with dancing, singing and joyous celebration. Turkish soldiers led the fire down into the well-built, modern Greek and European section of Smyrna by soaking the narrow streets with petroleum or other highly inflammable matter. They poured petroleum in front of the American consulate with no other possible purpose than to communicate the fire to that building at a time when C. Claflin Davis, Chairman of the Disaster Relief Committee of the Red Cross, Constantinople Chapter, and others, were standing in the door. Mr. Davis went out and put his hands in the mud thus created and it smelled like petroleum and gasoline mixed. The soldiers seen by Mr. Davis and the others had started from the quay and were proceeding toward the fire. Dr. Alexander Maclachlan, President of the American College, and a sergeant of American Marines were stripped, the one of his clothes and the other of a portion of his uniform, and beaten with clubs by Turkish soldiers. A squad of American Marines was fired on.61 Horton states that one could see carts full of dead bodies in the Armenian district.62 The stories about the fire of Smyrna are various and diverse. The testimony of the headmaster of the American school, Minnie Mils, belongs to the list of reliable stories. She related that she saw officers or sergeants of the Turkish regular army enter those buildings where the first flames were seen, carrying with them the tin boxes that obviously contained petroleum. After they exited the buildings, they caught fire.63 Bertha Morley notes: “…On Wednesday, a fire was started at the edge of the Armenian quarter, when the wind was favorable to sending the flames over Armenian houses. It was not far from us. We had all our pails filled with water and ready on the roof. Soon we saw that the fire was not going to hurt us, unless the wind changed.”64 In general, the material losses reached an estimated sixty million dollars.65 As a consequence of the fire, more than fifty thousand houses, twenty-four churches, twenty-eight schools, plus banks, consulates, and hospitals were burned.66 When the news spread about the fire of Smyrna in Constantinople, the Turkish press received it with obvious indifference. This fact is a basis for the belief of all those who consider that the fire that destroyed the European habitats of Smyrna was part of the Kemalists’ general Turkism policy.67 In a telegram sent to The Manchester Guardian from

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Constantinople, it is clearly mentioned that the tragedy of Smyrna was followed by Mustafa Kemal’s declaration that American colleges, Christian Unions of the Young People (CUYP), or any Christian institution, would not operate in Smyrna in future.68 Sir H. Lamb was able to penetrate a portion of the Armenian quarter, and in the space of fifty yards he counted twenty bodies. He concluded that both massacres and fires, including the destruction of the European quarter, were the deliberate work of the Turks, acting under the orders of the responsible authorities. “The object was vengeance against the Armenians, and also the extermination of Christian and foreign influence.”69 Twenty-five thousand people fell victim to the fire. From August 27 to September 4, 1922, fifty thousand Greeks were killed.70 To acquire an impartial and comprehensive answer about the “last days” of Smyrna, it is necessary to touch upon the testimonies of the people who at the time not only witnessed the events developing in Smyrna but recorded the details as well. They defined Smyrna in the following expressions: “city floating in the sunbeams,” “city of horror,” “city of the refugees running away from terror,” and so on.71 Watching the fire in the Armenian and Greek districts from his balcony, Kemal Ataturk had announced: “It is a sign that Turkey is being cleared of betrayers, Christians and strangers, and that Turkey is for the Turks.”72 During the first three days of the occupation, looting, murder, and outrage continued. It was a massacre, with all its attendant atrocities, but Turkish guards were stationed on all approaches to the Armenian quarter in order to prevent Europeans, as far as possible, from knowing what was going on.73 After the destruction of the city and the extermination of the population of Smyrna, Kemal wrote: “Only after the tragedy of Smyrna did our people really wake up; the sensitivity again possessed our nation; it understood that it was being dragged into an abyss and decided to take into its own hands the defense of its own rights. It is natural that it was necessary to form forces.”74 Turkish novelist and feminist political leader Halide Edip confessed: “We banished our Greek subjected citizens: we did our best to eradicate them. We treated the Armenians the same way. To achieve the purpose we used medieval methods.”75 According to Bierstadt, around 100,000 people fell victim to the slaughter, 280,000 people were praying for salvation in the port, and 160,000 were driven away to the farthest parts of Turkey, never to be seen again.76 Examining the existing facts, we come to the following conclusions. The Armenians and Greeks of Smyrna passed through similar experiences. Murder: murders had been committed systematically, group by group, executing an unarmed population. Smyrna became a gathering place for bodies and bones; some streets were impassable due to the stench. And churches, where migrants had found asylum, were burnt to the ground. Robbery: they were stealing people’s possessions—carpets, clothes, jewelry, and everything that was easily removed. Abduction: they were taking the most beautiful ladies away from their families, driving them away to the suburbs,

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and using them to fulfill their desires. The expulsion, which shattered the peaceful coexistence of the Christian Armenians and Greeks of Smyrna, also excluded their further presence. Mustafa Kemal and his supporters legalized the abuses and persecutions against the Christians. Simultaneously breaching international laws and contracts, Turkey made an attempt to liberate itself from international obligations and responsibility. The destruction of Smyrna by the Kemalists was a continuation of the Young Turk policy. The basis of the statehood of Mustafa Kemal was the captured property and the blood of the nation. As it was with the creation and strengthening of the Ottoman state during the previous centuries, new Turkey was also being built with “blood and sword.” Tehmine Martoyan is Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the University of Economy and Law (Yerevan, Armenia). She is also a member of the Scientific Council and the Editorial Board of the Journal of Genocide Studies of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia). She is the author of books and articles on the Armenians in Safavid Iran and translated into Armenian the book by Theofanis Malkidis entitled The Greek Genocide: Thrace, Asia Minor, Pontus. She has also made two films dedicated to the Greek and Armenian populations in Smyrna. Notes 1. Hr. Atcharyan, Hay gaghtakanutyan patmutyun [The History of the Armenian Diaspora] (Yerevan: Zangak-97, 2002), 550. 2. Hay gaghtashxarhi patmutyun [The History of the Armenian Diaspora (from the Middle Ages to 1920)], Vol. 2 (Yerevan: Gitutyun Press, 2003), 183. 3. Atcharyan, Hay gaghtakanutyan patmutyun, 554. 4. Richard G. Hovannisian, “Armenian Smyrna/Izmir,” in Armenian Smyrna/Izmir: The Aegean Communities, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian, 1–38, 2. (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2012), 1–38, 2. 5. Th. Malkidis, I Genoktonia ton Ellenon. Thrakia, Mikra Asia, Pontos (Leukosia, 2010). 6. Istoria tou Ellēnikou Ethnous (Athens: Ekdotikē Athēnōn, 1977); A. Thomopoulou, Smyrnē, O exastismos mias mikrasiatikēs polēs sto Smyrnē [Smyrna, the Urbanization of an Asia Minor City of Smyrna] (Athens, 2008). 7. Amja Hasan, Teghahanutyun ev vochnchacum (Teghahanutyan irakan patkery) [Exile and Destruction (the Real Picture of the Exile)] (Yerevan: Gasprint Press, 2007), 6; Mark H. Ward, The Deportations in Asia Minor, 1921–1922 (London: Anglo-Hellenic League, 1922). 8. Hasan, Teghahanutyun ev vochnchacum, 24. 9. Ibid., 6. 10. A. Kharatyan, “Zmyurniayi hay gaghtojaxy Egherni tarinerin” [The Armenian Colony of Smyrna during the Genocide], in Armenian Genocide-90, Collected Articles (Yerevan: Yerevan University Press, 2005), 113. 11. Ibid. 12. J. Lepsius, Germanian ev Hayastany 1914–1918 [Germany and Armenia 1914–1918] (Yerevan: Hayastan Press, 2006), 344–45.

246 | Tehmine Martoyan 13. Ibid., 345–47. 14. Ibid. 15. T. Akçam, Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Question (Moscow: Ario-Niks Press, 1995), 106. 16. Haykakan harts hanragitaran [The Armenian Question Encyclopedia] (Yerevan: Hakob Meghapart Press, 1996), 288. 17. S. Poghosyan and K. Poghosyan, Haykakan hartsi ev Hayots tseghaspanutyan patmutyun [History of the Armenian Question and the Armenian Genocide], Vol. 2, Book 3 (Yerevan: Hayastan Press, 2003), 469. 18. Ibid. See also Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. 2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 344–45. 19. Poghosoyan and Poghosyan, Haykakan hartsi ev Hayots tseghaspanutyan patmutyun, 469. 20. A. Alaverdyan, “Azgayin poqramasnutyunneri dem ughghvats qemalakanutyan druytneri mshakumy Erzrumi 1919 t. hamajoghovum” [The Formulation of the Main Statements of Kemalism against the National Minorities at the Congress of Erzerum in 1919], Near East, VII, History, Politics, Culture (2011): 29. 21. Poghosyan and Poghosyan, Haykakan hartsi ev Hayots tseghaspanutyan patmutyun, 472. 22. Ibid., 488. 23. Ibid., 473. 24. Haykakan harts hanragitaran, 288. 25. Ibid. 26. Kharatyan, “Zmyurniayi hay gaghtojaxy Egherni tarinerin,” 116. 27. Haykakan harts hanragitaran, 288. 28. Rene Puaux, Zmyurniayi vaxtchany, Zmjurniayi verjin orery [The Death of Smyrna, the Last Days of Smyrna] (Yerevan: Yerevan State University Press, 2012), 81. 29. Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City (Kent, OH and London: The Kent State University Press, 1988), 121. 30. L. Oeconomos, The Tragedy of the Christian Near East (London: Anglo-Hellenic League, 1923), 207. 31. “Zmyurniayah kyanqy zinadadaren heto, Ahavor pluzumy” [The Life of Smyrna after the Armistice. The Terrible Collapse], Nor Or [Athens] 3 (1924): 29. 32. Oeconomos, The Tragedy of the Christian Near East, 4. 33. National Archives of Armenia, fund 430, list 1, File 748, 3. 34. J. Aktsoghlu, Anitsvats aryutsi bnajnjumy [The Extermination of the Cursed Lion] (Yerevan: Tchartaraget, 2007), 102. The Greek army had left Asia Minor by September 18. On October 11, in the city of Mudanya, situated on the shore of the Marmara Sea, an armistice was signed between Turkey and the Entente, which Greece joined on October 13. The Mudanya armistice, followed by the Lausanne Treaty, marked the end of the Greco-Turkish War. 35. National Archives of Armenia, fund 430, list 1, file 748, 4–7. 36. H. Injikyan, Sotsialakan hogebanutyune ev tseghaspanutyune [Social Psychology and the Genocide] (Yerevan: Hayagitak, 1995), 63. 37. Ibid. 38. K. Nalchajyan, “Tseghaspanutyune vorpes hogebanakan fenomen” [Genocide as a Psychological Phenomenon], in Armenian Genocide-90, Collected Articles (Yerevan: Yerevan University Press, 2005), 339. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., 341–42. 41. Report on Turkey, USA Consular Documents by George Horton (Athens: The Journalists’ Union of the Athens Daily Newspaper, 1985), 20–21. 42. Henry Morgenthau, I Was Sent to Athens (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Cie, 1929), 47–49. 43. Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), 11–12.

The Destruction of Smyrna in 1922 | 247 44. Report on Turkey, USA Consular Documents by George Horton, 23. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 24–26. 47. Puaux, Zmyurniayi vaxtchany, 90. 48. George Horton, The Blight of Asia, an Account of the Systematic Extermination of Christian Populations by Mohammedans and of the Culpability of Certain Great Powers, with the True Story of the Burning of Smyrna (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926), 135–36. 49. Puaux, Zmyurniayi vaxtchany, 92. 50. Ibid., 21. 51. Ibid., 90. 52. H. Tsirkinidis, The Red River…, The Tragedy of Hellenism of Anatolia 1908–1923, a Historical Tale (Thessaloniki: Kyriakidis, 1999), 283. 53. Interview, conducted in Yerevan, July 13, 2013. 54. E. H. Bierstadt, The Great Betrayal: A Survey of the Near East Problem (Bloomingdale, IL: The Pontian Greek Society of Chicago, 2008), 21–22. 55. Puaux, Zmyurniayi vaxtchany, 82. 56. Zoryan Institute Archives. 57. Horton, The Blight of Asia, 162. 58. Ibid., 162–63. 59. D. Sakayan, Zmyurnia, 1922, Bjishk Karapet Khacheryani oragiry [Smyrna, 1922, the Diary of Doctor K. Khacheryan] (Yerevan: Nahapet, 2005), 81. 60. Bierstadt, The Great Betrayal, 35. 61. Horton, The Blight of Asia, 114 –16. 62. Ibid., 132. 63. Ibid., 65. For other evidence of the Turkish army burning the city, see Constantine G. Hatzidimitriou, American Accounts Documenting the Destruction of Smyrna by the Kemalist Turkish Forces, September 1922 (New York: Aristide D. Caratzas, 2005); Constantine G. Hatzidimitriou, “The Destruction of Smyrna in 1922: American Sources and Turkish Responsibility,” in The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923, ed. George N. Shirinian (Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012), 155–227. 64. Zoryan Institute Archives. 65. L. Oeconomos, The Martyrdom of Smyrna and Eastern Christendom (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1922), 66. 66. Haykakan harts hanragitaran, 131. 67. Puaux, Zmyurniayi vaxtchany, 85. 68. Ibid., 85–86. 69. Oeconomos, The Martyrdom of Smyrna and Eastern Christendom, 83. 70. S. Sōlomonidēs, Smyrnēs Chrysostomos [Chrysostom of Smyrma] (Athens: 1993); I. Hasiōtēs, Oi diōgmoi tōn Hellēnōn kai ē genoktonia sto Smyrnē [The Persecutions of the Greeks and the Genocide in Smyrna] (Athens: 2006), 61–64. 71. Oeconomos, The Tragedy of the Christian Near East, 56. 72. H. Armstrong, Grey Wolf (London: A. Barker, Ltd., 1937), 158. 73. Bierstadt, The Great Betrayal, 27–28. 74. M. Kemal, Puts novoy Turtsii 1919–1927 [The Way of New Turkey 1919–1927], Vol. II (Moscow: Gos. Socialno-ekonomicheskoe, 1932), 302. 75. Poghosyan and Poghosyan, Haykakan hartsi ev Hayots tseghaspanutyan patmutyun, 213.

248 | Tehmine Martoyan 76. Bierstadt, The Great Betrayal, 36. Human rights activist and member of the Free University Ankara Independent Initiative Sait Çetinogˆlu considers reasonable the calculation of the victims of Smyrna as numbering more than 100,000. He regards that fact as trustworthy, stating that before the fire around 400,000 Christians lived in Smyrna, and on October 1 there was no information on 190,000 of those Christians. See http://hyetert.blogspot.com/2012/01/izmir-1922-hristiyan-hayat-o-gun-izmir.html.

Bibliography Hay gaghtashxarhi patmutyun [The History of the Armenian Diaspora (from the Middle Ages to 1920)], Vol. 2. Yerevan: Gitutyun Press, 2003. Haykakan harts hanragitaran [The Armenian Question Encyclopedia]. Yerevan: Hakob Meghapart Press, 1996. Istoria tou Ellēnikou Ethnous [History of the Greek People]. Athens: Ekdotikē Athēnōn, 1977. Report on Turkey, USA Consular Documents by George Horton. Athens: The Journalists’ Union of the Athens Daily Newspaper, 1985. “Zmyurniayah kyanqy zinadadaren heto, Ahavor pluzumy” [The Life of Smyrna after the Armistice. The Terrible Collapse]. Nor Or [Athens] 3 (1924). Akçam, T. Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Question. Moscow: Ario-Niks Press, 1995. Aktsoghlu, J. Anitsvats aryutsi bnajnjumy [The Extermination of the Cursed Lion]. Yerevan: Tchartaraget, 2007. Alaverdyan, A. “Azgayin poqramasnutyunneri dem ughghvats qemalakanutyan druytneri mshakumy Erzrumi 1919 t. hamajoghovum” [The Formulation of the Main Statements of Kemalism against the National Minorities at the Congress of Erzerum in 1919]. Near East, VII, History, Politics, Culture (2011): 27–32. (Lusakn). Armstrong, H. Grey Wolf. London: A. Barker, Ltd., 1937. Atcharyan, Hr. Hay gaghtakanutyan patmutyun [The History of the Armenian Diaspora]. Yerevan: Zangak-97, 2002. Bierstadt, E. H. The Great Betrayal: A Survey of the Near East Problem. Bloomingdale, IL: The Pontian Greek Society of Chicago, 2008. Hasan, Amja. Teghahanutyun ev vochnchacum (Teghahanutyan irakan patkery) [Exile and Destruction (the Real Picture of the Exile)]. Yerevan: Gasprint Press, 2007. Hasiōtēs, I. Oi diōgmoi tōn Hellēnōn kai ē genoktonia sto Smyrnē [The Persecutions of the Greeks and the Genocide in Smyrna]. Athens: 2006. Hatzidimitriou, Constantine G. American Accounts Documenting the Destruction of Smyrna by the Kemalist Turkish Forces, September 1922. New York: Aristide D. Caratzas, 2005. ———. “The Destruction of Smyrna in 1922: American Sources and Turkish Responsibility.” In The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923, edited by George N. Shirinian, 155–227. Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012. Hemingway, Ernest. In Our Time. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930. Horton, George. The Blight of Asia, an Account of the Systematic Extermination of Christian Populations by Mohammedans and of the Culpability of Certain Great Powers, with the True Story of the Burning of Smyrna. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926. Housepian Dobkin, Marjorie. Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City. Kent, OH and London: The Kent State University Press, 1988. Hovannisian, Richard G. “Armenian Smyrna/Izmir.” In Armenian Smyrna/Izmir: The Aegean Communities, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 1–38. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2012. Injikyan, H. Sotsialakan hogebanutyune ev tseghaspanutyune [Social Psychology and the Genocide]. Yerevan: Hayagitak, 1995. Kemal, M. Puts novoy Turtsii 1919–1927 [The Way of New Turkey 1919–1927], Vol. II. Moscow: Gos. Socialno-ekonomicheskoe, 1932.

The Destruction of Smyrna in 1922 | 249 Kharatyan, A. “Zmyurniayi hay gaghtojaxy Egherni tarinerin” [The Armenian Colony of Smyrna during the Genocide”]. In Armenian Genocide-90, Collected Articles. Yerevan: Yerevan University Press, 2005. Lepsius, J. Germanian ev Hayastany 1914–1918 [Germany and Armenia 1914–1918]. Yerevan: Hayastan Press, 2006. Malkidis, Th. I Genoktonia tōn Hellēnōn. Thrakia, Mikra Asia, Pontos. Leukosia, 2010. Morgenthau, Henry. I Was Sent to Athens. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Cie, 1929. Nalchajyan, K. “Tseghaspanutyune vorpes hogebanakan fenomen” [Genocide as a Psychological Phenomenon]. In Armenian Genocide-90, Collected Articles, 339–49. Yerevan: Yerevan University Press, 2005. Oeconomos, L. The Martyrdom of Smyrna and Eastern Christendom. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1922. ———. The Tragedy of the Christian Near East. London: Anglo-Hellenic League, 1923. Poghosyan, S., and K. Poghosyan. Haykakan hartsi ev Hayots tseghaspanutyan patmutyun [History of the Armenian Question and the Armenian Genocide], Vol. 2, Book 3. Yerevan: Hayastan Press, 2003. Puaux, Rene. Zmyurniayi vaxtchany, Zmjurniayi verjin orery [The Death of Smyrna, the Last Days of Smyrna]. Yerevan: Yerevan State University Press, 2012. Sakayan, D. Zmyurnia, 1922, Bjishk Karapet Khacheryani oragiry [Smyrna, 1922, the Diary of Doctor K. Khacheryan]. Yerevan: Nahapet, 2005. Shaw, Stanford J., and Ezel Kural Shaw. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. 2. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Sōlomonidēs, S. Smyrnēs Chrysostomos [Chrysostom of Smyrma]. Athens: 1993. Thomopoulou, A. Smyrnē, O exastismos mias mikrasiatikēs polēs sto Smyrnē [Smyrna, the Urbanization of an Asia Minor City of Smyrna]. Athens, 2008). Tsirkinidis, H. The Red River…, The Tragedy of Hellenism of Anatolia 1908–1923, a Historical Tale. Thessaloniki: Kyriakidis, 1999. Ward, Mark H. The Deportations in Asia Minor, 1921–1922. London: Anglo-Hellenic League, 1922.

Archives National Archives of Armenia, Yerevan. Zoryan Institute Archives, Toronto, Canada.

PART III. LEGACIES AND INTERPRETATIONS

CHAPTER NINE Lemkin on Three Genocides Comparing His Writings on the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Genocides Steven Leonard Jacobs

Even more importantly … Kurds fell victims to a similar treatment at the hands of the Young Turks as the Armenians and other Christian groups. This not only serves as a reminder of the unsettling fact that victims could become perpetrators, but also that perpetrators could turn victims.1

Introduction There is no question that, in addition to his critically important volume published towards the end of World War II—Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress2—Jewish and Polish-born, naturalized American citizen Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), “father” of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide and author of our word “genocide,”3 would have made his scholarly and, perhaps, popular mark with the (eventual) publication of what was to have been his magnum opus: his three-volume History of Genocide (I. Antiquity; II. Middle Ages; III. Modern Times). Sadly, and tragically, his untimely death at age fifty-nine of a massive heart attack in his publicist’s office in New York City prevented the completion of this project;

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a little more than 20% of this 63-chaptered endeavor is found among his more than twenty thousand pages of newspaper clippings, editorials, documents, voluminous correspondence in several languages, articles, speeches, interviews, unpublished manuscripts, and other written materials.4 Yet, thankfully, the three genocides that are our concern here—the fates of the Armenians, the Assyrians, and the Greeks—are found among his writings, though not all in his History of Genocide. His lengthy writing on the Armenian Genocide, more than 120 pages, was, in all likelihood, intended to be a stand-alone monograph, though we have no solid evidence of that as such, other than the rationale that its length would have made it far too long to be included as a separate chapter (Chapter 39, simply titled “Armenians”) of Volume III. As regards the Assyrian Genocide, not one but two chapters—Chapter 2 (“Assyrian Invasions”) of Volume I, and Chapter 2 (“Assyrians in Iraq”) of Volume III—are included among his papers. Most interesting of all, however, with regard to the Greek Genocide, five chapters, more than any other genocide—Chapter 9 (“Genocide in Ancient Greece”) of Volume I, and Chapters 5 (“Genocide against the Greeks”), 7 (“Greeks under Franks”), 8 (“Greeks in Exile from Turkish Occupation”), and 9 (“Genocide by the Greeks against the Turks”) of Volume III5—are presented in the outline, yet none are found among his papers. (Additionally, there is no commentary on his part as to why the case of the Greeks, historically and contemporarily, figured so large in his thinking.) Instead, what we have are a large text of so-called “Background” of fifty-seven pages and a later edited and slightly smaller version (fifty-five pages) entitled “Greeks in the Ottoman Empire,” the title of which is not listed in the outline. Three additional chapters in Volume III—Chapter 4 (“Bulgaria under the Turks”), Chapter 18 (“Genocide by the Janissaries”), and Chapter 35 (“Smyrna”)—would have proven most helpful regarding his thinking about both the Ottoman Empire and the post-Ottoman Kemalist regime. But, alas, they, too, are not found among his papers, and, in all likelihood, were never written. Interestingly enough, his original Chapter 15 (“Hungary against the Turks”) was not found among his papers; instead, what we have is Chapter 19 (“The Case of Hungary”), but which addresses the sacking of Hungary by the Mongols rather than the Hungarian–Turkish conflict. I can only assume that the former is a case of yet another chapter not written. One brief relevant chapter that I did include as well in Lemkin on Genocide, pages 261–266, however, was the case of Chios.6 Before proceeding to summarize the contents of what we do have regarding these three genocides in Lemkin’s writings—analyzing, and comparing and contrasting them—let us briefly sketch out the biography of this singular human being who embodied in his person the Judaic Mishnaic and Talmudic dictum, “whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5; Babylonian Talmud Tractate Sanhedrin 37a).7 And further and appropriately relevant, let us also, albeit somewhat briefly, summarize Chapter 9 of Axis Rule in Occupied Europe—entitled simply “Genocide”—which is fully reflective of much of his thinking.

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Raphael Lemkin (1900–59) Lemkin was born on June 24, 1900, in the town of Bezwodne, Lithuania, eastern Poland, in the Russian restricted area known as the “Pale of Settlement.”8 Son of Bella and Joseph, he and his two brothers, Samuel and Elias, grew up on the family farm, “Ozerisko,” jointly owned by his father and uncle, and located approximately fourteen miles from the town of Wolkowysk. (Tragically, only Lemkin and his brother Elias, along with Elias’s family, would survive the Holocaust/Shoah. His parents did not, along with forty-nine other members of his family, though his brother Samuel is now understood to have died at a young age from tuberculosis before World War I.) Sometime during his teenage years—he does not tell us when—he acquired a copy of the novel Quo Vadis by the 1905 Polish Nobel Laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916), the reading of which would, ultimately, prove for him—and for us—a life-changing event.9 The novel, in somewhat graphic detail appropriate to the time, tells the horrific story of Roman emperor Nero’s (37–68; reigned 57–68) barbaric and brutal treatment of the early Christians in his realm. As Lemkin himself tells it, he was so affected by what he read that he approached his mother Bella and asked, “Why did the Christians permit themselves to be thrown to the lions without calling the police?” To which she is said to have responded, “Do you think the police could help them?” Whether this story is a bit exaggerated or apocryphal in Lemkin’s retelling, it led him on a reading journey of discovery, as he would learn of the horrors perpetrated by the French against the Huguenots, the Japanese against the Catholics, the Spanish against the Muslims, the Turks against the Armenians, and his own people by both the Russians and the Poles. Evidently, early on, he determined that the solution to this problem lay in the field of law, specifically international law. Such a solution would be consistent for one raised with a healthy respect for law and educated and understood within the context of the Jewish religious tradition.10 While he does not tell us in his autobiography about his life during the World War I period, he does inform us that he followed quite closely the increasing genocide against the Armenians by the Turks and the release of 150 Turkish criminals from the British-held island of Malta.11 Lemkin’s response to their release was both shock and the raising of a disturbing set of questions. He would write: I was shocked. A nation was killed and the guilty persons were set free. Why is a man punished when he kills another man, yet the killing of a million is a lesser crime than the killing of an individual?12 In 1926, he received his doctorate in law from the University of Lvov, Poland, after having also studied at Heidelberg University in Germany. It was during this period that he also followed closely the acquittal of Sholom Schwartzbart (1886–1938) for the assassination of the Ukrainian socialist leader Symon Petlyura (1879–1926), and, perhaps more relevantly, the acquittal as well of Soghomon Tehlirian (1897–1960)

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for the assassination of Talât Pasha (1874–1921) in Berlin. His growing concern was not whether individual life-taking was considered an act of murder or not, but that the murders of large groups of people was a crime for which no punishment existed. While yet a law student, he discussed the Tehlirian case with his professors, and, as he reports it: At Lwow University, where I enrolled for the study of law, I discussed this matter with my professors. They evoked the argument about sovereignty of states. “But sovereignty of states,” I answered, “implies conducting an independent foreign and internal policy, building of schools, construction of roads, in brief, all types of activity directed toward the welfare of people. Sovereignty, I argued, “cannot be conceived as the right to kill millions of innocent people.”13 Three years after receiving his law degree, in 1929, he became a Deputy Prosecutor in Warsaw, and Secretary of the Penal Section of the Polish Commission on Codification of Law. By 1933, he had already clarified in his own mind that humanity must be judged guilty of two crimes—what he termed “barbarity” (“oppressive and destructive actions directed against individuals as members of a national, religious, or racial group”), and “vandalism” (“malicious destruction of works of art and culture because they represent the specific creations of the genius of such groups”).14 Intending to present his case at the Fifth International Conference for the Unification of Penal Law at the League of Nations Conference in Madrid, Spain, he was denied that opportunity by his boss who, evidently, agreed with the antisemitic Warsaw Gazette that his interest was parochially Jewish only and of little value to a nation intent on maintaining diplomatic relations with Germany.15 Though his paper was sent ahead and read, no action was taken. With the invasion of Poland by Germany on September 1, 1939, Lemkin would join the Polish Resistance for a little more than one year before escaping to Stockholm, Sweden, and from there via Russia and Japan to the United States, arriving in 1941, and would initially begin his career in the US teaching law at Duke University Law School in Durham, NC. (Later, he would also teach law at Yale University Law School in New Haven, CT.) In 1942, he would join the Board of Economic Warfare, chaired by Vice President Henry Wallace (1888–1965), and at war’s end would join the legal team of Supreme Court Justice and US Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) at the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg, Germany.16 After the conclusion of the Nuremberg trials, in October 1946, Lemkin would devote the remaining thirteen years of his life to his singular and obsessive campaign to make the crime of genocide an international one under the mandate of the United Nations. Much of his recovered literary oeuvre has to do with his articles, speeches, and letters to those who could influence the passage of what would become the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in December,

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1948, becoming law after its ratification by the necessary number of nation-states on January 21, 1951.17 Drafter of much of the language of the Genocide Convention, as it has come to be known, his success was marred by his failure to secure its ratification by his adopted country of the United States; ratification would later happen under the presidency of Ronald Reagan (1911–2004), almost three decades after Lemkin’s death in 1959, in 1988.18 In tribute to Raphael Lemkin and his seemingly indefatigable efforts to make genocide the international crime that it is today, let us examine how he first presented it to his reading public in 1944 in Chapter 9 of Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.

What Is Genocide? Lemkin begins his chapter as follows: New conceptions require new terms. By “genocide” we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing), thus corresponding in its formation to such words as tyrannicide, homicide, infanticide, etc. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.19 Thus, at the outset, what we see here are two things important to Lemkin: first, that it is not only the taking of physical life that is central to genocide but the destruction of the cultural life of the group as well—echoes of his original 1933 understanding of barbarism and vandalism. And, second, that genocide is itself not a haphazard set of random behaviors but a “coordinated plan of action,” as has, indeed, proven to be the case throughout history, and reflected in the actions of the various genocidaires, whether or not the legal question of intentionality can always be proven. Far less quoted than the opening paragraph, however, is Lemkin’s first footnote in the chapter: “Another term could be used for the same idea, namely ethnocide, consisting of the Greek word “ethnos”—nation—and the Latin word “cide.”20 Thus,

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important as words are to Lemkin, it is the crime itself that he is addressing that is paramount. He then goes on to draw a distinction between the “two phases of genocide”, (1) “the destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed,” and (2) “the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor,” both of which are operative in the three cases to be discussed here: the Armenian, the Assyrian, and the Greek.21 Several pages (82–90) are then devoted to what Lemkin calls “techniques of genocide,” and as he discusses them: (1) political, (2) social, (3) cultural, (4) economic, (5) biological, (6) physical (racial discrimination in feeding, endangering of health, mass killing), (7) religious, and (8) moral. He then concludes this all-too-brief chapter with two “recommendations for the future”: (1) prohibition of genocide in war and peace, and (2) international control of occupation practices. His first recommendation mandates a review of international law in light of the horrific practices foisted upon Europe (and the Jews) by the Nazis during World War II, which, essentially, invalidate the Hague Resolutions (with regard to the practice of war).22 At that time, as he writes, he also included special legal statutes, among which was the punishment of the offender “when apprehended, either in his own country, if that was the situs of the crime, or in any other signatory if apprehended there.”23 With the tragic accuracy of hindsight as World War II was drawing to a close, he writes: It must be emphasized again that the proposals of the author at the Madrid Conference embraced criminal actions which, according to the view of the author, would cover in great part the fields in which crimes have been committed in this war by the members of the Axis Powers. Furthermore, the adoption of the principle of universal repression as adapted to genocide by countries which belong to the group [of ] non-belligerents or neutrals, respectively, would likewise bind these latter countries to punish the war criminals engaged in genocide or to extradite them to the countries in which these crimes were committed. If the punishment of genocide practices had formed a part of international law since 1933, there would be no necessity now to issue admonitions to neutral countries not to give refuge to war criminals.24 For Lemkin, then, “the entire problem of genocide needs to be dealt with as a whole; it is too important to be left for piecemeal discussion in the future,” and he further reminds his readers that “genocide is a problem not only of war but also of peace.”25 But he does not stop there: For Lemkin, it was not enough that the crime of genocide becomes international law; it must become part of the criminal law of the various signatories to its ratification. On page 93, he thus details the process, as he understands it, by which such criminality would then be incorporated into nation-state legislation. His second suggestion, that of restricting certain occupations, was specifically directed towards both the conduct of war and the treatment of prisoners of war

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(Articles 86, 87, and 88 of the Hague Resolutions already passed in 1929), as well as the treatment of “helpless women and children.” Such, indeed, was Lemkin’s all-encompassing understanding, not only of the crime of genocide, but what to do about it, as well. Let us now turn to the three cases of genocide under examination: the Armenian Genocide, the Assyrian Genocide, and the Greek Genocide.

The Armenian Genocide Because I have already written extensively on the Armenian Genocide, in this section I propose to summarize rather than repeat what I have already written.26 In reviewing these several texts vis-à-vis Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide (see note 1), what looms large for me is the following. For Lemkin, the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust/Shoah were among the primary sources of his early inspiration, but we do Lemkin and ourselves a disservice if we attribute his much more inclusive thinking to one or the other. As he would write in the first chapter of his autobiography: Since my very young days, I was interested in creating international protection for national, racial, and religious minorities against extermination. I read in history many examples of such extermination … Genocide is more dangerous than war. After a war which is lost, a nation may rebuild its technical and financial resources, and may start a new life. But those who have been lost in Genocide have been lost forever. While the losses of war can be repaired, the losses of Genocide are irreparable.27 Thus, from his early and continuous readings of genocidal horror throughout human history, coupled with his own thinking about how best to address the destruction of peoples and cultures, and further contextualized by his own and his family’s experiences in World War II along with too many millions of other Jews, the path towards both the word genocide and its realization in the 1948 Genocide Convention jaggedly took him down a road he could not but travel. And not knowing at the time the details of his own family’s murders, it would also, in the context of the Jewish religious tradition, serve him well as a fitting tribute to their memories.28 Ever the legal scholar and political activist, Lemkin saw no conflict between the two. His commitment to genocide scholarship is evident in his long manuscript on the Armenian Genocide. Unafraid to quote even the most horrific of reports, including rape, in all their uncomfortable details—for example, quoting liberally from Frederick Davis Greene’s 1895 The Armenian Crisis in Turkey, William Willard Howard’s 1896 Horrors of Armenia, as well as other sources—he knew full well that intellectual integrity requires a solid historical foundation, especially as regards genocide, no matter where the evidence led him. And those who were guilty—in this case the Turks primarily, specifically and quite stridently within an Islamic/Qur’anic

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context, and the Germans for their complicity and the British and other Europeans for their seeming indifference—were to be called to account in the public arena for their crimes. Thus the following commentaries of condemnation: The history of Mohammedanism has been one of constant warfare against Christianity, and the Armenians have been slaughtered and persecuted ever since their conversion to Christianity. The massacres of the 1890s were religious in character although the Sultan was too clever openly to wage war on his Christian subjects without concocting the excuse of a threatened revolution to excuse his tactics to the outside world. It was convenient for the European and British governments to accept the Sultan’s accusations against the Armenians and pretend to believe in their rebellion rather than admit that they were being persecuted for religious reasons alone. [pages 89–90 in the original manuscript] There is every evidence that the persecution of the Armenians met with full favor in Germany … Had Germany wished she could have stopped the atrocities merely by withdrawing her support … It is unlikely that the German authorities initiated the crime, but it is clear that the Germans made no move to stop it … From the above evidence, there can be little doubt that the plan of extermination was well conceived with the full recognition and support of Germany.29 [pages 95ff in the original manuscript] And, having thus condemned the Germans, Lemkin would go on to draw the connection between the fate of the Armenians at the hands of the Turks (and their allies) and the fate of the Jews at the hands of the Germans (and their allies): A strong parallel may be drawn between the extermination of the Armenians by the Turks and the extermination of the Jews by the Germans. The position of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire closely approximated that of the Jews in Germany. The Armenians were the industrious citizens of the Empire, with a talent for handicrafts and intellectual pursuits. They had the same gift for commerce as the Jews, and in Asiatic Turkey it was the Armenians who had the skilled workmen and the man of business. Every town in Anatolia had its prosperous Armenian quarter, the centre of local skill, intellectual life and trade, as well as of the town’s commercial relations with Constantinople and Europe. [page 93 in the original manuscript] As already noted, Lemkin’s writings consist of more than twenty thousand pages of newspaper articles, interviews, radio transcripts, scholarly articles, editorials, letters and correspondence, and largely unpublished manuscripts. Chapter 39 of the third volume of what was to be his major scholarly contribution, largely unfinished at the time of his death, History of Genocide, was to address the Armenian Genocide and was to be entitled simply “Armenians.” No such chapter has been found among his papers.

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However, among those same papers are the following: A 139-page manuscript, untitled by its author, but given the name by the cataloger of his papers, “Book-Length Manuscript on the Armenian Massacres,” and a six-page manuscript, also untitled, but given the name “Short Manuscript on the Armenian Massacres,” neither of which is dated. The former cites twenty-two bibliographic sources and is divided into seven sub-sections: (1) Armenians: Background, (2) Taxation (an area in which Lemkin was particularly interested), (3) Massacres of the 1890s, (4) Massacres of 1909—Adana; (5) Massacres and Deportations of 1915–1916, (6) Intent to Kill—Who is Guilty? (7) Reactions Abroad. (The subtitles are Lemkin’s own.) The “short manuscript,” on the other hand, includes no bibliography but does cite five sources in its footnotes.30 This genocide is the only case in all of his papers where a full-length manuscript has been written independently and accompanied by a shorter manuscript, and is concrete evidence of the importance Lemkin himself attached to the particular case of the Armenian Genocide. Rather than going through the entire longer manuscript section by section, I want to concentrate on Section VI—“Intent to Kill: Who is Guilty?”—which I continue to regard as the heart of his assessment of this genocide. As we know, ever the diplomat, even or perhaps because of his obsessive compulsion to see the Genocide Convention passed and then ratified by the member states of the United Nations, Lemkin courted Arab/Muslim states and non-Arab/Muslim states as well, including Turkey. As his voluminous and continuous correspondence to heads of state, other important government personnel, religious leaders, and members of the diplomatic corps regularly reveals, his passionate intensity did not cross over into those written relationships, nor in his face-to-face conversations. Thus, what is most surprising is the overt condemnation of Turkey itself throughout the text as well as both the Qur’an and Islam. One can therefore only conclude that Lemkin the scholar was of a different mindset than Lemkin the lawyer and political activist, that the facts are what they are and his own internal sense of intellectual responsibility demanded nothing less from him than totally honesty, and that the consequent commentary required no less than that same consistency. Lastly, having excoriated Turkey for its primary role in the Armenian Genocide, he also condemned Germany, Turkey’s primary ally, for its complicity, and saw in its behavior a parallel to the treatment of the Jews by the National Socialists and their own allies. As he would write: The persecution of the Armenians, a strong Christian element existing in the heart of Mohammedan religion, was inevitable as the fundamental principles of the Koran were in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ… No Mohammedan ruler, or follower of Mohammed’s religion, dared to do otherwise than what was taught him in the Koran and therefore none of the grants, permits, promises of reform, liberty of religion, protection

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of persons, honor and property of the Christian subjects of the empire, made by the sultans under pressure from foreign countries were intended to be kept. The rulers cold not have put such laws into effect and remained conscientious and faithful Mohammedans… It is undeniable that the Ottoman Government is a politico-religious system… From all the above evidence [it] is clearly to be seen that there is no place in the Ottoman Empire for persons of Christian faith…31 As noted as well, Lemkin saw the uncomfortable parallels between the fate of the Armenians and the fate of the Jews, as quoted above. Interestingly, Lemkin drew no distinction between the genocidal activities practiced under the despotic regime of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1842–1918) and those of his secularist successors, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), seeing it as a continuous process aided and abetted by Germany: The First World War temporarily freed the Ottoman Government from the control of the concert of European Nations, which, through the Treaty of Berlin, had attempted to ameliorate the conditions of the Christian inhabitants of Turkey. The Government felt that with Germany as its ally it need have no fear of future retaliations for its plan of complete extermination, as it was convinced that Germany would win the war and would shield Turkey from the vengeance of the Western Powers and of Russia…32 As should now be evident, not only the fate of his own Jewish people in the Holocaust/Shoah of World War II, but the Armenian Genocide itself, coupled with the assassinations by both Soghomon Tehlirian and Sholom Schwartzbart and their subsequent acquittals, impelled Lemkin forward to work towards international legislation preventing, condemning, and punishing genocide. Not only the UN Genocide Convention itself but the International Criminal Court (ICC, established 1998), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR, established 1994), and the International Criminal Tribunal for (the former) Yugoslavia (ICTY, established 1993) are also part of his legacy. But that is a presentation for yet another international conference. Thus, for Lemkin, genocidal history was what it was. Unafraid to marshal the evidence, the condemnations were, for him, a logical and necessary consequence of the data and thus set a high bar for scholarly and moral integrity.

The Assyrian Genocide Not one but two chapters addressing the Assyrians are included in my book Lemkin on Genocide: Chapter 2 (“Assyrian Invasions”) of Volume I, and Chapter 2 (“Assyrians in Iraq”) of Volume III. The first borders on the condemnatory: Lemkin’s reading of the Assyrian Empire is decidedly that they were culpable for genocide;

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in the second, his reading of the fate of the Assyrians in modern Iraq is that they are decidedly a genocidally-victimized people. Thus, and again, the integrity of genocidal scholarship demands of its practitioners, as it demanded of Lemkin, the highest standards of intellectual integrity, and, in this specific case, painting this picture requires acknowledging the historically guilty before addressing the historically innocent. The first chapter is a historical excursus; the second chapter is a contemporary one, though it does open with a “Chronological Historical Background to the Macedonian Problem” taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911. First things first, however: Lemkin begins the first account by situating the Assyrian Empire geographically between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and then goes on to address the Assyrian people, the economy, its “tremendously large slave population,” and its religion (“a compromise between the monotheism of the Hebrews and the prevailing polytheism of the time”), before moving quickly into the central focus of the chapter—genocide. He writes: The history of Assyria is replete with cases of genocide. It could hardly be otherwise since the country’s economic needs were many, and its religion and religious practices not only demanded unceasing and increasing amounts of labor and materials, but encouraged conquest for conquest’s sake. The kings, the god’s representatives on earth, gloried in their victories and proudly listed for posterity the horrible record of their personal deeds.33 He immediately follows this assessment with one rather graphic example: Ashur-natsir-appla II [reigned 883–859 bce] wrote, “I crossed the mountain of Kashiari and toward Kinabu, the fortress of Hulai I advanced. With the multitude of my troops by a charge tempestuous as the tempest, I fell upon the town. I took it. I put to the sword 600 of their warriors. I delivered 3,000 prisoners over to the flames and I left not a single one of them alive to serve as a hostage. Hulai, their governor, I took alive with my own hand. Their carcasses I piled in heaps, their young men and their maidens I delivered to the flames. Hulai, their governor, I flayed, I stretched his skin along the wall of Dadaamusa. The city I destroyed, I ravaged it, I gave it to the flames.”34 He continues in his reportage, documenting numerous cases of genocide, and then observes: “What the Assyrians could have accomplished with their artistic talents, their scientific curiosity, their organizational ability had they not directed themselves mainly to destruction, staggers the imagination.”35 Such an observation, noted throughout the various chapters, is consistent with his twofold insistence that genocide is both the physical destruction of a people and the destruction of a people’s culture. The chapter itself is equally indicative of his critique at work and unsparing condemnation of those who practiced then and continue now to practice genocide.

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The central focus of the chapter for Lemkin, however, was the genocidal conflict between the Assyrian Empire and the Elamites. “The most flagrant act of genocide— and the act which marked the beginning of the downfall of the Assyrian Empire— was committed by Assur-banipal [685–627 bce] against Elam.”36 Rich in tragic detail, Lemkin draws upon a number of sources before concluding: Assyria, the mighty empire, was herself to be destroyed in a short fifty years, without a strong country on her southern border, with only a desert there now, she became prey to hordes of marauders and attackers and the seven campaigns waged against Elam left her unable to fight them off … Thousands of years of the history of Assyria had passed. What was left, of the victor and the vanquished, was nothing.37 Thus, for Lemkin, Assyria was to take its place historically as one nation among many others in the ancient world for whom the practice of genocide was very much a raison d’être of its own existence. In addressing the genocidal fate of the Assyrian Christian community in Iraq in the modern period, however, Lemkin concretizes the comment of Schaller and Zimmerer that “perpetrators could become victims,” as well as the more popular cliché, “O how the mighty have fallen!” Though unquestionably compassionate to the plight of twentieth-century Assyrians in Iraq, he notes that in the 1920s “the Assyrians were tactless with the Iraqis, addressing their complaints over the heads of local officials, direct to the British High Commissioner, so that the Iraqis became increasingly unsympathetic toward the Assyrians.”38 Regarding the various murders of Assyrians in their home villages in Iraq throughout this same time period, he is equally unsparing of the British, for whom military and economic considerations trumped moral ones: The British adopted a policy of “whitewash”; they were anxious to preserve their newly acquired air bases in Iraq and the commercial air route through Iraq to India and Australia, and the concession which the Iraq Government had granted the Iraq Petroleum Company could not be jeopardized.39 He is also well aware that, in addition to the Assyrian people, other minorities— “non-Arabs” as he labels them—were also present in the Iraq of the early twentieth century: Kurds, Turks, Armenians, Jews, Baha’is, Yezidis, and Chaldeans, though he does not address their fates in this chapter. After a brief discussion of the relationship between Iraq and Great Britain, he turns his attention to the massacre reports of Lt. Col. R. S. Stafford in 1934 to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Great Britain, and found in their own publication.40 What is most unusual about this particular chapter and the Iraqi-related genocide of the Assyrians is that Lemkin seemingly goes backwards into history, almost as if two chapters are combined into one. The second section of the chapter is entitled “The Case of Iraq, the Caliphate and Syria under Hulagu,” and begins:

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Tule was governor of Persia after Jenghiz [Khan] had conquered the Kwaresmian Empire. However, as Jenghiz’s death in 1227, the conquest of that empire was not final. Jalal ad-Din (Rumi, 1207–1273), the son of the Kwaresmian Shah had gathered up a revolutionary army and fought Mongol contingents [which] devastated Asia Minor and Georgia, while fleeing from the Mongols. Tchammarghan was ordered by Khan Ogdai to follow Jalal ad-Din, and he devastated Persia again and pushed on into Georgia and Armenia, conquering both. In the meantime, Baidu was given the task of subduing Asia Minor. Hulagu, Tule’s son, was ordered by Ogdai’s successor, Mengku, to complete the Asiatic conquest in the west by subduing the Caliphate and Syria, as well as the fortresses of the Assassins in 1251 in Kuhistan. He achieved all three.41 It is always important when reading Lemkin’s historical accounts of the genocides he included and intended to include in his three-volume text to note that he documents (1) victims, (2) perpetrators, (3) victims becoming perpetrators, and (4) perpetrators becoming victims, all by references to appropriate sources. Thus: The Christians of Damascus, who were located with protection and privileges by Hulagu, took advantage of their long-awaited ascendancy to revenge themselves on the Moslems [sic]. They drank wine in the streets, pouring it out in front of the mosques; they marched through the streets holding the cross and forced all those passing by to rise, beating them up otherwise.42 What Lemkin voices indirectly, by including this history in the chapter on Assyrians, is his understanding that those Christians were in fact Assyrian Christians. What is apparent is Lemkin’s evident concern not only for the loss of life but also for cultural destruction, in this case the destruction of Baghdad: Baghdad was more to the Moslem world than its most illustrious and wealthy city. It was the symbol of Islam[ic] culture, being the seat of the Caliphate. Its destruction, therefore, was a great blow to Islam in general.43 As Lemkin understands this particular case of genocide, “the basis for Christian collaboration with the Mongols was their common hatred of Islamic nations for different reasons.”44 What therefore comes through most clearly in this particular chapter for us today is and should be a reluctance to cast any one group as fully and totally either victims or perpetrators. The lesson to be learned, to the degree that genocide perversely becomes a teaching modality, is that the event of genocide sucks into its maw all manner of groups and individuals and unalterably changes them for both better and worse.

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The Greek Genocide This is the only chapter of Lemkin’s we have that addresses the case of the Greek Genocide; the five chapters outlined in his History of Genocide were never written. The chapter begins with the following historical assertion: After a siege of 52 days, on the 29th of May, 1453, Constantinople fell into the hands of the Ottomans. From this date is counted the Osman sovereignty over Greece, although some regions succumbed earlier and some a little later. At this period, the national spirit of the Greeks had long ceased to exist. They had suffered from the onslaught of the Seljuks at the end of the 11th century. Later, at the beginning of the 15th century, they were again decimated by Tibur. After the massacre of Constantinople, many Greeks fled to the islands. But Mohammed II (1431–1481) realized that the Greeks had certain qualities which the Turks lacked. Therefore, a call was issued, a “ferman,” calling all Greeks who had fled to again take up their residence in the capital. In return, they were promised the protection of their property and the free exercise of their religion, and, thus assured, they returned in great numbers. Before the end of September, 5,000 families came from Trebizond and other ports of the Black Sea, and more than ten thousand from Mesembria, Adrianople, Silistria and Heraclea.45 Moving quickly and historically, he writes: “In 1908, welcomed by the Greeks, the Young Turks came to power. They promised a constitutional government, but it was soon evident that they desired only the supremacy of the Turks. Liberalism was only a thin veneer over a very intense nationalism.” Thus we see Lemkin interspersing his evaluative judgments throughout this historical discussion as he continues, “The Greek element was turkified [sic] by force, by setting up mixed communities. Greek women, for instance, were sent to Turkish villages to compel mixed marriages, and force them to give up their faith.” And finally in this initial section, “Uniformity was purchased at heavy economic and cultural cost.” Later on he would write: “It has been estimated that one million Christian children were recruited, and when one considers that the children were the ‘cream of the crop’ and were forbidden to marry, the loss to the Greek population is incalculable.” At the very heart of a number of chapters addressing the different genocides is a section always entitled “Who is Guilty?” This chapter is no different, and here, too, no one is spared either Lemkin’s analysis or his condemnation: While the persecutions of the Greeks by the Turks in this century are the result of government intentions and planning, those of the former centuries were in part due to the attitude of the Greeks themselves… The heads of the church paid sums to the Porte. This had not been instituted by the sultan, but by intriguing Greeks who tried to get official support while trying to get the top posts in the church…

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Comparable to these were the Fanariotes…They finally became so rich, that they became a source of credit for the Turkish government, and so powerful that their own fortunes were bound up with the Ottoman Empire… From 1453 until 1821, therefore, the highly placed Greeks were just as guilty of oppressing their brothers, as were the Turks, because they lent themselves as the instruments… Although instigated by the government, the Turkish population took part willingly in the persecutions.46 (Parenthetically, I would note my own orientation that history as the study of the past is not only complex and complicated, but “messy” as well.) In the section of the chapter entitled “Psychological Reactions on Both Sides,” Lemkin writes: The prime cause for the survival of the Christian communities was the incompetence of the Turks for any pursuit other than that of soldiering… The Greeks have a very strong national feeling, which has been nourished by the recollection of a great intellectual past and which finds its finest and most effectual expressions in the fostering of Greek schools.47 The Greeks profited in time by the slow disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, especially by the dissolution of the Janissaries, who had so long been a heavy burden, first because they were composed of Christian children, later because they became unmanageable, cruel, and overbearing… There was very likely also an element of jealousy, since the Greeks on the whole were much better educated and were wealthier per capita than the Turks. The Greeks on their side still regarded the Turks as the invaders, and interpreted even their most intensive nationalism as justified—not as aggressive. It is interesting to note that the Turks, although they loudly proclaimed the Greeks as traitors and deserving their harsh fate, felt compelled quite often to conceal their deeds.48 Thus, as previously stated, for Lemkin, when genocide is at issue, victims were the tragic recipients of these horrors, but in turn were not to be fully understood as being wholly innocent. This, I note, is not a case of “blaming the victim,” but rather, for Lemkin, instances of minorities acting at times belligerently towards majorities, and manipulating systems for parochial ends without addressing the long-term and perhaps unintended consequences of such behaviors. Lemkin, quite obviously, had great sympathy for the Greek people, not only because of their heritage, which has contributed so much to the humanizing and civilizing of humanity, but also for the tragedies of their past. Thus, he would write:

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The loss of the total persecution in the 20th century is difficult to assess, but is certainly tremendous. There were not only incalculable losses of life and property, but a nation deliberately deprived of intelligent, prosperous and progressive citizens in order to achieve uniformity of creed and race.49 The chapter concludes with a bibliography of fifty-one sources in English, French, and German, languages of which Lemkin was a master. The tragic plight of Chios— Chapter 6 of Volume III, and included in Lemkin on Genocide—is yet another case of genocidal victimization by the Turks, although, unfortunately, all-too-briefly written.

Conclusions: Pointing the Way to the Future of Genocide Studies In a February 2013 lecture at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, Belmont, MA, entitled “Raphael Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide,” I stressed the following points, derived from my reading of Lemkin’s work and his universalized commitment to telling the stories of the genocides of all humanity throughout history and working through international law to alleviate this scourge of what we have done and continue to do to ourselves: 1. If one is to take seriously the tragedy of one’s own people and its horrific lessons (here Assyrians, Armenians, and Greeks), then, most morally and ethically, we cannot ignore the pain and plight of others—Jews, Cambodians, Bosnians, Rwandese, Palestinians, Sudanese. 2. We who are privileged to call ourselves scholars must always remain committed to exploring objectively (aware of our own, at times, prejudices and biases) the data we examine, drawing conclusions based on the evidence presented, and not on economic, political, social, or sociological agendas. 3. Equally, we must remain committed to the three constituencies with whom we interact: our students whose faith in us as teachers must always be above reproach, our colleagues with whom we share our findings subject to their critiques and evaluations and reasoned revisions as well as other readings and interpretations, and the larger public who support us in our endeavors. 4. Implied in the study of the various genocides throughout history must be the courage necessary to condemn those guilty of this “crime of crimes,” as Lemkin does throughout his work. 5. The foundation of good—nay, excellent—scholarly work in the humanities is the linking of two seemingly discrete phenomena—in this case three genocidally victim populations—and the drawing of conclusions as to their similarities and dissimilarities and/or theorizing that examination (as I have done throughout this text with regard to Lemkin’s own assessments of these cases). 6. Perhaps unique to the study of all genocides as scholarly endeavors, it is not only the past that drives us forward, it is the future and the possible

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prevention of additional yet unacknowledged or future genocides that compel us and demand our involvement. As Lemkin himself would have it: “I understand the function of memory is not only to register past events, but to stimulate human conscience.”50 And, finally, as Lemkin himself would most assuredly agree: 7. Stimulating human conscience in the various cases of genocide, both historically and contemporarily, must lead us to preventative actions, both presently and in the future. The alternative is to cynically conclude that “history teaches us that history teaches us nothing,”51 that we cannot learn anything of value in the present, and that we stumble blindly into the future. Lemkin’s contributions should remind us that one human being can indeed effect significant and global change, and that, collectively, we can make a difference. Dr. Steven Leonard Jacobs holds the Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair of Judaic Studies and is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa. An ordained rabbi, Professor Jacobs is a specialist on the Holocaust and Genocide, Biblical Studies, Jewish-Christian Relations, and is one of the foremost authorities on Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” and devoted his life to the enactment of an international law on the punishment and prevention of genocide. Among his publications are The Encyclopedia of Genocide (2 volumes, 1999, Associate Editor), Pioneers of Genocide Studies (2002, Co-editor), Lemkin on Genocide (2012), Modern Genocide: The Definitive Reference and Documents Volume (4 Volumes, Co-editor, 2014), and numerous articles in books and journals. Notes 1. Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer, “Late Ottoman Genocides: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish Population and Extermination Policies,” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (March 2008): 9 [emphases added—SLJ]. Schaller and Zimmerer also guest-edited a Special Issue of the Journal of Genocide Research (7, no. 4 [2005]) entitled “Raphael Lemkin: The ‘Founder’ of the United Nations’ Genocide Convention as a Historian of Mass Violence.” In this context, see also Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002); and James L. Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Murder (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 2. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944, 674 pages. 3. In addition to his many and later writings, the first public appearance of his use of the term “genocide” appears in this volume: Chapter IX, 79–95. 4. Lemkin’s papers are scattered among three primary archives: (1) the 42nd Street Branch of the New York Public Library, NY; (2) the American Jewish Archives, on the campus of the Hebrew Union CollegeJewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati, OH; and (3) the American Jewish Historical Society, now located at the Center for Jewish History, New York City, NY. 5. Emphases added—SLJ.

270 | Steven Leonard Jacobs 6. See Steven L. Jacobs, “The Papers of Raphael Lemkin: A First Look,” Journal of Genocide Research 1 no. 1 (1999): 105–14, especially Appendix B (113–14), which contains the full outline of his proposed text. 7. His autobiography Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin, edited by Donna-Lee Frieze, is published by Yale University Press (2013). A lengthy earlier extract is found in Samuel Totten and Steven Leonard Jacobs, eds., Pioneers of Genocide Studies (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 365–99. 8. This summary is taken largely from my own entry “Raphael Lemkin” in the online version of the Encyclopedia of Human Rights, ed. David P. Forsythe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). See also William Korey, An Epitaph for Raphael Lemkin (New York: American Jewish Committee, 2001; updated 2009). In 2008, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the passage of the UN Genocide Convention, the Polish Institute of International Affairs organized an international conference which resulted in the volume edited by Agnieszka Bienczyk-Missala and Slavomir Debski, Rafal Lemkin: A Hero of Humankind (Warsaw: The Polish Institute of International Affairs, 2010). My own contribution was entitled “The Human, the Humane, and the Humanitarian: Their Implications and Consequences in Raphael Lemkin’s Work on Genocide” (153–62). A high point of that gathering was the affixing of a memorial plaque outside the apartment building where Lemkin lived and had his private office/study, attended by conference participants and government officials, and reported in the Polish press. 9. An English translation of Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis is still available, and translated by W. S. Kuniczak (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1983). 10 Steven Leonard Jacobs (2016), “The Jewishness of Raphael Lemkin” in Jonathan Friedman and Robert Miller, III, eds., The Highest Form of Wisdom: A Memorial Book in Honor of Professor Saul Friedman (19372103) (Hoboken and Jerusalem: Ktav Publishing House), 93-109. 11. The criminals were understood by Lemkin to have been direct participants in the Armenian Genocide. 12. Lemkin, Totally Unofficial, 19. One is here reminded of the infamous statement of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin (1878–1953): “The death of a single individual is murder; the death of a million individuals is a statistic.” 13. Ibid., 20. 14. See Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, 91. 15. Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) would become Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1939, though the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP/Nazi) was already fast becoming a force to be reckoned with in German politics. 16. Though the actual word “genocide” appears more than seventeen times in the multi-volume proceedings, Lemkin himself was somewhat frustrated by his inability to include it as a charge against the Nazi leadership on trial. 17. Two days after its passage, Lemkin was admitted to hospital suffering from complete exhaustion, what he termed “genociditis, exhaustion from working on the Genocide Convention.” Totten and Jacobs, Pioneers of Genocide Studies, 395. 18. For the full story of these, at times, contentious deliberations, see John Cooper, Raphael Lemkin and the Struggle for the Genocide Convention (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); and Lawrence J. LeBlanc, The United States and the Genocide Convention (Durham, NC and London: Duke University, 1991). To date (2016), however, the United States Congress, while annually affirming “Days of Holocaust Remembrance”, has yet to pass any resolution whatsoever—neither the House of Representatives nor the Senate, though both houses have brought such resolutions forward several times—affirming the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, and despite the fact that forty-three out of fifty states have already done so. 19. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, 79 [emphases added—SLJ]. Subsequently, in 1950, the word would appear in the Addenda Section of Webster’s New International Dictionary, 2nd edition, p. cix (Springfield: G. & C. Merriam Company), but without attribution: “gen-o-cide (jen’o’sid), n. (Gr. Genos race + cide) The use of deliberate, systematic measures such as killing, bodily or mental injury, unlivable conditions, prevention of births calculated to bring about the extermination of a racial, political, or cultural group or to destroy the language, religion, or culture of a group—gen’o’cid’al (-sid’al; -’l, …), adj.”

Lemkin on Three Genocides | 271 [emphasis added—SLJ]. What is of import here is the fact that, although Lemkin campaigned vigorously for the inclusion of “political groups” in his original concept, it was ultimately removed at the insistence of the Soviet Russian representatives who informed the drafting committee that they would withdraw their support if it was included. 20. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, 79. 21. Ibid., 79. 22. On page 92, Lemkin specifically references Articles 46, 48, 52, and 56 of the Hague Resolutions. He also suggests in Chapter 9 that the Hague Resolutions must be emended in two parts: (1) “every action infringing upon the life, liberty, health, corporal integrity, economic existence, and the honor of the inhabitants when committed because they belong to a national, religious, or racial group,” and (2) “every policy aimed at the destruction or the aggrandizement of one of such groups to the prejudice or detriment of another.” 23. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied in Europe, 91. 24. Ibid., 92. Emphases added—SLJ. 25. Ibid., 93. 26. Steven L. Jacobs, “Raphael Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide,” in Looking Backward, Moving Forward: Confronting the Armenian Genocide, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian, 125–35. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003); Jacobs, “The Journey of Death: Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide,” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 17 (2008): 7–18; Jacobs, “Perspectives on the Armenian Genocide.” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 19, no. 1 (2010): 21–43. 27. Raphael Lemkin, “Totally Unofficial Man” in Samuel Totten and Steven Leonard Jacobs, eds., Pioneers of Genocide Studies (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 366. 28. As he wrote in his autobiography: “… soon I transformed my personal disaster into a moral striking force. Was I not under a moral duty to repay my Mother for having stimulated in me the interest in Genocide? Was it not the best form of gratitude to make a ‘Genocide pact’ as an epitaph on her symbolic grave as a common recognition that she and many millions of others did not die in vain? I redoubled my efforts and found temporary relief from my grief in this work.” Steven L. Jacobs, “Genesis of the Concept of Genocide According to Its Author from the Original Sources,” Human Rights Review 3, no. 2 (2002): 103. 29. Lemkin’s emphasis on religion as a cause of the Armenian Genocide, rather than a factor, was a product of his time. Present-day scholarship sees Great Power rivalry in partitioning the Ottoman Empire as an important cause, along with the inherent inequity of the Ottoman political system and the intolerance of Turkish nationalism. See, for example, Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006); Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Christopher J. Walker, “World War I and the Armenian Genocide,” in The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, Vol. II, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian, 239–73 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). It is true that Germany agreed to the deportation of the entire Armenian population, since it had accepted the principle of non-involvement in interior matters of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, however, some German officials in the Ottoman Empire criticized the destruction of the Armenians and their own government’s acquiescence. In response to one particularly strong letter from his Ambassador to Constantinople dated December 7, 1915, the German Chancellor noted: “The proposed public reprimand of an ally in the course of a war would be an act which is unprecedented in history. Our only aim is to keep Turkey on our side until the end of the war, no matter whether as a result Armenians do perish or not.” Wolfgang Gust, ed., Der Völkermord an den Armeniern 1915/16: Dokumente aus dem Politische Archiv des deutschen Auswärtiges Amts (Springe: zu Klampen Verlag, 2005), 81. 30. Steven L. Jacobs, “Raphael Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide.” In Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., Looking Backward, Moving Forward: Confronting the Armenian Genocide, 129 (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2003). 31. Steven Leonard Jacobs, “The Journey of Death: Raphael Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide,” Journal of the Society of Armenian Studies, 17 (2008): 15-16.

272 | Steven Leonard Jacobs 32. Ibid. 33. Jacobs, Lemkin on Genocide, 89–90. 34. Ibid., 90. 35. Ibid., 93. 36. Ibid., 94. 37. Ibid., 100. 38. Ibid., 225. 39. Ibid., 229. 40. Stafford would go on to publish a book-length manuscript of his experiences entitled The Tragedy of the Assyrians in 1935, which is available online (Assyrian International News Agency Books Online, www. aina.org) and in hardcopy (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006). 41. Jacobs, Lemkin on Genocide, 240. 42. Ibid., 245–46. 43. Ibid., 248. 44. Ibid., 256. 45. From page 1 of the unpublished chapter. He does, however, reference this information as coming from “Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. 68.” 46. Steven Leonard Jacobs, “Genocide of Others: Raphael Lemkin, the Genocide of the Greeks, the Holocaust, and the Present Moment.” In The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks: Studies on the State-Sponsored Campaign of Extermination of the Christians of Asia Minor 1912–1922 and Its Aftermath: History, Law, Memory, edited by Tessa Hofmann, Matthias Bjørnlund, and Vasileios Meichanetsidis (New York and Athens: Aristide D. Caratzas, 2011), 300. 47. Perhaps, conjecturally, it is this assessment of the historical Greek intellectual tradition that was, in fact, Lemkin’s raison d’être for the five chapters addressing various instances of the Greek genocidal story. 48. Jacobs, “Genocide of Others,” 300. 49. See, also, my aforementioned chapter “Genocide of Others”, for a more in-depth analysis of this genocide. Particularly relevant is Constantine G. Hatzidimitriou’s review of this text in the AHIF Policy Journal, Winter 2012–13, and available online at http://ahiworld.org/AHIFpolicyjournal/. He, too, notes in assessing my own contribution that “Lemkin also recognized that during the long period of Ottoman rule, some members of Greek society cooperated with the Ottoman state and victimized their own people. This historical experience is related to similar aspects of other groups of victims such as the Armenians and Jews.” 50. Jacobs, “Genesis of the Concept of Genocide According to Its Author from the Original Sources,” 102. 51. Attributed to the German philosopher Georg Wilhem Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831).

Bibliography Akçam, Taner. A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006. Bienczyk-Missala, Agnieszka, and Slavomir Debski. Rafal Lemkin: A Hero of Humankind. Warsaw: The Polish Institute of International Affairs, 2010. Bloxham, Donald. The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Cooper, John. Raphael Lemkin and the Struggle for the Genocide Convention. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Gust, Wolfgang, ed. Der Völkermord an den Armeniern 1915/16: Dokumente aus dem Politischen Archiv des deutschen Auswärtigen Amts. Springe: zu Klampen Verlag, 2005.

Lemkin on Three Genocides | 273 Jacobs, Steven L. “Genesis of the Concept of Genocide According to Its Author from the Original Sources.” Human Rights Review 3, no. 2 (2002): 98–103. ———. “Genocide of Others: Raphael Lemkin, the Genocide of the Greeks, the Holocaust, and the Present Moment.” In The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks: Studies on the State-Sponsored Campaign of Extermination of the Christians of Asia Minor 1912–1922 and Its Aftermath: History, Law, Memory, edited by Tessa Hofmann, Matthias Bjørnlund, and Vasileios Meichanetsidis, 297–309. New York and Athens: Aristide D. Caratzas, 2011. ———. “The Human, the Humane, and the Humanitarian: Their Implications and Consequences in Raphael Lemkin’s Work on Genocide.” In Rafal Lemkin: A Hero of Humankind, edited by Agnieszka Bienczyk-Missala and Slavomir Debski, 153–62. Warsaw: The Polish Institute of International Affairs, 2010. ———. “The Journey of Death: Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide.” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 17 (2008): 7–18. ———. “The Papers of Raphael Lemkin: A First Look.” Journal of Genocide Research 1, no. 1 (1999): 105–14. ———. “Perspectives on the Armenian Genocide.” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 19, no. 1 (2010): 21–43. ———. “Raphael Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide.” In Looking Backward, Moving Forward: Confronting the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 125–35. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003. ———. “Raphael Lemkin.” The Encyclopedia of Human Rights, edited by David P. Forsythe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Korey, William. An Epitaph for Raphael Lemkin. New York: American Jewish Committee, 2001; updated 2009. LeBlanc, Lawrence J. The United States and the Genocide Convention. Durham, NC and London: Duke University, 1991. Lemkin, Raphael. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944. ———. Lemkin on Genocide. Edited and Introduction by Steven Leonard Jacobs. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012. ———. Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin. Edited by Donna-Lee Frieze. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2013. Mamdani, Mahmood. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002. Schaller, Dominik J., and Jürgen Zimmerer. “Late Ottoman Genocides: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish Population and Extermination Policies.” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (March 2008): 7–14. Sienkiewicz, H. Quo Vadis, translated by W. S. Kuniczak. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1983. Stafford, R. S. The Tragedy of the Assyrians. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006. Totten, Samuel, and Steven Leonard Jacobs, eds. Pioneers of Genocide Studies. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers, 2002. Walker, Christopher J. “World War I and the Armenian Genocide.” In The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, Vol. II, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 239–73. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Waller, James L. Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Murder. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

CHAPTER TEN The Greek Genocide in the Ottoman Empire Parallels with the Armenian Genocide Gevorg Vardanyan

The Greek Population in the Ottoman Empire After the foundation of the Ottoman Empire in 1299, as a result of invasions (particularly of Constantinople in 1453, the Morea [Peloponnese] in 1460, the Trabzon Empire in 1461, etc.), the Greek lands fell under Turkish rule. In the east, after sustained wars against Safavid Iran, Western Armenia was decisively annexed to the Ottoman Empire in accordance with the Treaty of Amasia, 1555, and the Treaty of Qasr-e-Shirin, 1639. However, the fact of passing into Ottoman power had a significant distinguishing feature for each of these Christian nations. In the case of the Armenians, one foreign rule was substituted for another, whereas the Greeks immediately fell under the rule of Ottoman Turks with the loss of their statehood. Perhaps this had a significant impact exemplified by an earlier manifestation of the Greek national liberation movement, as the traditions of statehood were more recent in their case. The result was the restoration of Greek statehood at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the south of the Balkan Peninsula. (Of course, the international situation, the tendency towards philhellenism, and the support of the Great

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Powers were of high significance). Already in the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Greek subjects of the Ottoman Empire had the example of the liberated Greek state. The final aim of their struggle was the reuniting of the Hellenic Kingdom. The Greek national liberation struggle that was initiated in 1821 and the liberation of Greece did not solve the problem of Greeks under Ottoman rule, as the majority of Greeks continued to live within the territory of the Ottoman Empire. In international diplomacy, the “Eastern Question” originated, in great part, in relation to the state of the Greek subjects of the Ottoman Empire.1 In the Ottoman Empire, the Greeks belonged to the Millet-i Rum or Rum Milleti (Community of Romans, or Roman nation). The head of the millet was the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople. The latter was considered both the spiritual and national leader of the “Greek Orthodox nation” (Ethnarchēs). Gennadios II Scholarios, the first post-Byzantine Patriarch, was the first to be granted this title by Sultan Mehmet II in 1454.2 In the course of time, the Patriarch became a member of the Ottoman bureaucracy. Alongside his spiritual influence, the Greek Patriarch also acquired considerable political power in the governance of the millet.3 In the Ottoman Empire the juridical status of non-Muslims in Islamic law was based on different ayahs of the Quran and Sharia (Islamic regulation of rights). According to these, society was divided into Muslims and non-Muslims, and the latter in their turn consisted of ahl-ul-kitab, “people of the Book” (monotheists, who had a Holy Book) and the rest (idolaters, atheists).4 The Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, like other Christians and Jews, had a peculiar status. They were considered ahl-ul-kitab, and in comparison with Muslims were deprived of a range of rights. The Greeks, like other Christians and Jews, had no right to bear arms or to ride a horse; their houses should be lower than the neighboring Muslims’ houses. They held almost no state positions; they wore special garments to visibly differentiate them from Muslims. At the same time, the “people of the Book” were not perceived as kafir or gavur; that designation was given only to the “atheists” or “idolaters,” who were the lowest stratum of society. Nevertheless, all non-Muslims, in this case Armenians and Greeks, were afforded dhimmi legal status, i.e., people who lived under the protection of the Islamic state or Muslim rule, so long as they submitted themselves to pay the tribute (jizya).5 The dhimmis, non-Muslims, were people of second rank. They were perceived in this way not only by the authorities but also by society. Millets became a system uniting dhimmis according to religion or different religious denominations. This attitude becomes more comprehensible if we take into account the fact that, in essence, the Ottoman Empire was a religious state, and the sultan was also the spiritual leader of all the Muslims, the Caliph.6 Like other Christian subjects—Armenians, Assyrians, Slavs, etc.—the status of the Greeks was rather tough. The Turkish government impeded the national development of the Greeks, who had rich traditions of statehood and were at a higher stage of development.

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Aiming to preserve the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, on November 3, 1839, during the reign of Sultan Abdülmecid I, the decree Hatt-ı Sharif of Gulhane was proclaimed, according to which all Ottoman subjects, regardless of religion, were considered equal, and acquired inviolability of life, property, and dignity. Reforms were initiated in the judicial and tax systems; new legislation was created for the army and its organization.7 On February 18, 1856, the decree Hatt-ı Hümayun on privileges of the minorities of the empire was proclaimed, which mainly consolidated the rights granted by the Hatt-ı Sharif.8 Despite Tanzimat’s progressive measures for the time, the main aim pursued by the Hatt-ı Sharif as well as the Hatt-ı Hümayun was the gradual assimilation of the subjects of the empire.9 In other words, these demonstrated the sources of Ottoman ideology. The ultimate objective was the preservation of the empire, and assimilation of the nations would be the most convenient solution to the problem. The best proof of this was the political legacy of one of the main executers of the reforms, Fuad Pasha, to Sultan Abdul Aziz. Speaking about the nations subject to the Ottoman Empire, he expressed his conviction that it was totally inappropriate to think of granting the Christians sovereignty or moreover independence. Bringing the example of Greece, Fuad Pasha said: We should not forget Greece, an unimportant country itself, however a tiresome tool in the hands of enemy states. European poets forming this ghostly kingdom believed they could revive a nation which had been dead for over two thousand years … The spirit of the Hellenic nation should always be the enemy of ours … Against the infringements of this fraudulent and malicious nation the best defense is in its odious vanity and absoluteness, because of which they become more and more detestable and unbearable in the eyes of all our Eastern nations. The aim of our policy should be the isolation of the Greeks from other Christians as much as possible. Above all, we must release the Bulgarians from the supremacy of the Greek Church without attaching them to the Russian or Roman Clergy.10 Since the principles stated in Tanzimat were not executed, a rebellion arose on the island of Crete in 1866. Despite the heroic struggle of the Cretan Greeks, however, the revolt was suppressed by the Turkish authorities in 1869. Nevertheless, the national liberation movement of the subject nations of the Ottoman Empire did not cease. The proclamation of the first Ottoman constitution in 1876 and its suspension shortly afterwards announced the end of the unsuccessful attempts at reform. The reforms were widely perceived by the Muslim population as an offense and violation of their national dignity. This was first displayed after the proclamation of the Hatt-ı Sharif in 1839, when the Greeks of Trapizon, granted rights according to the reforms of Tanzimat, reconstructed their church in 1841, and the Muslim fanatic

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Figure 10.1. Refugees fleeing Thrace, 1922. Courtesy Athens War Museum crowd destroyed the reconstructed part of the building.11 After 1876, a sharp rise in anti-Christian sentiment was observed, which gradually acquired the form of a call for the physical extermination of Christians.12 After Sultan Abdülhamit II came to power in 1876, a more regressive policy was adopted in regard to national issues of the Ottoman Empire, the result of which was the massacre of some 300,000 Armenians between 1894 and 1896.13 Although the massacres were mainly directed against the Armenians, they also included Assyrians.14 The Greeks, as a rule, were spared; Abdülhamit wished to avoid new complications in relations with Greece. However, everything changed after the rebellion of the Greeks in Crete in 1896. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the national question became further exacerbated in the Ottoman Empire. The Young Turks came to power in 1908, and the first mass deportations and massacres of Greeks began in 1913.

Mass Deportations and Massacres of Greeks, 1914–23 The first mass deportations and massacres of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire’s Aegean region began in 1913 during the Balkan Wars and continued through 1914. The mass deportation and slaughter of Greeks initiated in Eastern Thrace became systematized in the spring of 1914. The policy of the Young Turks applied towards

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the Greek population is characterized by the following features: (a) attacks on Greek villages and rural population by groups of the Special Organization (çetes); (b) forcing the population to abandon their houses by means of terror and murders; (c) desolation of villages; (d) economic boycott of Greek businesses; (e) seizure of enterprises belonging to the Greeks. Starting from the spring of 1914, Western Asia Minor became the stage for violations against the Greeks. The first noticeable events took place in the city of Adramiti, situated seventy miles north of Smyrna. In May, a considerable number of Muslim refugees (muhadjirs) arrived in Adramiti. Entering the city, the Muslim crowd began to rob the houses and shops of the Greeks.15 The Greek-populated cities of Western Asia Minor underwent depopulation one after another. The consequences of the anti-Greek invasion were very serious for the Greek nation. An international committee formed in the summer of 1914 and accompanied by Talât, the Minister of the Interior, during a tour along the shores of the Aegean Sea, documented that as a result of those actions a considerable part of those places had been desolated. A member of the committee, the Russian representative Tucholka, reported that the program of deportation of the Greeks from the Aegean shore had been planned by the government in advance.16 In 1913–14, before the beginning of World War I, the number of deported and murdered Greeks was estimated at 284,172 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (Thrace and Asia Minor apart from Pontus), of which 153,890 were from Asia Minor and 130,282 were from Thrace.17 Figures from other sources coincide with those of the Patriarchate with little difference. Specifically, according to Barton, the number of Greeks exiled only from the western shore of Asia Minor in that period was over 100,000.18 According to the British daily The Morning Post, the number exiled from Thrace and Asia Minor reached 350,000.19 During World War I, the persecutions and massacres of Greeks, which had started earlier than the case of the Armenians, were in general the continuation of the same policy that was applied towards them during the last period of the Balkan Wars and in the spring and summer of 1914. After World War I had begun, the regime of the Young Turks adopted a number of laws and edicts that were to make the anti-Greek movement more regulated and purposeful. The first of them was the edict of August 3, 1914, by the War Ministry, according to which all men aged 18–45 were subject to recruitment for military service. Shortly afterwards, the recruited Christians were disarmed, formed into labor battalions, and were moved to the further regions of Asia Minor to build roads and perform other hard labor under conditions of extreme difficulty.20 However, it became clear later that the main aim of the labor battalions was not the exploitation of free Christian labor, but one of the strategies of their phased extermination during the war. It is possible to obtain insight into the state of Christian soldiers in these labor battalions from the message of the Greek consul in Konya dated March 7, 1917. (It reached Athens only on September 18).

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The miserable men in the labor battalions are dispersed in different directions in the far ends of the Empire, from the shores of Asia Minor and the Black Sea to the Caucasus, Bagdad, Mesopotamia and Egypt; some of them to build military roads, others to dig the tunnels of Bagdad railway … I saw those wretched men in the hospitals of Konya, stretched upon their beds or on the ground, resembling living skeletons, longing for death to end their sufferings … To describe this disastrous situation I shall conclude that as a result of high level of mortality the cemetery of Konya is full of corpses of the soldiers serving in the labor battalions, and in each tomb there lie four, five or sometimes even six corpses just like dogs.21 Those who could not endure the severe working conditions and attempted to escape were proclaimed outlaws from March 1915. However, there are numerous examples of both Greek and Armenian recruits displaying appreciable courage and carrying out their military service generally with loyalty and skill.22 Nevertheless, this did not prevent the gradual extermination of the recruits during the war. The objective (as in the case of the Armenians) was to deprive the population of its strong, working component who were able to carry weapons, in order to facilitate the exile and extermination of the rest. Data from French military intelligence also testifies to the intolerable state of the Greeks in the labor battalions. According to information received on August 5, 1917, thirty thousand young men were murdered at one time.23 In general, according to data received from Greek sources, the number of Greek men aged 18–45 in labor battalions was over 200,000, of which at least 150,000 were martyred.24 The Greek-populated settlements on the western coast of Asia Minor could not avoid tragic events either. Around 120,000 Greeks had been exiled from there by the end of 1914.25 The town of Kidonia (Ayvali or Ayvalık), which was mainly inhabited by Greeks and had around thirty thousand Greek inhabitants, was totally desolated. The deportations of the citizens were not implemented immediately: some of them were deported in 1914, another group in July 1915, and the remaining group in April 1917.26 The anti-Greek movement was also increasing in the central part of Asia Minor. Thus, according to the report of Procopius, the Greek Metropolitan (Archbishop) of Konya, the state of the Greeks in this vilayet was worse than the state of the Hebrews in Egypt. They endured terrible sufferings, economic deprivations, looting, deportations, violence, and harsh extermination of the population.27 In Pontus, massacres were carried out in all districts: Trapizon, Rodopolis (Cevizlik), Chaldia (Gumushkhane), Colonia (Nikopolis, Shabin-Karahisar), Neocaesarea (Niksar), Amasia. Here, one of the main organizers of anti-Greek persecutions was Cemal Azmi, the Vali of Trabzon, an active member of the Special Organization. In general, the Greek Metropolitans of Pontus made a considerable contribution in recording Turkish atrocities in Pontus and conveying them to future generations. These

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records often contain detailed descriptions of the sufferings of the Greek nation. One of those Metropolitans was Germanos, the Archbishop of Amasia and Samsun. In a letter of December 29, 1918, directed to Konstandinides, the president of the committee of Greek survivors from Pontus, Germanos relates as an eyewitness that of all regions of Asia Minor, Pontus endured the worst ordeals and misfortunes. The town of Sinope and its vicinity were the first to be desolated; afterwards Ayajik and Karza with the surrounding villages suffered the same fate. Their inhabitants were dispersed to the region of Kastamonu but most of them died on the way from fatigue and suffering. In the region of Ayajik (in Sinope kaza), only two Greek villages, Yokari-Kyor and Serney, were able to avoid the massacres as they had totally converted to Islam.28 The data on the three regions, Thrace (218,447 or 218,767), Western Asia Minor (298,449), and Pontus (257,019), and their sum (773,915 or 774,235), include the total number of deported Greeks in the Ottoman Empire in 1913–18.29 World War I ended with the defeat of Germany and its ally, the Ottoman Empire, and on October 30, 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was concluded. As a condition of the armistice, the Allies and Greece forced Turkey to allow the Greek survivors to return to their homes. However, shortly afterwards, on returning to their homes, the Greeks found them destroyed, robbed, and burnt, and the upcoming Kemalist nationalist movement had already announced the beginning of new massacres of the Greek nation. The Greco-Turkish war began on May 15, 1919, when the Greek armed forces took control of Smyrna according to the resolutions passed at the Paris Peace Conference.30 This action taken by Greece was legally justified by the 7th article of the Armistice of Mudros, concluded on October 30, 1918, which granted the Allies the right to occupy any strategic point in Turkey in case of threat to their security.31 In Turkish and Soviet historiography, there is a widespread opinion that the Greek side was the main aggressor and did the bidding of the Western imperialists. In fact, one of the main goals of the Greek army was the protection of their compatriots on Turkish territory. It should be noted that after the Armistice of Mudros, there was a rapid formation of Turkish “self-defense groups” against the Entente, but in fact these were established to counter the yielding of territory to Greece and Armenia.32 The target of the actions of these groups became not the Entente, but the Greek and Armenian populations. Many of the members of these groups had formerly participated in crimes against Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians, and evaded responsibility for them.33 A few days after the Greek army landed in Smyrna, on May 19, 1919, General M. Kemal was sent to Samsun at the command of Grand Vizier Damad Ferid Pasha to establish order in the region, collect the arms and ammunition allocated in different areas as soon as possible, and take them into custody.34 In fact, instead of executing the orders of the sultan and the government, Kemal started uniting the different nationalist forces functioning in the east of Turkey. After Kemal’s arrival, the anti-Greek policy in Pontus gained new strength and became somewhat systematized. Strong anti-Greek advocacy was implemented every-

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where, encouraging the believers to murder the “gavurs.” There were announcements placed everywhere, in Turkish schools, coffee shops, mosques, official institutions, even on street corners, inducing Turks to exterminate Greeks and clear Turkey of those “faithless dogs.”35 From the report of Germanos, the Metropolitan of Amasia, dated May 31, 1919, we learn that the looting, kidnapping, murder, and terrorizing of the Greek population continued through the whole summer with the help of Lazes (an ethnic group native to northeast Turkey and Georgia).36 Aiming at the elimination of Greek self-defense units, Topal Osman, the commander of Turkish forces in Kerasunda, initiated anti-Greek persecutions and violence in Pontus. According to Armenian sources, Osman Agha destroyed three hundred Greek villages from Bafra and Ineboli to Trapizon, and all the villagers who had been unable to hide themselves in the mountains were burned alive in their homes.37 The region of Pontus was almost totally cleared of its Greek population. On May 25, 1922, the Greek naval base in Constantinople sent a message to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Greece, stating that the Christians in the above-mentioned regions were in a disastrous condition. The inhabitants of rural areas had practically been exiled and slaughtered on the way and the arrestees had been killed or burned alive.38 The Kemalist forces entered Smyrna on September 9, 1922. They first attacked the Armenian district (Haynots),39 and then entered the Greek and European (Franks’) districts. It is worth mentioning that the Turks did not take responsibility for setting the fires in Smyrna, considering them the result of provocations on the side of the Greeks and Armenians or ascribing them to contingency.40 However, there are numerous testimonies of foreign witnesses regarding the real reasons for the crimes committed in Smyrna during those days. The headmistress of an American Women’s College, Ms. Mini Mills, said, “I saw with my own eyes a Turkish officer with a petrol or oil tin box in his hand and a few minutes later the house was in flames.”41 British historian and journalist A. J. Toynbee was convinced that the Turkish troops deliberately burned every house to the ground.42 It should also be taken into consideration that the Armenian and Greek districts of the city were burned down and destroyed, whereas the Turkish district remained safe.43 And it is worth mentioning one of the latest publications on this subject, Constantine Hatzidimitriou’s article, “The Destruction of Smyrna in 1922,” in which he provides additional evidence of Turkish responsibility using American official and unofficial accounts.44 The fire of Smyrna of September 13–15, 1922, and the forced deportation and massacres of the population, were in essence the end of the presence of the Christian element in Asia Minor. The city, which was the biggest Christian center in Asia Minor and was often called “gavur Izmir” by Turks for being a Christian city, was destroyed. The war ended with the defeat of Greece. Simultaneously, this was the end of Hellenism in Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace. Taking into account the data of the Greek Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, according to which the number of Orthodox Greek victims in the Ottoman Empire during the period starting from the Balkan Wars until the end of World War

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I was 700,000, and adding to it the massacres of 1919–22, it becomes obvious that in 1914–23, during the regimes of the Young Turks and the Kemalists, nearly one million Greeks were exterminated.45 Thus, the Kemalists completed the policy commenced by the Young Turks, the objective of which was clearing the territory of the empire of Greek subjects. Hundreds of thousands of Greeks were forcibly exiled from their settlements. A proportion of them died or were violently murdered on the way to their places of exile; others were deported to Greece.

Parallels between the Greeks and the Armenians In the historiography of the Armenian Genocide, there are works devoted to the comparison of the genocides of Armenians and other nations. In this regard, considerable work has been carried out in the sphere of comparative research of the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust.46 However, the comparative study of the extermination of the Armenians with other nations of the Ottoman Empire that suffered deportations and massacres (in this case the Greeks) is also of great scientific interest.47 The peculiarity of such an approach is that it observes the national policy of the same country on the example of two subject nations. After passing under Ottoman rule, the Armenians and the Greeks were deprived of rights, and this issue was exacerbated at the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century. We can unambiguously agree with Greek historian I. Hassiotis, who states that the calamitous consequences of Turkish chauvinism, especially in the early part of the twentieth century, formed the unvarying common denominator between the Greeks and Armenians. The almost identical fates of these two ethnic elements in Asia Minor drew them together. According to Hassiotis, the similarities were evident in their peaceful and productive activities, as well as in their pursuit of national aspirations, just as they were in the parallel course of their vicissitudes and ultimate elimination.48 The unequal treatment of the Ottoman authorities towards the Christian population had great importance in the expansion of the conflict between the two sides. In the nineteenth century, the reforms of Tanzimat did not produce essential change in the lives of the Armenians and Greeks under Ottoman rule, and the problem of equal rights of Muslims and Christians remained unsolved.49 A vivid example is the revolt of the Greeks in Crete in 1866–69, which took place because of unfair tax policies and the unimplemented promises of the Hatt-ı Hümayun.50 The judicial system was a particularly strong example of unequal and discriminatory treatment between Christians and Muslims. Major Cox, R. E., in his report to UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Lord J. Russell in 1860, responding to the question of whether or not the testimony of Christians was allowed in court, replied: “In cases between Christians, yes; but in cases between Christians and Mahometans, no. This is one of the subjects on which the intelligent portion of the Christians

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earnestly insists for redress, and which they know at the same time is one of the most difficult for the Ottoman Government to deal with, on account of the strong prejudices entertained by the Mussulmans…”51 Even the economic, social, and cultural successes of the Christians seem to be factors that amplified their vulnerability.52 Although the Muslims preferred military and civic service, the economic success and dominant position of Christians was accepted with “envy, fury and resistance.”53 Their quick progress and social mobilization, accompanied by their low social status, were creating a problem and becoming a reason for dissatisfaction, even violence, for the ruling community.54 During the massacres, manifestations of the Turkish attitude were already being seen. For example, A. Adossidès, the author of one of the most important sources about the Adana massacres, noted the good conditions and the material well-being of the Christians of the region among the reasons for the massacres.55 It is no coincidence that even contemporary observers presented the idea that not only were the Armenians the target of violence in Adana, but also the new technologies—tractors and other forms of mechanized equipment used by them.56 When we observe the role of Armenians and Greeks in the public-political life of the Ottoman Empire, we see negligible representation of Christian subjects in the state political system (4.6%). This fact is also vivid proof of unequal treatment.57 It means that, as a rule, governmental levers were unreachable for Armenians and Greeks. Of course, some individuals were able to achieve success and influence, but such cases were exceptions rather than the rule.

Greece and the Greek Deportations and Massacres In comparing the experiences of the Armenians and the Greeks, we have to pay attention to the factor of Greece as the nation-state of the Greek people. In this context there is a particularly vital problem: what role did Greece play in the period 1913–23 to restrain the anti-Greek policy in Turkey, and how did the presence of Greece create certain differences in the anti-Armenian and anti-Greek policies? Before the genocide period, Greece often had a preventive role in the Ottoman policy towards Christians (here Greeks). Before the creation of Greece’s independence, in the 1820s, during the Greeks’ national liberation struggle, the Ottoman authorities widely applied the method of massacre. During the further revolts of the Greeks against the Ottoman authorities, separate incidents of massacre had occurred, but none of them reached such an extent as those during the Greek War of Independence. More expressive is the fact that during the Hamidian massacres, the atrocities experienced by the Armenians and Assyrians were not applied against the Greek population. During the observed period, in terms of monitoring the role of Greece, the Balkan Wars are of exceptional importance. After the Balkan Wars and the actual loss of the islands (even though by the Treaty of Athens on November 14, 1913, no final solu-

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tion was given for the problem of the islands), the Young Turks settled on the idea of speeding up the process of cleansing the Aegean coast of the Greeks. The Young Turks understood that only a new war could restore Turkish authority over the islands, but in their opinion, in this war the Aegean coastal Greek population could become a dangerous factor. At the same time, no matter how much Turkey desired a new war, the Turkish navy had no predominance over the Greek fleet.58 These factors, however, can be explained by the policy which Turkey started to apply against the Greek population. In May and June 1914, the Turkish–Greek negotiations concerning an exchange of populations were underway.59 However, an important factor is remarkable here: the negotiations were taking place at the same time that the Greek population was being deported more intensively from Eastern Thrace and the western shores of Asia Minor. Thus, three problems were solved: (1) the deportation of thousands of Greeks would be legalized; (2) in the case of signing the agreement, the “Union and Progress” party would operate more freely, without any differentiation between voluntary and compulsory means; and (3) the attention of Greece was distracted, because while the negotiations were still taking place, the Aegean shore was cleared of the Greek population. This method of operation, with some alterations, was also applied in the Turkish–Greek agreement of 1923 by which the deportation of the Greeks until January 1923 was legalized. Interestingly, there is also another approach to this issue, according to which the deportation of the Greeks aimed to exert pressure on the Greek government in order to force them to make concessions concerning the islands.60 In fact, the goals and tasks of the Greeks’ deportation were more comprehensive. In the first place, these were the first steps towards Turkification of the empire. In addition, an important issue would be solved: the Young Turks would get rid of the Greek population of the Aegean coast in Asia Minor, who would be dangerous for Turkey in a war against Greece. After the start of World War I, when talking about the Greece factor, we should not forget about Germany, who was trying to keep Greece out of the war. This could explain the temporary pause in the anti-Greek policy in the second half of 1914.61 This is an important factor, because in the case of the Armenians and Assyrians, Germany did not play any positive role, even temporarily, in preventing the deportations and massacres, and in fact became the principal accomplice in the Armenian Genocide.62 In the first half of 1915, however, we see a continuation of the anti-Greek policy, but the main issue here is geographical. The main attention was focused on Eastern Thrace, the Gallipoli peninsula, and the residences on the Marmara coast,63 which have great strategic importance. This can be considered the continuation of the policy of 1914. In the summer of 1916, the Entente increased the pressure on the Greek government, as the contradictions between the Venizelists, who were supporters of the Entente, and King Constantine had deepened, reaching a peak in November–December. In August 1916, the Venizelists protested, and Venizelos created a provisional revolutionary government in Thessaloniki, which declared war on Germany and its allies. Eventually,

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in June 1917, the pro-German king gave up the throne in favor of his son, Alexander, and on July 30, Greece declared war against the Central Powers.64 In addition to the entry of Greece into the war, the progress of the Russian troops in Pontus in 1916 is also important. The occupation of Trapizon and the surrounding area, as well as the operations of Greek self-defense groups, sharpened the anti-Greek tensions. The Turks were seeing the Greeks as potential allies of the Russians. The anti-Greek persecutions were becoming more active in the areas not under Russian occupation.65 Until the end of World War I, Greece was no longer able to prevent deportations and massacres of thousands of Greeks. When talking about the Greece factor in the years of the Nationalist Movement (Kemalists), we should emphasize the fact that it had the function of savior only in the territories of Greek occupation. However, in the end, after the retreat of the Greek army, Greece could play no positive role. In general, in observing the Greece factor, we see that it did have some part in restraining Turkey’s anti-Greek policy, in that the phased development of the policy was conditioned by the presence of Greece. We can assume that even considering all this, without the existence of Greece, the number of Greek victims would be incomparably larger. This important fact is missing in the Armenian and Assyrian cases. As for Russia, it could not play the role for the Armenians that Greece did for the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. Instead, Tsarist, and also Bolshevik Russia largely utilized the Armenian issue for its own strategic plans. This is not to deny that during the massacres, in some cases the Russian army had a saving role. However, in the case of the Greek population of the Ottoman Empire, there is no objective reason to suspect the sincerity of Greece, taking into consideration that it was dealing with its own people.66 This means that in the policy of Greece towards the Ottoman Empire, the interests of the Greek state and the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire are balanced, whereas in the policy of the Russian Empire, first and foremost came the interests of the Russian state.

Similarities and Differences between the Armenian and Greek Massacres Comparing the deportations and massacres of Greeks and Armenians, we come across the vivid fact that in the literature, in the case of the Armenians, the factor of “intention” is proven, i.e., the aim of the Turkish authorities was extermination.67A question arises: how do we explain the mass deportations and massacres of the Greeks? A number of specialists researching the massacres of the Assyrians and Greeks are inclined to see the existence of intention in their extermination as well. According to Professor H. Travis, “Absent a governmental intention to exterminate the Christians of the empire, it would be nearly impossible to explain how the massacres, rapes, deportations, and dispossessions of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christians living in the Ottoman Empire at the time of World War I could have taken place on such a vast scale.”68

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It is known that the third (1910) and fourth (1911) conferences of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) played a significant role in the preparation of the Armenian Genocide. These conferences were marked with the passing of anti-Christian resolutions within the party. However, the resolutions of the conferences, which reach us indirectly, also referred to the Greeks.69 It turns out that in the first phase, i.e. during decision-making within the party, the objective regarding the fate of the two nations (Turkification) bore a common character. In this case a certain confusion arises regarding the deportations of 1913–14. It relates to the deportations of several thousand Greeks from the settlements of the Aegean coast during the mentioned period. Are these and the Armenian Genocide “initiated a year later” the result of separate programs or not? Different opinions exist concerning this issue. American-Armenian researcher R. Adalian, in his article dedicated to the comparison of the two tragedies, comes to the conclusion that these are separate phenomena, as “the Greeks were exchanged and the Armenians were disposed. That is the difference that makes genocide.”70 Yes, the events of 1913–14 were rather mass deportations; massacres were committed only in separate places and on comparatively smaller scales in contrast to the Armenian Genocide. Nevertheless, the main aim of the deportations of Greeks was the policy of Turkification, the aspiration to free the above-mentioned areas from the Christian population, the protection of the territories, and realization of their own version of a solution to the national question. It is the observation of the objectives and motives that gives us an opportunity to find the connection between these two phenomena. The Young Turks pursued the same aim in the case of the Armenians. That is, the anti-Greek policy is connected to the anti-Armenian one by the same policy of Turkification. And the use of different means has another reason behind it—the role of Greece. The existence of the Greek state, as well as the presence of the Muslim (Turkish) population there, somehow constrained the Young Turks from solving the Greek question through massacres. The majority of the differences in policies applied towards Greeks and Armenians are conditioned by the existence of Greece, the state of the Greek people.71 However, this fact had considerable impact only on the means applied and not on the decisions. The consequence was the deportation of thousands of Greeks. In this regard, the observation of Hassiotis is relevant: “It is strange that both Greek and Armenian historians should have treated the first persecutions of the Greeks in 1913–1914 and the Armenian Genocide of 1915 as two separate phenomena.”72 Agreeing with the Greek author, it is worth adding that they should not be observed as separate and individual phenomena for the following reasons. Firstly, the differences mainly relate to the process and the applied means, i.e., in 1913–14, despite the separate cases of massacres, the main form of the anti-Greek policy was deportation. It was accompanied by threats, conversion to Islam, killings of the disobedient, and so on. Nevertheless, the main aim was achieved—Eastern Thrace and the western coasts of Asia Minor were “freed” from the Greek population. That is, in the case of Greeks, the consistent policy of Turkification was applied as well.

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The second reason that reveals the connection of the two phenomena is their continuation. This is seen especially in the active involvement of some criminal leaders both in the process of the deportations of the Greeks and in the Armenian Genocide. For example, Doctor Reşid, who served as a governor in Carissa, organized the exile of the Greeks at the command of Talât.73 Later, the same person, as the governor of Diyarbekir, organized the massacres of the Armenians and Assyrians.74 The role of Dr Mehmed Nazım, who stands among the originators of the anti-Christian policy, is notable. As early as 1910–11, he was the one who raised the program of settling Macedonia with Muslim refugees.75 In that period, the first attempts at a Turkification policy were made.76 He was also involved in the forced deportations of the Greeks in 1914, in Western Asia Minor.77 The same person also had a key role in implementing the Armenian Genocide.78 The example of Talât Pasha, who had a direct connection with the deportations and massacres of the Greeks in 1913–14, is also of great importance. This is verified by his visit to Eastern Thrace one month after the start of World War I, where he called for active participation in the anti-Greek policy and possession of their property.79 The same Talât became the chief architect of the Armenian Genocide.80 There is a third significant factor that has been ignored by many researchers. The deportations of the Greeks in 1913–14 were part of the anti-Greek policy of 1913– 23. Observation of the 1913–14 deportations of Greeks as a separate phenomenon was mainly conditioned by Greek–Turkish relations and the Balkan Wars during that period. But if it refers to the policy realized against the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire in the first quarter of the twentieth century, it would be more correct to observe the deportations of 1913–14 in the context of the events of 1913–23. It is obvious that during World War I and the Greek–Turkish war, the anti-Greek policy was not limited to deportations and partial massacres. If in 1913–14 the violence against the Greeks was displayed by mass deportations, then in the subsequent years those were accompanied by violent massacres. However, assuming this as a basis, we cannot insist that the events in Pontus in 1916–22 and Smyrna in 1922 are separate phenomena. The anti-Greek policy in the Ottoman Empire in 1913–14 and 1916–23 had certain differences, i.e. they had a phased development. Such abrupt phases cannot be found in the case of the Armenians. The main events were in 1915 and the following years, and no state position (in the case of Greeks, Greece and Germany) had such influence to stop the Armenian massacres. If we compare that policy with the Armenian Genocide, then we should take into account its chronological peculiarities. Fourthly, the deportations of the Greeks in 1913–14 became a kind of precedent for the Armenian Genocide. In other words, the effectiveness of the measures and the absence of punishment for the crime is the link between the two tragedies. Realization of the fact that it was possible to deport Greeks, even with the existence of the Greek state, and remain unpunished, brought the Young Turks to the conclusion that it was possible to treat the Armenians the same way by more violent means. Taking into consideration this very fact (the indifferent attitude of the international community towards the deportations of the Greeks in the preceding and succeeding

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three–four months of World War I), American Ambassador H. Morgenthau, a contemporary of these events, stated, “It was probably for the reason that the civilized world did not protest against these deportations that the Turks afterward decided to apply the same methods on a larger scale not only to the Greeks but to the Armenians, Syrians, Nestorians, and others of its subject people.”81 It should only be added that the same policy was continuously applied towards the Greeks both during the years of World War I and the Greco-Turkish war of 1919–22. Observation of the above-mentioned reasons allows us to conclude that two similar operations implemented with a difference of only one year must be interrelated, especially if they are implemented by the same state, regime, and participants. The “programmatic” side of the deportations and massacres of Greeks in the years of World War I is also of high significance. Some sources have preserved information according to which the exile of Armenians would be followed by the exile of Greeks. In particular, according to Lepsius, members of the CUP often made public announcements that “foreigners must not live in Turkey, first of all Armenians, then Greeks, then Jews, at the end Europeans.”82 The existence of a “continuous approach” of extermination of the subject nations and its implementation is vivid in the example of Pontus, where the exile and massacre of Greeks succeeded the extermination of Armenians. This is also witnessed by the second letter (dated March 25, 1915) of the Central Committee of the CUP to the executive representative of the party in Adana vilayet published by A. Andonian. According to Andonian, it was a repetition of the first letter of February 18, with the difference of a remark that after the Armenians, the Young Turks should implement the extermination of the other subject nations: Greeks, Syrians, and Arabs.83 However, the programmatic side of the organization and implementation of deportations and massacres of Armenians and Greeks has distinct differences. It is obvious that the deportations and massacres of Greeks had a phased development in regard to chronology and geography. Thus it is difficult to insist on the existence of a certain plan. Putting the Armenian Genocide on a parallel with the anti-Greek policy from the viewpoint of planning, it is still difficult to find the sources of the latter in a single document. However, it is evident that the 1913–23 deportations and massacres of Greeks (Eastern Thrace, Asia Minor, Pontus) forming a single policy were of a state character and were realized with a certain systematization. The genocidal policy realized by Turkish authorities towards Armenians and Greeks is almost identical from the viewpoint of the mechanisms used and means applied: • Economic sanctions • Recruitment—formation of labor battalions—extermination of young people • Forced conversion to Islam • Mass deportations and massacres • Destruction of cultural, educational, and religious institutions.

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Often, the similarity was so considerable that the two phenomena were identified and considered a single crime or different phases of a single crime. In this regard, Morgenthau wrote, “The Armenians were not the only subject people in Turkey which suffered from the policy of making Turkey exclusively the country of the Turks. The story which I told about the Armenians I could also tell about the Greeks and the Syrians with some modifications.”84 Nevertheless, the methods of anti-Greek and anti-Armenian policy have some peculiarities. In particular, there is a difference in the number of victims. The human losses of the Armenian nation outnumber those of the Greeks, although this fact does not decrease the tragedy of the Greek people. Indeed, it is significant that this difference is of a “quantitative” and not “qualitative” character. Another important peculiarity is the fact of application of the Muslim element. The extermination of Armenians and Greeks has a fundamental difference: the Kurdish element was largely used during the massacres of Armenians, which was not the case with the Greeks. Armenian historian A. Avagyan has drawn attention to this fact, and according to his observation, there was no such factor as the Kurds in the densely Greek-populated areas, regardless of the presence of Muslim refugees.85 In the western and northern parts of the empire, the Turkish authorities used the local Muslim element (for example Lazes); however, it cannot be compared with the role of the Kurds in the Armenian Genocide. The absence of the “Kurdish factor” can be considered one of the distinguishing features between the anti-Greek and antiArmenian policies. One of the important differences in the case of the Greeks was the absence of a specific effort for the extermination of intelligentsia, the “beheading” of the nation, such as “April 24” represents for Armenians. However, this does not mean that the Greek intelligentsia was able to avoid arrests and murders. Moreover, a month before April 1915, on March 8, nearly two hundred Greeks were arrested in Constantinople and exiled to the depths of Asia Minor. Among them were a large number of Greek intelligentsia and prominent people.86 Even more dreadful were the executions of Greek intelligentsia and representatives of the political elite in the autumn of 1921.87 Not attempting to compare the immensity of grief over loss of the intelligentsia of the two nations, we will mention that the main difference is that in the context of the Greek tragedy, this did not have the disastrous influence that it did for the Western Armenians. In this regard, it is appropriate to mention that in research in the field of deportations and massacres of the Greeks, no special emphasis is put on the problem of the extermination of the Greek intelligentsia in contrast to the historiographical literature dedicated to the Armenian Genocide. Another difference between the Armenian Genocide and the massacres of the Greeks is the correlation in the numbers of the exiled and the murdered. In the case of the Armenians, the number of the murdered exceeded the number of the deported. In the case of Greeks, there were no large concentration camps like Deir ez-Zor and Ras-ul-Ain. Greek Genocide researcher T. Malkidis, referring to Professor

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P. Enepekidi from the University of Vienna, compared the Greek Genocide with the Holocaust of the Jews, stating the similarities between the two phenomena and emphasizing at the same time that although the Greeks were exiled, they mainly died on the way due to hunger, fatigue, and disease. There was no final “destination” for the Greeks; a “Greek Auschwitz” did not exist. Instead, he considered the deportation of the Greeks “Auschwitz on the way.”88 It is interesting that some observers at the time put a special emphasis on the fact that in most cases the Greeks were not massacred but condemned to death by harsh conditions. Comparing the manifestations of the anti-Greek and anti-Armenian policies, it was mentioned in the letters of the Greek Relief Committee (GRC) that “… Massacres were more merciful as compared with the tortures and horrors of deportation. The Greeks were not massacred at the same rate as the Armenians, but they were forced to move on and on to regions where no food could be found. The route of their march was strewn with corpses. Deportation proved to be more effective than massacres in making havoc and devastation….”89 However, this comparison has a subjective side, because these circumstance were also present in the mechanisms of extermination of the Armenians; there are numerous descriptions of how the Armenians suffered and died en route to their places of exile from deprivation, hunger, thirst, and disease. So the experience of the two peoples was not significantly different in this regard. There are also several subjective differences conditioned by geographic location, the “devotion” of the perpetrators, and other reasons. In particular, the role of geographic location should not be underestimated. The traditional residences of the Greeks were nearer to Europe, which played a definite “constraining” role for the Turks. In regard to the perpetrators of genocide, there are noticeable similarities. The perpetrator is Turkey, and the successive regimes of the Young Turks and Kemalists and their leaders. As a result of observation and comparison of the deportations and massacres committed by Turkish authorities against Armenians and Greeks, the main similarities and differences become evident. The similarities are the following: the subject status of the two nations; the absence of rights before World War I; the policy of Turkification; a number of mechanisms of deportations and massacres, as well as the continuity of those two phenomena. These similarities can often be observed as generalities. The main indicator of this similarity is the identity of the “executioner,” in other words, the identity of the state that committed genocide (Turkey). The differences are the “Greece factor,” the “programmatic side” of the two phenomena, and the phased development of the anti-Greek policy. There are differences also in the mechanisms of implementation; particularly notable are the methods of murdering the intelligentsia, the patterns of extermination of the peaceful Armenian and Greek populations, as well as the “Kurdish factor.”

The Ottoman Genocides of the Armenians and Greeks | 291

Gevorg Vardanyan is a Research Fellow in the Department of Comparative Genocide Studies of the Armenian Genocide Museum and Institute, Yerevan. His research focuses on the comparative aspects of Armenian Genocide Studies, genocide denial, Ottoman Greek history, and Turkish foreign policy. He is co-editor of the Journal of Genocide Studies (in Armenian), the journal of the Armenian Genocide Museum and Institute. He has published numerous articles on aspects of the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides. He is also author of the monograph Greek Population in the Ottoman Empire and the Asia Minor Disaster (1914–1923) (AGMI Press, 2012). Notes 1. The term “Eastern Question” was first used at the Congress of Verona in 1822. It is worth mentioning that its usage was connected with the discussions concerning the situation created in the Balkans and the rise of the national liberation movement against the Ottoman Empire. See Arman J. Kirakossian, British Diplomacy and the Armenian Question from the 1830s to 1914 (Princeton and London: Gomidas Institute, 2003), 12. 2. A. Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek–Turkish Relations, 1918–1974 (Athens: Centre for Asia Studies, 1992), 22. 3. In 1461, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople was founded, which, in its turn, became the institution handling the spiritual and national issues of the Armenians under Ottoman rule. The sultan aimed to make it a peculiar counterbalance to the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Armenian Apostolic Catholicosate of Etchmiadzin. The Jewish Millet was also founded. 4. Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 22. 5. Ibid. For more details on dhimmitude, see Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude: Seventh–Twentieth Century (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996); Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002). 6. After the occupation of Egypt in 1517 by Selim I (1512–20), the Ottoman sultans considered themselves to have acquired the title of Caliph. See A. F. Miller, Kratkaya istoria Turtsii [Short History of Turkey] (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1948), 18. 7. G. Noradoungian, D’Actes internationaux de l’Empire Ottoman, Tome Deuxième (1789-1856) (Paris: Cotillon a. o., 1900), 288–90. 8. V. Sheremet, Osmanskaya imperia I Zapadnaya Evropa, vtoraya tret XIX v. [Ottoman Empire and Western Europe, the Third Quarter of 19th Century] (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), 242. 9. R. Safrastyan, Doktrina osmanizma v politicheskoy zhizniOsmanskoy imperii (50-70 gg. XIX v.) [The Doctrine of Ottomanism in the Political Life of the Ottoman Empire (50–70 of 19th c.)] (Yerevan: AAS Press, 1985), 49. 10. An excerpt of the Eastern Armenian translation of the “Political legacy” of Fuad Pasha directed to Sultan Abdul Aziz (1869). The full text can be found in the Armenian monthly Aror (Tiflis) no. 6 (1903): 177–87. According to the translator, “The ‘Political legacy’ was translated from an authentic copy and published in 1903 in Armenian newspapers abroad. Taking into consideration the importance of the content, it was translated into Eastern Armenian.” Ibid., 184. All translations from Armenian to English by GV. 11. R. Safrastyan, Ottoman Empire: The Genesis of the Program of Genocide (1876-1920) (Yerevan: Zangak-97, 2011), 82. 12. Ibid., 112. 13. R. J. Rummel, Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900 (Münster: Lit, 1998), 24.

292 | Gevorg Vardanyan 14. The number of Assyrian victims is estimated at fifty-five thousand in 1895–96. See Joseph Naayem, Shall This Nation Die (New York: Chaldean Rescue, 1921), 274. 15. I Diogmi ton Elinonen Fraki ke Mikra Asia: Afentikes Ekfesis ke Episima Kimena [Persecutions of the Greeks in Thrace and Asia Minor: Authentic Reports and Official Documents] (Athens: Panelliniou kratos, 1915), 78–88. 16. G. Kilimjyan, “Eritturqeri azgayin qaghaqakanutyan hartsi shurdjy” [On the National Policy of the Young Turks], Lraber hasarakakan gitutyunneri 8, no. 332 (Yerevan) (1970): 14. 17. René Puaux, La Déportation et le Rapatriement des Grecs en Turquie (Paris: Edition du Bulletin Hellenique, 1919), 8. 18. James Barton, Story of Near East Relief (1915–1923): An Interpretation (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 63. 19. [Manchester League of Unredeemed Hellenes], Turkey’s Crime: Hellenism in Turkey (Manchester: Norbury, Natzio & Co., 1919), 31. 20. Speros Vryonis Jr., “Greek Labor Battalions in Asia Minor,” in The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007), 275– 90; Rafael de Nogales, Four Years beneath the Crescent (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1926), 176–77. 21. Les Persécutions antihélleniques en Turquie, depuis le debut de la guerre européenne: D’après les rapports officiels des agents diplomatique et consulaires (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1918), 18–19. 22. For instance, Doctor Khacheryan, who had been awarded military orders, or Sarkis Torossian. See D. Sakayan, Zmyurnia 1922, Bzhishk Karapet Khacheryani oragiry [Smyrna 1922, Doctor Karapet Khacheryan’s Diary] (Yerevan: Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Press, 2005), 34 and 142. See also Sarkis Torossian, From Dardanelles to Palestine, a True Story of Five Battle Fronts of Turkey and Her Allies and a Harem Romance (Boston: Meader Publishing Company Publishers, 1947). In this regard, it is worth mentioning the letter of Enver Pasha, sent on February 26, 1915, after the Battle of Sarıkamış, in which the Turkish Minister of War thanked the Armenian Patriarchate for “the sacrifice and heroism of the Armenian soldiers in the war.” In this letter Enver conveyed his thanks to the “Armenian Nation, which was known to represent an example of complete loyalty to the Ottoman Government.” See Akçam, A Shameful Act, 143. 23. Charēs Tsirkinidēs, Ē Genoktonia tōn Ellēnōn tēs Anatolēs (Pontou—Mikras Asias—Anatolikēs Thrakēs— Kōnstantinoupolēs—Kyprou), 9, retrieved 5 May 2011 from http://www.hecucenter.ru/word-files/Tsirkinidis%20Gr.doc. For more on the labor battalions, see Vryonis, “Greek Labor Battalions in Asia Minor”; Akçam, A Shameful Act, 142–46. 24. [Manchester League of Unredeemed Hellenes], Turkey’s Crime, 30. 25. “Greeks in Asia Minor, Fresh Campaign of Persecution,” The Scotsman, January 11, 1915, 8. 26. [Oecunemical Patriarchate], Persecution of the Greeks in Turkey 1914–1918 (Constantinople: Press of the Greek Patriarchate, 1919), 64–69. 27. Ibid., 95. 28. G. Karavangelis, The Turkish Atrocities in the Black Sea Territories: Copy of Letter of His Grace Germanos, Lord Archbishop of Amassia and Samsoun (Manchester: Norbury, Natzio & Co. Ltd., 1919), 4. 29. Puaux, La Déportation, 8. 30. In May 1919 the Supreme Council of the Allies allowed Greece to occupy the city. See A. A. Pallis, Greece’s Anatolian Venture and After, a Survey of the Diplomatic and Political Aspects of the Greek Expedition to Asia Minor (1915–1922) (London: Methuen, 1937), 66. 31. A. J. Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey. A Study in the Contact of Civilizations (London: Constable and Co., 1922), 77. 32. Arsen Avagyan, Cherkesskiy factor v Osmanskoy imperii i Turtsii (vtoraya polovina XIX—pervaya polovina XX vv.) [The Circassian Factor in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey (The Second Quarter of 19th c.—the First Quarter of 20th c.)] (Yerevan: Gitutyun, 2001), 246–47. 33. Those organizations grew sufficiently in number in the course of time. Among them, for instance, was “Karakol,” most of the members of which were former members of the Special Organization (Teşkilât-ı

The Ottoman Genocides of the Armenians and Greeks | 293 Mahsusa). There were also committees of Cilice, Smyrna, Thrace, and other places. See Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 716–20; Erik Jan Zürcher, The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish Nationalist Movement, 1905–1926 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), 82; Douglas A. Howard, The History of Turkey (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 85–87. 34. A. M. Shamsutdinov, Natsionalno-osvoboditelnaya borba v Turtsii 1918–1923 gg. [The National Liberation Struggle in Turkey in 1918–1923] (Moscow: Nauka, 1966), 68. 35. J. Murat, The Great Extirpation of Hellenism and Christianity in Asia Minor, the Historic and Systematic Deception of World Opinion Concerning the Hideous Christianity’s Uprooting of 1922 (Miami, FL: A. Triantafillis Pub., 1999), 60–61. 36. The Black Book of the Sufferings of the Greek People in Turkey from the Armistice to the End of 1920 (Constantinople: Press of the Patriarchate, 1920), 31–32. 37. P. A. Haykuni, Topal Osman ev depqery Mazuani medj zinadadaren heto [Topal Osman and the Events in Marzvan after the Mudros Armistice] (Athens: Nor Or Press, 1924), 35. 38. K. Photiades, The Annihilation of the Greeks in Pontus by the Turks (Tübingen: Union of the Fighters for the Liberation of the Greek Lands Seized by Turkey, 1987), 33. 39. L. Oeconomos, The Martyrdom of Smyrna and Eastern Christendom, a File of Overwhelming Evidence, Denouncing the Misdeeds of the Turks in Asia Minor and Showing Their Responsibility for the Horrors of Smyrna (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1922), 79. 40. Giles Milton, Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922, the Destruction of a Christian City in the Islamic World (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 307. 41. Ibid., 306. 42. Toynbee, The Western Question, 152. 43. See Oeconomos, The Martyrdom of Smyrna, 136. 44. There are two extracts from these documents, the first of which is a telegram received and read by Hughes, the US Secretary of State: “… Confidential reports received from our many officials at Smyrna, and British Foreign Office, indicate that Turks burned the city in conformity with definite plan to solve the Christian minority problem by forcing the evacuation of the minorities…” The second example is an extract from the American High Commissioner’s Intelligence Officer Lieutenant A. S. Merrill’s diary: “The Turks say the fire was set by the Armenians and that 22 of guilty parties confessed. That the Turks only burned houses in fighting the fire with fire. The French pretended to believe this. I am convinced in my own mind that the Turks burned the town. They burned it to force the Allies to evacuate the non-moslems. Their slogan is ‘Turkey for the Turks.’ They consider that all their troubles during the last 40 years can be attributed to the propaganda spread by the Christian minorities and that the only solution is to remove these Minorities.” See Constantine G. Hatzimidtriou, “The Destruction of Smyrna in 1922: American Sources and Turkish Responsibility,” in The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912-1923, ed. George N. Shirinian (Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012), 169–70. 45. It is very difficult to estimate clearly the number of Greek victims. According to the Greek historian Ch. Tsirkinidis, the number varies between 1.3 and 1.5 million. (He took the statistics of the League of Nations’ refugee service related to 1,221,000 refugees from the Ottoman Empire to Greece, and subtracted from it the number of the Greek population of the Ottoman Empire, 2.7 million). See Tsirkinidēs, Ē Genoktonia tōn Ellēnōn, 11. We have different estimates for the period 1913–18. Some researchers note that during World War I, Greek tolls vary between 240,000 and 300,000. However, this figure is incomplete, as it does not include all regions of the Ottoman Empire. See Howard Sacher, The Emergence of the Middle East: 1914–1924 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 309; Les Persécutions antihelléniques en Turquie, 60– 62. We also have the observation of the American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, according to which the figure of deported Greeks during the war varies between 200,000 and 1,000,000. See Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1918), 212–13. The most complete were the Patriarchate’s figures. According to data from the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople,

294 | Gevorg Vardanyan the number of deportees was 773,915 or 774,235. R. J. Rummel, juxtoposing all figures for the years 1919–22, gave the estimate of 213–368,000 (mean estimate 264,000) (Rummel, Statistics of Democide, 96). If we add this estimate to the Patriarchate’s figures for the period 1913–18 (773,915 or 774,235), we can see the approximate number of Greek victims for the years 1913–23 (roughly 1,000,000). We can also mention estimates presented by Lord Curzon during the Lausanne Conference (December 1, 1922), according to which 1,000,000 to 1,100,000 Ottoman Greeks had been killed or deported, had fled or died. See Lausanne Conference on Near East Affairs 1922–1923. Records of Proceedings and Draft Terms of Peace (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1923), 121–22. 46. See, for example, Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Prefiguration of Some Aspects of the Holocaust in the Armenian Genocide (Revisiting the Comparative Perspective),” Genocide Studies and Prevention 3, no. 1 (2008): 99–109; Tigran Matosyan, “Comparative Aspects of the Armenian and Jewish Cases of Genocide,” in Hovannisian, The Armenian Genocide, 291–302. 47. In a number of works there are extracts dedicated to the observation of this issue. See, for example, Rouben P. Adalian, “Comparative Policy and Differential Practice in the Treatment of Minorities in Wartime: The United States Archival Evidence on the Armenians and Greeks in the Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Genocide Research 3, no. 1 (2001): 31–48. 48. I. Hassiotis, “The Armenian Genocide and the Greeks: Response and Records (1915–1923),” in The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 129. 49. During Tanzimat and after, a considerable number of Greeks were involved in the Ottoman state system, though those were individual cases and could not play an essential role in the qualitative sense. Moreover, the Greeks serving in the Ottoman state system primarily protected the interests of the empire. A notable example of this is the Ambassador of Turkey in Athens during the crisis of Crete in the 1860s, G. Fotiadis, Greek by ethnicity, who left Athens on December 17, 1868 as a sign of protest against the position of Greece in the question of Crete. See Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul, 28. The Tanzimat reforms being realized in the Greek community and “General/National Ordinances” adopted in 1862 referred to the inner life of the community, aimed to regulate mainly religious issues, and could not make any changes in the legal status of the subjugated Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. See Av. Papazyan, Turqakan vaveragrakan nyuterOsmanyan kaysrutyan voch mahmedakan zhoghovurdneri masin (1839–1915) [Turkish Documentary Materials about the Non-Muslim Peoples of the Ottoman Empire (1839–1915)] (Yerevan: Zangak-97, 2002), 51–89. 50. I. Senkevich, Rosiya i Kritskoe vostanie 1866–1869 gg. [Russia and the Cretan Revolt of 1866–1869] (Moscow: Nauka, 1970), 32. 51. Reports received from Her Majesty’s Ambassador and Consuls Relating to the Condition of Christians in Turkey, 1860 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1860), 58. 52. According to the data of 1912 in the field of industry and handicrafts in the Ottoman Empire, the specific weight of the Greeks was 48.5%, the Armenians 29.7%, the Turks 12%, other nations 9.8%. The situation is almost the same in the sphere of trade: Greeks 43.1%, Armenians 22%, Turks 14.9%, other nations 19.1%. See O. H. Indjikyan, Burzhuazia Osmanskoy imperii [The Bourgeoisie of the Ottoman Empire] (Yerevan: ANAS, 1977), 212–13. 53 . G. Kilimjyan, Turk-hunakan haraberutyunnery 1908-1914 tvakannerin [Greek–Turkish Relations 1908–1914] (Yerevan: Yerevan University Press, 1988), 158. 54. R. Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 20, 41–42. 55. A. Adossidès, Arméniens et Jeunes-Turcs, Les Massacres de Cilice (Paris: P.-V. STOCK, 1910), 16–17. 56. Akçam, A Shameful Act, 69; S. Suren Manukyan, “Haykakan Ardiakanatsume vorpes Teghaspanut`yan Padjar (Adanayi Orinakov)” [Armenian Modernization as a Reason for the Armenian Genocide (the Case of Adana)] Journal of Genocide Studies 1, no. 1 (2013): 73. 57. S. J. Shaw and E. K. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Reform, Revolution and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808–1975, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, London, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 242.

The Ottoman Genocides of the Armenians and Greeks | 295 58. The armaments race between Greece and Turkey, which especially intensified in spring and early summer 1914, was also conditioned by this. On June 22, 1914, the Greek Chargé d’affaires in Washington, Tsouklas, visited US President Wilson and agreed to buy the American ships Idaho and Mississippi. With Congress’s approval, on July 8, 1914 the two battleships were sold to Greece, and were renamed Kilkis and Lemnos. This, in turn, aroused the anger of the Turks. See Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 55–56. On the other hand, the Turkish government was also undertaking active steps to strengthen its own navy by ordering new battleships from France and Great Britain. However, either buying a foreign ship or ordering a new one needs a certain amount of time. As noted by Cemal [Djemal] Pasha, “In view of all this activity, it will at once be admitted that our one object in life was to make our fleet superior to the Greek fleet at the first possible moment. I did everything conceivable to remove all obstacles and delay in the realisation of this project.” See Djemal Pasha, Memories of a Turkish Statement, 1913–1919 (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1922), 95. 59. As early as November 15, 1913, a Population Exchange Agreement was signed between Turkey and Bulgaria, in which 9,714 Muslim families (48,570) from Bulgaria were exchanged for 9,472 Bulgarian families (46,764) from Eastern Thrace. The Young Turks’ regime had the intention of signing a similar agreement with Greece, with whom a tentative agreement had been reached, by which the exchange must be voluntary in nature, and the security guarantors of the refugees would be the two states. A joint committee would be set up to deal with current issues. The committee held a few meetings, but final specification of the terms did not happen. The work of S. Ladas, a specialist on the issue, talks about a five-point tentative agreement, which is taken from the letters of Venizelos and Ghalib Bey, kept at the Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Greece. So the Greek–Turkish consent was in fact only a tentative agreement. The outbreak of World War I did not allow the opportunity to clarify the exchange mechanism. For more detail, see S. Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932), 19–22. 60. M. L. Smith, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919–1922 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 32. 61. For more information, see George N. Shirinian, “The Great Catastrophe: The Genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923,” 14, retrieved from http://www.genocidepreventionnow.org/Portals/0/docs/Great_Catastrophe.pdf; Vahakn N. Dadrian, German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity (Watertown, MA: Blue Crane Books, 1996), 227. 62. There are many works about German involvement in the Armenian Genocide, for example Dadrian, German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide; Dadrian, “Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in German and Austrian Sources,” in The Widening Circle of Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, Vol. 3, ed. Israel W. Charny (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 77–125; Wolfgang Gust, The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915–1916 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014). 63. Les Persécutions antihelléniques en Turquie, 41–45. 64. Pallis, Greece’s Anatolian Venture, 33 and 157. 65. For more information, see [Oecunemical Patriarchate], Persecution of the Greeks in Turkey, 109–10. 66. The policy of Greece towards Ottoman Greeks should be observed in the context of the “Megali Idea” (Great Idea). This was an irredentist concept of Greek nationalism, the main goal of which was the creation of Greater Greece. The “Megali Idea” had played a big role in Greek foreign policy since the mid-nineteenth century. The Greek politician Ioannis Kolettis (Greek Prime Minister 1834–35 and 1844–47) represented the “Megali Idea” in its wilder political aspect in the National Assembly in January 1844: “The kingdom of Greece is not Greece; it is merely a part, the smallest, poorest part of Greece. The Greek is not only he who inhabits the kingdom, but also he who inhabits Ioannina or Salonika or Serres or Adrianopolis or Constantinople or Trebizond or Crete or Samos or any other region belonging to Greek history or the Greek race. There are two great centers of Hellenism, Athens is the capital of the kingdom, Constantinople is the great capital, the City, the dream and hope of all Greeks.” See Smith, Ionian Vision, 2–3. 67. See Safrastyan, Ottoman Empire, 114–33.

296 | Gevorg Vardanyan 68. Hannibal Travis, “Native Christians Massacred: The Ottoman Genocide of the Assyrians during World War I,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 1, no. 3 (2006): 342. 69. Arsen Avagyan, Genotsid 1915 g., Mekhanizmi prinyatiya I ispolneniya resheniy [Genocide of 1915: Mechanisms of Decision-Making and Their Implementation] (Yerevan: Armenian Genocide MuseumInstitute, 1999), 15–18. 70. Adalian, “Comparative Policy and Differential Practice,” 31–48. 71. For US Ambassador Morgenthau’s observation about the role of Greece, see Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 325–26. 72. Hassiotis, “The Armenian Genocide and the Greeks,” 135. 73. David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006), 66, 156. 74. Ibid. 75. Avagyan, Genotsid 1915 g., 22. 76. For more information, see George Horton, The Blight of Asia: An Account of the Systematic Extermination of Christian Populations by Mohammedans and of the Culpability of Certain Great Powers, with the True Story of the Burning of Smyrna (Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers, 1926), 30–31. 77. Fuat Dündar, Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878–1918) (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010), 62, n. 116. 78. Vahakn N. Dadrian and Taner Akçam, Judgment at Istanbul. The Armenian Genocide Trials (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011), 179–80. 79. Persecution and Extermination of the Communities of Macri and Livissi (1914–1918) (Paris: Imprimerie Chaix, 1919), 3–4. 80. We can also single out Turkish military leader Topal Osman (1883–1923). The Armenian sources claim that the experience of the Balkan Wars had important significance in the future while dealing with the Armenians and Greeks of Marzovan. Of course, there is no mention that he organized or implemented the massacres of the Christians; however, it is mentioned that just at that period he was filled with hatred towards Christians, which was manifested to a large extent in 1921, when dealing with the Armenian and Greek populations of Marzovan. See Haykuni, Topal Osman, 35–37. 81. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 323. 82. J. Lepsius, Gaghtni teghekagir, Hayastani djardery [Secret Record: The Massacres of Armenia] (Constantinople: Asaturian and Sons, 1919), 242–43. 83. A. Andonian, Mets vojire. Haykakan verjin kotoratsner yev Talât pasha [The Colossal Crime: The Armenian Last Massacres and Talât Pasha] (Yerevan: Arevik, 1990), 134–37. 84. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 232. 85. Avagyan, Cherkesskiy factor, 243. 86. See Les Persécutions antihélleniques en Turquie, 36–37. 87. To martyrion tou Pontou [The Martyrdom of Pontos] (Athens: Alex. Vitsikounaki, 1922), 8–12. 88. T. Malkidis, Ē Genoktonia tōn Ellēnon, Thrakē, Mikra Asia, Pontos [The Greek Genocide. Thrace, Asia Minor, Pontus] (Levkosia: Ekdosis Egeyon, 2010), 197–98. 89. Nikolaos Hlamides, “The Greek Relief Committee: America’s Response to the Greek Genocide,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 3, no. 3 (2008): 378.

Bibliography The Black Book of the Sufferings of the Greek People in Turkey from the Armistice to the End of 1920. Constantinople: Press of the Patriarchate, 1920. “Greeks in Asia Minor, Fresh Campaign of Persecution.” The Scotsman, January 11, 1915.

The Ottoman Genocides of the Armenians and Greeks | 297 I Diogmi ton Elinonen Fraki ke Mikra Asia: Afentikes Ekfesis ke Episima Kimena [Persecutions of the Greeks in Thrace and Asia Minor: Authentic Reports and Official Documents]. Athens: Panelliniou kratos, 1915. Lausanne Conference on Near East Affairs 1922–1923. Records of Proceedings and Draft Terms of Peace. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1923. To martyrion tou Pontou [The Martyrdom of Pontos]. Athens: Alex. Vitsikounaki, 1922. Persecution and Extermination of the Communities of Macri and Livissi (1914–1918). Paris: Imprimerie Chaix, 1919. Les Persécutions antihélleniques en Turquie, depuis le debut de la guerre européenne: D’après les rapports officiels des agents diplomatique et consulaires. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1918. Reports Received from Her Majesty’s Ambassador and Consuls Relating to the Condition of Christians in Turkey, 1860. London: Harrison and Sons, 1860. Adalian, Rouben P. “Comparative Policy and Differential Practice in the Treatment of Minorities in Wartime: The United States Archival Evidence on the Armenians and Greeks in the Ottoman Empire.” Journal of Genocide Research 3, no. 1 (2001): 31-48. Adossidès, A. Arméniens et Jeunes-Turcs, Les Massacres de Cilice. Paris, P.-V. STOCK, 1910. Akçam, Taner. A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006. Alexandris, A. The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek-Turkish Relations, 1918–1974. Athens: Centre for Asia Studies, 1992. Andonian, A. Mets vojire. Haykakan verjin kotoratsner yev Talât pasha [The Colossal Crime: The Armenian Last Massacres and Talât Pasha]. Yerevan: Arevik, 1990. Avagyan, Arsen. Cherkesskiy factor v Osmanskoy imperii i Turtsii (vtoraya polovina XIX–pervaya polovina XX vv.) [The Circassian Factor in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey (The Second Quarter of 19th c.–the First Quarter of 20th c.)]. Yerevan: Gitutyun, 2001. ———. Genotsid 1915 g., Mekhanizmi prinyatiya I ispolneniya resheniy [Genocide of 1915: Mechanisms of Decision-Making and Their Implementation]. Yerevan: Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, 1999. Barton, James. Story of Near East Relief (1915–1923): An Interpretation. New York: Macmillan, 1930. Dadrian, Vahakn N. “Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in German and Austrian Sources.” In The Widening Circle of Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, Vol. 3, edited by Israel W. Charny, 77–125. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers, 1994. ———. German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity. Watertown, MA: Blue Crane Books, 1996. ———. “The Prefiguration of Some Aspects of the Holocaust in the Armenian Genocide (Revisiting the Comparative Perspective).” Genocide Studies and Prevention 3, no. 1 (2008): 99–109. Dadrian, Vahakn N., and Taner Akçam. Judgment at Istanbul. The Armenian Genocide Trials. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011. Djemal, Pasha. Memories of a Turkish Statesman, 1913–1919. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1922. Dündar, Fuat. Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878–1918). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010. Gaunt, David. Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006. Gust, Wolfgang. The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915–1916. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014. Hassiotis, I. “The Armenian Genocide and the Greeks: Response and Records (1915–1923).” In The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 129–51. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Hatzimidtriou, Constantine G. “The Destruction of Smyrna in 1922: American Sources and Turkish Responsibility.” In The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923, edited by George N. Shirinian, 155–227. Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012.

298 | Gevorg Vardanyan Haykuni, P. A. Topal Osman ev depqery Mazuani medj zinadadaren heto [Topal Osman and the Events in Marzvan after the Mudros Armistice]. Athens: Nor Or Press, 1924. Hlamides, Nikolaos. “The Greek Relief Committee: America’s Response to the Greek Genocide.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 3, no. 3 (2008): 375–83. Horton, George. The Blight of Asia: An Account of the Systematic Extermination of Christian Populations by Mohammedans and of the Culpability of Certain Great Powers, with the True Story of the Burning of Smyrna. Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers, 1926. Howard, Douglas A. The History of Turkey. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. Indjikyan, O. H. Burzhuazia Osmanskoy imperii [The Bourgeoisie of the Ottoman Empire]. Yerevan: ANAS, 1977. Karavangelis, G. The Turkish Atrocities in the Black Sea Territories: Copy of Letter of His Grace Germanos, Lord Archbishop of Amassia and Samsoun. Manchester: Norbury, Natzio & Co. Ltd., 1919. Kévorkian, Raymond. The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011. Kilimjyan, G. “Eritturqeri azgayin qaghaqakanutyan hartsi shurdjy” [On the National Policy of the Young Turks]. Lraber hasarakakan gitutyunneri 8, no. 332 (1970): 11-16. ———. Turk-hunakan haraberutyunnery 1908–1914 tvakannerin [Greek–Turkish Relations 1908–1914]. Yerevan: Yerevan University Press, 1988. Kirakossian, Arman J. British Diplomacy and the Armenian Question from the 1830s to 1914. Princeton and London: Gomidas Institute, 2003. Ladas, S. The Exchange of Minorities, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932. Lepsius, J. Gaghtni teghekagir, Hayastani djardery [Secret Record: The Massacres of Armenia]. Constantinople: Asaturian and Sons, 1919. Malkidēs, T. Ē Genoktonia tōn Ellēnon, Thrakē, Mikra Asia, Pontos [The Greek Genocide. Thrace, Asia Minor, Pontus]. Levkosia: Ekdosis Egeyon, 2010. [Manchester League of Unredeemed Hellenes]. Turkey’s Crime: Hellenism in Turkey. Manchester: Norbury, Natzio & Co., 1919. Manukyan, Suren. “Haykakan Ardiakanatsume vorpes Teghaspanut`yan Padjar (Adanayi Orinakov)” [Armenian Modernization as a Reason for the Armenian Genocide (the Case of Adana)]. Journal of Genocide Studies 1, no. 1 (2013): 69–75. Matosyan, Tigran. “Comparative Aspects of the Armenian and Jewish Cases of Genocide.” In The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 291–302. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007. Melson, R. Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. Miller, A. F. Kratkaya istoria Turtsii [Short History of Turkey]. Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1948. Milton, Giles. Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922, the Destruction of a Christian City in the Islamic World. New York: Basic Books, 2008. Morgenthau, Henry. Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1918. Murat, J. The Great Extirpation of Hellenism and Christianity in Asia Minor, the Historic and Systematic Deception of World Opinion Concerning the Hideous Christianity’s Uprooting of 1922. Miami, FL: A. Triantafillis Pub., 1999. Naayem, Joseph. Shall This Nation Die. New York: Chaldean Rescue, 1921. Nogales, Rafael de. Four Years beneath the Crescent. New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1926. Noradoungian, G. D’Actes internationaux de l’Empire Ottoman, Tome Deuxième (1789–1856). Paris: Cotillon a. o., 1900. Oeconomos, L. The Martyrdom of Smyrna and Eastern Christendom, a File of Overwhelming Evidence, Denouncing the Misdeeds of the Turks in Asia Minor and Showing Their Responsibility for the Horrors of Smyrna. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1922. [Oecunemical Patriarchate]. Persecution of the Greeks in Turkey 1914–1918. Constantinople: Press of the Greek Patriarchate, 1919.

The Ottoman Genocides of the Armenians and Greeks | 299 Pallis, A. A. Greece’s Anatolian Venture and After, a Survey of the Diplomatic and Political Aspects of the Greek Expedition to Asia Minor (1915–1922). London: Methuen, 1937. Papazyan, Av. Turqakan vaveragrakan nyuterOsmanyan kaysrutyan voch mahmedakan zhoghovurdneri masin (1839–1915) [Turkish Documentary Materials about the Non-Muslim Peoples of the Ottoman Empire (1839–1915)]. Yerevan: Zangak-97, 2002. Photiades, K. The Annihilation of the Greeks in Pontus by the Turks. Tübingen: Union of the Fighters for the Liberation of the Greek Lands Seized by Turkey, 1987. Puaux, René. La Déportation et le Rapatriement des Grecs en Turquie. Paris: Edition du Bulletin Hellenique, 1919. Rummel, R. J. Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900. Münster: Lit, 1998. Sacher, Howard. The Emergence of the Middle East: 1914–1924. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969. Safrastyan, R. Doktrina osmanizma v politicheskoy zhizniOsmanskoy imperii (50–70 gg. XIX v.) [The Doctrine of Ottomanism in the Political Life of the Ottoman Empire (50–70 of 19th c.)]. Yerevan: AAS Press, 1985. ———. Ottoman Empire: The Genesis of the Program of Genocide (1876–1920). Yerevan: Zangak-97, 2011. Sakayan, D. Zmyurnia 1922, Bzhishk Karapet Khacheryani oragiry [Smyrna 1922, Doctor Karapet Khacheryan’s Diary]. Yerevan: Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Press, 2005. Senkevich, I. Rosiya i Kritskoe vostanie 1866–1869 gg. [Russia and the Cretan Revolt of 1866–1869]. Moscow: Nauka, 1970. Shamsutdinov, A. M. Natsionalno-osvoboditelnaya borba v Turtsii 1918–1923 gg. [The National Liberation Struggle in Turkey in 1918–1923]. Moscow: Nauka, 1966. Shaw, S. J., and E. K. Shaw. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Reform, Revolution and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808–1975, Vol. 2. Cambridge, London, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Sheremet, V. Osmanskaya imperia I Zapadnaya Evropa, vtoraya tret XIX v. [Ottoman Empire and Western Europe, the Third Quarter of 19th Century]. Moscow: Nauka, 1986. Shirinian, George N. “The Great Catastrophe: The Genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923.” Retrieved from http://www.genocidepreventionnow.org/Portals/0/docs/ Great_Catastrophe.pdf. Smith, M. L. Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919–1922. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973. Torossian, Sarkis. From Dardanelles to Palestine, a True Story of Five Battle Fronts of Turkey and Her Allies and a Harem Romance. Boston: Meader Publishing Company Publishers, 1947. Toynbee, A. J. The Western Question in Greece and Turkey. A Study in the Contact of Civilizations. London: Constable and Co., 1922. Travis, Hannibal. “Native Christians Massacred: The Ottoman Genocide of the Assyrians during World War I.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 1, no. 3 (2006): 327–71. Tsirkinidēs, Charēs. Ē Genoktonia tōn Ellēnōn tēs Anatolēs (Pontou—Mikras Asias—Anatolikēs Thrakēs— Kōnstantinoupolēs—Kyprou). Retrieved 5 May 2011 from http://www.hecucenter.ru/word-files/Tsirkinidis%20Gr.doc. Vryonis, Speros Jr. “Greek Labor Battalions in Asia Minor.” In The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 275–90. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007. Ye’or, Bat. The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude: Seventh–Twentieth Century. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996. ———. Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002. Zürcher, Erik Jan. The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish Nationalist Movement, 1905–1926. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986.

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE GENOCIDE OF THE OTTOMAN GREEKS, 1913–23 Myths and Facts Thea Halo

Beside the well-worn denials of the Armenian Genocide that many have come to recognize, the genocide of the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire during the same period is even more widely misrepresented, when mentioned at all. Similarly, until recently, the genocide of the Assyrians, which also took place during the same time and in many of the same places, was rarely mentioned.1 This chapter will examine some of the misrepresentations and misunderstandings that have circulated for decades about the genocide of the Greeks and attempt to clarify what I call those “myths.”2 A common refrain from a number of historians has been the claim that Greece’s Megali Idea or irredentism made the Young Turks fearful of losing “their heartland,” and their fear caused their genocidal reaction to the Anatolian Greeks,3 although not all of these historians called it genocide. Another premise is that the Greeks of Anatolia did not suffer genocide because they had a nation, namely Greece, that cared deeply for their well-being and, therefore, unlike the Armenians, they were protected. This conjecture was based on the familial relationship between Greece’s King Constantine I and his brother-in-law, Wilhelm, Kaiser of Germany, ally of Turkey. While acknowledging that deportations and displacements of Greeks were brutal and caused deaths at times, these and other historians often claimed that the Greeks of Asia Minor were simply moved inland for strategic reasons in 1914, or deported in preparation for the Great War. The premise that “deportations were a wartime mea-

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sure” was used to explain away the Armenian Genocide as well,4 while the deaths of more than half the Assyrian population were ignored. Perhaps the two most repeated myths used to dismiss the Greek Genocide are asserted by those who conflate the Greco-Turkish War of 1920–22 with the genocide of the Ottoman Greeks from 1913 to 1923, and those who use the “exchange of populations” of 1923 as a euphemism to disguise the ten years of genocidal outrages to which the Ottoman Greeks were subjected. Allegations of atrocities committed against Turkish civilians by the Hellenic army when Greece landed troops at Smyrna in May 1919, and during the subsequent Greco-Turkish War of 1920–22, are also used by some to mitigate or confuse the seven years of genocidal outrages against Thracian and Anatolian Greeks—before Greece’s presence in Asia Minor—with the three years of Greece’s administrative rule in Smyrna and the Greco-Turkish War that followed. For almost a century, one of the negative effects of these myths and assertions was a lack of awareness of the true nature of what the Ottoman Greeks had suffered. Until recently, the massacres and displacements that took place during the final years of the Ottoman Empire were known exclusively as the Armenian Genocide. For the greater public, they are still known by that narrow definition. Ottoman Greeks and Assyrians, when included, were usually relegated to the “also mentioned” category of Ottoman citizens who suffered. One account of the period by distinguished political scientist Robert Melson, writing on the Armenian Genocide, went so far as to deny

Figure 11.1. Figure 11.1. Refugee caravan. Courtesy Athens War Museum.

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the very existence of the Greeks and Assyrians in Anatolia: “The Greeks and then the Balkan Christians had seceded, leaving the Armenians as the last of the great Christian minorities still under Ottoman rule.”5 Melson repeats variations of this assertion three times in his sixteen-page essay. In the “conclusion” to his paper, as if to make sure he leaves the reader with the impression that the Armenians were the only Christians under Ottoman rule and, therefore, the only victims of the Ottoman genocide, Melson writes: “… because the Armenians were the last Christian millets that had not seceded from the Ottoman Empire….”6 Melson had overlooked and effectively wiped away four thousand years of vibrant Greek and Assyrian history in Asia Minor, today’s Turkey. With such misrepresentation, it is no surprise that young scholars might come away believing that the Armenians were the only victims of the genocide. At one IAGS conference in 2003, two young scholars presenting papers on the Ottomans and the Armenian Genocide admitted during Q&A that they had not realized Greeks and Assyrians existed in Asia Minor at the time. It is important to note that massacres of Christians in the Ottoman Empire did not begin with the Young Turks, nor end with them. Between 1822 and 1909 alone, at least 358,477 Ottoman citizens, mostly Christians, were slaughtered throughout the empire. During his 32-year rule from 1876 to 1908, Abdul Hamid II, the sultan known as the Bloody Tyrant, was responsible for the massacre of over 258,000 citizens, again mostly Christians.7 However, it was not until the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)—popularly known as the Young Turks—seized the reins of power in 1908 with the promise of liberty, justice, equality, and fraternity for all, and a revival of the constitution and parliament that Abdul Hamid II had prorogued soon after being installed as sultan in 1876, that the periodic massacres evolved into a genocide of up to 3.5 million Christians in Anatolia and Thrace: Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians. Since Greece attained independence in the nineteenth century, there had been periodic conflicts between Greece and the Ottoman Empire. These included repeated revolts by Crete and attempts at its unification with Greece from as early as 1841. Nevertheless, in the early stages of the Young Turk regime, advocacy for Ottomanism and the constitution enjoyed popular support, even among the Christian subjects and in liberated Greece, as it promised equality for all, regardless of religion or ethnicity. The Great Powers also initially supported the Young Turks. Many saw the July 1908 speech in Liberty Square, Salonika, by Young Turk Enver Pasha, as inspiring and eloquent. Enver declared: “Today arbitrary government has disappeared. We are all brothers. There are no longer in Turkey Bulgarians, Greeks, Servians, Rumanians, Mussulmans, Jews. Under the same blue sky we are all proud to be Ottomans.”8 The biggest impediment to its realization was the concept that “Islam was the foundation of Ottomanism and the Ottoman dynasty was Turkish.”9 A sentiment that was expressed in the late nineteenth century by the Young Ottoman leader Namik Kemal, and adopted by the Young Turk leaders, that “We can compromise with the Christians only when they accept our position of dominance,”10 revealed the true nature of the Young Turk ideology. As early as June 24, 1909, German Ambassador in

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Constantinople Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim reported that random murders had taken place in Kydonia [Crete] and Xanthis [Thrace], that just two months after the sultan’s deposition in 1908, the Young Turks had already decided to “wage a war of extermination against the Christians of the Empire,” and that the murders and rude treatment of the Greek Patriarch were part and parcel of that decision.11 In 1909, one year after taking office, the Young Turks abandoned their professed “all brothers…under the same blue sky” policy. Ottomanism morphed into the Turkification of non-Turkish nationalities by force. Their new slogan became “Turkey for the Turks,” and they pursued a vision of a superior race that included all Turanian peoples. Arnold Toynbee wrote in Turkey-a Past and a Future that “Turkish nationalism…has taken Attila to its heart, and rehabilitated Jenghis Khan, Timur, Oghuz, and the rest with the erudition of a Turanian Walter Scott.”12 Leading Young Turk ideologue Marcel (Moïse) Samuel Raphael Cohen, aka Tekin Alp, (also: Tekinalp) championed Turkish Nationalism. Tekin Alp wrote: “In adopting Turkish Nationalism as the basis of their national policy, the Turks have only abandoned an abnormal state of affairs and thereby placed themselves on a level with modern nations.”13 The embrace of nationality was much like the nationalism embraced by former subjects in the Balkans, the difference being that the Ottoman Empire was not a single nation with a predominantly Turkish population. In 1909, when the Young Turks had already narrowed their vision for the empire, it was still a multinational, multi-ethnic empire, whose predominant inhabitants were not Turks and, in many cases, not even Muslims. In an attempt to ensure domination in its European territories, by 1910 the Young Turks set a plan in motion to move Muslims into the Balkans from lost provinces, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and other unrelated areas, to Ottomanize and neutralize Christians in the Balkans. This would, and did, displace many Christians from their age-old family lands. Murder and the torture of Bulgarian and Greek notables, and later lesser-known Bulgarians and Greeks, were also used.14 Murder and torture were Ottoman methods used in the past, sometimes with unforeseen consequences. These Young Turk atrocities were miscalculations that led to an alliance, known as the Balkan League, between former rivals Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro. The first Balkan War that followed in 1912 lost the empire all of its European territories. With this stunning failure, the Young Turks turned to their backup plan to Turkify the empire by exterminating and/or driving out the Christian populations of Eastern Thrace and Anatolia, starting with the Greeks. As giaour (infidels/heathens), the Greeks, and later the other Christians—Assyrians and Armenians—were dehumanized as alien or “other” on a religious, ethnic, and even a national basis. The following speech given in 1912 in Turkish villages in the Pontic, or Black Sea region, two years before World War I, demonstrates the hatred the Young Turks hoped to generate against the Christians:

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Brothers. All this, whatever you see, gardens, fields, houses, shops—all of this was yours. The Giaours were your slaves…and now they act as your masters. Everything you see, they managed to take from you with treachery…Everything must become yours once more.15 On March 18, 1913, Greece’s King George I was assassinated while strolling along the quay at Salonica. Although the murderer was caught and said to be a disgruntled Greek drunkard, who claimed he killed the king because the king had refused his request for money, others speculated that more sinister forces in Germany, Bulgaria, or even Turkey were responsible. King George’s son Constantine I took the throne. As the brother-in-law of the German Kaiser, Constantine would later be suspected of being more loyal to Germany and the Central Powers than to Greece and the Allies. It would be an allegation backed by strong evidence. As we will see, such a premise is also a strong argument against the myth that the Young Turks were afraid of Greek irredentism before Greece landed troops in Asia Minor in May 1919. A month after King George’s assassination, the second Balkan War began, when Greece and Serbia formed an alliance against Bulgaria to fight for the spoils. Turkey joined the conflict. Muslims were expelled from Bosnia and Macedonia, some of whom were the Muslims who had been brought in by the Young Turks in 1910. Many Muslims were also terrorized or murdered, and their property stolen. The British Consul contended that the large exodus of Muslims from Macedonia was instigated by “widespread massacres, forced conversions and the wholesale robbing of Muslim goods,” mostly by “Macedonian Christians.”16 In other words, although Thracian and Anatolian Greeks would later pay the price, Slav peasants had committed these crimes, not the Greek army. Historian Mark Mazower writes: As it marched towards Salonica across the Vardar valley, the Hellenic army was far less violent towards Muslim civilians than its Serbian and Bulgarian allies (in fact, many Muslim peasants fled into Greek-held territory to get away from the other armies, and, especially, from the bands of irregulars which accompanied them), and for the most part it preserved its discipline.17 According to Mazower, even the recent Muslim transplants in Bosnia were not molested by the Hellenic army when they were greeted with bread and salt, “the traditional gesture of surrender…In the countryside, however, it was a different story…This was a war of the poor against the rich, and Christian as well as Jewish land-owners’ homes, were also ransacked. Nevertheless, the Muslim beys were the most vulnerable.”18 Having retaken Eastern Thrace after the second Balkan War of 1913, the Young Turks instigated attacks on Ottoman Greeks in Eastern Thrace to force them to leave the country of their own free will through massacres and rapes, as would be done the following year in Asia Minor.19 Greece agreed to an exchange of populations in Thrace, allegedly to allow Muslim refugees from the Balkan wars to emigrate to

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Ottoman territory, even though most of the Balkan refugees were not from Greek territory. The Thracian Greeks were never compensated for lost lives, homes, businesses, or personal chattel. The World War I-era Ottoman alliance with Germany would be the last nail in the empire’s coffin. But it was this alliance that would give the Young Turks the opportunity to rid Asia Minor of her millennia-old Christian communities once and for all under cover of war, again starting with the Greeks. During this period, German officers were given control of most of Turkey’s Ministry of War, leading US Ambassador to the Empire, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., to believe “the appointments signified nothing less than that the Kaiser had almost completed his plans to annex the Turkish army to his own.”20 In 1914, before, and then during World War I, Ottoman Greeks along the western coast of Asia Minor became the next targets. US Consul General George Horton, who was stationed at Smyrna from 1911 to 1917 and again from May 1919 to September 1922, reported that in the spring of 1914, the Aegean coast Greeks were demonized to induce the Turkish population to destroy them. Horton wrote: [V]iolent and inflammatory articles in the Turkish newspapers appeared unexpectedly and without any cause…so evidently “inspired” by the authorities…Cheap lithographs…executed in the clumsiest and most primitive manner…represented Greeks cutting up Turkish babies or ripping open pregnant Moslem women, and various purely imaginary scenes, founded on no actual events or even accusations elsewhere made. These were hung in the mosques and schools…and set the Turk to killing…21 Greek businesses were also boycotted on orders of the Young Turks, and tens of thousands of Greeks were attacked and displaced, leading to thousands of deaths. The main objective was to persuade the Christian villagers to leave, by means of intimidation if necessary. Among the principal methods used to achieve this were “monitoring, humiliation, killings, preventing them from working their lands, oppressively heavy taxation, seizure of property…forcible conscription.”22 As the senior ally of the Ottomans with control of most of Turkey’s Ministry of War, Germany could have demanded protection for the Greeks. Instead, Germany became the instigator and facilitator of their persecution and displacements. It was Morgenthau’s opinion that the idea to deport the Greeks was strictly a German device.23 Morgenthau wrote: “… Germany…had her own plans for Asia Minor, inevitably the Greeks in this region formed a barrier to Pan-German aspirations…”24 In fact, German propaganda against the Greeks and Armenians went back to the 1880s. Some German propagandists supported and/or justified the elimination of the Armenians (and Greeks) on racial grounds. Alfons Mumm, a German Foreign Office official, had excused the “Hamidiye massacres” of the Armenians as an act of Turkish

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self-defense, asserting, “… one must not forget that the characteristics of this race [the Armenians], its cunningness, and its rebellious activities had to provoke the rage of the Turks…”25 Hugo Grothe, while admitting to the violence against the Armenians, condoned the sultan’s actions by claiming that “the perpetrators [the Turks] of massacres were only taking back, admittedly in a violent manner, that which had been taken from them illegally by their Armenian subordinates,”26 thereby flipping on their heads the labels of victim and oppressor. Still others, such as Alphons Sussnitzki, seem to have had a dual agenda. Sussnitzki advocated “the exclusion of Armenians and Greeks,” for being “under British and French influence,” then proposed using “Ottoman Jews, Arabs, and Dönmes ([Jewish] converts to Islam)” in their places since, according to Sussnitzki, “Turks lacked the racial aptitude for trade—unless they were Turks from Crete, of Greek racial origin.”27 Not all Germans believed the Christians were a problem for Turkey, however. Siegfried Lichtenstädter, among others, believed the minorities were a positive element of the empire.28 Some German organizations and individuals vigorously protested the treatment of Armenians. A number of German ambassadors and consuls in Anatolia also tried to intervene during the massacres without success. During the war years there is a multitude of correspondence between King Constantine, his wife, Queen Sophia, and her brother, Kaiser Wilhelm II. One thing seems dramatically missing from the correspondence to the Kaiser, or to anyone else. Aside from a request by King Constantine to Serbia at the end of May 1914, that Serbia intervene (diplomatically) with the Ottomans concerning the anti-Hellenic persecutions in Turkey, there is scant evidence that serious attempts were made to intervene on behalf of the Anatolian Greeks. Even with this correspondence, it is unclear whether the request was made only for Hellenic nationals living in Turkey, or for the Anatolian Greeks also, since “Hellenic” is used in the title and Greek and Hellenic are used interchangeably in the correspondence. In the body of the message, however, G. Strait, Greece’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in Belgrade, refers to the anti-Hellenic boycotts and to the “systematic extermination of her [Greece’s] compatriots.”29 This seems to indicate that the prime, or perhaps the only concern of Greece was for Hellenic subjects living in Turkey. One correspondence from Queen Sophia to Talât Pasha in August 1915 was found in which she asks for special treatment of the Greeks from Antalya in southern Turkey. It is not clear why, if Queen Sophia had access to Talât, only the Greeks of Antalya were mentioned, unless she is also only referring to Hellenic subjects in Antalya. Failure to pressure the Kaiser or Talât on behalf of the Ottoman Greeks should dispel the myth that the Ottoman Greeks had a country that cared deeply for their well-being, and that they were more protected because King Constantine’s wife Sophia was the sister of the German Kaiser. The London Morning Post reported: During the first persecution the Greek Government did everything possible to protect their co-nationals, but during the second outbreak King

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Constantine impeded every possible movement for the amelioration of the lot of that unfortunate race. Reports sent to the Government by dignitaries of the Orthodox Church in Asia Minor were suppressed. Numberless documents dealing with these massacres were stolen from the Government archives and destroyed. On one occasion the Bishop of Pera traveled from Constantinople to Athens for the purpose of imploring the King to protest more energetically. He was not received by the King but by Queen Sophia, who cut the conversation short with the words: “Return immediately to Constantinople. The will of the King is that you live on good terms with the Turks.”30 In the London Morning Post report, we again only see reference to Greece’s “co-nationals.” Perhaps the confusion concerning the reported protection of Anatolian Greeks arose from the failure to make a distinction between Hellenic Greeks who were nationals of Greece living in Asia Minor, and Anatolian, or Ottoman Greeks. Horton best addressed the difference. Although the Allied nationals living in Smyrna during the war were not unscathed, referring to the treatment of non-Turks in Smyrna beginning in May 1915, Horton wrote: On the whole, the British, French, Italians and other colonies at Smyrna placed under my protection did not suffer that extreme persecution which culminates in death by violence or starvation, nor did those Greeks who were subject of King Constantine, known as “Hellenic Greeks”…With reference to these latter, the Vali [Ottoman governor general in Smyrna, Rahmi Bey] frequently told me that he intended to treat them well, as he considered King Constantine an ally of Turkey and Germany.31 This pronouncement of friendship, and Greece’s avowed neutrality during World War I under King Constantine I, should dispel another myth—that the Young Turks’ fear of Greece’s irredentism was the cause of the Greek Genocide. Such a pernicious premise places blame on a foreign country, in this instance Greece, which in turn tends to exonerate or mitigate the actions of the actual perpetrators of the genocide, as if they were the real victims. While it is true that Greeks had long dreamed of recapturing lost territories in Asia Minor, and elsewhere—a dream known as the Megali Idea—as a neutral nation, Greece could not hope to win back lands if she was unwilling to fight for them, and the Young Turks knew this. Horton goes on to clarify the treatment of the indigenous Greeks under Ottoman rule, who were known as Rum, or Rumları (Romans, i.e. Byzantines), and Rayahs (the flock), or, as noted, more offensively as giaour. Horton reported: The most frightful victims of Turkish and German malignancy were the… Rayahs, or Greeks under Ottoman sovereignty. These were massacred, robbed, driven out of their homes, ravished, or were drafted into the army

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and set to digging trenches and other work of that nature, without food or clothing, until many of them died of starvation or exposure.32 The drafting of thousands of Greek men into the dreaded Amele Taburları, or labor battalions, where they were worked and starved to death, also left their women, children, and the aged vulnerable. Although the Greeks were the first victims of this device, Armenians, Assyrians, and the Greeks of Pontos later shared the same fate. Perhaps one of the strongest pieces of evidence against King Constantine and the notion that Anatolian Greeks were protected is the report that the deportations of the Ottoman Greeks stopped when Eleftherios Venizelos briefly resumed his post as Prime Minister of Greece, from August 10 to September 24, 1915. The following observation seems to confirm both Rahmi Bey’s assessment that King Constantine was an ally of Turkey, and that Constantine was indifferent to the plight of the Anatolian Greeks: The return of Venizelos to power in August, 1915, disturbed the Turks so much that on the 10th of September the Turkish Government ordered the Vali of Broussa to put a stop to the deportation of the Greek populations of Ghemlek and the country around it. The second retirement of Venizelos from office and the condemnation of Greece to a policy of inaction emboldened the Germano-Turks anew and they gave themselves up with fervor to the extermination of the enslaved Greeks.33 During a rare interview with King Constantine I, Count Ferri-Pisani noted that not once had the king referred to Greece as his country, or the Greeks as his people.34 Although Constantine was born in Greece, he was of Danish and Russian parentage, a fact that had not hindered his father, King George I, from doing his duty for Greece. In an apparent learn-as-you-go genocide, Morgenthau reported that the Young Turks were so successful against the Anatolian Greeks that they decided to target the other Christian “races” as well, i.e. the Armenians and Assyrians.35 Kuşçubaşı Eşref, one of the central operatives in the anti-Christian operations, would refer to non-Muslims as “internal tumors” in the body of the Ottoman state that had to be “cleaned out” as “a national cause.”36 With Germany’s help, Turkey could finally eliminate her Christian populations under cover of war, without foreign intervention. On October 26, 1914, the Young Turks’ Interior Ministry issued a deportation order against the Nestorian (Assyrian) population of the Hakkari district of the Ottoman-Iranian borderlands.37 Seven months later, in 1915, the empire-wide deportation of the Armenians began, culminating in a full-scale genocide of Assyrians and Armenians. In October 1915, less than a month after Venizelos again left office, “the German military attaché reported to Berlin that Enver wanted to ‘solve the Greek problem during the war…in the same way that he believes he solved the Armenian problem.’”38 Morgenthau reported: The Turks adopted almost identically the same procedure against the Greeks as…against the Armenians. They began by incorporating the

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Greeks into the Ottoman army and then transferring them into labour battalions, using them to build roads in the Caucasus and other scenes of action. These Greek soldiers, just like the Armenians, died by the thousands from cold, hunger, and other privations.39 In 1916, the Greeks of the Pontos region of the Black Sea were targeted. Some were brutally massacred outright, or burned alive as they took refuge in churches. Of the twenty-five thousand Greek inhabitants of the Bafra region alone, 90% were eliminated.40 As Christians, the Assyrians fared no better than the Greeks and Armenians. On March 10, 1915, Russian Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Pavel Vvedenski found “the remains for the adult Christian male population of an entire district…hundreds of corpses lying exposed everywhere. All…were mutilated…most had been decapitated.”41 That scene was repeated again and again in other Assyrian villages. Most of the Kurdish and Turkish mobs who helped carry out the slaughters of Armenians and Assyrians were poor. Vile propaganda depicting Ottoman Christians as bloodsuckers tied to foreign powers, coupled with permission to plunder their victims, gave the mobs the impetus to violence when the signal from Ottoman authorities was given. The “Special Organization” that helped carry out the massacres, called the “butchers of the human species” by the commander of the Ottoman Third Army, Vehib Pasha, consisted of thousands of criminals released from prisons for the purpose of “escorting the deportees.”42 After the initial massacres, the next phase of the Ottoman genocide was death marches in extreme conditions, known as the White Death, during which hundreds of thousands of Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians perished under the cruelest conditions. In a 1919 report, before the further destruction of the Pontic Greeks from 1920–22, Dr George E. White, a representative of the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, wrote: “the worse crimes were committed against the Greeks along the Black Sea coast between 1916–1917.” As an example, White relayed the following: Turkish Officials decimated the Greek population along the Black Sea coast, 250,000 Greek men, women and children living between Sinope and Ordou, without shedding of blood, but by “parboiling” the victims in Turkish baths then turning them out half clad to die of pneumonia and other ills in the snow of an Anatolian winter.43 While it is unclear if White was claiming that all 250,000 Pontians were destroyed in this manner, his report provides us with one of the diabolical methods of extermination used by the Ottoman authorities against the Pontic Greeks. In March 1917, German Ambassador to Turkey, Count Paul Wolff-Metternich, attempted to intervene on behalf of the Christians. An outraged Enver Pasha and the German military authorities in Constantinople demanded the Kaiser recall him, claiming, “Intervening in favour of the Christians wounded the amour propre of the Turks and badly served German interests.”44

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With Constantine’s abdication on June 15, 1917, and Venizelos’s renewed control of the Greek government, the deportation of Anatolian Greeks again briefly ceased. It was another strong indication that both the Young Turks and the Germans had been sure Constantine would not intervene on behalf of the Anatolian Greeks, while both were wary of Venizelos’s reaction. With King Constantine’s forced abdication, Greece entered the war on the side of the Allies in 1917. The properties confiscated from the Christians, or the “abandoned properties of the deportees,” as they were euphemistically termed, created a new class of “notables” in Anatolia. Historian Taner Akçam notes that by allowing Ottoman Turks and Jews—some of whom were members of the Young Turk regime—to purchase the properties “at ridiculously low prices,” a whole new class of nouveau riche was created, and it made those who were already wealthy even wealthier.45 Later, those serving under Mustafa Kemal, such as the notorious mass murderer Topal Osman, would also benefit.46 The Manchester Guardian reported that: “The majority of the so-called Mohajirs or Bashi-Bazouks who carried out the evictions, etc.…were Turkish regulars in disguise.”47 In June 1918, four months before the end of the Great War, and a year before Greece landed troops at Smyrna, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported that at least one million Greek men, women, and children had perished as a result of organized massacres and deportations by “the Turco-Teutons” in Asiatic Turkey.48 On October 30, 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed, officially bringing Ottoman participation in the war to an end, but the massacres, death marches, and labor camp conscriptions continued. A New York Times article dated December 8, 1918, affirms that: …the Turkish authorities, despite Turkey’s defeat, are pursuing a brutal attitude towards the Christian populations of the empire and are inciting the Ottoman people to fanatical outrages against the non-Moslems… Many signs of organizing among the Turks for new massacres of Christians, and particularly Greeks, are noted.49 This news item was published five months before Greece landed troops at Smyrna. These news reports alone should dispel any notion that the Greeks perished because of the Greco-Turkish War. Afraid Italy would take the western coast of Asia Minor when she landed troops pursuant to an unimplemented wartime agreement with the Allies, Britain, France, and the US urged Greece to land troops at Smyrna to forestall Italy reaching that far north. Rather than an invasion of Turkey by Greece, the continued assault on the Greek communities in Asia Minor allowed Greece to land troops at Smyrna in May 1919, as a provision in the Armistice of Mudros gave the Allies the right to occupy any Ottoman territory “in case of disorder” and a threat to security. With a new title of Inspector General, Mustafa Kemal—the future Atatürk—arrived at Samsun, also in May 1919, and immediately began to incite violence against the remaining Greeks of Pontos. Kemal and his Nationalists had picked up where the

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Young Turks left off, with many Young Turks joining Kemal’s Nationalist movement. This would become the final phase of the Greek Genocide before the exchange of populations. At Smyrna, a shot from an unknown source during the landing of Greek troops set the Greek army into action, firing into the Turkish crowd. While it is true that revenge attacks on Turkish civilians then also took place for the years of massacres, theft, and atrocities that the Anatolian Greeks had suffered, it is also true that there were attacks by Turks against Greeks, and Smyrna’s first Greek governor, Aristidis Stergiadis, immediately put a stop to the violence and punished the Greek perpetrators more harshly than the Turks. After a court martial trial, three of the Greek ringleaders were publicly shot. In all seventy-four sentences were passed on those convicted of disturbing public order on the days immediately following the landing of the Greek military authorities:…Of the seventy-four sentenced, forty-eight were Greeks; thirteen Turks; twelve were Armenians and one a Jew. The three persons executed were Greeks, one of them a soldier.”50 It is also true that Greece now revived the centuries-old hope of the Megali Idea, to take back ancient lands. Kemal’s attack on the British at Constantinople in 1920 gave Greece the opportunity it needed to be granted permission to move inland as payment for successfully defending the British. The consequence of this decision would be fatal. My mother’s own fate was also sealed when she and her family were sent on a death march to exile along with the three thousand inhabitants of the three Greek villages of Iondone.51 As confirmed by numerous reports, including that of the American Consul at Aleppo, Jesse B. Jackson, Kemal ordered wholesale deportations of the Greeks of Pontos. American relief workers Yowell and Ward reported that in 1921 the road was strewn with thousands of dead bodies along the way, and that armed guards had prodded the deportees on. Of the tens of thousands of Greeks from the Black Sea region that were deported, Dr. Ward affirmed the following: Of the entire number of Greeks deported, two-thirds of them were women and children and the main causes of death were, starvation, exposure, typhus, and dysentery. The Turkish authorities were frank in their statements that it was the intention to have all the Greeks die and all of their action—their failure to supply any food or clothing—their strong opposition to relief by the N.E.R.—their choice of routs, weather, etc.— concentrations in unhealthful places, and last of all their deliberate choice of destination Bitlis, a place almost totally destroyed, with no industry and located far up in the mountains, seem to fully bear this statement out.52 We will never know if Greece would have been successful in her quest to “recapture” lands. After the untimely death of Constantine’s brother, King Alexander, who had assumed the throne on Constantine’s abdication, Prime Minister Venizelos was

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voted out of office and Constantine I was allowed to return as king. While the Allies trusted Venizelos, especially Britain’s Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, they mistrusted King Constantine. Withdrawal of Allied support for Greece as her troops marched towards Ankara, and support from Italy, France, and Russia for Turkey, ensured Greece’s defeat. This colossal betrayal of Greece by her Allies would also have enormous consequences for the Allies themselves. Allied support for Mustafa Kemal’s Nationalists against Greece put an end to Allied territorial designs on Constantinople and Anatolia. The priorities of the Allies, including those of the US, had shifted however, to thoughts of trade with the new Nationalist regime. Led by Mustafa Kemal, the Allies recognized that the destiny of Ottoman Turkey was poised to change. Constantine’s army, stranded without necessary supplies, left some devastation in its wake. Without their commanders, and having no pretense of organization or a proper chain of command, the Hellenic troops burned villages as they retreated. It was a “scorched earth” strategy many armies use to hinder the advancing enemy from catching up. Marjorie Housepian Dobkin writes in her book, Smyrna 1922: Soldiers threw down their ammunition and pushed blindly toward the sea, gathering tens of thousands of Greek civilians in their wake. Kemal had once declared to his followers: “If it is the will of God that we are defeated, we must set fire to all our homes, to all our property; we must lay the country in ruins and leave an empty desert.” Now the defeated Greeks, in their panicked flight through a detested land, set the torch to their own villages, killed and maimed some of the Turkish inhabitants, and took to the roads. For one hundred miles, until they caught up with their enemy in the suburbs of Smyrna, the pursuing Turks came upon one smouldering [sic] town after another.53 While massacres of Turkish civilians by Hellenic forces during their panicked flight towards Smyrna were readily reported, and even exaggerated, atrocities committed by Kemal’s Nationalists against Turkey’s Greek subjects were a matter the US preferred to ignore. Admiral Bristol admonished US relief workers to refrain from reporting on the plight of the Christian populations for fear it would turn American opinion against Turkey, thereby hindering plans to commence trade with the new Nationalist leader. Dulles tried to explain confidentially to the Admiral that the State Department was in a bind: its task would be simple if the reports could be declared untrue or even exaggerated, but the evidence, alas, was irrefutable—and if the Armenians and Greeks were here and there retaliating against Turks they could scarcely be blamed.54 The following report affirms that H. Rumbold, the British “High Commissioner, had interviewed at great length Dr. Ward of the American Near Eastern Relief Commission, who has reached Constantinople from Kharput, which he left on March 15 [1922].”

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Dr. Ward endorsed Signor Tuozzi’s recent statement that the deliberate policy of the Turks is to exterminate Minorities. He considers that they are accelerating their activities in this respect before the peace settlement and he stated that, if action is not taken soon, the problem will be solved by the disappearance of the Minorities.55 During Greece’s offensive into the interior, however, independent observers disputed alleged massacres of Turkish civilians. Dr. Peet, who came with Dr. Ward, states that Dr. Gibbons, formerly a Professor at Robert College, who has been visiting the Greek front, and went into the Turkish lines, reports that the Greeks have behaved well in the Afion-Khara-Hissar-Aidin sectors; also that the Mussulman population seems quite content with the Greek rule in those districts. This confirms the belief that recent Turkish accounts of Greek atrocities were designed to divert attention from the Turkish atrocities.56 So why would stories of Greek atrocities persist? If we examine Rear Admiral Colby M. Chester’s ludicrous description of Armenian deportations, we see clearly the depths to which advocates of trade with Turkey stooped to quash reports of Ottoman atrocities, while belittling or blaming the victims. Chester, who was seeking business concessions from Turkey, described the Armenian death marches as fully financed pleasure trips to a health resort for ungrateful recipients. Chester wrote: So the Armenians…were moved from the inhospitable regions where they were not welcome, and could not actually prosper, to the most delightful and fertile part of Syria. Those from the mountains were taken into Mesopotamia, where the climate is as benign as in Florida and California, whither New York millionaires journey every year for health and recreation. All this was done at great expense of money and effort.57 Professor Thomas A. Bryson points out that, although historians have traditionally obscured the real intent of American foreign policy-makers concerning the Middle East, rather than an Open Door principle after World War I “merely to defend American rights from the Allied efforts to achieve economic hegemony over Turkey and other parts of the old Ottoman Empire” scholars such as William Appleman Williams, using supporting works of several young scholars, asserted that “Woodrow Wilson used the Open Door to promote American economic expansion.” Rather than an idealistic policy with sporadic support, “the Open Door was an American-designed tactic that diplomats used continuously throughout the first half of the twentieth century for the express purpose of promoting American expansion, with a view to creating an American economic empire….”58 The oil fields in the districts of Mosul and Baghdad, discovered by a German expert in 1901, and the Allied desire for oil concessions, were a strong incentive for the

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Allies to placate Kemal, even at the cost of Christian lives and allegiance to Greece. With Constantine back on the Greek throne during the latter part of the Greek offensive in Turkey, the decision to abandon Greece was made easier. Concessions made to Kemal’s Nationalists would later extend to the Treaty of Lausanne.59 Descriptions of the burning of Smyrna by Kemal’s forces after the evacuation of the Greek army, and the many thousands of Greek and Armenian civilians of Smyrna that Kemal’s troops massacred when they entered the city, are documented in numerous books and films portraying the tragedy.60 Refugees say that the Kemalists spared nobody, except their co-religionists and Jews. Massacre and incendiarism were the order of the day and were carried out by groups headed by Turkish officers. Houses and stores were looted by soldiers and civilians and afterwards set on fire. Mutilated and burnt corpses were everywhere to be seen, and the atmosphere was poisoned with the smell of burnt flesh emanating from the ruins.61 When the surviving Greeks and Armenians were rescued, all men from eighteen to forty-five years of age were taken as prisoners of war and marched into the interior by Kemal’s forces, never to be heard from again. As noted, the myth that the genocide of the Ottoman Greeks was caused by the Greco-Turkish War is easily discredited by the thousands of reports that affirm the hundreds of thousands of Ottoman Greek deaths between 1913 and 1919, before Greece landed troops at Smyrna. In May 1922, G. W. Rendel of the British Foreign Office wrote in his report: The great contention of the pro-Turks, now that the massacres etc. are proved, is that they are due to the Greek landing at Smyrna. This is entirely untrue and mischievous. Apart from the million or more Armenians massacred during the war, we know that at least half a million Greeks were deported before 1919, of whom a great number died, and we have the evidence of British internees, (e.g. McLean) for some of the worst and most horrible anti-Greek atrocities of that period.62 The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne that officially ended the Greco-Turkish War officially displaced the remaining Christian Greeks of Turkey and many Turks, or Muslims of Greece, in an exchange of populations. Those who use the exchange of populations as a euphemism to disguise the Greek Genocide rely on a public who is ill informed of the facts. This is not difficult, as it is almost impossible for the general public to know all the nuances of multiple histories around the world. Clearly, by the time of the exchange, there had been ten years of atrocities against the Ottoman Greek populations in Thrace, Western Asia Minor, and Pontos, with a death toll estimated at 1.2 million Ottoman Greeks. The Treaty of Lausanne also affected the Turkish-speaking Cappadocian Greeks in Central Turkey. Even after the exchange,

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many of the Ottoman Greeks who were transported to Greece continued to die from the effects of their years of hardship and a Greek nation that was ill equipped to feed, house, and care for an influx of more than a million destitute refugees, 100,000 of whom were Armenians, 1,000 Assyrians, and 9,000 Circassians.63 If none of the above-mentioned myths were reasons for the Greek Genocide, the question remains: why resort to genocide? The question and answer to the Greek Genocide should not be isolated from the questions and answers for the genocide of the other Christian victims, the Armenians and Assyrians. Just as focusing solely on the Jewish victims of the Nazis gives us a limited view of the Nazi agenda, so too does studying the elimination of the Armenians in isolation distort our understanding. The range of groups targeted by the Nazis—Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists, Roma and Sinti, Poles, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, the mentally and physically challenged, dissenting Christian clergy, Russian prisoners of war, other Slavic ethnicities, and so on—were part of a broad attempt to restructure German society to fulfill an Aryan vision. In the same way, the Young Turks hoped to restructure Turkish society to fulfill a Turanian vision. It is only when we examine the full scope of the genocides that took place between 1913 and 1923 that we begin to look for and find their real motives. Since the targets were Christian in a mostly Muslim country, many would like to reduce the motive to religious hatred, Muslim against Christian, or Islamic extremism. Those easy answers would also be misleading. Although Young Turk fears of the break-up of the country may have also played a part in the genocides, the actions and ideological writings of the Young Turks and the observations of foreign diplomats have very clearly answered the larger question: why resort to genocide? The answers were found to have relatively little to do with religious hatred per se. For the Greeks, as for the Armenians and Assyrians, crucial observations and documentation reinforce a conclusion that the goal of the genocide was to restructure Turkish society to make Turks the main beneficiaries of the genocides. George Horton believed, for instance, that had the Young Turks kept their campaign promise of a truly multicultural, multi-ethnic federation, the worker bees, the Christians, would have taken over the hive, and the Young Turks knew this. Horton wrote: …Christians would speedily have outstripped the Ottomans, who would soon have found themselves in a subordinate position commercially, industrially and economically. It was this knowledge which caused the Turks to resolve upon the extermination of the Christians.64 Young Turk ideologue Tekin Alp seemed to agree. He wrote concerning the Greek and then Armenian boycotts: “…The real motive…was the longing of the Turkish nation for independence in their own country.”65 Rather than being afraid of Greek irredentism, as some claim, the Young Turks were afraid of something they perceived to be much more dangerous. As so many of the Muslim population was illiterate at the time due to the failure of the government

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to educate its citizens, Dr Martin Niepage, a German teacher at the German Technical School in Aleppo observed: The Christian nations—Armenians, Syrians and Greeks—alarm him [the Mohammedans] by their cultural and economic superiority, and he sees in their religion an obstacle to Turkifying them by peaceful means. They have, therefore, to be exterminated or converted to Mohammedanism by force.66 In his official report, Horton wrote: I have heard Turkish politicians make speeches at Salonica in which they affirm that if the Christians were exterminated and driven out, the Turks would of sheer necessity progress and develop schools, commerce and industry. Then followed the great massacre…67 The question of how to encourage the masses to allow, or even take part in the Young Turks’ genocidal program was apparently also debated. Tekin Alp candidly admitted that: They [the Young Turks] realised only too clearly that the still abstract ideals of Nationalism could not be expected to attract the masses, the lower classes, composed of uneducated and illiterate people. It was found more expedient to reach these classes under the flag of religion.68 Perhaps the most important of Alp’s insights concerning religion was his assertion that to draw in the masses with religion, the Young Turks needed their own version of Islam or, more accurately, their own god. Alp claimed: “Because it is written in the Koran that Islam knows no nationalities, but only Believers…the Nationalists… maintain that the Turks cannot interpret the Koran in the same manner as the Arabs…Their idea of God is also different.”69 In other words, the Young Turks had to refashion God to cater to the Young Turk agenda, because, as Lord Bryce pointed out in a speech in the House of Lords: There was no Moslem passion against the Armenian Christians. All was done by the will of the Government, and done not from any religious fanaticism, but simply because they wished, for reasons purely political, to get rid of a non-Moslem element which impaired the homogeneity of the Empire, and constituted an element that might not always submit to oppression.70

Thea Halo is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Not Even My Name, which was instrumental in garnering the first state-level resolutions that recognized the genocide of the Pontian and other Asia Minor Greeks and Assyrians. She was

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a driving force behind the resolution of the International Association of Genocide Scholars calling for the joint recognition of the Ottoman Genocides. Ms Halo was a former news correspondent and producer for public radio, and has also published a collection of poetry. Ms Halo is currently working on a history book about the Ottoman Empire and the Greek, Assyrian, and Armenian Genocides. Among her honors and awards, Thea, along with her mother, Sano Halo, a survivor of the genocide who passed away in 2014 at the age of 105, was given honorary Greek citizenship by the Greek government. In 2002, Thea was awarded the AHEPA Homer Award, and in 2012 the Association of Greek American Professional Women honored Thea and Sano for their “Profound Contribution to Literature and to Hellenic Cultural Heritage and History.”

Appendix. Full Text of the 2007 IAGS Resolution WHEREAS the denial of genocide is widely recognized as the final stage of genocide, enshrining impunity for the perpetrators of genocide, and demonstrably paving the way for future genocides; WHEREAS the Ottoman genocide against minority populations during and following the First World War is usually depicted as a genocide against Armenians alone, with little recognition of the qualitatively similar genocides against other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire; BE IT RESOLVED that it is the conviction of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks. BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Association calls upon the government of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides against these populations, to issue a formal apology, and to take prompt and meaningful steps toward restitution.

Notes 1. “Assyrian” or “Assyro/Chaldean” is often used as an umbrella term to denote numerous peoples with closely related ethnic and Christian identities. Here the term Assyrian is used to include: Chaldeans (Catholic), Syriacs, Syrian (Eastern Orthodox), Nestorians, Jacobites, and Arameans, unless the document cited specifically names the denomination. Assyrian settlements in Anatolia date to at least 2200 bc and may go back even further. 2. In 2007, Prof. Adam Jones and I proposed a resolution to the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) to recognize the genocide of the Pontian and other Anatolian Greeks and Assyrians as comparable to the genocide of the Armenians. After our presentation of extensive primary source material and an extensive bibliography, the resolution passed with an overwhelming majority of the vote. During the discussion, however, a small group opposed the inclusion of the Ottoman Greeks in the resolution, based on certain preconceived ideas and misunderstandings about this history. The text of the resolution is appended at the end of this chapter.

318 | Thea Halo 3. The terms Anatolian Greeks and Ottoman Greeks are used interchangeably in this chapter. Anatolia is a Greek word, meaning east or where the sun rises. It was used as a geographic location to denote Asia Minor and is still used today, even in Turkey. The term Anatolia has become synonymous with Turkey. 4. Leo Kuper, “The Turkish Genocide of Armenians, 1915–1917,” in The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1986), 53. Also see “Fact Sheet: Armenian Genocide,” Knights of Vartan Armenian Research Center, The University of Michigan-Dearborn, retrieved from http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/facts/genocide.html. 5. Robert Melson, “Provocation and Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry into the Armenian Genocide of 1915,” in Hovannisian, The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, 72. Also see Melson’s Revolution and Genocide (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 161. 6. Melson, “Provocation and Nationalism,” 79. 7. George Horton, The Blight of Asia, an Account of the Systematic Extermination of Christian Populations by Mohammedans and of the Culpability of Certain Great Powers, with the True Story of the Burning of Smyrna (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1926), ch. 1, “Turkish Massacres, 1822–1909.” Thirty thousand has been added to the figure for the period between 1904 and 1909, and the massacre at Adana. 8. Henry Morgenthau, Sr., Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1918), 12–13. 9. Şükran Vahide, Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabiʻ, Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005), 58. 10. Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 49. 11. Kaiserlich Deutsche Gesandtschaft Bonn PAAA, Turkei Nr. 168, Bd. 6, f. Bd. 7. 24/6/1909. No. 48, A. 10963. Wangenheim zu Seiner Durchlaucht Dem Herrn Reichskanzler Fürsten von Bülow. Found in the archives of the Foreign Ministry of Greece, as reported by Konstantinos Fotiadis, Professor of History at Aristotelian University in Greece and compiled in fourteen volumes of documentation: Constantinos Emm. Fotiadis, The Genocide of the Pontus Greeks by the Turks, Vol. 12 (Thessaloniki: Herodotus, 2004), 54. 12. Arnold Joseph Toynbee, Turkey-A Past and a Future (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1917), 18. 13. Tekin Alp, The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal (Constantinople: Admiralty War Staff, Intelligence Division, 1917), cited in Arnold Joseph Toynbee, Turkey-a Past and a Future. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1917), 14-15. 14. Horton, The Blight of Asia, Ch. 3, “First Step in Young Turks’ Program (1909-1911).” Also see Horton’s consular report from Athens, Greece to the U.S. Secretary of State entitled: The Near Eastern Question, September 27, 1922. Horton’s diaries are housed at Georgetown University Library Booth Center for Special Collections. 15. From the transcript of Efstratios Sidiropoulos and Meletios Sidiropoulos, who came from the region of Fatsa, village of Ayios Antonios (Ayiandon), Turkey. Interview recorded in Greece, May 19, 1964, Center for Asia Minor Studies. 16. Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430–1950 (New York: Vintage Books, 2004), 337. 17. Ibid., 334. 18. Ibid., 335. 19. DK/RA-UM/Gruppeordnede sager 1909-1945. 5. L. 15, “Grækenland-Tyrkiet: Politiske Forhold”, Pk. 1, Juni 1914-31/12 1945. Danish diplomatic sources. Departure of telegram: 06/23/1914. Arrival of telegram: 06/30/1914. Embassy/consular serial number: No. 31. Translated by: Matthias Bjørnlund. www.armenocide.net 20. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, ch. 3, 41. 21. Horton, The Blight of Asia, Ch. 5, “Persecution of Christians in Smyrna District (1911-1914),” 25.

The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks, 1913–23 | 319 22. Elisabeth Kontogiorgi, “Forced Migration, Repatriation, Exodus: The Case of Ganos-Chora and Myriophyto-Peristaris Orthodox Communities in Eastern Thrace,” Balkan Studies 35, no. 1 (1995): 22–24. See Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 68. 23. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 365–66. 24. Ibid., 48–49. 25. Hilmar Kaiser, Imperialism, Racism, and Development Theories. The Construction of a Dominant Paradigm on Ottoman Armenians (Ann Arbor, MI: Gomidas Institute, 1997), 10. 26. Ibid., 16. 27. Ibid., 31. From Alphons J. Sussnitzki, “Zur Gliedderung Wirtschaftlicher Arbeit nach Nationalitäteu in der Türkei” [On the Division of Labor According to Nationality in Turkey], Archiv für Wirttschafisforschung im Orient 2 (1917): 382–407. “The author was a journalist who between 1911 and 1918 reported for several German newspapers in Ottoman Affairs. Contributing to the Allegemeine Zeitung des Judentuns, he reported on affairs of the Ottoman Jewish community and the Zionist movement. In 1918 his articles appeared in the Welwirtschaftszeitung, where he discussed problems of the Ottoman economy.” 28. Kaiser, Imperialism, 29. 29. The Greek White Book. Supplemental Documents 1913–1917. No. 1. Issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Greek Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1919), 1–2. 30. The London Morning Post, carrying a report from Constantinople on December 5, 1918. The New York Times Current History: The European War (New York: The New York Times, 1919), Vol. 18, 549. 31. George Horton, Recollections Grave and Gay: The Story of a Mediterranean Consul (Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1926; republished Athens: Hellenic Electronic Center, 2007), 155/217. 32. Ibid., 155/217. 33. Persecutions of the Greeks in Turkey since the Beginning of the European War. Translated from official Greek documents by Carroll N. Brown, Ph.D. and Theodore P. Ion, D.C.L. Originally published for the American-Hellenic Society, 105 West 40th Street, New York, NY by Oxford University Press American Branch, 35 West 32nd Street, New York, 1918, 72. 34. Count Ferri-Pisani, “A Talk with the King of Greece. Also One with Former Premier Venizelos. Two Suppressed Interviews,” The New York Times, October 29, 1916. 35. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 323. 36. From the memoirs of Kuşçubaşı Eşref, one of the key members of the “Special Organization” (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa) that was responsible for cleansing Anatolia of its non-Muslim population. Quoted in Celal Bayar, Ben de Yazdım, Vol. 5 (Istanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1967), 1578. See Taner Akçam, “The Greek Deportations and Massacres of 1913–1914: A Trial Run for the Armenian Genocide,” in The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1913, ed. George N. Shirinian (Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, 2012), 69, note 2. 37. Republic of Turkey, (BOA.DAHİLİYE ŞİFRE KALEMİ Nu:46/78) Babiali [1] Ministry of the Interior, Office of the Directorate of Public Security, General ........ Private: Number: 104. Ottoman archives. Research by Dr. Racho Donef. 38. Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (New York: The Penguin Press, 2006), 180. 39. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 324. It should be noted that Greeks had begun being drafted into Ottoman labor battalions before the start of the war. 40. Harry Psomiades, The Phantom Republic of Pontos and the Megali Catastrophe (Melbourne: The Hellenic Studies Forum Inc. of Australia, 1992). 41. David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006), 81.

320 | Thea Halo 42. Guenter Lewy, “Revisiting the Armenian Genocide,” Middle East Quarterly 12, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 3–12. Quoted in Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Armenian Genocide and the Pitfalls of a ‘Balanced’ Analysis: A Response to Ronald Grigor Suny,” Armenian Forum (Summer 1998): 89; Taner Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord: Die Istanbuler Prozesse und die türkische Nationalbewegung (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1996), 204. 43. “The Greeks were Parboiled and then Sent on Death Marches! Turkish Bath Weapon,” The Stevens Point Journal, September 11, 1919. 44. Mr. Zalocostas, the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs, dated March 28, 1917 (Ministerial Archives, No. 2338). Also see D.J., Turkey and Greeks. Record of Persecution. Complicity of Germany, January 26, 1917. News article found in and addressing documentation from the archives of the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 45. Akçam, A Shameful Act, 274, 340–41. 46. Ibid., 340–41; see also 191–92. Topal Osman has been described as a “sadistic ethnic cleanser of Armenians and Greeks.” Robert Shenk, America’s Black Sea Fleet: The US Navy amidst War and Revolution, 1919–1921 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2012), 50–51. 47. “Persecution of Greeks by Turks. An Englishman’s Account from the Aegean,” Manchester Guardian, July 2, 1914. 48. “Germans Made the Turk More Efficient in His Murders,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 1, 1918, 5. 49. “10,000 Armenians Fell in Turkish Massacre: Ottoman Retreat from the Caucasus Marked by Slaughter and Plunder,” The New York Times, December 8, 1918. 50. George Horton, The Blight of Asia, Chapter X, The Greek landing at Smyrna (May, 1919). 51. Thea Halo, Not Even My Name (New York: Picador USA, 2001). 52. Major Forrest D. Yowell and Dr Mark H. Ward, Treatment of the Christians by Turks, Report to American Consul at Aleppo, Syria, Jesse B. Jackson, April 5, 1922, 4. Department of State, Division of Near Eastern Affairs, No. 784, filed July 14, 1922. The Near East Relief (N.E.R.) was an American charity that was formed in response to Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr.’s requests for the administration of humanitarian aid to Turkey’s diminishing minority groups. 53. Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 100. 54. Ibid., 85. 55. No 1 al rapporto N. 12374/921 del 9.11.1921. Comite De Defense Nationale. A Son Excellence, Monsieur le Haut Commmissaire de Sa Majesté. Le Roi d’Italie. Cited in Fotiadis, The Genocide of the Pontus Greeks by the Turks, Vol. 12, 429. 56. Ibid. Robert College is an American college, middle and high school established in Constantinople in 1863. It still operates in Istanbul today. 57. Albert Mackenzie, “Crimes of Turkish Misrule,” Cited in Current History, A Monthly Magazine of the New York Times, October 1922. Mackenzie was connected with relief work in Turkey. He refuted Chester’s report, and also addressed the slaughter of Greeks. 58. Thomas A. Bryson, “Admiral Mark L. Bristol, an Open-Door Diplomat in Turkey,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 5, no. 4 (September 1974), 450. 59. Edward Hale Bierstadt, The Great Betrayal: A Survey of the Near East Problem (New York: Robert M. McBride and Company, 1924), 145; reprinted by the Pontian Greek Society of Chicago, 2008. 60. Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, Smyrna 1922; Constantine G. Hatzidimitriou, American Accounts Documenting the Destruction of Smyrna by the Kemalist Turkish Forces, September 1922 (New York: Aristide Caratzas, 2005); Maria Iliou, Writer/Director, Smyrna: The Destruction of a Cosmopolitan City 1900–1922 [documentary, 2012]; Bierstadt, The Great Betrayal. 61. Bierstadt, The Great Betrayal, 223. 62. F.O. 371/7877, X/P 9206. 16.5.1922, Cited in Fotiadis, The Genocide of the Pontus Greeks by the Turks, Vol. 13, 307.

The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks, 1913–23 | 321 63. Bierstadt, The Great Betrayal, 248–49. 64. Horton, The Blight of Asia, Ch. 3, “First Step in Young Turks’ Program (1909-1911),” 16. 65. Toynbee, Turkey-A Past and a Future, 39. 66. Martin Niepage, The Horrors of Aleppo Seen by a German Eyewitness. (London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., 1917), 20. Dr Niepage resigned his appointment at the school as a protest against the Armenian atrocities in 1915. 67. George Horton, Report on Turkey, USA Consular Documents (Athens: The Journalists’ Union of the Athens Daily Newspapers, 1985), 17. 68. Toynbee, Turkey-A Past and a Future, 19. 69. Ibid., 17–18. 70. Arnold Joseph Toynbee, Armenian Atrocities. The Murder of a Nation. Excerpts from the Speech Delivered by Lord Bryce in the House of Lords (London, New York, and Toronto: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915), 7–8.

Bibliography “10,000 Armenians Fell in Turkish Massacre: Ottoman Retreat from the Caucasus Marked by Slaughter and Plunder.” The New York Times, December 8, 1918. “Fact Sheet: Armenian Genocide.” Knights of Vartan Armenian Research Center, The University of Michigan-Dearborn. Retrieved from http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/facts/genocide.html. “Germans Made the Turk More Efficient in His Murders.” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 1, 1918, 5. The Greek White Book. Supplemental Documents 1913–1917. No. 1. Issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Greek Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1919. “The Greeks were Parboiled and then Sent on Death Marches! Turkish Bath Weapon.” The Stevens Point Journal, September 11, 1919. The New York Times Current History: The European War. New York: The New York Times, 1919. “Persecution of Greeks by Turks. An Englishman’s Account from the Aegean.” Manchester Guardian, July 2, 1914. Persecutions of the Greeks in Turkey since the Beginning of the European War. Translated from official Greek documents by Carroll N. Brown, Ph.D. and Theodore P. Ion, D.C.L. Originally published for the American-Hellenic Society, 105 West 40th Street, New York, NY by Oxford University Press American Branch, 35 West 32nd Street, New York, 1918. Akçam, Taner. Armenien und der Völkermord: Die Istanbuler Prozesse und die türkische Nationalbewegung. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1996. ———. “The Greek Deportations and Massacres of 1913–1914: A Trial Run for the Armenian Genocide.” In The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923, edited by George N. Shirinian, 69–88. Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012. ———. A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006. ———. The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. Bayar, Celal. Ben de Yazdım. Vol. 5. Istanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1967. Bierstadt, Edward Hale. The Great Betrayal: A Survey of the Near East Problem. New York: Robert M. McBride and Company, 1924; reprinted by the Pontian Greek Society of Chicago, 2008. Bryson, Thomas A. “Admiral Mark L. Bristol, an Open-Door Diplomat in Turkey.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 5, no. 4 (September 1974): 450–67. Dadrian, Vahakn N. “The Armenian Genocide and the Pitfalls of a ‘Balanced’ Analysis: A Response to Ronald Grigor Suny.” Armenian Forum (Summer 1998): 73–130. Ferguson, Niall. The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.

322 | Thea Halo Ferri-Pisani, Count. “A Talk with the King of Greece. Also One with Former Premier Venizelos. Two Suppressed Interviews.” The New York Times, October 29, 1916. Fotiadis, Constantinos Emm. The Genocide of the Pontus Greeks by the Turks. Vol. 12. Thessaloniki: Herodotus, 2004. Gaunt, David. Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006. Halo, Thea. Not Even My Name. New York: Picador USA, 2001. Hatzidimitriou, Constantine G. American Accounts Documenting the Destruction of Smyrna by the Kemalist Turkish Forces, September 1922. New York: Aristide Caratzas, 2005. Horton, George. The Blight of Asia, an Account of the Systematic Extermination of Christian Populations by Mohammedans and of the Culpability of Certain Great Powers, with the True Story of the Burning of Smyrna. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1926. ———. Recollections Grave and Gay: The Story of a Mediterranean Consul. Indianapolis, IN: The BobbsMerrill Company, 1926; republished Athens: Hellenic Electronic Center, 2007. ———. Report on Turkey, USA Consular Documents. Athens: The Journalists’ Union of the Athens Daily Newspapers, 1985. Housepian Dobkin, Marjorie. Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City. London: Faber and Faber, 1972. Kaiser, Hilmar. Imperialism, Racism, and Development Theories. The Construction of a Dominant Paradigm on Ottoman Armenians. Ann Arbor, MI: Gomidas Institute, 1997. Kuper, Leo. “The Turkish Genocide of Armenians, 1915–1917.” In The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 43–59. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1986. Lewy, Guenter. “Revisiting the Armenian Genocide.” Middle East Quarterly 12, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 3–12. Melson, Robert. “Provocation and Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry into the Armenian Genocide of 1915.” In The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 61–84. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1987. ———. Revolution and Genocide. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Niepage, Martin. The Horrors of Aleppo Seen by a German Eyewitness. London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., 1917. Kontogiorgi, Elisabeth. “Forced Migration, Repatriation, Exodus: The Case of Ganos-Chora and Myriophyto-Peristaris Orthodox Communities in Eastern Thrace.” Balkan Studies 35, no. 1 (1995): 15–45. Mackenzie, Albert. “Crimes of Turkish Misrule.” Current History, A Monthly Magazine of the New York Times (October 1922). Mazower, Mark. Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430–1950. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. Morgenthau, Henry Sr. Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1918. Psomiades, Harry. The Phantom Republic of Pontos and the Megali Catastrophe. Melbourne: The Hellenic Studies Forum Inc. of Australia, 1992. Shenk, Robert. America’s Black Sea Fleet: The US Navy amidst War and Revolution, 1919–1921. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2012. Tekin Alp [Tekinalp, Musin]. The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal. Constantinople: Admiralty War Staff, Intelligence Division, 1917. Toynbee, Arnold Joseph. Armenian Atrocities. The Murder of a Nation. Excerpts from the Speech Delivered by Lord Bryce in the House of Lords. London, New York, and Toronto: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915. ———. Turkey-A Past and a Future. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1917. Vahide, Şükran, and Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabiʻ, Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005.

Archives Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives. Athens, Greece.

CHAPTER TWELVE “REDEEMING THE UNREDEEMED” The Anglo-Hellenic League’s Campaign for the Greeks in Asia Minor Georgia Kouta

O Ionian land, it is you they still love, it is you their souls still remember. —Ionian Song, Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)

Introduction This chapter walks down a rather transnational road; from the Greeks in London, to the Greeks in Anatolia, it aspires to map the interaction between nationalism and violence, between propaganda and influence, and offers a conceptualization of events of 1912–14 within the realm of ideology. These events, including the commercial boycotts, intimidating measures, forcible deportations en masse, and the subsequent persecutions of the Greek Orthodox population of the coastal-urban centers of the Ottoman Empire, serve as an invitation to revisit a complex historical period riddled with violent ethnic tensions.

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During the first two years of its existence, the Anglo-Hellenic League recorded these events and accumulated information regarding the condition of the refugees, the deportations, the violent incidents, and the persecutions by both English and Greeks living in Asia Minor. The eyewitness reports and letters received by the League were promptly published in its pamphlets. But the League’s role was hardly the mere reproduction of the incidents that had occurred. It developed, moreover, a vehement discourse regarding the treatment of refugees, the Greek national claims, and the Young Turks’ nationalism, which served to advance an influential propaganda in favor of the Greek cause of the Megali Idea (Great Idea). Hence, in this chapter, I will examine the discourse developed by the League in pamphlets, newspapers, and propaganda writings with a view to offering a theoretical analysis and reconceptualization of the historical period. The particular discourse has escaped persistent and analytical examination by modern historiography. Accordingly, the role of the League as an organ of the Greek Diaspora, fostering the ideas of the Greek irredentist vision of Megali Idea, has never before been recorded to such an extent. The purpose of the study, therefore, is not a restatement of the persecutions and the deportations; neither does it aspire to enhance the “national self ” through a rediscovery or an invention of history.1 It is hoped that the approach adopted will transcend the narrative essence that characterizes much of the writing on the subject and offer a critical understanding of an aspect of modern Greek history that still remains academically understudied. Hence, what I rather aim at is to contribute to the conceptualization of this propaganda League as a vehement advocator of Greek territorial claims and an ardent supporter of the Venizelist irredentist vision. Venizelos envisaged a “Greater Greece” of the “two continents and five seas,” a modern analogue of the Byzantine Empire, in contrast to the royalist slogan of the “small but honorable Greece.”2 In this respect, and in order to avoid generalizations and abstractions that tend to surface when examining national historical events as such, I consider it mandatory to contextualize the arguments by subsuming them in the general historical context and, in addition, by providing the ideological underpinnings that both fueled the actions of our historical agents and also negatively shaped their national perceptions regarding the “other.” It is our understanding that events, and especially national events with a considerable impact on the formation of national history, should be perceived and understood within their synchronicity. That entails a conceptualization inextricable from their broader historical context and their contemporary conjunctures, or, in the wording of Frantz Fanon, “every human problem must be considered from the standpoint of time.”3 Such an approach acknowledges the event in its historical rather than its national time, and thus it respects both micro- and macro-history.4 Also, because the phenomena under examination are inscribed on temporal, geographical, and ideological horizons, it is expected that there exists a certain fluidity of meaning regarding the terminology employed which cannot be defined a priori, exactly because the historical process is a dynamic one, with no definite and imper-

“Redeeming the Unredeemed” | 325

meable margins. Thus, the use of the term “identity” here is employed in its anthropological sense and goes beyond self-consciousness to denote also social performance and self-identification within a group, namely the commercial group of Greek Ottoman citizens occupying mainly the coastal urban centers of the Ottoman Empire. I am in full agreement with Kechriotis’ understanding of the term, which is neither “static” nor “frozen in time,” while this kind of conceptualization helps to reveal the individual’s “perception of the self and the society around him/her.”5 The analysis will expand on two levels; first there will be a presentation of the historical context and the ideological underpinnings that shaped the discourse of the historical protagonists, and then I will present the deportations and persecutions of Anatolian Greeks as they have been recorded in the writings of the Anglo-Hellenic League. My main concern, however, is to understand the interpretation and representation of these events in the realm of ideology.

Political Ideologies and Their Agents In 1913, pride was the general feeling that permeated Greek national sentiment, stemming from the victory over the Bulgarian threat which, until the Balkan Wars, constituted in the Greek mindset the threat of the “other.” The Bulgarians had “won with their sword” this position against the Greeks and had represented the main rival to Greek monopoly in the Balkans since the second half of the nineteenth century.6 In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, Greece not only doubled her territory, but was also ready to “enter a new age of transitions with pragmatic and not rhetorical—as in the past—trust in her potentials.”7 However, for a considerable number of Greeks living in Anatolia, specifically the wealthy bourgeoisie of the urban centers, 1913 signified the beginning of a dramatic countdown. If 1913 constituted for the mainland a milestone to be celebrated, for a large number of Greeks residing in Asia Minor it marked the beginning of the Reign of Terror.8

Greek Nationalism and the Megali Idea The Greek victory in the Balkan Wars signified a series of political developments which, in pragmatic terms, revived the national program regarding Greek expansionism. Greece’s new Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, to whom the domestic and foreign press attributed the success of the wars, was an ardent supporter of the Megali Idea, a rather abstract term coined by Ioannis Kolettis in 1844, but which was gradually vested with concrete meaning in the following years.9 This period, therefore, was characterized by a strong belief that, firstly, the victories of the Balkan Wars were primarily attributed to the political ingenuity of Venizelos and, secondly, that they signified the beginning of the realization of the political program to incorporate irredentist Hellenism into the Greek state. The political idea of a Greater Greece had been dynamically changing and adapting over the course of the nineteenth century according to the abilities and priorities

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of the Greek government. Llewellyn-Smith identifies the different strands in the conceptualization of the Megali Idea, between the “romantic dream of a revival of the Byzantine-Greek Empire centred on Constantinople,” which essentially dominated the political ideology of nineteenth-century Greece, and the idea of a “modern nation state, as the progressive redemption of the Greek irridenta by their incorporation in the Greek kingdom,” which prevailed in the twentieth century.10 Although we are quite dubious regarding the impermeability of any firm categorizations, we nonetheless agree that definitive lines can be drawn between the first, which, because of its inherent idealism, was connected with a rather cultural and economic predominance over the Ottoman Empire, and the latter, which entailed an open and direct clash with the empire. Understandings of the Megali Idea were mainly moving in an active irredentist direction during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, also due to the fact that a vast majority of Greek subjects were residing outside the official national frontiers. Venturas underlines the trans-territorial character of the Great Idea as it was produced by the Greek state to comprise three sub-groups: “those residing within the borders of the Independent state, the ‘irredeemed Greeks’ living in the Ottoman Empire and those of the diaspora.”11 English statistics show that on the eve of World War I, there were 5,100,000 subjects living in Greece (including the old and new territories after the Balkan Wars) and 4,500,000 Greeks of the Diaspora residing in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Oceania etc., of which 2,500,000 were living in Asia Minor and the Black Sea region.12 However, these figures provided by the Naval Intelligence Division of the British Admiralty do not agree with the Ottoman census for the year 1914, which provides a completely different picture. Greeks in the Ottoman state amounted to 1,729,738, according to the population registers quoted by Karpat.13 In any case, the beginning of the twentieth century finds the Greek population focused mainly in the coastal-urban centers of the Ottoman Empire. This had further contributed to the adoption of a more dynamic strategy by the Venizelist government regarding the territorial claims as dictated by the dogma of Irredentism.14 Venizelos, after direct collision with King Constantine, abandoned the conciliatory policies and supported Greece’s alliance with the Entente as a means towards the annexation of the western Asia Minor territories. His interests, however, were not merely political; Papadopoulos concludes that in this way he would “secure the already invested capital in those particular areas and he would attract new from the Greek communities abroad.”15 Accordingly, and in order to appeal to a homogenous and united entity, official Greek policies had to utilize a notion that could encompass Greek subjects regardless of the geographical dispersion. To provide a national topos, the notion of “national consciousness” was employed because of its flexibility in transcending the geographical limits of the Greek state and identifying as a homeland not only the territories forming the Hellenic state but also the lands in the Ottoman Empire known as the Greek East.16 The disambiguation of this term is crucial for our understanding of the

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context of Greek Irredentist policies during the tumultuous decade of 1912–22. In 1919, in a memorandum dealing with the rights of Greece, Venizelos affirmed that “the democratic conceptions of the Allied and Associated Powers cannot admit of any other indicator of nationality than that of national consciousness.”17 Again, during the same year, in a memorandum submitted to the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference in Versailles, he clarified: Religion, race, language cannot be considered as certain indicators of nationality. The sole unmistakable criterion is ethnic consciousness, that is to say the expressed wish of people as they determine their fate and decide to what national family they wish to belong.18 Therefore, the Megali Idea came to be identified within the context of an ethnic nationalism based on the Herodotian characteristics of ὅμαιμον—homaimon, “of the same blood,” ὁμόγλωσσον—homoglosson, “speaking the same language,” and ὁμότροπον—homotropon, “of the same habits or life.”19 Consequently, throughout the period under examination, this idea, along with its ideological offspring, Irredentism, became the articulating conviction of the Greek liberal state.

Nationalism of the Young Turks By 1908, the growing nationalism of the Young Turks (Jön Türkler) had been radicalized in the Committee of Union and Progress (Ittihad ve Terraki Cemiyeti; CUP) and represented the dominant political force in the country, according to Kamouzis, “from the first Balkan war to the signing of the armistice of Mudros in 1918.”20 As a consequence of the Balkan Wars, the Ottoman Empire lost about 80% of its European territory and 4.2 million inhabitants.21 The consequent mass inflow of Muslim refugees from the Balkan territories represented a solid body of Ottoman citizens that assisted in the constitution of an ethnic Turkish core, thus fulfilling the nation-building aspirations of the CUP for a “Turkey for the Turks,”22 as 85% of the empire was now Muslim.23 The “Turkification” of the territories they settled is inextricably linked with their understanding that their survival depended on the survival of their state.24 In this line of reasoning, they became more susceptible to radicalization under the aegis of the CUP.25 The rise of the CUP and the Young Turk movement as “nuclei of resistance against the political regime” of Sultan Abdul Hamid II breathed new air into the political organization of the modern Turkish state.26 They supported the abolition of religion as a medium towards modernization and instead they placed emphasis on the ethnic (national) character of the state. In Anderson’s words, the Young Turks “were positivists whose view of matters sacred was thoroughly instrumental.”27 The fact that some of the CUP leaders were “explicitly atheistic” and aspired to an “anti-religious” positivism, while embracing the principles of Social Darwinism, may have provided the “ideological justification” for the persecution of Christians.28

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As a consequence, the millet system, which constituted a religious categorization of the minorities living in the empire, began to experience modernization under the regime of the Unionist Officers in 1908. The ultimate goal was the “homogenisation of the Ottoman society through the political and secularizing authorities” and constituted the most important element of “rupture between the old and the new regime.”29 This new regime sought to legitimize its authority via the establishment of a parliamentary system which “presupposed the definite overthrow of the traditional millet system.”30 Consequently, the privileges of the religious leaders were gradually abolished, turning the millet from a religious into an ethnic community that mirrored efforts of transit from a multi-religious empire to a multi-ethnic state by the end of the Tanzimat period.31 In the ethnic segmentation of Ottoman society, we should seek the consequences of the empire’s gradual process of nationalization, which is connected with the general demand of the time for modernization, and of which the exclusive agent should be the state. In Gellner’s perspective, nationalism presupposes that “the rulers should belong to the same ethnic (that is, national) group as the ruled” and therefore “nation and political power should be congruent.”32 Along the same line, a ruler who belongs to a different national group is deemed illegitimate.33 Hence, it became vital that the program of modernization should be advanced only by and through the state, and this process entailed a Turkish rather than an Ottoman message. The CUP chose to vest its ideological appeal with the “full dress of a modern nationalism.” On the one hand, it proclaimed a civic nationalism, in line with the symbolic vocabulary of the time: “liberty, equality, fraternity and justice,” providing a common citizenship shared by all the people in the empire. On the other hand, it sought to secure the integrity of the empire at any cost, by preparing a “more confessional or ethnic nationalism restricted to Muslims or Turks.”34 Ziya Gökalp, the most significant ideologue of this new regime and member of the CUP, vociferously designated in his poem “Turan” (1911) the modern interpretations of Turkish nationalism: The country of the Turks is not Turkey, nor yet Turkestan / Their country is abroad and everlasting land—Turan!35 Gökalp, also known as the father of Turkish sociology, had a seminal role in the ideological consolidation of the CUP. As a theoretician of the Young Turk revolution, his writings articulate the ideology of pan-Turkism, which sought to fashion a new national identity, consolidated by the Turkish state elites. He proposed the creation of a “new mode of civilization,” a “New Life” that would be tailored to the Ottoman soul, incorporating new “economic, domestic, aesthetic, philosophic, moral, legal and political values.”36 This social revolution, which would follow the political, as Gökalp understood it, is what he called movement of the “New Life” in order to reclaim the place in the economic and social spheres where the non-Muslims held a more favorable position. Gökalp’s social and political influences were primarily French. In 1907, a group of exiles in Paris merged with the Ottoman Freedom Society (Osmanlı Hürriyet Cemiyeti), established in Salonica in 1906, providing the movement with a new impetus.37

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Skopetea eloquently traces the French ideological influence on the Young Turk movement inter alia via positivism, and freemasonry. The latter represent during this period the “temporary repositories of the messages of French Revolution.”38 His “social ideal” as it was molded through his French and European intellectual interaction,39 can be summed up in a single sentence: “We are of the Turkish nation (millet) of the Islamic religious community (ummet) of western civilization (medeniyet).”40 The modern Turkish state would no longer be Eastern, which was equated with the traditional, but would be modeled on Western examples, based on the modernization and centralization of the state. For such an attempt, any nationality apart from the Turkish one posed, according to the CUP ideology, a threat to the purity of the nation and imperiled the establishment of a strong modern state. In the context of this reasoning, “minorities were seen as possible obstacles, jeopardizing visions of national homogeneity.”41 Essentially, the foundations of Turkish nationalism and the policies of the Young Turks were based on the conviction that the establishment of a powerful state (devlet) would occur only via “Turkification and westernization” and that the political power should emanate from a national bourgeois class that would undertake the role of national progress. The state would produce a national bourgeois class (commercial, industrial, financial), which would become “the agent of national awakening.”42 The political program of the Young Turks, therefore, as expressed by the party of Union and Progress, was that the Turkish bourgeois class would be the vehicle for the expression of a political nationalism based on the ideals of “statism,” “solidarity,” and “national unity,” ideals that could only be manifested by one national class, the Turkish bourgeoisie.43 Accordingly, we should identify most of the Young Turk policies as ascribing to and promoting a context of economic nationalism that places the “state into focus,” and in the event of clashing or competing nationalisms, it “may also take more severe forms: population exchanges, expulsion of minorities.”44 Apart from the ideological and theoretical underpinnings that provided the context of the proliferation of these policies, we should not disregard the existence within the CUP of a group of “under-theorized” activists, whose “main ideological precept was their commitment to the preservation of the Ottoman state.”45 “The Homeland in Danger” (Vatan Tehlikede) (1895) was the first manifesto of the CUP that orchestrated a state of terror, claiming the Turkish nation was imperiled by “alien” national elements.46 In this logic, the government had to replace “the non-Muslim bourgeoisie, which completely dominated the modern industrial, financial and commercial sectors of the economy, with a ‘national’, that is to say: Muslim, bourgeoisie of their own,”47 with an ultimate goal of the creation of a uniform state of Turkish Muslims. This conceptualization understood minorities as a threat that undermined the state’s authority and “exclusion, marginalization, expulsion or even extermination have been the prevalent and preferred options” to protect the homogenous state.48 This “longing for congruence” and the policies aiming at “ethno-political purity” vis-à-vis the embrace of “crude social Darwinism” eventually led to

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attempts at “homogenizing entire populations,”49 and served both to “legitimize the power monopoly of ethnic Turks,” leading to homogenization and, at the same time, to centralize the state and prevent its disintegration.50

The International Setting In the international setting, Britain’s policies regarding the protection of the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire were reversed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when German infiltration in the Ottoman Empire completely altered British strategic orientations. “Pax Ottomanica” was gradually abandoned, and instead a new political dogma began to form around the dissolution of the empire, which entailed Greece representing the only guarantor of British interests among the “aspiring heirs” of the “Great Patient.”51 The 1908 Young Turk revolution gave Britain the opportunity to further its economic interests in the empire and to replace “German commercial hegemony at Constantinople with an Anglo-French hegemony.”52 In Llewellyn-Smith’s view, Lloyd George’s support of Greece at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 “was based on a sense that Greece was the coming power in the Eastern Mediterranean, a virile, vigorous and expanding nation, opposed to a feeble moribund and untrustworthy Turkey.”53 However, the exegesis would remain simplistic if we did not take into account the West’s growing fear of pan-Islamism and the plausible possibility that Germany would be further enhanced in the wealthy soil of the Ottoman Empire. In 1910, when Venizelos’s liberal government took charge, British economic and political interests appeared to be in agreement with the official Greek policies of Irredentism for the realization of the Megali Idea.54 The Anglo-Hellenic League Peripheral developments also had as a point of departure the milestone of 1913, and were accordingly entangled with the state ideology of the Megali Idea. Our study has as an epicenter the discourse of the Anglo-Hellenic League, which was established in London during that year by English Philhellenes and Anglo-Greeks. The League aspired to “defend the honour of Greece,”55 and “to put the case for Greek policy, administration and national aspirations clearly and fairly.”56 Although at the beginning a “silent minority,” the London Greeks began to transform during the Balkan Wars into a league clearly linked with the charismatic leader Eleftherios Venizelos and with vehement liberal political discourse.57 Undoubtedly, their economic interests, which were satisfied through the consolidation of a liberal state, led them to form a “pressure group for the promotion of the irredentist interests of Greece.” In this way, the economic character of the London Greek bourgeoisie began for the first time to seriously relate its interests with the political program of the Megali Idea by advocating in a series of pamphlets and manifestos for the “Greek expansionism which followed the rise of Venizelos.”58 A vital methodological note concerns the social group under examination. The available archival material regarding the League restricts our research to a very con-

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fined social group, that of the London Greek bourgeoisie. Ship-owners, lawyers, entrepreneurs, merchants, diplomats, and academics synthesized the portrait of this community. Thus, the information that we draw upon for the social, economic, and political action of the dispersed Greeks organized in the League represented those belonging to the upper social strata. With its official foundation in 1913, the League published the Rules of the Anglo-Hellenic League, in which the aims and objectives were outlined. These were summarized in five points: 1. To defend the just claims and honor of Greece. 2. To remove existing prejudices and prevent future misunderstandings between the British and Hellenic races, as well as between the Hellenic and other races of South Eastern Europe. 3. To spread information concerning Greece and stimulate interest in Hellenic matters. 4. To improve the social, educational, commercial and political relations of the two countries. 5. To promote travel in Greece and secure improved facilities for it.59 The League conceived its role as being the one group to provide answers to those treating Greece with animosity in newspaper articles and various other published writings. They had assumed that an organized “society with a definite policy” provided with writing power was needed, which, “under the guidance of a strong committee,” would be able to propagate effectively and “defend the honour of Greece.”60 Two weeks later, the sister branch in Athens was established and formally acknowledged by the Greek government, with the provision that its officials could have “reasonable access to Ministers and Government Departments.”61 It provided accounts of the situation in the conflict zones of the Balkan front, Asia Minor, and Epirus, and reported back to the League in London. For better coordination, it was provisioned that a committee of the League would also form a branch in Corfu and another in Patras, “under the auspices of the Chamber of Commerce.”62 In 1918, under the new chairman, S. Delta,63 the branch proceeded with cordial “co-operation with the American-Hellenic Society founded in 1917.”64 In the same year the Thessaloniki branch was also founded under the name “British Hellenic League of Salonica,” with its object to “strengthen the social and intellectual relations between the two Nations.”65 Whereas the London League and its Athenian branch were particularly oriented towards the promotion of Greek territorial claims, it seems as though the Salonica branch had assumed a rather cultural role. Its primary contribution was to encourage commercial and educational cooperation between Greece and England and to familiarize Greeks with the English language by supporting English education in Greece. Besides its domestic branches, the League pursued an international outlook and sought to extend its cooperation with pro-Hellenic groups or societies in Britain and

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abroad. In France, it collaborated with the philhellenic society through the League’s correspondent and diplomat, M. Leon Maccas, who founded a monthly review, entitled Les Études Franco-Grècques, of which specimen copies and subscription forms were available for members of the League in its London offices.66 Crossing the Atlantic, it aspired to collaboration with the American-Hellenic Society, founded in November 1917. The League regularly received copies of the Society’s publications, especially regarding the Near Eastern Question. They were also particularly proactive regarding the refugee problem in 1918 and the Greek population in Asia Minor. In return, the American-Hellenic Society received copies of the League’s publications, which were then distributed to local libraries.67 The prevailing assumption was that the export of propaganda could influence allied governments to support more actively the Greek demands and even shape a more congruent public opinion. However, approximately a year after its establishment, in the annual meeting of 1915, the Anglo-Hellenic League decided to broaden its political agenda. “The main and pressing business of our newly formed League [is] to answer incessant attacks upon Greece and to put the case for Greek policy, administration and national aspirations clearly and fairly.”68 In this context, the League extended its role from an advocate of matters concerning purely foreign policy, like Irredentism or relations with neighboring countries, to include also a discourse on matters regarding internal policies and administration, such as the economy or education. This can probably be justified by the fact that because they were already vital economic players for Greece, they attempted to consolidate their presence in a “unified and relatively large internal market” by the establishment of an official political connection with the state.69 Indeed, Pollis underlines that “the rights which they claimed against the state and the freedoms they demanded were designed to further their interests as an economic class and to enable them to acquire political power.”70 Therefore, the League, as the political embodiment of bourgeois economic interests, supported Venizelos not on the basis of some metaphysical devotion to his charismatic personality, but rather because he represented more pragmatically their political and economic endeavors regarding a liberal and geographically expanded state. For his part, the new archigos (leader) incorporated in his political program a “more aggressive foreign policy,” which was “sensitive to the dreams of the masses as well as their material needs, and able, above all, to encompass the Great Idea.”71 Diasporic interests saw their representative in the figure of Greece’s new Prime Minister, and Venizelos aspired to diasporic assistance to consolidate his power and further his irredentist mission, which was in direct contradiction to the royalist slogan, “a small but honorable Greece.”72 I believe it was fundamental to provide the ideological sub-structure that finally shaped the political projects of both nationalisms in order to explain the events dealt with in the second part of this chapter, not just as a mere retaliation. Concepts of social engineering of a homogenous entity have played their part in the construction of an economically, politically, linguistically, and ethnically robust vision of the state.

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Projects of forming an ethnically homogenous nation-state were again not merely a Turkish aspiration. In his speech before the Greek Parliament on June 17, 1930, the Greek Prime Minister would admit that Greece shared and achieved a similar task.73 In 1914, when systematic Christian persecutions were already well advanced, the League began to focus its writings towards the Hellenism in Asia Minor and the expulsions, deportations, and massacres of the Greek population in Anatolia. The League also published letters and first-hand accounts from Greeks in Asia Minor whose existence was threatened and who were pleading with the League to “enlighten public opinion about the persecution of the Ottoman Greeks.”74 These pamphlets provide illustrative accounts of the conditions of the Christian minorities in Asia Minor and follow the growing Ottoman nationalism in the cities of Smyrna, Aivali, and Phocaea and in the Greek villages in western Anatolia (mainly in the province of Aydin), while they vividly demonstrate the gradual intensification of the discourse and the measures taken by the Ottoman government in preparation for the persecution of the Greek Orthodox minority. It is necessary to note, however, that the language used in these accounts and reports subscribes largely to a Western discourse, with particular political and cultural connotations, especially regarding national identity. For example, the unanimous use of the term “Hellenes” to identify an imagined collectivity is quite striking, whereas “Greek subjects” and “Greek Orthodox Ottoman subjects” are conspicuous by their absence. In another instance, “Christians” may refer to Greeks, or Greeks and Armenians, or every non-Muslim community. The sources, thus, should be read within this framework, where reception, recording, and conceptualization of the events, as well as choices in terminology, dominate the collective discourse largely in the absence of nuanced historical understanding.

The Reign of Terror. Letters and Accounts to the Anglo-Hellenic League Our anger is strengthening: revenge, revenge, revenge; there is no other word.75 The preconditions upon which the atrocities found a legitimizing command were an amalgam of the nationalist era, the ideology of pan-Turkism, and the growing influence of the Greek commercial class within the Ottoman Empire.76 Hobsbawm acknowledges that the Greeks in Anatolia formed part of an “international merchant and administrative class [that] also settled in colonies or minority communities throughout the Turkish Empire and beyond, and the language and higher ranks of the entire Orthodox Church, to which most Balkan peoples belonged, were Greek.”77 This fact was, per se, enough reason for the Young Turks to perceive the Greek minority as a threat to the existence of the envisioned modern state. The ideology of pan-Turkism had “infiltrated the various Turkish associations and journals of the period, which rapidly became the main platform on which the major

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conceptual and theoretical battles were fought.”78 However, these remained in the sphere of theory until the beginning of World War I, when they were followed by “serious political repercussions” and “put to practice by an influential group” within the avant-garde of the CUP.79 The ruling elite, which included, inter alii, Mahmut Celâl (Turkey’s third president), Talât Pasha, the party leader and Interior Minister, and the governor of Smyrna, Evranoszade Rahmi, began to realize the theoretical ruminations of Turkification. As Balkan refugees themselves, “who had lost their own homeland,” they strongly held to the belief that in order to claim their state back, they had to substitute the non-Muslim middle class within the empire with a solid Turkish one.80 Nationalism combined with the patriotism shared by the Muslim refugees provided the “ideological glue” and the “ideological underpinnings” for the homogenization project.81 The belief in “unlimited progress” in its totalitarian version, which promised a “new society and a new man,” constituted the “key legitimizing ideology of the new centralizing state.”82 The ideological construction of the new Turkish state cultivated a fertile ground for the implementation of theory, and it was not long before this was transformed into actions. Indeed, the homogenization policy was put into effect in 1914, when Mahmut Celâl, “the secretary of the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (which had established a one-party dictatorship after a coup d’état in January 1913) in Smyrna, was instructed by Talât Pasha to Turkify the Western seaboard of Asia Minor.”83 The first step towards the realization of the above project aimed to undermine the economic supremacy of non-Muslims, and particularly Greeks, in commercial centers like Constantinople and Smyrna.84 Via the Special Organization, anti-Greek boycotts were employed on a large scale, accompanied by violence and propaganda. In Kamouzis’s words, such measures aimed to create “favouritism towards Turkish merchants” with the ultimate goal of the Turkification of the economy.85 However, a commercial boycott was not the only means to accomplish total Greek financial destruction. According to a report compiled by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, other measures included requisitions and levies. Because of the economic power and wealth of the Greeks, Greek commercial activities were particularly resistant to the boycott. The Ottoman authorities had to employ other measures, such as confiscating fortunes and commodities, in order to more deeply challenge Greek economic authority.86 In economic terms, the Greek commercial bourgeoisie was identified as a comprador class, which occupied commercial and financier positions, particularly in the urban centers of Istanbul and western Anatolia.87 Bloxham maintains that a reason for the deportations and a repressive policy was also the fact that this class “cooperated with or at least did not oppose European economic penetration since it benefited from the trading privileges,” a result of the European capitulatory system.88 In its development, this policy led to a more radical attempt at homogenization, that of en masse deportations, persecutions, and massacres, an omen of the violent extinction of the non-Muslims that followed.

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Behind the economic motives, there was also a political project. The government was eager to substitute the non-Muslim middle class with a purely Muslim and Turkish one, remembering the “New Life” project of Gökalp. Beyond an economic threat, the non-Muslims also posed a national-political threat to the homogeneity of the new state. These methods of ill treatment led to the exclusion of the ethnic minority from the “nation,” based on the “concomitant and sudden allegation of the racial incompatibility.”89 Despite their formal citizenship status, these minorities were identified as “others” and were excluded from any formal participation in the Turkish nation because of their religious and ethnic identity.90 With an ultimate goal of cleansing of foreign elements in order to ascertain a purely Turkish national culture and economy, the CUP embarked on a path to consolidate the nation-building process, beginning with the areas of trade and language. In this context, we now proceed to present the primary accounts of victims in the coastal areas of Asia Minor, first regarding the commercial embargo, and in a second phase, the violent persecutions and deportations.

Letters from Greeks Dr Charalampides, a distinguished Greek physician residing in one of the villages in Asia Minor, contacted the League via Messrs. Craies & Stavridi, to report the “terrible tortures and unheard of sufferings” of Christians in the area. In his letter of May 30/June 12, 1914, he wrote that he thought it would be a good plan to “write you the details of what has been taking place, in order to afford you the material for writing and making known the atrocities committed by the Turks against the innocent and peaceful inhabitants of Asia Minor, the unmentionable orgies of the Young Turks, and the Uprooting of the Christian population from the Adramyttine Gulf.” 91 Charalampides, who was convinced that the orders were given from the center, was writing primarily with reference to the events that took place on May 21, when the CUP declared a boycott of Christian products and “twenty paid men of the very lowest class, armed with clubs in their hands” prevented Turks from entering Christian shops or even “salut[ing] a Christian.”92 In addition to this, rumors regarding the imminent persecution of inhabitants being driven out of their villages began to flood the towns of ‘Kemer, Karagiadz, Dikerli, Sansides, Kalagra, and Regi Kiosk.93 On the following day, the rumors were realized. The streets became empty and “ruffians armed with sticks were spreading the fear.” “Everyone was thinking of his approaching end,” and if one thought to defend himself, that would be considered “as rebellion and a general massacre of Christians would follow,” the Turkish herald had warned.94 The Greek doctor also made an extensive note on how the Christians were abused and humiliated in every instance during that night, and how anyone who tried to flee through the nearby harbor of Adramyttium was “attacked, stripped, dishonoured or killed by Bashibazouks.”95 He also added that Turks had taken advantage of the situation and stripped Christians of their belongings, plundered their houses, and stolen their money, while they forced

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them to sign acts of sale of their property. He described how the people who were forced to abandon their houses sought refuge in the “precincts of the Church, which in a few hours was filled with thousands of people … men, women, young girls and children, of every age and class, women with their hair down, some with only night attire, others carrying babies, children crying in their mothers’ arms or running naked behind.”96 Charalampides also described vividly his own personal experience when he was asked by a “well-known Turk” to sell him his shop and stock for a pitiful price, but which sale saved his family, as it was protected by the Turkish flag that was hoisted at once in front of his house.97 He ended his letter with a reminder that there is a “sacred duty to take the part of Hellenism, Christianity and civilization and … not rest from enlightening public opinion about the persecution of the Ottoman Greeks.”98 Charalampides was reported as one of the victims of a massacre in December that year, along with I. Procopiu and G. Mylonas, in Karaulani village.99 Among the letters the League received, there is one from Alexander Pallis, a classical scholar and Epirote in origin, who had joined the Ralli Bros firm in Liverpool in 1897. Pallis had been an eminent member of the Anglo-Hellenic League and in his words served as “secretary of a propaganda League” in 1918.100 At the time he was residing in Salonica and witnessed the unsettling situation of the refugees arriving from Asia Minor. He reported on how “there are hundreds lying about the quay. One thousand three hundred came yesterday from Troy, in Asia Minor, from where they were forcibly expelled on threats of death.” His writings coincide with Charalampides’ account regarding the way the refugees were forced to abandon their houses and flee: “They [the refugees] have the greatest difficulty in embarking, as the Turkish boatmen on the way to the steamers rob them and extract from them excessive fares.”101 Pallis, as well, asserted that the events were executed with the approval of the government. In addition, he reported that many of the Turkish refugees supposedly leaving Salonica and returning to Asia Minor, when asked, said “they had come from Servia” and were found outside the palace office “waiting for permits.”102 Indeed, of the 140,000 Muslim refugees who had fled the Balkans by April 1914, “only the 24,000 were from the newly conquered Greek territories,” while the vast majority came from areas under Serbian or Bulgarian authority to escape future maelstrom.103 The condition of the “real” Turkish refugees from the Bulgarian territories was dealt with by Eastern and Western Review, which maintained that it was the “only magazine published in the English language with philhellenic affiliations.”104 The magazine argued that the number of Turkish refugees who gathered in Thessaloniki by June 1914 had reached thirty-two thousand. The Greek authorities, represented by Chief Engineer Dallaportas, had undertaken relief work by providing the refugees with food and tent shelter. Infirmaries were also set up that could treat smallpox patients. The supplies for these “were given by H.M., the Queen,” who had also distributed among the refugees “thousands of blankets contributed to her disposal by the Greek colony of London.”105 Mazower affirms that “the Greek government fed

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many, and the city’s Muslim Committee looked after the rest, and organized their transportation: as under the Ottomans, care of refugees was still regarded as primarily a communal matter.”106 The language that was employed by the magazine, and the way in which the argument was structured, obviously aimed to highlight the distinction between the treatments of the refugees by the respective governments. It maintained that the ill treatment of the Asia Minor and Thracian Greek refugees who were arriving in Salonica in a “pitiful state,” and their “story of the atrocities which the Turks committed in Thrace in order to force them into exile,” would make one’s hair “stand on end.”107 Ekklēsiastikē Alētheia, the periodical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, informs us that for the relief of the refugees in 1914, the Russian government had granted 10,000 roubles, the Greek government 50,000 francs,108 and the American Philanthropic Society in Turkey had donated 15,000 pounds for care of the persecuted Greeks.109 It also quoted the statement of one of the Muslim refugees residing in the area where the tents were set up, who stated to the newspaper reporter that he “thanked God for bringing them other Greeks, who had saved them from hunger and death.”110

Letters from Englishmen In addition, the League received various reports from English subjects (who are not named) residing in the Ottoman Empire and who provided their own account of how they witnessed the events. A pamphlet in 1914 published the letter of an Englishman living in Smyrna, stating, “Things are looking, politically, as black as thunder. Refugee Turks from Macedonia have been arriving in thousands and on the plea that they were ousted by Greeks, they are doing so here. Worse still, they are massacring … There is no doubt it has been instigated by the Government.”111 Muslim refugees who fled the Balkan Peninsula and settled in Anatolia were subsequently organized into irregular chetté bands, “wreaking their revenge on the Christian peasants,” which had created a terrifying atmosphere in the villages around the coast.112 However, another letter by an Englishman in one of the Aegean islands confirms that “the Mohajirs [Turkish emigrants from Europe] who were brought to Chesmè to expropriate the Christians were not from Macedonia, but nearly all Albanians of the Cheg tribe, from Servian territory.” He, too, affirms that the Turkish government, although it “professes ignorance,” was fully aware of this “organized plot of the Committee for getting rid of the Christian population along the Anatolian coast.”113 The League reported that by 1914, ninety thousand refugees arrived from the Anatolian coast in Mytilene and seventy thousand in Chios,114 while Pallis in his pamphlet on the exchange of populations speaks about seventy thousand refugees from Asia Minor to the adjacent islands.115 As L. Calvocoressi reported to the League from Chios, “since a couple of days large numbers of Christian inhabitants from the opposite coast of Asia Minor chiefly from the large village of Kato Panagia, near Tchesmè, are crossing over to our island to take refuge, in a pitiable condition.”116

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Similar are the observations of the famous British historian Arnold Toynbee, in his Western Question published in 1922: Entire Greek communities were driven from their homes by terrorism, their houses and land and often their movable property were seized, and individuals were killed in the process … The procedure bore evidence of being systematic. The terror attacked one district after another, and was carried on by “chetté” bands, enrolled from the Rumili refugees as well as from local populations and nominally attached as reinforcements to the regular Ottoman gendarmerie … Turkish “political” chettés made their début in 1914 on the Western littoral … they carried out the designs of the Union and Progress Government against the Armenians…117 Along with the various accounts received by the League, the London Committee of Unredeemed Greeks was also instrumental in publishing accounts and reporting on the incidents. In 1914, a pamphlet entitled Anti-Hellenic Prosecutions in Turkey with Pictures of the Atrocities Committed against the Greeks in Turkey during the Early Months of 1914 maintained that “the purpose inspiring the anti-Hellenic persecutions in Turkey has been the utter annihilation of the Greek natives of the soil.”118 Accordingly, the Anglo-Hellenic League in its pamphlet No. 22 attempted to reconstruct more boldly the argument that the current events were part of a greater preconceived scheme to exterminate the Greeks from Asia Minor. In reality, the growing fear prevailing among Christians, as a result of the boycott in earlier years (1909–10), attacks, slaughters, and the flamboyant discourse of the CUP, “made any event look like an organized massacre” and a “planned onslaught against the Christians.”119 The pamphlet, which dealt with the matter of “driving out the Greek population pitilessly and in masses,” was edited by the chairman of the League and director of the London School of Economics (LSE), William Pember Reeves.120 It included accounts from The Anatolia, the organ of the Committee of Union and Progress at Smyrna, and an extract from the Ekklēsiastikē Alētheia, printed in Le Messager d’Athènes on March 26, 1914. Its objective was “to show from events which began before the war, and are still occurring, that the crushing of Hellenism in Asia Minor is the policy which Turkey has had in hand ever since the Balkan War.”121 For this reason, Reeves supported the idea that Turks “represent everywhere government by force, as opposed to law.”122 Drawing on the words of Gladstone, written in 1876, Reeves reproduced and enhanced the Western mindset regarding Turkish oppression: “Hence, then grew up what has seldom been seen in the history of the world, a kind of tolerance in the midst of cruelty, tyranny and rapine. Much of Christian life was contemptuously let alone.”123 He maintained also that these expulsions had been “the policy of the Young Turks, under Dr. Nazım, to expel from Ottoman soil this Hellenic population” for reasons that include the intensification of the national feeling within the Ottoman Empire

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and “to satisfy the impulse of revenge … by persecuting helpless individuals.”124 Nazım, according to Akçam, is also to be held accountable for the Armenian deportations and killings.125 Scholars like Mazower and Üngör have underlined the origins of the revengeful character of Muslim refugees and the way in which victims become perpetrators, based on the report provided by the British consul in Salonica. They arrive in Turkey with the memory of their slaughtered friends and relations fresh in their minds, they remember their own sufferings and the persecutions of which they have been victims, and finding themselves without means or resources, encouraged to some extent by their own government, they see no wrong in falling on the Greek Christians of Turkey and meting out to them the same treatment that they themselves have received from the Greek Christians of Macedonia.126 The will to avenge expulsion from the Balkans is also eloquently quoted by Perry Anderson in his article on Kemalism, where he quotes from Enver’s letter to his wife: “Our anger is strengthening: revenge, revenge, revenge; there is no other word.” In another instance, he provides an extract from Enver’s speech: How could a person forget the plains, the meadows, watered with the blood of our forefathers; abandon those places where Turkish raiders had hidden their steeds for a full four hundred years, with our mosques, our tombs, our dervish retreats, our bridges and our castles, to leave them to our slaves, to be driven out of Rumelia to Anatolia? This was beyond a person’s endurance. I am prepared gladly to sacrifice the remaining years of my life to take revenge on the Bulgarians, the Greeks and the Montenegrins.127 However, revenge was a two-way street. The unofficial proposal by Galip Kemali, the Turkish ambassador to Athens, for “an exchange of the rural Greek population of the Izmir province for the Muslims in Macedonia,” was just ratifying what had already started as a reaction to the influx of Muslim refugees from the Balkans.128 Greeks of Anatolia, facing “hostile mob behaviour and a more nationalistic state bureaucracy,” began to migrate to the adjacent Aegean islands.129 In the words of the British historian Toynbee, “The arrival of the Rumelian refugees from the end of 1912 onwards produced an unexampled tension of feeling in Anatolia and a desire for revenge; and so the Balkan War had two harvests of victims: first, the Rumeli Turks on the one side, and then the Anatolian Greeks on the other.”130 The pamphlet nevertheless had another objective, and that was to demonstrate explicitly the gradual intensification of the persecution. Reeves, apart from the drive to “satisfy the impulse of revenge,” identified as another motive of the Young Turks the problem of the accommodation of the incoming Muslim refugees in the territo-

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ries already inhabited by Greek Ottomans. In his description of the two streams of refugees, the Muslim and the Christian, he illuminates the contradictions that reveal each group’s objective. In the case of Greek refugees, Reeves maintained that leaving the territories of Thrace and Asia Minor, the mob was mainly composed “of ruined, half starved, and sometimes beaten and wounded men and women,” who had been forced to leave their homes. In contrast, in the case of Muslims leaving Macedonia, the exodus “was voluntary and in a large measure stimulated by Turkish agents.”131 On that note, Pallis also emphasizes the pitiful situation of Greek refugees from Asia Minor, in contrast to the refugees from Macedonia, who had “emigrated voluntarily” and had taken care previously of their homes and fortunes.132 An article in the Manchester Guardian on June 2, 1914, by an Englishman, also maintained that in Phocaea the “object of the expulsion is to procure homes for Mahometan refugees from Europe [but] the homes in this case were simply looted and in many cases destroyed.”133 The League received assurances from reports, that until June 18, 1914, the houses that had been vacated by Muslim emigrants remained unoccupied. When a new influx of Greek refugees demanded from the authorities permission to reside in the area, they were allowed to do so, but were advised by the Greek government that “the owners have not by absence forfeited their right of property” and “they have been always able either to sell their property or to return.”134 On a strictly official level, “the property rights of the Ottoman state as well as Muslim individuals” were protected by the 1881 Greco-Ottoman Convention of Constantinople and the November 1913 Treaty of Athens, according to Katsikas.135 Reeves identified the boycott of Greek traders as the first step of the Turkish policy of “exciting hatred and fanaticism against the Greeks in Asia Minor,” which led to the “forcible expulsion of thousands and thousands.”136 He characteristically stated that in Turkey, boycott was not a mere economic or commercial policy. It had been accompanied by threats, plunders, and destruction of Greek shops, and beating and robbing of customers by club stations outside these shops, who were not “peacefully persuaded” to avoid them. The boycott was furthermore endorsed by a fervent press campaign, led by Anatolia, which, in Reeves’ understanding, aimed to “lead to violence and murder.”137 In order to prove his assertion, he quoted extracts of violent propaganda writing from the Turkish newspaper. The one that follows comes as a response to the annexation of the Aegean islands by Greece. “Greece, by this act of hers, is fishing in troubled waters; let her learn that after this step of hers we shall smash the heads and pick out the eyes of all the Christians in this town.”138 Interestingly enough, Anatolia targeted the Greek Monarch Constantine and not Prime Minister Venizelos, who was most explicitly linked with the irredentist vision. In the following quote, the newspaper denounced the “crazy” Greek king for the “souls of men, their families, their fortunes [that] have been destroyed by Greek oppression, brutality and crime.” He is, moreover, accused as the main person responsible for the condition of Muslim refugees from Macedonia: “the soul of the Ottoman

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Empire is being strangled by the hand of a bloody, tyrannical madman whose wits are besotted by victory and by his own conceit. To the Greek hordes whom he has summoned about him Constantine offers orgies of Mussulman flesh.” The CUP drew a prophetic parallel between Nero and Constantine, concluding that the latter “compels humanity to bless the memory of Nero.”139 In the same pamphlet, we also find the CUP’s circular, inviting Muslims to boycott Greek goods. The discourse goes beyond calls for commercial boycott and transforms into a speech of hatred. “Let us swear that from this day forth we shall not have the slightest relations with the Christians, that we shall not put foot inside the shops of these Christian traitors. Distinguish between our friends and our enemies. From the moment we take this oath will date inevitably the resurrection of Pan-Islamism.”140 The CUP’s notion of “Union” was that which dictated that “not one para [pound] must be given without the circle of Mussulmans” so as to consolidate a Turkish economic hegemony. “Let us never give our money to such as are not Mussulmans. Create among ourselves a union indissoluble, a bond as strong as iron.” The circular highlights that “the most important task is to consume Turkish products as much as possible.” 141 In order to achieve this, it advises all Muslims to write their name on their stores to avoid confusion with non-Muslim stores. This economic policy functioned on a theoretical level as a “‘consciousness-raising’ program for the Turkish/Muslim community in general” and its actual consequences were that almost “500 Muslim/Turks established their own companies and entered the market as the newcomers in trade.”142 The boycott was seconded by the Pan-Mahommedan Brotherhood, which passed the following resolution: “A commercial boycott to be applied rigorously against all Christians in general, to this end, speeches to be delivered at the various centers, and the Ulema to preach at the Mosques.”143 The same tactic was employed in the boycott of 1911, when, according to the report of consul Evgeniadis, the CUP, “in order to accelerate the disturbances, urged the softas (preachers) in the mosques and the fanatics in the local clubs to propagate the persecution of the Hellenic subjects by all means and destruction of their fortunes.”144 The response of the Greek Orthodox authority was a mazbata (letter of protest) submitted by the Patriarch to the government to protest and demand measures to be “taken immediately to alleviate the Greek population from this unjust treatment.” However, Ekklēsiastikē Alētheia reported that the appearances made by the Patriarch before Talât Bey, Minister of Interior and the Minister of Justice, were not met satisfactorily.145 In addition, a circular by the Greek merchants of Soma to the representative of foreign commercial houses in Smyrna was also included in the pamphlet, providing information about the “rigorous boycott … subjected to all kinds of violence.”146 The merchants, who identified themselves as equals among their Mussulman compatriots, who have “paid taxes regularly and have sent [their] sons to defend the Ottoman Empire,” demanded the protection of the law against “those who would molest” them.147

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In Lieu of a Conclusion Poso akriva plērōnetai t’anthisma tōn patridōn, Tou maē ki aprilē tōn ethnōn o xanagennēmos!148 These lines, which form part of a traditional poem entitled “The Song of the Refugees,” despite their literary nuance, carry a very true understanding of the reasons that led to the persecution of Hellenism in Asia Minor. The gradual intensification of an ideologically robust nationalism had an impact on both the micro- and macro-history of the Anatolian Greeks. As an outcome, the collective national experience projected negative stereotypes of otherness, which, viewed from a socio-psychological perspective, can contribute to the exacerbation of collective alienation, especially if this occurs in populations that have had closely interwoven relations over long periods of time.149 Analyzing the stated convictions of the CUP’s sub-structural ideology can offer a more historically informed view of the events that took place in 1912–14. The modernizing elite, in the attempt to “secure political and economic sovereignty,” perceived Christian minorities as “undermining national security and progress by representing foreign influence and causing domestic mayhem.”150 The words of the League, that in the Anatolian towns and villages, “Greeks occupy a considerable place both as regards numbers as well as wealth and industry, even where, as sometimes, the Turks outnumber them,” exacerbated the CUP’s perception that the non-Muslim bourgeoisies posed a threat not only to the existence of the Turkish nation but also to the existence of the Turkish state itself.151 And while the Greeks were eulogizing the “intellectual, political and social superiority of Greek civilization,”152 the ideology of Turkism, which aspired to a “Turkified” economy, perceived the Greek minority as “forestalling the development of a Muslim bourgeoisie and inhibiting Turkish national development.”153 The examination of the publications of the League concerning the events on the Anatolian coast reveals the direct link that exists between the development of Ottoman economic nationalism and the ideology of pan-Turkism with the systematic persecution of Greeks in the area. As a consequence, the Christians were instructed that “this [is] no longer your country; if you don’t go to-day you will be compelled to go to-morrow,” a manifestation upon which the Young Turks and the CUP embarked to achieve their objective of the consolidation of a nascent Turkish state.154 This conceptualization of the state was fervently intolerant of religious or ethnic pluralism in direct antithesis to its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, which had “always been a polyethnic and multi-religious social entity.”155 Territorial implications of the Great Idea and the rival conflicting images of the nation-state that Greece and Turkey developed during this period would only partly explain the issue of the events presented in this chapter. The acute aspirations of “pan-Turkism” and the homogenizing visions of the state espoused by the CUP all

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contributed to the context in which the boycott and the atrocities that followed caused an open conflict and an increasing tension, which reached its peak during World War I. It is also within this context and the subsequent catastrophic events of 1919–22 that the respective national narratives have been constructed to emphasize almost exclusively the existing tension and violence. However, it cannot be denied that “tension, as well as peaceful coexistence, existed both before and after the events.”156 Omitting this fact gives place to the construction of a negative perception of multicultural and multi-ethnic coexistence and a problematic understanding of “otherness.” When the prevailing assumption in the Greek dominant historiography is that peaceful coexistence between people with different ethno-religious backgrounds is rather problematic, what then we observe in present day Greece should not surprise us. If we take as a fact that politics of the state are constructed upon the so-called lessons of history—that is, the way we choose to commemorate history and baptize the historic events, or, in the words of the Greek poet Embirikos, the way we cherish “the memory of remembrance” (ē mnēmē tōn amnēseōn)—then social interaction and confrontation of any kind of “otherness” in Greece today is also partly influenced by the historical encounter and reproduction of events like the ones described in these pages. Georgia Kouta has recently submitted her PhD thesis to the Modern History Department in collaboration with the Center for Hellenic Studies, King’s College, London. She has studied History, Archaeology and History of Art in Athens, Thessaloniki, Milan and London. She taught Modern European History as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the History Department of King’s College London (2012-2014). Among the areas of her research are Nationalism, the Modern Greek Diaspora, and the Historical Sociology of the London Greek community in the 20th century. Notes 1. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1987), 148. 2. Paschalis M. Kitromilides, ed., Eleftherios Venizelos: The Trials of Statesmanship (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 119. 3. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto, 1986), 14. 4. Sia Anagnostopoulou, Mikra Asia. Oi ellēnorthodoxes koinotētes 19os–1919. Apo to millet tōn Rōmiōn ston ellēniko ethnos [Asia Minor. The Greek Orthodox Communities. From the Rum Millet to the Greek Nation, 19th c.–1919] (Athens: Ellēnika Grammata, 1999), 12–13. 5. Vangelis Kechriotis, “Experience and Performance in a Shifting Political Landscape,” Deltio Kentrou Mikrasiatikōn Spoudōn [Bulletin of the Center for Asia Minor Studies] 17 (2011): 63. 6. Helle Skopetea, “Oi Ellēnes kai oi Echthroi tous” [Greeks and Their Enemies], in Istoria tēs Elladas tou 20ou aiōna [History of Greece in the 20th Century], Vol. A2, ed. Christos Hatziiosef (Athens: Bibliorama Editions, 1999), 18, 20. 7. George Margaritis, “Oi Polemoi” [The Wars], in Hatziiosef, Istoria tēs Elladas tou 20ou aiōna, Vol. A2, 118. All translations from Greek into English by GK.

344 | Georgia Kouta 8. This is not to say that there had not been tension or conflict before 1913, but with the victory of the Balkan Wars, we witness a professed radicalization and more centralized action. 9. Helle Skopetea, To “Protypo Vasileio” kai ē Megalē Idea: Opseis tou ethnikou problēmatos stēn Ellada, 1830–1880 [The “Aspired Kingdom” and the Great Idea: Aspects of the National Question in Greece, 1830–1880] (Athens: Polytypo, 1988), 285. 10. Michael Llewellyn-Smith, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919–1922 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 4. 11. Lina Venturas, “‘Deterritorialising’ the Nation: The Greek State and the ‘Ecumenical Hellenism’,” in Greek Diaspora and Migration since 1700: Society, Politics and Culture, ed. Dimitris Tziovas (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009), 125. 12. See Handbook on Greece, Vol. I, compiled by the Geographical Section of the Naval Intelligence Division, Naval Staff, Admiralty, London (London: H. M. Stationery Office, n.d.), 171, quoted in C. B. Eddy, Greece and the Greek Refugees (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1931), 34. 13. Kemal Haşim Karpat, Ottoman Population 1830–1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 189. We should bear in mind, however, the limitations of Ottoman population statistics on non-Muslims. See, for example, Karpat, Ottoman Population, 3–11; Levon Marashlian, Politics and Demography: Armenians, Turks and Kurds in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, MA, Paris, and Toronto: Zoryan Institute, 1991). 14 . Christos Chatziiosif, “Ē exostrepheia tēs ellēnikēs oikonomias stis arches tou 20ou aiōna kai oi sunepies tēs stēn exōterikē politikē” [The Extroversion of the Greek Economy at the Beginning of the 20th Century and Its Consequences on Foreign Policy], in Ē Ellada tōn Valkanikōn polemōn 1910–1914 [Greece of the Balkan Wars 1910–1914], Svolopoulos, Konstantinos, Carabbot, Phillip, Apostolatos, Gerasimos (eds.) (Athēna: ELIA, 1993), 143–60. 15. Yiannis Papadopoulos, “Ē metanasteusē apo tēn Othōmanikē Autokratoria stēn Amerikē (19os aiōnas–1923)—Oi Ellēnikes koinotētes tēs Amerikēs kai ē alutrōtikē politikē tēs Elladas” [The Immigration from the Ottoman Empire to America (19th Century–1923)—The Greek Communities of America and the Greek Politics of Irredentism] (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Panteio University, Athens, 2008). For the financial aspect, see also Nikos Psyroukes, To neoellēniko paroikiako phanemeno [The Modern Greek Diasporic Phenomenon] (Athens: Epikairoteta, 1974). 16. Ioannis K. Hassiotis, “Past and Present in the History of Modern Greek Diaspora,” in Diaspora, Identity and Religion: New Directions in Theory and Research, ed. Waltraud Kokot, Khachig Tölölyan, and Carolin Alfonso (London: Routledge, 2004), 185–202. See also Hassiotis, “Continuity and Change in the Modern Greek Diaspora,” Journal of Modern Hellenism 6 (1989): 9–24. 17. Eleutherios Venizelos, Greece before the Peace Congress of 1919: A Memorandum Dealing with the Rights of Greece (New York: Published for the American-Hellenic Society by Oxford University Press, American branch, 1919), 3. 18. Observations sur la réponse bulgare au sujet des questions territoriales, Memorandum submitted to the Supreme Council of the Paris Peace Conference (Paris, 1919), cited in Richard Clogg, The Greek Diaspora in the Twentieth Century (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 16. 19. Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones, with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940). Herodotus, in his Histories (VIII, 144), suggested that nationality permeates geographical borders and “binds together populations living on large territories or even in dispersion.” Cited in E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 20. Dimitris Kamouzis, “The Constantinopolitan Greeks in an Era of Secular Nationalism, Mid-19th Century to 1930” (Ph.D. thesis, King’s College, London, 2009), 83. 21. Erik-Jan Zürcher, “Greek and Turkish Refugees and Deportees 1912–1924,” Turkology Update Leiden Project Working Papers Archive (January 2003), 2, retrieved from http://www.transanatolie.com/english/ turkey/turks/ottomans/ejz18.pdf.

“Redeeming the Unredeemed” | 345 22. Matthias Bjørnlund, “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a Case of Violent Turkification,” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 41–58. 23. Perry Anderson, “Kemalism,” London Review of Books 30, no. 17 (2008): 3–12, retrieved from http:// www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n17/perry-anderson/kemalism. 24. Anagnostopoulou, Mikra Asia, 42–43. The Muslim refugees from Salonica settled predominately in Izmir and Manisa in Asia Minor. 25. Bjørnlund, “The 1914 Cleansing.” Taner Akçam’s research in the Prime Minister’s archives in Istanbul has revealed that the government “invested particular effort to leave the impression that it was not directly involved.” He finds that “from some ministry telegrams it can be understood that it was the Muslim refugees from the Balkan countries who instigated this type of attack and looting on their own,” referring to activities recorded in the province of Edirne on April 18, 1914. Taner Akçam, “The Greek Deportations and Massacres of 1913–1914: A Trial Run for the Armenian Genocide,” in The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923, ed. George N. Shirinian (Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012), 74–75. 26. Anagnostopoulou, Mikra Asia, 274–75. 27. Anderson, “Kemalism.” 28. Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 19–20. 29. Sia Anagnostopoulou, The Passage from the Ottoman Empire to the Nation-States: A Long and Difficult Process: The Greek Case (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2004), 91. 30. Ibid. 31. Kamouzis, “The Constantinopolitan Greeks,” 88–89. 32. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 1. 33. Daniele Conversi, “Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing and Nationalism,” in The SAGE Handbook of Nations and Nationalism, ed. Gerard Delanty and Krishan Kumar (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006), 320. 34. Anderson, “Kemalism.” 35. Umut Özkırımlı and Spyros A. Sofos, Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 126. 36. Ziya Gökalp, Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays, trans. and ed. Niyazi Berkes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 56–60. 37. Vangelis Kechriotis, “Civilization and Order: Middle-Class Morality among the Greek-Orthodox in Smyrna/Izmir at the End of the Ottoman Empire,” in Social Transformation and Mass Mobilization in the Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean (1900–1923), ed. Christos Chatziosif and Andreas Lyberatos (Rethymnon: Crete University Press, 2013), 122. 38. Helle Skopetea, Ē Dusē tēs Anatolēs: eikones apo to telos tēs Othōmanikēs Autokratorias [The Decline of the East: Images from the End of the Ottoman Empire] (Athens: Gnosi, 1992), 63. 39. Although the authoritarian and conservative nature of the “mainstream Young Turks” drew upon Auguste Comte’s motto, “order and progress,” Gökalp’s political ideology was influenced mainly by Emile Durkheim and Gustave Le Bon. More in Taha Parla, The Social and Political Thought of Ziya Gökalp, 1876–1924 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), 21. 40. Parla, The Social and Political Thought, 25. 41. Özkırımlı and Sofos, Tormented by History, 145. 42. Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 218, cited in Anagnostopoulou, Mikra Asia, 525. 43. Füruzan Husrev Tökin, Türkiyeʼde siyasî partiler ve siyasî düşüncenin gelişmesi 1839-1965 (İstanbul: Elif Yayınları, 1965), 48; and Muzaffer Sencer, Türkiye’de siyasal partilerin sosyal temelleri (Istanbul: Geçiş Yayınları, 1971), 57, both cited in Anagnostopoulou, Mikra Asia, 525.

346 | Georgia Kouta 44. Ayhan Aktar, “Economic Nationalism in Turkey: The Formative Years, 1912–1925,” Boğaziçi Journal, Review of Social, Economic and Administrative Studies 10, no. 1–2 (1996): 264. 45. Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide, 20. Regarding the ideology of the CUP and its leaders, see also M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 46. Anagnostopoulou, Mikra Asia, 454. 47. Zürcher, “Greek and Turkish Refugees,” 2. 48. Özkırımlı and Sofos, Tormented by History, 145. 49. Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide, 20; Conversi, “Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing and Nationalism,” 321. 50. Bjørnlund, “The 1914 Cleansing,” 4. 51. Konstantinos Tsoukalas, Exartēsē kai Anaparagōgē koinōnikos rolos tōn ekpaideutikōn mēchanismōn stēn Ellada (1830–1922) [Dependency and Reproduction: The Social Role of Educational Mechanisms in Greece (1830–1922)] (Athens: Themelio, 1977), 366. 52. D. W. Sweet, “The Bosnian Crisis,” in British Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey, edited by F. H. Hinsley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 178, quoted in Sevtap Demirci, British Public Opinion towards the Ottoman Empire during the Two Crises: Bosnia-Herzegovina (1908–1909), the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2006), 30. 53. Llewellyn-Smith, Ionian Vision, 84. 54. Regarding British interests in the Mediterranean and the role of the Greek financial and commercial bourgeoisie as “ministers” of British interests, see Tsoukalas, Exartēsē kai Anaparagōgē, 348, 336–37. 55. Anglo-Hellenic League, An Anglo-Hellenic League (London: Anglo-Hellenic League, 1913). 56. The Annual Meeting of the Anglo-Hellenic League, No. 18 (London, 1915). 57. Venizelos’s leadership was often described as “charismatic” in the writings of the period. On the much discussed Weberian concept of “charismatic leadership,” see Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), Vol. 1. Also, a further discussion on this issue can be found in Kitromilides, Eleftherios Venizelos, 3 58. Tsoukalas, Exartēsē kai Anaparagōgē, 369. 59., “Rules of the Anglo-Hellenic League” The Anglo-Hellenic League, (hereafter AHL), (London: 1913). 60. Ibid. 61. “The Anglo-Hellenic League newsletter”, AHL No. 6 (London, 1914). 62. Ibid. 63. Stephanos Delta was also a member of the Greek-Egyptian League and one of the founders of Athens College—a Greek-American educational institution in Greece. He married the well-known novelist, Penelope Delta, daughter of Emmanuel Benakis. 64. AHL, No. 18 (London, 1915). 65. “Ē sysphigsis tōn koinōnikōn kai pneumatikōn scheseōn metaxu tōn duo laōn”—British Hellenic League of Salonica Memorandum, 1918, British Public Record Office (PRO)/ Foreign Office Papers (FO) 286/670, National Archives, Kew. 66. “The Annual Meeting of the Anglo-Hellenic League”, AHL, No. 37 (London, 1918). Maccas’s Venizelist writings include Ainsi Parla Venizelos (1916), a study of the Greek internal policies, and a pamphlet on Constantin Ier (1917). 67. The Annual Meeting of the Anglo-Hellenic League, number unknown (London, 1920). 68. AHL, No. 18 (London, 1915). 69. Nicos P. Mouzelis, Modern Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978), 18. 70. Adamantia Pollis, “Commentary,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 7, no. 2 (October 1989): 227–29.

“Redeeming the Unredeemed” | 347 71. Mark Mazower, “The Messiah and the Bourgeoisie: Venizelos and Politics in Greece, 1909–1912,” The Historical Journal 35, no. 4 (1992): 904. 72. Kitromilides, Eleftherios Venizelos, 119. 73. Eleutherios K. Venizelos and Stephanos I. Stephanou, Politika ypothēkai anthologeisai apo ta keimena autou [Political Axioms Collected from His Writings] (Athens: Private Collection, 1969), Vol. 2, 279. 74. “Letters on the Expulsion of Greeks from Asia Minor, and in Reply to Allegations of Ill-Treatment Inflicted on Turks in Greek Macedonia,” AHL, No. 13 (London, 1914) 75. Letter of Enver to his wife, in Anderson, “Kemalism.” 76. The term “class” in this study, and particularly “middle class,” is employed not in strict economic terms. Rather, it refers to a broader linguistic construction that serves as a political tool, or represents a collective self-identification, which acts within a certain public sphere, and which identifies itself by the way it asserts its modernity. That is the way in which it endorses Western values and emerges as a collectivity through certain social practices like spaces of sociability, common lifestyle and interaction, and, of course, common interests. For more on the assertion of modernity, see Keith David Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 8. An enlightening discussion on particularly the Greek middle class in Smyrna is available in Kechriotis, “Civilization and Order.” Also, a valuable contribution to my understanding of the Greek merchant groups in the Ottoman ports in terms of class analysis has been Athanasios Gekas, Compradors to Cosmopolitans? The Historiographical Fortunes of Merchants in Eastern Mediterranean Ports (Florence: European University Institute, 2008), retrieved from http://cadmus.eui. eu/bitstream/handle/1814/9015/MWP_2008_29.pdf?sequence=1. Gekas’s study examines the analytical tools for class analysis in the Mediterranean ports, while it poses some very interesting theoretical questions regarding cosmopolitanism. 77. E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution 1789–1848 (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 140-41. 78. Özkırımlı and Sofos, Tormented by History, 127. Journals like Genç Kalemler [The Young Pens] and Yeni Mecmua [New Magazine] were known for their inclination towards revolutionary nationalist ideas. 79. Özkırımlı and Sofos, Tormented by History, 128. 80. Zürcher, “Greek and Turkish Refugees,” 2. 81. Conversi, “Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing and Nationalism,” 321. 82. Ibid., 323. 83. Zürcher, “Greek and Turkish Refugees.” 84. It is indicative of the economic power of the Greek community in Constantinople that in 1911, “of the 654 wholesale companies in Constantinople, 528 (81 percent) were owned by ethnic Greeks.” George N. Shirinian, “Introduction,” in Shirinian, The Asia Minor Catastrophe, 13. 85. Kamouzis, “The Constantinopolitan Greeks,” 84. 86. Greece, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Persecutions of the Greeks in Turkey since the Beginning of the European War (New York: Published for the American-Hellenic Society by Oxford University Press, American branch, 1918), 14–16. 87. Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide, 18. 88. Ibid. However, conceptualizing of the Greek bourgeoisie as the domestic extension of the Western states, which stems from a world systems analysis, is rather problematic. It presents the bourgeoisie (or the Greek middle class in question) as a by-product of economic and political conjunctures; namely it renders the agents as mere intermediaries with no agency of their own. On the contrary, and especially for the Greek bourgeoisie of western Anatolia, Kasaba’s research has identified that often it acted “in its own right,” which was not always in accordance with Western interests. Reşat Kasaba, “Was There a Compradore Bourgeoisie in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Western Anatolia?” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 11, no. 2 (1988): 215–28. 89. Meir Amor, “Oppression, Mass Violence and State Persecution: Some Neglected Considerations,” Journal of Genocide Research 5, no. 3 (2003): 361–82.

348 | Georgia Kouta 90. For the identification as “others,” see particularly Taner Akçam, From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2004), x; Robert Melson, “Provocation or Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry into the Armenian Genocide of 1915,” in The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1986), 77; Jennifer Jackson Preece, “Ethnic Cleansing as an Instrument of Nation-State Creation: Changing State Practices and Evolving Legal Norms,” Human Rights Quarterly 20, no. 4 (1998): 817–42. However, Kechriotis notes that this was not the case in the early years of the century, when their national sentiment “did not necessarily contradict with civic loyalty to the Ottoman state.” Kechriotis, “Experience and Performance,” 83. 91. AHL, No. 13 (London, 1914). 92. Ibid. It is worth mentioning that an earlier boycott movement, as an answer to Crete’s declaration of its annexation by the Greek Kingdom in 1908, had also instigated similar events. During the years 1909–11, with the agitators often Muslim Cretan migrants, there was again a similar strategy to hire “unemployed people and use them to form police groups.” From consular reports we note that the same measures were taken as those in the years we examine against Greek merchants and entrepreneurs. They included preventing Greek vessels from approaching the shore, preventing the public from entering shops owned by Hellenes, and marking storefronts with the word Yunani (Greek). As a last resort, they placed guards outside the shops to forcibly prevent customers from entering. FO 195/2360, Bernham (Smyrna) to Lowther (Constantinople), no. 75, August 28, 1910, quoted in Kechriotis, “Experience and Performance,” 79–80. 93. AHL, No. 13 (London, 1914). 94. Ibid. 95. Ibid. 96. Ibid. 97. Ibid. 98. Ibid. 99. Greece, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Persecutions of the Greeks, 23. 100. Eumorfopoulos to Burrows, July 8, 1918, King’s College London Archives, AC2/F194. 101. “Letters Relating to Greek Macedonia and to the Expulsion of Greeks from Turkey”, AHL, No. 12, (London,1914). 102. Alexander Pallis to Colonel Haywood, June 1, 1914, Salonica, quoted in Ibid. 103. Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 316. 104. Eastern and Western Review (Greek-American Pub. Co, Boston), no. 11 (June 1914). 105. Ibid., 19. 106. Mark Mazower, “The Muslim Exodus from Salonika, 1912–1924,” presented by the Borderlands Seminar Series, Watson Institute, Brown University, March 8, 2005. 107. Telegram from Salonica, Eastern and Western Review (June 1914): 24. 108. “To zētēma tōn prosphugōn tēs Thrakēs” [The Problem of the Refugees from Thrace], Ekklēsiastikē Alētheia [The Ecclesiastical Truth] 48, no. 5 (April 1914): 164. 109. [Ē Philanthrōpikē Amerikanikē Etaireia dia tēn Tourkian], “Ex Amerikēs to phōs,” 174. 110. Eastern and Western Review (June 1914): 19. 111. AHL, No. 12 (London, 1914). 112. Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts, 316. [Emphasis in the original.] 113. “Organized Persecution in Asia Minor,” July 2, 1914, quoted in AHL, No. 13 (London, 1914). 114. “Greeks in Minor Asia”, AHL, No. 22, (London, 1915). 115. Alexandros Pallis, Peri tēs antallagēs plēthusmōn kai epoikismou en tē Valkanikē kata to etē 1912–1920 [Regarding the Population Exchange and Settlement in the Balkans during 1912–1920] (Constantinople: K. Makridou kai I. Aleuropoúlou Press, 1920), 11.

“Redeeming the Unredeemed” | 349 116. Calvocoressi to the Executive Committee of the Anglo-Hellenic League, London, June 1, 1914, quoted in AHL, No. 12 (London, 1914). 117. Arnold Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey (New York: Howard Fertig, 1970; 1st edition, 1922), 139, 280. 118. London Committee of Unredeemed Greeks (London, 1914). 119. Kechriotis, “Experience and Performance,” 102. 120. AHL, No. 22 (London, 1915). 121. Ibid. 122. Ibid. 123. W. E. Gladstone, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (London: John Murray, 1876). 124. AHL, No. 22 (London, 1915). 125. Akçam, “The Greek Deportations,” 86. 126. Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts, 317; Uğur Ümit Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 44. 127. Anderson, “Kemalism.” 128. Ayhan Aktar, “Homogenizing the Nation, Turkifying the Economy—The Turkish Experience of Population Exchange Reconsidered,” in Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey, ed. Renée Hirschon (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), 83. 129. Ibid. 130. Toynbee, The Western Question, 139. 131. AHL, No. 22 (London, 1915). 132. Pallis, Peri tēs antallagēs, 10. 133. “Persecution of Greeks by Turks,” Manchester Guardian, June 2, 1914, quoted in AHL, No. 13 (London, 1914). 134. Ibid. 135. Stefanos Katsikas, “Millet Legacies in a National Environment: Political Elites and Muslim Communities in Greece (1830s–1923),” in State-Nationalisms in the Ottoman Empire, Greece and Turkey: Orthodox and Muslims, 1830–1945, ed. Benjamin C. Fortna, Stefanos Katsikas, Dimitris Kamouzis, and Paraskevas Konortas (London: Routledge, 2013), 59. 136. AHL, No. 22 (London, 1915). 137. Ibid. 138. Extract from Anatolia, quoted in ibid. 139. Ibid. 140. “Circular Inviting Moslems to Boycott Greek Goods,” quoted in AHL, No. 22 (London, 1915). 141. Ibid. 142. Aktar, “Economic Nationalism in Turkey,” 266–67. 143. AHL, No. 22 (London, 1915). 144. FO 195/2383, Barnham (Smyrna) to Lowther (Constantinople), no. 33, April 20, 1911, in Kechriotis, “Experience and Performance,” 103. 145. Ekklēsiastikē Alētheia, printed in Le Messager d’Athènes, March 26, 1914, quoted in AHL, No. 22 (London, 1915). 146. “Circular from the Greek Merchants of Soma,” April 2, 1914, in ibid. 147. Ibid. 148. [How expensively the flourishing of homelands costs and how the rebirth of the nations’ May and April—my translation]. From “The Song of the Refugees, 3 November 1922,” Nea Estia no. 1091 (1972): 2–4.

350 | Georgia Kouta 149. Renos Papadopoulos, “Individual Identity in the Context of Collective Strife,” Eranos Yearbook, (1997): 99-113; and Renos Papadopoulos, “Factionalism and Interethnic Conflict: Narratives in Myth and Politics,” in The Vision Thing: Myth, Politics and Psyche in the World, ed. Thomas Singer (London: Routledge, 2000), both quoted in Renée Hirschon, “Unmixing Peoples in the Aegean Region,” in Hirschon, Crossing the Aegean, 10. 150. A. Dirk Moses, “Genocide and Modernity,” in The Historiography of Genocide, ed. Dan Stone (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 182. 151. AHL, No. 22, (London, 1915). 152. Ibid. 153. Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide, 18. 154. “Why the Greeks Fled,” Manchester Guardian, June 29, 1914, quoted in AHL, No. 13 (London, 1914). 155. Aktar, “Economic Nationalism in Turkey,” 265. 156. Kechriotis, “Experience and Performance,” 105.

Bibliography “Anti-Hellenic Prosecutions in Turkey with Pictures of the Atrocities Committed against the Greeks in Turkey during the Early Months of 1914” London Committee of Unredeemed Greeks, London: Hesperia Press, 1914. [Ē Philanthrōpikē Amerikanikē Etaireia dia tēn Tourkian]. “Ex Amerikēs to phōs” [The Light from America]. Ekklēsiastikē Alētheia [The Ecclesiastical Truth] 42, no. 10 (November 10, 1918). “To zētēma tōn prosphugōn tēs Thrakēs” [The Problem of the Refugees from Thrace]. Ekklēsiastikē Alētheia [The Ecclesiastical Truth] 48, no. 5 (April 1914). Akçam, Taner. From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide. London: Zed Books, 2004. ———. “The Greek Deportations and Massacres of 1913–1914: A Trial Run for the Armenian Genocide.” In The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923, edited by George N. Shirinian, 69–88. Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, Inc., 2012. Aktar, Ayhan. “Economic Nationalism in Turkey: The Formative Years, 1912–1925.” Boğaziçi Journal, Review of Social, Economic and Administrative Studies 10, no. 1–2 (1996): 263–90. ———. “Homogenizing the Nation, Turkifying the Economy—The Turkish Experience of Population Exchange Reconsidered.” In Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey, edited by Renée Hirschon, 79–95. New York: Berghahn Books, 2003. Amor, Meir. “Oppression, Mass Violence and State Persecution: Some Neglected Considerations.” Journal of Genocide Research 5, no. 3 (2003): 361–82. Anagnostopoulou, Sia. Mikra Asia. Oi ellēnorthodoxes koinotētes 19os–1919. Apo to millet tōn Rōmiōn ston ellēniko ethnos [Asia Minor. The Greek Orthodox Communities. From the Rum Millet to the Greek Nation, 19th c.–1919]. Athens: Ellēnika Grammata, 1999. ———. The Passage from the Ottoman Empire to the Nation-States: A Long and Difficult Process: The Greek Case. Istanbul: Isis Press, 2004. Anderson, Perry. “Kemalism.” London Review of Books 30, no. 17 (2008): 3–12. Retrieved from http:// www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n17/perry-anderson/kemalism. Anglo-Hellenic League. An Anglo-Hellenic League. London: Anglo-Hellenic League, 1913. ———. Rules of the Anglo-Hellenic League. London: Anglo-Hellenic League, 1913. ———. Various issues of The Anglo-Hellenic League newsletter published in London. Bjørnlund, Matthias. “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a Case of Violent Turkification.” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (2008): 41–58. Bloxham, Donald. The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

“Redeeming the Unredeemed” | 351 Chatziiosif, Christos. “Ē exostrepheia tēs ellēnikēs oikonomias stis arches tou 20ou aiōna kai oi sunepies tēs stēn exōterikē politikē” [The Extroversion of the Greek Economy at the Beginning of the 20th Century and Its Consequences on Foreign Policy]. In Ē Ellada tōn Valkanikōn polemōn 1910–1914 [Greece of the Balkan Wars 1910–1914], Svolopoulos, Konstantinos, Carabbot, Phillip, Apostolatos, Gerasimos (eds.), 143–60. Athens: ELIA, 1993. Clogg, Richard. The Greek Diaspora in the Twentieth Century. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Conversi, Daniele. “Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing and Nationalism.” In The SAGE Handbook of Nations and Nationalism, edited by Gerard Delanty and Krishan Kumar, 320–34. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006. Demirci, Sevtap. British Public Opinion towards the Ottoman Empire during the Two Crises: Bosnia-Herzegovina (1908–1909), the Balkan Wars (1912–1913). Istanbul: Isis Press, 2006. Eddy, C. B. Greece and the Greek Refugees. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1931. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto, 1986. Gekas, Athanasios. Compradors to Cosmopolitans? The Historiographical Fortunes of Merchants in Eastern Mediterranean Ports. Florence: European University Institute, 2008. Retrieved from http://cadmus. eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/9015/MWP_2008_29.pdf?sequence=1. Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. Gladstone, W. E. The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. London: John Murray, 1876. Gökalp, Ziya. Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays. Translated and edited by Niyazi Berkes. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959. Greece, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Persecutions of the Greeks in Turkey since the Beginning of the European War. New York: Published for the American-Hellenic Society by Oxford University Press, American branch, 1918. Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü. Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Hassiotis, Ioannis K. “Continuity and Change in the Modern Greek Diaspora.” Journal of Modern Hellenism 6 (1989): 9–24. ———. “Past and Present in the History of Modern Greek Diaspora.” In Diaspora, Identity and Religion: New Directions in Theory and Research, edited by Waltraud Kokot, Khachig Tölölyan, and Carolin Alfonso, 185–202. London: Routledge, 2004. Hirschon, Renée. “Unmixing Peoples in the Aegean Region.” In Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey, edited by Renée Hirschon, 3–12. New York: Berghahn Books, 2003. Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Revolution 1789–1848. New York: Vintage Books, 1996. ———. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Kamouzis, Dimitris. “The Constantinopolitan Greeks in an Era of Secular Nationalism, Mid-19th Century to 1930.” Ph.D. thesis, King’s College, London, 2009. Karpat, Kemal Haşim. Ottoman Population 1830–1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Kasaba, Reşat. “Was There a Compradore Bourgeoisie in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Western Anatolia?” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 11, no. 2 (1988): 215–28. Katsikas, Stefanos. “Millet Legacies in a National Environment: Political Elites and Muslim Communities in Greece (1830s–1923).” In State-Nationalisms in the Ottoman Empire, Greece and Turkey: Orthodox and Muslims, 1830–1945, edited by Benjamin C. Fortna, Stefanos Katsikas, Dimitris Kamouzis, and Paraskevas Konortas, 47–72. London: Routledge, 2013. Kechriotis, Vangelis. “Civilization and Order: Middle-Class Morality among the Greek-Orthodox in Smyrna/Izmir at the End of the Ottoman Empire.” In Social Transformation and Mass Mobilization in the Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean (1900–1923), edited by Christos Chatziosif and Andreas Lyberatos, 115–31. Rethymnon: Crete University Press, 2013. ———. “Experience and Performance in a Shifting Political Landscape.” Deltio Kentrou Mikrasiatikōn Spoudōn [Bulletin of the Center for Asia Minor Studies] 17 (2011): 61–105.

352 | Georgia Kouta Kitromilides, Paschalis M., ed. Eleftherios Venizelos: The Trials of Statesmanship. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. Liddell, Henry George, and Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. Revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones, with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940. Llewellyn-Smith, Michael. Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor, 1919–1922. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973. Marashlian, Levon. Politics and Demography: Armenians, Turks and Kurds in the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge, MA, Paris, and Toronto: Zoryan Institute, 1991. Margaritis, George. “Oi Polemoi” [The Wars]. In Istoria tēs Elladas tou 20ou aiōna [History of Greece in the 20th Century], Vol. A2, edited by Christos Hatziiosef. Athens: Bibliorama Editions, 1999. Mazower, Mark. “The Messiah and the Bourgeoisie: Venizelos and Politics in Greece, 1909–1912.” The Historical Journal 35, no. 4, (1992): 885–904. ———. Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Melson, Robert. “Provocation or Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry into the Armenian Genocide of 1915.” In The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 61–84. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1986. Moses, A. Dirk. “Genocide and Modernity.” In The Historiography of Genocide, edited by Dan Stone, 156–93. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Mouzelis, Nicos P. Modern Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978. Özkırımlı, Umut, and Spyros A. Sofos. Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Pallis, Alexandros. Peri tēs antallagēs plēthusmōn kai epoikismou en tē Valkanikē kata to etē 1912–1920 [Regarding the Population Exchange and Settlement in the Balkans during 1912–1920]. Constantinople: K. Makridou kai I. Aleuropoúlou Press, 1920. Papadopoulos, Yiannis. “Ē metanasteusē apo tēn Othōmanikē Autokratoria stēn Amerikē (19os aiōnas–1923)—Oi Ellēnikes koinotētes tēs Amerikēs kai ē alutrōtikē politikē tēs Elladas” [The Immigration from the Ottoman Empire to America (19th Century–1923)—The Greek Communities of America and the Greek Politics of Irredentism]. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Panteio University, Athens, 2008. Parla, Taha. The Social and Political Thought of Ziya Gökalp, 1876–1924. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985. Pollis, Adamantia. “Commentary.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 7, no. 2 (October 1989): 227–29. Preece, Jennifer Jackson. “Ethnic Cleansing as an Instrument of Nation-State Creation: Changing State Practices and Evolving Legal Norms.” Human Rights Quarterly 20, no. 4 (1998): 817–42. Psyroukes, Nikos. To neoellēniko paroikiako phanemeno [The Modern Greek Diasporic Phenomenon]. Athens: Epikairoteta, 1974. Shirinian, George N. “Introduction.” In The Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Ottoman Greek Genocide: Essays on Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace, 1912–1923, edited by George N. Shirinian, 11–42. Bloomingdale, IL: The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, 2012. Skopetea, Helle. Ē Dusē tēs Anatolēs: eikones apo to telos tēs Othōmanikēs Autokratorias [The Decline of the East: Images from the End of the Ottoman Empire]. Athens: Gnosi, 1992. ———. “Oi Ellēnes kai oi Echthroi tous” [Greeks and Their Enemies]. In Istoria tēs Elladas tou 20ou aiōna [History of Greece in the 20th Century], Vol. A2, edited by Christos Hatziiosef, 10-35. Athens: Bibliorama Editions, 1999. ———. To “Protypo Basileio” kai ē Megalē Idea: Opseis tou ethnikou problēmatos stēn Ellada, 1830–1880 [The “Aspired Kingdom” and the Great Idea: Aspects of the National Question in Greece, 1830– 1880]. Athens: Polytypo, 1988. Smith, Anthony D. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1987. Toynbee, Arnold. The Western Question in Greece and Turkey. New York: Howard Fertig, 1970; 1st edition 1922.

“Redeeming the Unredeemed” | 353 Tsoukalas, Konstantinos. Exartēsē kai Anaparagōgē koinōnikos rolos tōn ekpaideutikōn mēchanismōn stēn Ellada (1830–1922) [Dependency and Reproduction: The Social Role of Educational Mechanisms in Greece (1830–1922)]. Athens: Themelio, 1977. Üngör, Uğur Ümit. The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Venizelos, Eleutherios. Greece before the Peace Congress of 1919: A Memorandum Dealing with the Rights of Greece. New York: Published for the American-Hellenic Society by Oxford University Press, American branch, 1919. Venizelos, Eleutherios K., and Stephanos I. Stephanou. Politika ypothēkai anthologeisai apo ta keimena autou [Political Axioms Collected from His Writings]. 2 Vols. Athens: Private Collection,1965–1969. Venturas, Lina. “‘Deterritorialising’ the Nation: The Greek State and the ‘Ecumenical Hellenism’.” In Greek Diaspora and Migration since 1700: Society, Politics and Culture, edited by Dimitris Tziovas, 125–40. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009. Watenpaugh, Keith David. Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. Weber, Max. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Zürcher, Erik-Jan. “Greek and Turkish Refugees and Deportees 1912–1924.” Turkology Update Leiden Project Working Papers Archive, January 2003. Retrieved from http://www.transanatolie.com/english/ turkey/turks/ottomans/ejz18.pdf.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Genocide by Deportation into Poverty Western Diplomats on Ottoman Christian Killings and Expulsions, 1914–24 Hannibal Travis

Genocide by deportation facilitates denial of the crime. Few could deny that genocide by direct killing of a racial or religious group would constitute a massive crime.1 Yet in one short-lived decision by Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the judges ruled that President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan had not committed genocide against the non-Arab groups residing in the Darfur region because many of the groups’ members survived their deportation as refugees or internally displaced persons.2 Despite a pattern of violent acts designed to rid the country of non-Arab groups, the tribunal doubted that there was genocidal intent on the part of the government as a whole.3 In recent work, I have argued that genocide may take place by means of deportation into circumstances of life bringing about large-scale premature deaths from hunger, disease, exposure, and homelessness. This argument rests on Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention, the drafting history of that article, the jurisprudence of international and domestic criminal tribunals on the subject, and the writings of jurists.4

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This study considers the role of deportation in the genocide of the Ottoman Christians, 1914–24. It compares the findings of diplomats and other contemporary reports on the deportations to the jurisprudence of international and domestic criminal tribunals concerning deportation as a genocidal act.

Recent Work on the Armenian Genocide as a Local or Improvised Process Recent scholarship which distinguishes between Armenian “genocide” and “treatment” of the Assyrians and Greeks by the Ottoman Empire resembles, in some respects, the ruling of Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC on Darfur. A number of scholars based in Europe have made their academic reputations in recent years by staking out a middle position on the Armenian Genocide between the traditional “Armenian Genocide” story and the “Armenian allegations” narrative propounded by the Turkish government. Specifically, Donald Bloxham argues that “genocide” requires “direct physical annihilation” rather than “forced collective displacement,” and that therefore there was no “prior genocidal intent” in the sense argued by Vahakn Dadrian.5 After 1940, there was a “decision that every Jew was to be murdered,” whereas antiArmenian, anti-Greek, and anti-Assyrian persecutions were not genocidal before mid June 1915.6 Even with respect to Armenians, there were localized exceptions based on survivors’ utility to the Ottomans.7 This theory self-consciously attempts to provide a happy medium between the “Turkish nationalist viewpoint” and the Armenian “nationalist mythology.”8 The historian must step in and examine the empirical facts, by abandoning the “quasi-political” search for “genocidal intent.”9 Professor Bloxham argues that use of the “genocide” concept “should be a by-product of the historian’s work, not its ultimate aim or underpinning,” and refers to genocide and intent as terms more legal than historical, “designed for the ex post facto judgements of the courtroom rather than the historian’s attempt to understand events as they develop….”10 Hilmar Kaiser, in his recent work, argues that there was no “conspiratorial plan” that led to mass killings of Armenians, Greeks, or Assyrians.11 Similarities between the ethnic cleansing of Armenians and Greeks, pointed out by Taner Akçam among others, prove nothing in Kaiser’s view.12 Kaiser, like Bloxham, seems to equate genocidal “intent” with “empire-wide genocide” committed by “unified” actors.13 Therefore, one may not speak of “genocide” by deportation of Armenians to “atrocious” locations or “allowing deportees to be sent to what would most likely mean their destruction.”14 Kaiser implies that it would not constitute “Turkification” to commit ethnic cleansing of Armenians and Greeks if a “large number of Armenian deportees survived….”15 He persisted in this view even after admitting that there is evidence that Armenians were deported into areas without food or the means to grow it, and where they would be vulnerable

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to attacks by Ottoman troops, Bedouin Arabs, Circassians, and other migrants.16 Similarly, Bloxham had previously argued that “total murder” is “genocide,” but that deportation with “massive … ‘attrition’” is not.17 Kaiser appears to conclude that even total murder is not genocide when he clears Cemal [Djemal] Pasha of genocide despite noting that “systematic killings by authorities” had occurred, and that Cemal had promised to end these atrocities but apparently did not carry out his intent to punish the perpetrators, even as he attempted to punish one Ottoman official for the minor offense of getting drunk.18 Both Bloxham and Kaiser invoke the Genocide Convention definition, but neither explored what it meant to its drafters, or how it has been applied by prosecutors and judges in actual cases.19 It is natural for historians to ignore legal materials and concepts, while focusing on other historians’ notions of “intent.” To acknowledge the breadth of the concept of “genocide” is to make it more difficult to pillory the overly emotional Armenian and Turkish nationalists for wrongly assessing Ottoman “intent.” For example, the possibility of a legal category of partial genocide or genocide by starvation complicates the search for an empire-wide policy of mass executions devised by a Hitler or a Young Turk. One might group together Bloxham and Kaiser as the “functionalists” in the Ottoman genocide debate. In the Holocaust context, functionalists tend to downplay Adolf Hitler’s pre-existing plan to exterminate the Jews in revenge for the Germans’ defeat in World War I and threatened losses in World War II.20 Intentionalists focus on the many virulent threats to exterminate the Jews uttered by Adolf Hitler, the long history of German anti-Semitism even prior to 1941, and the fairly unique plan by the Germans to seek out and kill Jews even on the periphery of Europe and in places like Palestine.21 A more functionalist approach emphasizes the discretion of local officials, and their decision to murder groups of Jews who might have been allowed to survive, for such reasons as inadequacy of supplies to feed them.22 A similar “functionalist” tendency appears in the works of Bloxham and Kaiser on the Ottoman Christian genocide. Bloxham argues that regional functionaries of the Ottoman regime had argued for a policy of massacring Armenians, and that there was “even less orchestration from Istanbul” in the case of the Ottoman and Persian Assyrians than in the case of the Ottoman Armenians.23 High-ranking Ottoman military commanders offered their services to the Turkish national holy war of 1919–26.24 They had made repeated decisions to conduct their operations in “complete disregard of the laws of war.”25 Yet it was the Armenian rebellion at Van, Assyrian “clashes with Kurds and Ottoman irregulars,” and Greek “imperialism” and “invasion” that led to Ottoman reprisals against these three groups, according to Bloxham.26 Kaiser, similarly, argues that Talât Pasha and Ahmed Cemal Pasha, two-thirds of the ruling Ottoman triumvirate, attempted to prevent the deaths of Armenians and Assyrians, and wanted to provide them with food and housing.27 He blames corrupt local offi-

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cials and unruly non-Turks for the scale of Armenian deaths during World War I.28 In this, he echoes Guenter Lewy, Justin McCarthy, and Yusuf Halaçoğlu. He is adamant that there was no “central governmental policy” to kill Assyrians in Diyarbakir, for example.29 He credits messages from the provincial level that ordered better treatment of Assyrians than Armenians.30

Questioning the Functionalist Thesis in the Historiography of the Ottoman Christian Genocide On the issue of planning and scheming to commit genocide prior to the various “clashes,” the accounts of Bloxham and Kaiser are difficult to reconcile even with their own footnotes and citations.31 Kaiser, for example, notes that Taner Akçam has collected evidence that the existence of a “single plan” to target Ottoman Christians underpinned the “continuities between Greek and Armenian … cases of ethnic cleansing.”32 Moreover, he quotes Ryan Gingeras as acknowledging that “the transcripts of the Istanbul Military Tribunal of 1919 shed some light on … the deportations of Armenians in Yozgat and Trabzon.”33 Likewise, he cites Fuat Dündar as pointing out that the Interior Ministry’s desire to resettle Muslim refugees in Christian areas led to both the “evacuation” of Greek communities and “targeting” of Armenian areas.34 Despite military and Interior Ministry surveillance and control over the situation in Zeitun, US official documents indicated that a death march of Armenians took place.35 The Ottoman provincial official for Deir al-Zor told a US official in Aleppo that fifteen thousand Armenian refugees in his area were starving as the government refused to give them any food.36 The Grand Vizier personally denied a plea from the Armenian patriarch of Constantinople, Efendi Zaven, to save the deportees.37 The US official who had spoken to the Ottomans about the refugees later learned that the roads were lined with corpses.38 A high Ottoman official wrote that the Armenian race was a threat to the Turks.39 Bloxham, for his part, cites a number of works that support a preplanned scheme theory of the Ottoman Christian genocide, including those of Gabriele Yonan, Mark Levene, Hans-Lukas Kieser, and David Gaunt.40 Concerning the intentions of the Ottoman regime in 1914–15, the scholars cited by Bloxham and Kaiser make several important points. First, Professor Akçam argues that the roots of the genocide date to 1913, when two organizations were established: the Special Organization and the Office for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants, and when Ziya Gökalp published his plan for Turkification. Akçam argues that the failure of the Ottoman government to promote unity led to the “greatest damage” among “the empire’s Christian communities.”41 In 1914, the government decided to use the Special Organization against the “non-Turkish elements” who threatened the empire, by seizing their property and expanding the

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borders of the empire into the lands of the enemies of the Turks.42 The Greeks of present-day western Turkey initially fell victim to this ethnic cleansing conspiracy.43 In late 1914, a holy war was declared and the Chamber of Deputies instructed the army to revenge Turkey’s centuries of “martyrs.”44 Second, Kieser documents how in August 1914, extreme anti-Christian zealot Dr Mehmed Reşid became vali of Diyarbakir, after Talât had proposed making him head of the inspectorate for the entire southeast.45 Dr Reşid believed that the “Ottoman element” was in decline due to attacks by the Greeks from beyond the borders, and by Armenians from within.46 The ministries of interior and of war saw the Ottoman Christians as dangerous tumors that had to be broken down or expelled.47 Thus began the operations against the Greeks in the west, and the Armenians in the east, prior to the Van uprising.48 Third, Gaunt maintains that in October and November 1914, the Ottomans began to kill Assyrian men, kidnap the women, deport Assyrians from their villages, and massacre “columns of refugees.”49 Likewise, Mark Levene locates the genocidal Ottoman mentality in the works of Gökalp, who wrote of harnessing the technological exterminating power of the Western empires as seen, for example, in Africa.50 Finally, Gabriele Yonan writes of a “holy war made in Germany,” in which jihadist propaganda, designed by Germans and spread widely in 1914, incited Turkish troops and gendarmes to massacre Christians.51 Germany’s concealment of the massacres and manipulation of the facts was such that Yonan declares that “the attitude of the German government and its Foreign Office, once the extent of the Turkish annihilation of the Christians became known, hardly argues acquittal or exoneration from shared responsibility.”52 The Bloxham-Kaiser analysis resembles the doctrines of manslaughter, misadventure, and self-defense in the law of homicide, which state that a man does not commit murder in a mutual combat, or in the use of excessive force against a criminal or a subordinate, or “in the heat of blood or passion.”53 Wolfgang Gust has gathered a variety of evidence that opposes the theory of a “heat of the moment” series of deportations by Ottoman officials, principally targeting Armenians.54 He points out that in 1910, Talât told a political gathering that the empire’s infidels “stubbornly resist every attempt to Ottomanize them” so that “all such efforts must inevitably fail,” he concluded.55 A few years later, Talât’s ally Cemal warned Armenian activists that if they pushed for the reforms the European powers had called for in eastern Anatolia, there would be “massacres through ‘the Muslim populations of the six provinces,’ which were targeted for reforms.”56 Similarly, Ziya Gökalp wrote in a document intended for Tâlat and Cemal that the empire needed a sovereign community or master race of sorts, to combat the European reforms through “domination.”57 Based on this type of evidence, the mainstream of Armenian Genocide literature regards the proposition as being well established that there was a top-down plan that issued from Constantinople and was aimed at destroying the Armenians. Dadrian

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also identifies Gökalp as a main architect of the Armenian Genocide, points out that the Turkish military tribunal called the genocide “premeditated,” and highlights the fact that the Special Organization was persecuting Armenians within weeks of the war’s launch.58 Similarly, Richard Hovannisian regards the following as important evidence of a plan or scheme that culminated in genocide: meetings of the Ottoman ruling party’s central committee in 1911 at which the removal of Christian subjects of the empire was discussed; secret meetings in Erzurum in 1913 at which the Armenian threat was on the agenda; the regime’s decision in 1913 to disallow any Armenian communities from existing if they exceeded 10% of any given district; the ruling triumvirate’s naming of nationalist extremists as valis in the east by 1913; attacks on Armenian areas in 1914 prior to the war; and Ottoman Interior Minister Talât Pasha’s declaration to provincial officials in April 1915, prior to the Van uprising, that the “elimination of the Armenian element in Turkey” had been discussed.59 Robert Melson, contributing a chapter to a book edited by Professor Hovannisian, calls Gökalp the Ottoman regime’s point man on the minority question, and observes that he endorsed the Armenian deportations and admired Genghis Khan and Timur Leng, men famous for their massacres.60 Finally, Raymond Kévorkian links the decision to rid the country of “non-Turks” to the regime’s chief “ideologue,” Gökalp.61 Part of the justification was building a “National Economy” through “mass crimes” against Ottoman Christians to transfer wealth to the Turks and Kurds.62 Since about 2008, this view that there was a centrally administered plan has included Assyrians and Greeks as targets of Constantinople’s genocidal policies.63 While the genocide served various functions, it was intentional and premeditated.64 Ultimately, it is impossible to completely reject the Bloxham-Kaiser thesis that the Ottomans may never, or at least not in 1914 or early 1915, have developed an intention to kill every Armenian or Christian.65 But imposing such a definition of “genocide” or “intentional” genocide is unnecessary and inaccurate. As described below, the definition of genocide has always extended to efforts, such as those of the Ottomans, to irreparably damage, displace, and destroy the national pattern in an area by selective killings.

The Relevance of Localism to the “Genocide” Framework Local variation does not necessarily prevent a finding of genocide, although that argument is often made. Bureaucrats implementing a policy of ethnic cleansing typically begin by planning various methods of deportation, and accompanying them with reinforcing commitments to violence. Even what is called “outright” or “total” genocide takes time to organize and perpetrate, giving rise to local variation.66 Üngör often compares the genocide to a large-scale engineering project, arguing that “a generation of traumatized Young Turk politicians … perpetuated this vio-

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lent project of societal transformation in order to secure the existence of a future Turkish nation-state,” resulting in “heterogeneous regions [being] subjected to … violent forms of social engineering….”67 Hannah Arendt maintains that even Adolf Eichmann “lacked manpower and also lacked knowledge of local conditions,” so he had to rely on the “cooperation” of allied or neutral countries, as well as the Jewish Councils and other Jewish party and welfare organizations. 68 This was despite the fact that the Israeli prosecutor in Eichmann’s case charged that he had planned and carried out the Final Solution. 69 Robert Melson argues that the Final Solution contemplated an efficient but by no means immediate massacre of the eleven million Jews from Ireland in the west to Turkey in the east, with killing preceded by expropriation of property and use in forced labor.70

Does Deportation Preclude a Finding of Genocidal Intent as a Matter of Historiography? Genocide scholars have almost uniformly recognized that on a theoretical level, genocide is consistent with deportation and with local variations in the treatment of the affected ethnic, racial, or religious group. Thus, for example, Robert Melson points out that while the Holocaust was a “total genocide” that implied the killing of Jews “throughout the world” on “racialist” grounds, the Germans tended not to apply the method of immediate massacre in “Germany itself.”71 Elsewhere, Raul Hilberg states that 270,000 of Germany’s Jews survived until 1939, outliving what Melson calls the first “stage” of the Holocaust.72 The example of Kristallnacht, as well as of the killings in Dachau concentration camp starting in 1933 and of thousands of disabled children starting in 1939, showed that the Nazis had the power to apply the method of direct massacre inside Germany, as they did in Poland to kill 3.3 million Jews.73 Melson points out that there were actually more than 560,000 Jews living in Germany by 1925, and 700,000 in Germany and its annexed territory of Austria by 1938.74 He contends that Jews began to flee prior to the outbreak of a total genocide policy, during the first “stage” of the Holocaust, featuring expropriation of property and discriminatory laws.75 Foreign public opinion, he suggests, prevented the adoption of Hitler’s ultimate aim of extermination during the first and second stages of the Holocaust.76 Hilberg suggests that twenty thousand of Germany’s Jews survived until 1945, indicating pockets of variation.77 In the allied countries and occupied territories, there was even more variation, with Romania having 430,000 Jews remaining on its territory in 1945, France 200,000, Hungary 200,000, Germany 60,000 (in displaced persons camps) who arrived from outside of Germany, Poland 50,000, Bulgaria 47,000, Czechoslovakia 44,000, Belgium 40,000, Italy 33,000, the Netherlands 20,000, Greece 12,000, Austria 7,000,

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and Denmark 5,500.78 Going even further than Hilberg, David Stannard points out that “the deaths of Jews in Germany, Romania, Hungary, and the USSR, though totaling about 1.3 million people, represented less than 30 percent of those countries’ prewar Jewish populations.”79 He adds that the forced labor population of the Auschwitz death camp (after extermination of the old, young, etc.) had between an 81% and a 75% monthly survival rate in July 1942 to March 1943, rising to 94.8% on a monthly basis after April 1943, and that other camps had annual survival rates in excess of 75%.80 Today, there are more than 600,000 Jews in France and Germany alone.81 This is more than double the number in 1927, or in 2007, of Christians remaining in Turkey, where four to seven million Christians once lived. In fact, the surviving Jews in France in 1945 probably outnumbered Turkish Christians in 1927.82 There was a similar dynamic of local variation during the Ottoman Christian genocide, according to the Ottoman and European archives. The Ottoman and Danish archives on the Assyrians and the Greeks reveal a program dating to 1914 to deport these peoples from their homes to make living space for European and Caucasian Muslim refugees from the unraveling Turkish occupation of Slavic and Georgian homelands.83 Racho Donef has gathered a number of these documents, including a Danish consulate report from July 1914 regarding the transfer of Greek homes to the European refugees.84 In Alatsata, the Greek natives were forced by government officials to leave their houses to the European refugees, affecting the homes of at least 13,500 persons.85 As David Gaunt points out, this policy affected Assyrians in 1914 and 1915: On October 26, 1914, on the eve of the declaration of war, Minister of Interior Talât Pasha ordered the deportation of Assyrians living along the border. He accused them of collaborating with the Russians, and they would be deported hundreds of kilometers into the interior. They were to be dispersed with only a few families in each village in order that their language and culture would disappear and they would end up totally assimilated Turks. Although the deportation never came to effect, the authorities harassed the Assyrians through arrests and summary executions. Repeated attacks by cavalry provoked a state of guerrilla warfare as the Assyrians gradually retaliated. The Assyrians entered the administrative town of Julamerk and discovered official documents indicating the plans for their annihilation. In early May 1915 a defeated Ottoman army retreated across the border through Hakkari after having perpetrated atrocities on the Nestorians and Chaldeans of Iran…. The fate of the Assyrian tribes was sealed by the government decision for a full ethnic cleansing that came as a response. The Minister of Interior decreed drive them out and never “let them return to their homelands.”86

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Professor Christian Gerlach states that similar policies affected the Armenians starting in 1913, with a great deal of local variation because “the Ottoman state was in no position to [fully] fund the necessary, tremendously expensive settlement projects, which in 1913–1914 also met with stiff local resistance and triggered bloody conflicts.”87 In 1914, the plan was “to send Kurds, Armenians, and Arabs to Central or Western Anatolia, and Bosniaks, Circassians, and other Muslims to Eastern Anatolia.”88 As their properties were confiscated en masse, at least 800,000 Armenians perished by 1916, with up to 250,000 surviving as members or slaves of Kurdish or other Muslim families, and up to 200,000 other Ottoman Armenians surviving as free persons in such places as Constantinople or Smyrna, often in cities near Western armies or navies.89 As Stephen T. Katz notes, there may have been up to 275,000 Armenian refugees living in Arab countries and Persia in 1916–17, as well as up to 300,000 in the Russian Empire.90 Up to half of the Greeks deported from Thrace by the Ottomans and their allies also may have survived.91 Between one-third and threequarters of the total Ottoman Greek population may have survived until 1923.92 The scale of the Ottoman Christian genocide was so vast as to be impossible to carry out instantly, or without a planned effort to mobilize the resources of a nationstate, or perhaps of an organized race or religion that was dominant due to state power. As US Congressman Peter Schiff has pointed out: When Ottoman forces began to massacre their Armenian neighbors 95 years ago, there were nearly 2,000 Armenian churches in what is now Turkey. Fewer than 100 remain standing and fully functioning today. One of the world’s oldest Christian communities has, in significant part, disappeared from its ancestral homeland.93 As Ryan Gingeras writes, Armenian and Greek life came to a “near total end” in far western Turkey outside of Smyrna due to this “cleansing,” while up to two million Circassians and large groups of Albanians and Bosniaks resettled in historically Armenian and Greek areas.94 Robert Melson contends that the government of Sultan Mehmet VI indicted members of the former Ottoman government for carrying out a “centrally directed plan” to resolve the “Eastern question” with “massacre and plunder.”95 Professor Üngör notes that the Ottoman Third and Fourth Armies, as well as dedicated parts of the Interior Ministry and large numbers of the police, implemented the Ottoman policy of finding homes for Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Bosniaks, and Circassians, and taking homes and businesses away from Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks.96 Matthias Bjørnlund maintains that Dr Reşid created a “national Turkish/ Muslim economy” by “cleansing the Greeks” and then “exterminat[ing] the Armenians and Assyrians” in 1915–16.97 He notes that the Ottomans saw the Greeks as dangerous due to their ties with Greece and Western Europe, just as the Nazis saw the Jews as dangerous due to ties with the Soviet Union and global anti-Nazism.98 In fact, Turkish law and bureaucracies have never really stopped carrying out the Ottoman Christian genocide. As Hans-Lukas Kieser points out, the Law of Family

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Names forces non-Turks to Turkify their very names, and the Law of Foundations “dismantle[d]” the non-Turks’ churches, synagogues, schools, and community organizations.99 As US Congressman Brad Sherman added to this analysis: “Church property is routinely confiscated through discriminatory laws,” as “hundreds of religious minority properties” were “taken” especially “those belonging to the Greek Orthodox community, as well as the Armenian Orthodox, Catholics, and Jews.”100 The government forbids Armenians and Assyrians from opening their own schools in their own languages with their own religious instruction, thereby Turkifying them over the years in language, names, and ignorance of Christian doctrines and non-Turkish history.101

The Original Understanding of the Ottoman Christian Genocide The original understanding of the Ottoman Christian genocide revealed that contemporary observers saw mass deportation of non-Turks from their homelands in the Ottoman Empire as a genocidal process. Although they did not use the word “genocide,” some of them coined Germanic words for people-murder, and many others referred to extermination, wholesale massacre, death of a nation or nations, uprooting of a people, and other terms for elimination, destruction, and removal from the cultural fabric. The Ottomans and allied Kurds treated some local areas differently, with massacres on site being committed in some places, but death marches or deportations to inhospitable locations occurring in others. In 1915, the Italian consul-general in Trebizond wrote in an Italian journal that in his district he saw “the ruin and desolation of individuals and community, the holocaust of all and everything….”102 Ambassador Morgenthau and British Prime Minister Lloyd George also spoke of Armenian “holocaust[s].”103 In 1916, a member of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief wrote in The New York Times magazine Current History of a “great holocaust” of “Christian civilians” among Armenians and “Syrians,” the latter being comprised of Christians from “near the Persian border and in ancient Assyria … north of Mosul.”104 In 1929, Winston Churchill described “whole districts blotted out at one administrative holocaust,” and of “uncounted thousands of helpless Armenians” massacred.105 In a 1916 cable to the German Imperial Chancellor, the German ambassador to the Ottoman Empire wrote that the “Turkish government” had a “policy of eliminating the Armenian Question by exterminating the Armenian race.”106 The US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, a few years later, referred in similar terms to the “death warrant to a whole race” through “deportations.”107 In 1919, Johannes Lepsius wrote of the Völkermord or race-murder/genocide of the Ottoman Armenians.108 To contemporaries, the Assyrian case provided evidence of premeditation of the anti-Christian violence in the late Ottoman Empire. Some German sources

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are clear, but are rarely quoted by those scholars who, like Christian Gerlach and Ryan Gingeras, attempt to downplay the role of pan-Islamism and panTurkism and thereby seek to de-ethnicize, deracinate, or mutualize the Ottoman Christian genocide.109 For example, as I have argued at length elsewhere, German military and geopolitical theorists urged the Ottomans to adopt a total war strategy against their Christian neighbors, much as the Germans had done in Europe.110 When such a strategy was implemented, the Germans wrote repeatedly of Ottoman massacres of the Armenians and Assyrians, which threatened to be applied to the Greeks as well in 1916–22.111 In 1918, the German ambassador declared that the Greeks “will be destroyed as the Armenian element was.”112 His predecessor had written: “The systematic slaughter of the Armenian people who had been deported from their homes had taken on such an extent that … in various places the Christians of other races and confessions were also no longer being spared.”113 A report by the German ambassador in late 1915 stated: “I have learned from a very trustworthy source that … about 4000 Armenians also from Constantinople have been deported to Anatolia and that the remaining 80000 Armenians still living in Constantinople are to be gradually cleared away, 30000 having already been deported … and a further 30000 having fled.”114 He wanted to stop praising the Turks and to start reprimanding them.115 The German imperial chancellor responded: “The proposed public reprimand of an ally in the course of a war would be an act which is unprecedented in history. Our only aim is to keep Turkey on our side until the end of the war, no matter whether as a result Armenians do perish or not.”116 A letter to the German chancellor in 1916 followed up this exchange of views with the news: “Halil Bey’s campaign in northern Persia included the massacre of his Armenian and Syrian battalions and the expulsion of the Armenian, Syrian, and Persian population out of northern Persia….”117 The plan extended to Mosul, where the British threatened to rout Ottoman forces: “Halil Bey and his staff reached Mosul on November 3, 1915. The Ottoman officers believed that it was the time to massacre the Armenians of Mosul.”118 The German consul at Mosul, Walter Holstein, told a teacher at the German Technical School in Aleppo that “in many places on the road from Mosul to Aleppo, he had seen children’s hands lying hacked off in such numbers that one could have paved the road with them.”119 The consul told him that he “saw shallow graves with freshly-buried Armenian corpses. The Arabs of the village declared that they had killed these Armenians by the Government’s orders. One asserted proudly that he personally had killed eight.”120 A German diplomat in eastern Turkey described a comprehensive “plan to homogenize Turkey violently; [a] web of contrived excuses, pretexts, deflections, and concealments with respect to that design; the techniques used to lull and trap the victim population; the use of criminal gangs; and the active involvement of the [governing political] party machinery in all stages of execution.”121

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The documents prepared by US diplomats are to similar effect. The US ambassador to Constantinople, Henry Morgenthau, explained that the alliance with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire provided the Ottomans with a “great opportunity for them to put into effect their long cherished plan of exterminating the Armenian race.”122 After leaving his post, he called the Ottoman Empire’s “murdering of hundreds of thousands,” auctioning as slaves “of many [girls] at eighty cents each,” and “destruction of hundreds of villages and cities” a “devilish scheme to annihilate the Armenian, Greek and Syrian Christians of Turkey.”123 Nor was he necessarily grandstanding for official negotiating leverage; the United States government censored his contemporaneous complaint about the slaughter of the “Armenian race.”124 He wrote to President Woodrow Wilson that “the horrible massacre of helpless Armenians and Syrians” was “the greatest crime of all ages.”125 In his memoirs, he reiterated that the massacres had been planned and targeted Greeks as well: Had [the former leaders of the Ottoman Empire], when they conquered Bulgaria, put all the Bulgarians to the sword, and peopled the Bulgarian country with Moslem Turks, there would never have been any modern Bulgarian problem and Turkey would never have lost this part of her empire…. [The Young Turks] felt that the mistake had been a terrible one, but that something might be saved from the ruin. They would destroy all Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, and other Christians, move Moslem families into their homes and into their farms, and so make sure that these territories would not similarly be taken away from Turkey…. The time had finally come to make Turkey exclusively the country of the Turks.126 The US consul in the Near East similarly concluded that the “policy of the Turkish nationalists [was] to exterminate and eliminate the entire Christian element in Turkey.”127 He later wrote that the European powers had enabled these extremists “to complete the extinction of Christianity in the Near East.”128 Similarly, the British ambassador to the United States, James Bryce, confirmed that his extensive knowledge of history revealed “no record of massacres more unprovoked, more widespread or more terrible than those perpetrated by the Turkish Government upon the Christians of Anatolia and Armenia in 1915,” including half of the Assyrian people, whether Catholic or Orthodox.129 He claimed that the Ottoman’s “habit” of massacring people at least since the Greek revolution of 1822 “has made the Turk look upon extermination as his natural policy.”130 While the Ottomans asserted that they were merely responding to the “Armenian aggressors,” no such claims could be made against the Assyrians, who had lived in “small communities who could not have taken any hostile action against the Turks, and who have suffered exactly as the other Christians have suf-

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fered” in that they were “massacred.”131 In 1919, he reported that the refugees of the “great massacres of 1915” were “dying by hundreds a week in many places, not only from disease, but from starvation and from diseases which are due to starvation.”132 And this was not his idiosyncratic opinion, for the British Foreign Office officially announced that both Armenians and “the Nestorian or Syrian Christians” experienced “massacres” at Ottoman hands in 1915.133 Another British document indicated that in Persia, which was never alleged to have been the aggressor against the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman massacres victimized people “without distinction of race or religion.”134 The Archbishop of Canterbury told the House of Lords that the Ottoman government had a “cold-blooded plan … of quite deliberate massacre on a large scale … and … a plan of so-called deportation from the occupied regions which, in very many cases, merely meant massacre in a deferred degree.”135 It was an “outrage on civilization without historical parallel in the world.”136 An international expert on population movements, the League of Nations’ Fridtjof Nansen, wrote that the Young Turks planned to organize “the settlement of Moslems in the Christian parts of the empire, first and foremost in Macedonia and Armenia,” so that the “Kurds were once more encouraged to make encroachments” and the “known leaders of massacres went scot-free.”137 He quoted from a letter indicating that the Ottomans wanted “to exterminate all Armenians living in Turkey.”138 Likewise, the Chairman of the Relief Committee for Greeks of Asia Minor announced to the press in 1917 that the “same treatment is being meted out to the Greeks as to the Armenians and Syrians.”139 The American Near East Relief announced in 1923 that it was caring for two million Armenian and Greek orphans whose parents had been murdered.140 A report by Near East Relief to the US Secretary of State indicated that the “Armenian and Greek deportees are now in a condition worse than slavery.”141 The “women and children … without food or clothing of any kind … have been robbed of everything….”142 The nationalists under Mustafa Kemal banned aid to Greeks, including hospital care and food for orphans.143 Government officials told Near East Relief that “the Greeks were enemies of the Government and that they should be killed, and that those who assisted them were enemies of the Government.”144 Greek diplomats in Washington reported that “Anatolia is being cleared of its Greek inhabitants by all possible methods, and the two most popular are deportation and extermination, according to … circumstance.”145 Mustafa Kemal told the League of Nations that he would not stop “massacres.”146 Other humanitarian workers corroborated the accounts of Morgenthau, Bryce, Near East Relief, and Nansen. The official for Transcaucasia of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief reported:

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I heard a great many stories of individual sufferings of men flayed alive, hacked to pieces with axes, stoned to death, buried alive, burned to death, starved to death in holes of indescribable filth, of women outraged in the most cruel and disgusting manner, pregnant women ripped up, breasts cut off, delicate, refined young women compelled to travel day after day perfectly naked, innumerable cases of women being forced into Moslem harems, of children also tortured and killed in the most brutal manner.147 A Presbyterian missionary in Urmia named Ms. Cochran wrote: The Russians’ departure was the herald for the Kurds to pounce upon the prey they had so long been held at bay from … They came in hundreds from every Kurdish quarter, sore against the Christians for having joined forces with the Russians, who had armed them and drafted them for military service whether they would or not… In the city… they had from ten to forty deaths a day from cold, privation, illness of one kind and another, and perhaps shock from fright. In another part of the city, where we have a big school building for our Moslem boys’-school, three thousand people were rescued and brought in by Dr. Packard’s valiant intervention, when he rode up to the Kurdish chief in the thick of a fight between Kurds and the villagers entrenched in Russian trenches and fighting for their lives, begged the lives of the inhabitants, and after parleying awhile succeeded in buying the souls of the people in exchange for their guns. He rode back to the city with them after the sun had set on a January night, reaching the city about nine o’clock, their homes being robbed and burned behind them by the Kurds. Turkish rule and Kurdish plundering have reduced the inhabitants to the verge of starvation, and as yet the end is not in sight… We are still feeding thousands of people—just enough bread every day to keep life in their bodies—and have saved the Syrian nation but have accumulated thirty or forty thousand dollars (six to eight thousand pounds sterling) of debt… The one who eats with me all the time is a boy from the village Dr. Packard delivered, Geogtapa, and his father was killed and his house burned and goods carried off or destroyed. Their food supplies were left, mostly, as the robbers got their fill and could only destroy the rest…148 Similarly, an Anglican missionary wrote:

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The day after the departure of our missionaries from Urmi, that is, the 3rd January (1915), the Kurds and Turks, and with them a great number of the Moslems of Urmi, began to raid and kill and to make captives from a large part of the Christian villages. The majority of the Christians, to the number of about 25,000, took refuge in the courtyards of the Americans and French and in our own premises. Up to the present time there is a large number of the Syrians in our yard; another portion, we do not know how many, fled to Russia with the Russian army. The besieged people here were provided with bread, one portion each per day, by the missionaries; but many have not escaped death. People died from the following causes :—(1) From fear ; (2) from their bad dwelling places ; (3) from cold ; (4) from hunger ; (5) from typhoid fever—the dead up to now from this disease, as far as we can tell, are from 800 to 1,000. Those who died from the slaughter and raiding of villages numbered 6,000. Many died in the houses of their refuge from the causes mentioned above. About 2,000 died of those who fled (to Russia), either on the road or after their arrival there. In our house my daughter Beatrice died from fright, and, 25 days after Beatrice, Mrs. Nisan died from grief at the loss of her daughter….149 A representative of the Assyrian patriarch reported: The Russian troops had been in occupation of Azerbaijan, north-western Persia, for a number of years, and their presence meant safety, prosperity and security of person and property both to Christians and Moslems alike. Under the conditions then prevailing, the Kurds had been restrained entirely from their occupation of plunder, and the Turks were deprived of prominence in that part of Persia which they have coveted for years. The Persians also have been restless, and their attitude towards the Christians was somewhat doubtful. On the 2nd January, 1915, it was suddenly known that the Russian army, consulate and all, were leaving Urmi—and not that alone, but it was found later that they were withdrawing from all northern Persia…. Roughly speaking, one-third of the people who happened to know of this withdrawal, through whose villages the army was to pass, left for Russia. The great majority simply left their homes and walked out. Some only heard of the withdrawal during the night, and so could hardly make any provision for the journey. A good number of people from Tergawar and Mergawar, and outlying districts, who were already refugees in Urmi—having been plundered on two or three occasions previously— left with the army. So there was a concourse of over 10,000 people, mostly women and children, walking in the bitter cold, scantily provided, sore-

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footed, wearied, that had to make their way to the Russian frontier over mountains and along miserable roads and through swamps. Their cries and shrieks as they walked were heart-rending. The people of Salmas had left two or three days earlier and under somewhat better conditions. There was a swamp between Salmas and Khoi where people actually went kneedeep, where oxen and buffaloes died of cold, and where there was no real resting place and provisions could only be procured from a distance of some ten miles. The agonies of the children were inexpressible. Some mothers had two or three children to take care of, and they dragged one along while they carried the other on their shoulders. Many died on the roadside, many lost their parents, many were left unburied…. About two-thirds of the people who stayed behind at Urmi had the cruellest of fates. No sooner had the Russian forces withdrawn than the roads were closely guarded, and no one was permitted to come in or go out of Urmi for over four months. The Kurds poured in from every quarter, and the Persian Moslems joined hands with them. They engulfed the Christian villages; plunder, pillage, massacre and rape were the order of the day… Thus in the course of a fortnight all the 45,000 Syrians and Armenians were plundered—not one village escaped… Seeing that a few houses of Christians were left in the city which were not plundered, the dozen or less of Turkish officials, who had control of things, began to fleece the people…. [T]hey obtained 5,500 tomans as blood money for Mar Elia, the Syrian Bishop, whom they found in hiding on the roof of a house, and threatened to kill him unless the money was paid. Then, again, such prominent men as Shamasha Lazar, Shamasha Babu and Dr. Isaac Daniel had to pay 3,000, 2,000 and 1,000 tomans respectively to save their lives. Such was the perpetual terror in which the whole community lived. Soon disease broke out, typhoid played havoc, and over 4,000 died of the epidemic alone. There was scarcely any life left in the remnant of the people when the Russians retook Urmi in May. They were worn out and so emaciated that one could hardly recognise them. It was the first time for months that they were able to crawl out of their filthy winter quarters and to inhale fresh air. The Americans, who had fed these people all through the winter, now gave the men and women spades and sickles to return to their villages, and some flour to start life in their ruined homes. I have seen villages turned to ashes, where not one window door or any woodwork was to be found… The troubles of Mar Shimun’s independent tribes of Tiari, Tkhuma, &c., in Kurdistan, south of Van, began last June. Mar Shimun’s seat in the village of Quodshanis was attacked by regular troops and Kurds, destroyed

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and plundered. Most of the people escaped to Salmas. Mar Shimun at the time was in the interior with the main body of his congregation… As over 90 per cent. of the Christians at Urmi are destitute, and the condition of some 10,000 to 15,000 Armenians and Syrians in Salmas is not much better, we have at once some 80,000 people and more who must be assisted, if they are not to starve during the coming winter.150 A relative of the patriarch emphasized the impoverishment of the Assyrians due to their deportation: When we saw many Christians of Gawar and Albek killed without reason, we thought our turn would come. Every kind of warfare commenced, and since then, for months, we have been fighting in the mountains; in the end we were not successful, because the Kurds were helped by the artillery of the Turkish Government. Of course when our cartridges were exhausted we could not stand before the great force of Turkish artillery … [E]ither we must deliver ourselves to Turkey and be killed or flee to save ourselves. We did the latter, but even then half the nation was left behind. Now we are here in Dilman Salmas … Many of the refugees who come here are dying of hunger; they have no bedding, and many men just died on the way here. Would you were here to see with your own eyes our state; your sympathy would indeed be aroused. All the houses have been destroyed … and burnt and robbed; we are in rags and hunger and in a strange land… Of all these the condition of the Tkhumnai is the most miserable; they are quite destitute. If some help is not forthcoming for the nation all hope of survival is at an end, for three parts [i.e. 75% of them] will die of hunger.151 According to the victims, the transfers from Armenians to Kurds and Turks included human beings as well as villages and cities. An Assyrian priest documented how the Kurds “haggled over the prices” of Armenian women and children like goods in a marketplace.152 The Ottoman military delivered contingents of Armenian deportees to bands of Kurds, who stripped the victims of their clothes, shot them, and opened up their corpses to search for gold or silver.153 “Poor Turks and Kurds seized young women as brides for their sons, which avoided paying ruinous bride prices” within their own communities.154 By the time of the 1927 census, the Turkish government described eastern Turkey as more than 60% Kurdish, with more than 540,000 Kurds out of 870,000 inhabitants.155 The Kurdish population surged by nearly 50% in the next eight years, with 765,000 Kurdish speakers and “only” 228,000 Turks.156 In some parts of eastern Anatolia, like Bitlis, there had been at least twice as many Armenians and Assyrians as Kurds, while in others, like Erzerum, Van, and Diyarbakir, there had been at

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least 50% more.157 Over the long term, pan-Islamism brought about a decline in the Christian population of eastern Anatolian cities from between a third and half of the population, to between 0 and 5% of it.158 In Van, the Kurdish population rose to account for 80% of the province, as the Christian population lost its former majority and became a tiny, insecure minority.159 It is estimated that today, Christians are less than 1% of Turkey’s population. Deportation helps to re-form nations by removing some components of nations, while exponentially increasing the numbers of other components. Despite claims of an anti-Kurdish “cultural genocide,”160 Turkey’s 1,184,446 Kurdish speakers in 1927 grew to 11.5 million in 2007.161 The historically Armenian and Assyrian provinces of Diyarbakir, Hakkari, Mardin, and Van are now 73–90% Kurdish.162 What has happened is that, in Lemkin’s term, the east’s “national pattern” has been replaced.

Is There a Legal Basis for Treating the Partial Destruction of a Group by Deportation as Genocide? The Genocide Convention provides: Recognizing that at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity, Hereby agree … : … Article II: … [G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction … in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.163 Each of these methods was used against the Armenians, in tandem.164 This section will explore how these methods arose in other cases, and whether courts found a “genocide” or merely war crimes. The lawyer and adviser to the United Nations who became known as the “father” of the genocide treaty, Raphael Lemkin, in fact used the Assyrian massacres of the 1840s as an example of genocide. In a narrative of the Armenian Genocide published in 2008, he wrote that ten thousand Nestorian and Armenian Christians were massacred, and about as many women and children enslaved by the Kurds under Bedr Khan Bey.165 He quotes the British press as reporting that by the 1870s, villages were desolated and deserted throughout “Kurdistan,” with the Ottoman Empire’s “most peaceable inhabitants” murdered, including their children.166 He

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wrote of the genocide in 1915, that the richest Assyrian village in the Urmia region was destroyed, the men killed, and the women violated. He noted that “the commanding officer had put a price on every Christian head.”167 He quoted another report of an “awful holocaust” of Christians at the hands of the Kurds, a report actually written by an Assyrian, Jean Naayem.168 Lemkin intended the concept of genocide to apply to cases that did not involve the total dest n,ruction of a group, expressly instructing his readers that “genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation….”169 Indeed, he attempted at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal to have several Nazi war criminals indicted for “genocide, viz., the extermination of … particular races and classes of people and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, and Gypsies and others.”170 Lemkin believed that the Poles, for example, had suffered genocide by partial killings, destruction of their “institutions of self-government,” interference with their religious and cultural activities and ordinary reproductive processes, and deprivations of food and other resources.171

The Nazi Germany Precedent As noted above, a combination of global public opinion and logistical problems prevented Hitler from turning Kristallnacht into a Final Solution in 1938. The Final Solution of 1942–45 was preceded by a policy of emigration to and resettlement in Africa, Asia, or America from 1933 to 1941. The Nazi Party “regarded as a desirable solution the emigration of the Jews from Reich territory and from the territories which had meanwhile been annexed to the Reich (Austria and the Bohemia-Moravia Protectorate).”172 A document sent to the heads of the Operations Units of the Security Police stated: ‘“Expulsion [of the Jews] across the border was confirmed by the Fuehrer.’”173 Adolf Eichmann was responsible for “deportation of Jews from the Reich to Poland (… Generalgouvernement) on freight trains.”174 In 1940, the Nazi Foreign Ministry and Head Office for Reich Security planned “the evacuation of the Jews on a large scale” to Africa, where Jewish Councils under Reich control would govern them.175 After this plan failed to materialize, an “order for total extermination was given by Hitler in 1941.”176 The drafters of the Genocide Convention contended that in some concentration camps, the “annual death rate [wa]s thirty percent to forty percent,” not 100%, but in such camps “the intention to commit genocide is unquestionable.”177 According to German documents, there were still 2.5 million to 3.5 million Jews in occupied Poland two years into the occupation, at least 1.3 million after almost three years, and 100,000 after almost five years.178 The Soviet Union liberated two million Jews from Nazi control.179 The Iraq Precedent Some scholars argue that the trial of Saddam Hussein was the first in which a former head of state was tried in his own country for crimes against humanity.180

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Although Saddam was initially charged with a variety of crimes against Kurds, Shiites, and Kuwait, the only trial to be completed against him before his execution involved mostly Shiites in the al-Dujail massacre of 1982.181 In 2007, the Iraqi High Tribunal convicted Saddam’s head of internal security for the northern zone during 1987–88, Ali Hassan al-Majid, of genocide for killing thousands and deporting hundreds of thousands of Kurds.182 The presiding judge reasoned that al-Majid “gave orders to the troops to kill Kurdish civilians and put them in severe conditions,” and “subjected them to wide and systematic attacks using chemical weapons and artillery.”183 Scholars who are ethnically Kurdish or who are close politically to the Kurdish leadership often describe the Kurdish genocide of the 1980s in Iraq as if there were no other victims and Kurds suffered the most proportionately. Of course, many Kurds lost their lives in Iraq during the 1980s and 1990s due to genocide and torture. But the Kurdish people was never at risk of being removed completely from Iraq’s mosaic of peoples. The Kurdish population in Iraq doubled from two million in 1970 to four million in 2002, and Kurds claim today that they number five to six million in Iraq, which is why their elected leaders have claimed an entire region of the country as their own and even refused to fly the flag of Arab Iraq over it. Instead, most Kurds fled the northern “free fire zones” in which Iraqi military and security forces had been killing anything that moved, destroying Kurdish and Assyrian villages, and deporting Kurds, Assyrians, and Turkomen from their homes in an “Arabization” campaign.184 As a result of a US-led intervention in 1991, a no-fly zone kept Iraqi aircraft out of the north, past the 36th parallel of latitude (including Arbil, Dohuk, Mosul, Rowandiz, and Zakho).185 There was even a Kurdish governor of Dohuk under Saddam Hussein.186 There was also a pro-government Kurdish militia known officially as the National Defense Battalions, but known by its enemies as the jahsh.187 Middle East Watch documented that in Dohuk governorate, where many Assyrians lived, “they were in fact dealt with by the regime even more severely than their Kurdish neighbors.”188 At each stage of the Anfal campaign, “ground troops and jahsh enveloped the target area from all sides, destroying all human habitation in their path, looting household possessions and farm animals and setting fire to homes, before calling in demolition crews to finish the job.”189 As the army took villagers away to be killed or deported, the jahsh “combed the hillsides to track down anyone who had escaped.”190 Just like in the 1890s or 1910s, the jahsh were responsible for “burning and looting villages,” and the “demolition of security-prohibited villages.”191 In that way, they resemble the janjaweed of Sudan, or the Ottoman Special Organization.192

The Cambodia Precedent In 1994, the United States recognized the Cambodian genocide and promised justice, following up on President Jimmy Carter’s condemnation of the “genocidal” trag-

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edy in 1979, and his comparison of it to the Holocaust.193 Although estimates vary, recent scholarship has asserted that three-quarters of Cambodia’s 1975 population survived this genocide.194 The Cambodian regime caused many of these deaths “carelessly,” rather than by massacre.195 Some Cambodian estimates, however, suggest that nearly half of the population was killed, or three million out of seven million, with one million fleeing.196 Surveys of the refugee population on the Thai-Cambodian border suggest that 63–85% of individual towns and villages survived, which may be an overestimate since total massacres leave no survivors to survey.197 In 1979, there were at least six million survivors in Cambodia and 460,000 Cambodian refugees in Vietnam and Thailand.198 About 149,000 Cambodian refugees moved to the United States by 1990.199 The Khmer Rouge engaged in extensive expulsions in 1975 before most large massacres in 1976 to 1979. The Khmer Rouge deported 150,000 ethnic Vietnamese people from the country.200 The mass displacement of Cambodians by Vietnamese communists and American bombing raids also preceded the genocide, and may have contributed to it. Half a million tons of bombs had landed on Cambodia by 1973.201

The Bosnia-Herzegovina Precedent The first international trial of a military officer for genocide appears to be that of Radislav Krstić for his conduct during the Yugoslav civil war of 1992–95.202 The tribunal did not discover a plan or scheme to kill all of the Bosnian Muslim civilians on the other side of that war by Krstić, noting that it was even “impossible to determine with precision the number of Bosnian Muslim men killed by Bosnian Serb forces” after the fall of Srebrenica. It stated that genocide had been committed because it concluded that there had been massacres affecting about seven thousand men, mostly of combat age.203 The tribunal found that: [T]he intent to eradicate a group within a limited geographical area such as the region of a country or even a municipality may be characterised as genocide…. The Jelisic Judgement [of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia] held that genocide could target a limited geographic zone…. In a Judgement against Novislav Djajic on 23 May 1997, the Bavarian Appeals Chamber similarly found that acts of genocide were committed in June 1992 though confined within the administrative district of Foca.204 Not only was there no plan to kill all Bosnian Muslims in that case, but the first person convicted in this genocide, in the view of the tribunal, “may not have devised the [limited] killing plan” that there was. It was enough, however, for the tribunal that there had been “widespread and systematic killings” and that the accused had become “clearly involved in their perpetration.”205 On another occasion, the same tribunal analyzed deportation as genocide, stating that “the forcible transfer of individuals could lead to the material destruction

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of the group, since the group ceases to exist as a group, or at least as the group it was….”206 Deportation is therefore proof of “specific intent to rid the Srebrenica enclave of its Bosnian Muslim population … through force and coercion,” which, when children also have to leave and homes are then destroyed or taken, “clearly indicates that it was a means to eradicate the Bosnian Muslim population from the territory where they had lived.”207 The tribunal that made these findings is the first of its kind to be created after the entry into force of the Genocide Convention.208 In 1992–93, the government of Turkey, the UN General Assembly, and the United States government all condemned ethnic cleansing as a form of genocide.209 A draft resolution of the UN Commission on Human Rights delivered to that body by the Republic of Turkey argued that there should be an inquiry into whether these practices constitute genocide because “ethnic cleansing is aimed at the dislocation or destruction of national, ethnic, racial or religious groups,” even while noting that the destruction was not total because “two and a half million refugees and displaced persons” survived.210 This effort was clearly connected to the process of getting the UN General Assembly to call the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia a form of genocide, for Turkey’s letter preceded that resolution by only nineteen days.211 The US ambassador to the Human Rights Commission equated Bosnia with the Holocaust.212 The Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) of Radovan Karadžić in Bosnia promoted ethnic partition and population exchanges, basically, prior to the Srebrenica genocide. Just as the Young Turks wanted all Turks to live together in one unified state, the SDS declared that “all Serbs have the right to live in one state.”213 The SDS wanted to allocate 30% of the former Yugoslav province of Yugoslavia to a combined Bosnian Muslim and Croatian Catholic state, while keeping Serbian majority or plurality areas in Yugoslavia.214 As of July 1992, the policy of ethnic cleansing stood condemned by Turkey, the United Nations General Assembly, and the US State Department. It involved forcing hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes and communities, with 628,000 (including Serbs) going to Croatia, 382,500 refugees registering as such in Serbia, 200,000 fleeing to Germany, 300,000 moving to other countries, and hundreds of thousands being internally displaced within Bosnia and Herzegovina.215 The Srebrenica genocide of 1995 was preceded by the mass flight of Bosnian Muslims, including many who fled to Srebrenica as a UN safe haven from mass violence in the surrounding region.216 In Srebrenica itself, most of the Muslim residents affected by the Bosnian Serb advance were relocated, not massacred.217 The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia concluded that while “as many as 7,000–8,000 men of military age were systematically massacred … the remainder of the Bosnian Muslim population present at Srebrenica, some 25,000 people, were forcibly transferred to Kladanj,” the “wounded men were spared,” and “the forcible transfer of the rest of the Bosnian Muslim population was well under way.”218 The Bosnian Serb army provided buses for the Bosnian Muslim women, children, and elderly people to travel into Bosnian Muslim-held territory.219

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Turkey has admitted repeatedly that genocide may occur by killing a group’s political leaders, or engaging in local atrocities that do not kill a substantial percentage of the group, but that cause many refugees to flee. During several key historical moments, Turkey has reiterated this understanding of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948. For example, it condemned genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, when a small percentage of the Bosnian Muslim population had been killed by the Yugoslav government because some of its political and military leaders were engaging in terrorism and committing crimes against Serbs. The United Nations General Assembly agreed with this condemnation in resolutions issued in 1992 through 1996.220 Turkey also excoriated Greece and Greek Cypriots on numerous occasions in the 1960s and 1970s for committing genocide against the Turkish minority in Cyprus, even though the death toll was relatively modest.221 More recently, Turkey accused several large non-Muslim countries of practicing genocide in suppressing a rebellion by Muslim political and military leaders, e.g. Russia in Chechnya and China in Xinjiang.222

The Kosovo Precedent The first intervention by a regional organization on genocide-related humanitarian grounds, without UN approval, took place in Kosovo in 1999.223 In the space of two months in March and April 1999, the US President, US Secretary of State, British Prime Minister, British Defense Minister, German Defense Minister, and Turkish Prime Minister condemned Serbia for “genocide” in its formerly autonomous province of Kosovo.224 By May, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervened to support Kosovo and degrade Serbia’s military and economy, with the aim being to help 640,000 Kosovar refugees from Serbia living in Albania and Macedonia to return to their homes. Between early April and mid May 1999, Serbia’s Operation Horseshoe had “attacked and destroyed KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] strongholds and killed, terrorized and expelled civilians in areas that supported the group.”225 The number of Kosovar refugees in Albania and Macedonia increased by 1,500% in less than two months.226 Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian population rose from 1.6 million in 1991 to 1.67 million in 2003.227 The Rwandan Precedent The first conviction by an international tribunal for the crime of genocide occurred in 1998. The court issued a finding of genocide, it said, “[e]ven though the number of victims is yet to be known with accuracy.”228 The tribunal justified the finding by noting that there had been massacres, citing evidence of there being “heaps of bodies,” and indications that women had been raped in proximity to mass killings.229 The tribunal therefore made no finding that the entire victim group, the Tutsi people of Rwanda, had been targeted for death; killings simply had to be “massive and/or systematic” in order to reflect genocidal intent.230

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Some scholars contend at times that Rwanda and the Holocaust are radically different from the other genocides, unique in the scope of their total extermination, rather than also involving deportation or two-sided persecutions.231 Yet some research suggests that the majority Hutu people may have suffered 300,000 or more deaths by 1995, and untold thousands more deaths during massacres and mass displacements within or towards the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) after Rwanda and Uganda invaded it after 1995.232 The Rwandan genocide of 1994 was preceded by extensive displacement of Tutsis under Hutu-dominated regimes, and then of Hutus by the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front. In 1993, the number of Tutsi Rwandan refugees outside Rwanda was 400,000 to 700,000.233 The United Nations did not conclude that there was a realistic conspiracy to destroy all Tutsi; instead, the killers had a range of intentions that included war, revenge, looting, and conformism.234 The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, in the trial of the highest-ranking military defendants, including the Minister of Defense Théoneste Bagosora, did not describe a conspiracy to commit a total genocide, instead finding that there was a civil war environment analogous to Ottoman documentary accounts of 1915.235 The United Nations estimated that three million people fled to Congo and Tanzania,236 yet the Rwandan population fell by as few as 1.7 million people in the war period of 1991 to 1995.237 By 2005, the population of Rwanda was almost two million larger than in 1990.238 Still, the UN Security Council, UN Secretary-General, and the United States have recognized the Rwandan genocide.239

The Darfur Precedent The first arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide involved the Darfur region of Sudan from 2004 through 2008.240 A key question in this case is whether there was merely a counterinsurgency campaign with excessive force, or an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” The prosecutor’s application for a warrant estimated that 115,000 to 300,000 members of non-Arab “target groups” died directly or indirectly, but that 2.7 million out of a population of 6.4 million had been deported or forcibly transferred from their homes and/or communities.241 Most deaths occurred because, just as in the Ottoman Empire, the target groups were denied their livelihoods in their own homelands, as the government delayed humanitarian aid, denounced humanitarian aid workers, and withheld access to food and medical services such aid could provide.242

Conclusion Diplomats and genocide scholars have attributed the Armenian Genocide and related violence against Ottoman Assyrians and Greeks to several potentially overlapping extremist ideologies. The US ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, famously blamed the Young Turk regime’s “passion” for Turkifying the entire nation. This theory implic-

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itly invoked the ideology of pan-Turkism. Other scholars have looked to religious extremism, sometimes noting that non-Christian minorities, such as the Ottoman Arabs, Jews, and Kurds, were relatively unscathed in the era of the Young Turks. Still others, to extreme militarism. There is no inconsistency between a racist or other discriminatory motive and local variation in the carrying out of the crime of genocide. International judgments and other accounts of genocide in Nazi-occupied Europe, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Iraq have acknowledged local variation and the absence of direct orders to kill all victims at once. Recent scholarship on the inconsistency of preferences within large groups engaged in large-scale criminality has acknowledged that refugees often outrun their persecutors in circumstances of war and chaos. While it is probably not feasible, and certainly unnecessary, to pin down a single genocidal ideology as motivating a particular episode of mass killing, identification of strands of extremist ideology prior to and during such an episode is helpful to impute intent. Scholars have amply documented such strains in the Ottoman case. Thus, there is important evidence of genocidal intent to be found in the strains of extremist ideology that emerged in the Ottoman Empire during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and first quarter of the twentieth century. Hannibal Travis is Professor of Law at Florida International University. He has contributed frequently to the Journal of Genocide Research, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, and Genocide Studies International. His recent work deals with the Yezidi genocide, the failure to prevent or remedy the genocides in Iraq and Syria, and genocidal intent in the late Ottoman Empire. He is the author of Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan (Carolina Academic 2010). Notes 1. In addition to genocide, jurists might consider deportation as a crime against humanity or a war crime. 2. Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir (Pre-Trial Chamber I, Decision on the Prosecution’s Application for a Warrant of Arrest) ICC-02/05–01/09, 1/95 (March 4, 2009), paras. 143–44. 3. An Appeals Chamber disagreed on mostly procedural grounds. The Appeals Chamber suggested that a trial on genocide charges would be appropriate. Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir (International Criminal Court, Appeals Chamber, Decision on the Prosecution’s Application for a Warrant of Arrest) ICC-02/05–10/09–0A (February 3, 2010). 4. Hannibal Travis, “On the Original Understanding of the Crime of Genocide,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 7, no. 1 (2012): 30–55. 5. Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians, paperback edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 69–71, 96. 6. Ibid., 90, 95. 7. Ibid., 89, 93. 8. Ibid., 96, 231.

Genocide by Deportation into Poverty | 379 9. Ibid., 96, 225–26, 229–33. See also ibid., 229 (accusing “Armenian historians and politicians” of “political ends” and an “emotive connection with the historical record”). 10. Ibid., 95. 11. Hilmar Kaiser, “Regional Resistance to Central Government Policies: Ahmed Djemal Pasha, the Governors of Aleppo, and Armenian Deportees in the Spring and Summer of 1915,” Journal of Genocide Research 12, no. 3–4 (2010): 175; Kaiser, “Genocide at the Twilight of the Ottoman Empire,” in The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, ed. Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 365–85; Kaiser, “A Deportation That Did Not Occur,” The Armenian Weekly, April 26, 2008, 16–18. 12. Kaiser, “Regional Resistance,” 210. 13. Ibid., 210. 14. Ibid., 210. 15. Ibid., 174–75. 16. Ibid., 180–92. 17. Bloxham, The Great Game, 111. 18. Kaiser, “Regional Resistance,” 192–93, 210. 19. Bloxham, The Great Game, 69–71. Kaiser does so implicitly, speaking vaguely of a “legal definition of genocide” which calls for “intent.” Kaiser, “Regional Resistance,” 175. 20. Bloxham argues, along with Tony Kushner, that historian Daniel Goldhagen is wrong to assert that “ingrained and pathological German hatred of all Jews” was the “sole” cause of the Holocaust, or in other words that Goldhagen’s intentionalism is excessive. Bloxham and Kushner, The Holocaust: Critical Historical Approaches (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 9–11. Omer Bartov goes too far in saying that to Bloxham, “antisemitism did not play a major role in the genocide of the Jews,” for as Doris Bergen points out, Bloxham attempts a “masterful” “analysis of the mutually reinforcing relationship between antisemitism and Nazi power.” Omer Bartov, Doris Bergen, Donald Bloxham, Jürgen Matthäus, and Martin Shaw, “Donald Bloxham, The Final Solution: A Genocide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) [Review Forum],” Journal of Genocide Research 13, no. 1–2 (2011): 107–52, 122 for Bloxham, 133 for Bergen. 21. E.g., Bartov et al., “Donald Bloxham, The Final Solution”; Omer Bartov, Germany’s War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013); Bloxham and Kushner, The Holocaust, 9–11, 69–70, 84–85, 88, 115, 146–47; A. Dirk Moses, “Structure and Agency in the Holocaust: Daniel J. Goldhagen and His Critics,” History and Theory 37, no. 2 (1998): 194–219. 22. Götz Aly, “Final Solution”: Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews (London: Arnold, 1999), 214, 251; Bartov, Germany’s War; Paul R. Bartrop and Steven L. Jacobs, Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide (London: Routledge, 2010), 230–31; Christopher Browning, The Routledge History of the Holocaust, ed. Jonathan C. Friedman (London: Routledge, 2010), 164–65; Stig HornshøjMøller, “Hitler and the Nazi Decision-Making Process to Commit the Holocaust: A New Proposal,” in The Encyclopedia of Genocide: Vol. 1: A-H, ed. Israel Charny et al. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999), 313–15; Wulk Kansteiner, “The Rise and Fall of Metaphor: German Historians and the Uniqueness of the Holocaust,” in Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, 3rd edn, ed. Alan Rosenbaum (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2009), 280; Donald McKale, Hitler’s Shadow War: The Holocaust and World War II (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 9; Dan Stone, Histories of the Holocaust (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 111. 23. Bloxham, The Great Game, 83, 97. 24. Ibid., 98–106. 25. Ibid., 101. 26. Ibid., 84, 98, 105–6. 27. Kaiser, “Regional Resistance,” 201, 204, 209–10.

380 | Hannibal Travis 28. He specifically mentions local Bedouin Arabs, roving Circassians, and other Muslim immigrants (ibid., 180–92). He disagrees with Lewy and Halaçoğlu on the scale or conspiratorial nature of the Armenian rebellions (ibid., 175), but echoes their works on other matters, such as the lack of central planning or scheming by Ottoman leaders to kill Armenians. He cites four of these authors’ works published between 2002 and 2006 (ibid., 210). Other works that Kaiser does not analyze describe how Ottoman officials received orders to “destroy” and “kill” the Armenians and other Christians. David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim–Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006), 157. 29. Kaiser, “Genocide at the Twilight.” 30. Ibid.; Kaiser, “A Deportation.” Although it is beyond the scope of this chapter, many scholars believe such messages to have been prepared for purposes of contemporary or ex post facto self-exculpation, not action. 31. Historiography can be distinguished from history as a method of scholarship that attempts to make sense of history and to theorize why events happen, much like evolution theorizes why the fossil record looks as it does. 32. Kaiser, “Regional Resistance,” 210, citing Taner Akçam, Ermeni Meselesi Hallolmuştur: Osmanlı Belgelerine Göre Savaş Yıllarında Ermenilere Yönelik Politikalar (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2008), 104. 33. Kaiser, “Regional Resistance,” 211, quoting Ryan Gingeras, Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1912–1923 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 37. 34. Kaiser, “Regional Resistance,” 212, citing Fuat Dündar, Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878–1918) (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010), 74. 35. Kaiser, “Regional Resistance,” 213, citing US National Archives, RG 59,867.4016/80, Merrill to Morgenthau, June 14, 1915, in United States Official Records on the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1917, ed. Ara Sarafian (Princeton, NJ and London: Gomidas Institute, 2004), 68. 36. Kaiser, “Regional Resistance,” 215–16, quoting RG 59,867.4016/373, Jackson to Morgenthau, March 4, 1918, in Sarafian, United States Official Records, 587. 37. Kaiser, “Regional Resistance,” 216. Üngör refers to Patriarch Zaven as the patriarch of Echmiadzin and Nubar, after the spiritual center of the Holy Armenian Apostolic Church. Uğur Ümit Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia 1913–50 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 50. There is another title, that of Primate and Catholicos of all Armenians and Supreme Patriarch of the National See of Ararat, the Apostolic Mother Church of the Cathedral of Etchmiadzin. Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 40 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 106. 38. Kaiser, “Regional Resistance,” 217. 39. Ibid. 40. Bloxham, The Great Game, 254, 256. He also cites Dadrian, Lepsius, Kévorkian, Sarafian, and others whose works are to similar effect regarding scheming against the Armenians in particular. Ibid., 248, 250–55. 41. Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Macmillan, 2006), 81, 84, 89, 91, 93–94, 108. 42. Ibid., 91, 93, 102. 43. Ibid., 104–11. 44. Ibid., 112–16. See also Henry Morgenthau, Secrets of the Bosporus. Constantinople 1913–1916 (London: Hutchinson, 1918), 107–8 (quoting the Sultan’s declaration of holy war as saying that “the blood of infidels in the Islamic lands may be shed with impunity—except those to whom the Moslem power has promised security and who are allied with it,” to which he added that by the “allied” exception the “Germans and Austrians are excepted from massacre”); Bloxham, The Great Game, 71. 45. Hans-Lukas Kieser, “From ‘Patriotism’ to Mass Murder: Dr. Mehmed Reşid (1873–1919),” in A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Ronald Grigor

Genocide by Deportation into Poverty | 381 Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman N. Naimark (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 135–36. 46. Ibid., 130. 47. Ibid., 133. 48. Ibid., 133–41. 49. David Gaunt, “The Ottoman Treatment of the Assyrians,” in Suny et al., A Question of Genocide, 248–49. 50. Mark Levene, “Why Is the Twentieth Century the Century of Genocide?” Journal of World History 11, no. 2 (2000): 305–36, 318–20. See also Levene, “Creating a Modern ‘Zone of Genocide’: The Impact of Nation- and State-Formation on Eastern Anatolia, 1878–1923,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12, no. 3 (1998): 398–411. 51. Gabriele Yonan, Ein Vergessener Holocaust: Die Vernichtung der christlichen Assyrer in der Turkei (Gottingen: Gesellschaft für Bedröhte Volker, 2000), 78–89, 105–13, quoting Yonan H. Shahbaz, The Rage of Islam (Philadelphia: The Judson Press, 1918), 51. On October 10, 1915, The New York Times reported that Earl Evelyn Baring and Lord Robert Crewe-Milnes announced in the House of Lords that “German consular officials encouraged the Turkish population to attack Armenians.” “Spare Armenians, Pope Asks Sultan,” The New York Times, October 11, 1915, retrieved from http:// www.cilicia.com/armo10c-nyt19151011c.html. Some scholars argue that the German calls to jihad were aimed to incite attacks against British, French, or Russian forces in majority-Muslim colonies and territories, rather than against Ottoman Christian civilians. German contemporaries of the policy disagreed. In 1917, German veteran Dr Harry Sturmer published his memoirs, in which he accused the German government of giving its “consent” for extermination of the Armenian race. “Germany’s Sins Indicted by a German,” The Literary Digest, October 6, 1917, retrieved from http://www.cilicia.com/armo10c-ld19171006.html. Ambassador Bryce argued that the Germans gave their “tacit approval” to the Ottoman leadership to commit “the hugest single crime” of the war in a region with “great strategical importance” to Germany. Quoted in “Armenia, United and Independent,” The New Armenia, December 1918, 191. Ambassador Morgenthau wrote that the Germans could have prevented the “greatest horror in history,” but refused to do so other than by issuing a timid “note.” Morgenthau, “‘The Greatest Horror in History’: An Authentic Account of the Armenian Atrocities,” Red Cross Magazine 13, no. 3 (March 1918): 15. In 1917, an American Protestant missionary, the Rev. Alpheus Newell Andrus of Mardin, accused the Germans of having “suggested” the antiChristian measures, and of participating in them. “German Guilt for Armenian Blood,” The Literary Digest, October 27, 1917, retrieved from http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php&title=German_ Guilt_For_Armenian_Blood_-ld19171027. Dr Sturmer explained that the German embassy gave false assurances of doing everything it could to save the Armenians. “Germany and the Armenian Atrocities,” New York Times Current History (November 1917), retrieved from http://www.cilicia. com/armo10c-nyt191711a.html. The German High Commissioner in the Caucasus wrote to the German Foreign Office in 1918 that: “History will not, and can not, admit that the two great Christian empires of Central Europe were not in a position to impose their will upon their Asiatic ally, at least in such a case as this, where the life and death of a whole people are at stake.” “Germany and the Armenian Massacres,” New York Times Current History (November 1919), retrieved from http:// www.cilicia.com/armo10c-nyt191911.html. See also C. Snouck Hurgronje, The Holy War “Made in Germany” (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915). 52. Gabriele Yonan, “Holy War Made in Germany: New Light on the Holocaust against the Christian Assyrians during World War I” (Paper presented to the Institute of the Max Planck Society for Promoting Science and Education, Berlin, Germany, July 2, 2000), retrieved from http://www.nineveh.com/ Holy%20War%20Made%20in%20Germany.html. 53. “Homicide,” in Encyclopedia Britannica, Or, a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature, Vol. 8 (Edinburgh: Bell and MacFarquhar, 1747), 636–37. 54. Wolfgang Gust, “The Question of an Armenian Revolution and the Radicalization of the Committee of Union and Progress toward the Armenian Genocide,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 7, no. 2–3 (2012): 251–64. 55. Ibid., 256.

382 | Hannibal Travis 56. Vahakn Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995), 211. 57. Ibid., 180–81. 58. Dadrian, “Armenian Genocide, Documentation of,” in Charny et al., Encyclopedia of Genocide, 93–95; “The Armenian Genocide,” in Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity, Vol. 2, ed. Dinah Shelton (New York: Macmillan Library Reference, 2005), 72–74. 59. Richard G. Hovannisian, “The Armenian Genocide: Wartime Radicalization or Premeditated Continuum?” in The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007), 9–14. 60. Robert Melson, “Provocation or Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry into the Armenian Genocide of 1915,” in The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010), 76–79. 61. Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 197. 62. Ibid., 229, 309, 322, 327–28, 356, 364, 394, 405, 810. 63. Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses, “Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing,” in Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe, ed. Donald Bloxham and Robert Gerwarth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 98–99; Donald Bloxham, “The First World War and the Development of the Armenian Genocide,” in Suny et al., A Question of Genocide, 260–75; David Gaunt, The Assyrian Genocide of 1915 (2009), retrieved from http://www.atour.com/history/1900/20140424a.html; Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2d ed. 2010) 149–67; Adam Jones and Thea Halo, “International Genocide Scholars Association Officially Recognizes Assyrian, Greek Genocides,” Zinda Magazine, December 15, 2007, retrieved from http://www.zindamagazine.com/html/ archives/2007/12.24.07/index_mon.php; Anahit Khosroeva, “The Assyrian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire and Adjacent Territories,” in Hovannisan, The Armenian Genocide, 267–74; René Lemarchand, “Introduction,” in Forgotten Genocides: Oblivion, Denial, and Memory, ed. René Lemarchand (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 2–4, 9, 18; Pieter H. Omtzigt, “Foreword,” in The Slow Disappearance of the Syriacs from Turkey and of the Grounds of the Mor Gabriel Monastery, ed. P. H. Omtzigt, Markus K. Tozman, and A. Tyndall (Munster: LIT Verlag Munster, 2012), 4; Martin Tamcke, “The Collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the ‘Seyfo’ against the Syrians,” in Omtzigt et al., The Slow Disappearance, 21–25; Alan Hurst, “The Lausanne Treaty: High Aspirations, Highly Neglected,” in Omtzigt et al., The Slow Disappearance, 25–29; Aryo Makko, “Living between the Fronts: The Turkish-Kurdish Conflict and the Assyrians,” in Omtzigt et al., The Slow Disappearance, 64, 71; Soner Onder, “Minority Rights in Turkey: Quo Vadis, Assyrians?” in Omtzigt et al., The Slow Disappearance, 100, 103–4, 118; Markus Tozman, “Cadastral Registration of Lands and Preservation Orders in Turkey’s South-East,” in Omtzigt et al., The Slow Disappearance, 139–56; Hannibal Travis, “The Assyrian Genocide: A Tale of Oblivion and Denial,” in Lemarchand, Forgotten Genocides, 123–36. 64. Premeditation is not required for genocidal intent, however. Ad Hoc Committee on Genocide, Report of the Committee and Draft Convention, UN Doc. No. E/794 (October 13, 1948), 5; UN Doc. No. A/C.6/ SR.73 (October 13, 1948), 89. 65. Certainly, there was advocacy and perhaps planning of such killings and deportations in the nineteenth century, and in 1908–09. Hovannisian, “The Armenian Genocide,” 10–12; Henry Theriault, “Rethinking Dehumanization in Genocide,” in Hovannisian, The Armenian Genocide, 35–36. 66. Cf. Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 69–70 (“The entrepreneurs of genocide are like the organizers of Adam Smith’s pin factory who have discovered the division of labor. Ideologues conjure up a monstrous conspiracy … ambitious administrators define target categories and compete for jurisdiction; different officials pass sentences or create administrative authorities; others arrest, some load onto trains, others unload, some guard, others herd people to the killing ground or into the gas chambers; still others shake cyanide crystals into the vents.”); David Cohen, “Beyond Nuremberg: Individual Responsibility for War Crimes,” in Human Rights in Political Transitions, ed. Carla Hesse and Robert Post (New York: Zone

Genocide by Deportation into Poverty | 383 Books, 1999), 53–74, 53 (“Contrasted with conventional crimes conducted by a single person or small cabal, state atrocities are instead often the product of collective, systematic, bureaucratic activity, made possible only by the collaboration of massive and complex organizations in the execution of criminal policies initiated at the highest levels of government. How, then, is individual responsibility to be located, limited, and defined within the vast bureaucratic apparatuses that make possible the pulling of a trigger or the dropping of a gas canister in some far-flung place?”); Mark Osiel, “The Banality of Good: Aligning Incentives against Mass Atrocity,” Columbia Law Review 105 (2005): 1751-1862, 1765 (“Specifically, a bureaucratic state can organize such crimes with unprecedented efficacy—employing sophisticated technologies, lasting several years, covering an entire country, perpetrated by many thousands, victimizing millions—and harnessing the legal system to these ends.”). 67. Uğur Ümit Üngör, “Geographies of Nationalism and Violence: Rethinking Young Turk ‘Social Engineering,’” European Journal of Turkish Studies, no. 7 (2008), retrieved from http://www.ejts.org/document2583.html. See also Üngör, “When Persecution Bleeds into Mass Murder: The Processive Nature of Genocide,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 1, no. 2 (2006): 173–96; Üngör, “Recalling the Appalling: Mass Violence in Turkey in the Twentieth Century,” in Memories of Mass Violence, ed. Nanci Adler, Selma Leydesdorff, and Leyla Neyzi (London: Routledge, 2008), 175–98. 68. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 2006), 125, 140, 160. 69. Harry Mulisch, Criminal Case 40/61, the Trial of Adolf Eichmann: An Eyewitness Account (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 50. 70. Robert Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 237–39. See also ibid., 218–37. 71. Ibid., 29–30, 252, 255. 72. Ibid., 238. See also Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 2nd edn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 1128. 73. Hilberg, The Destruction, 1128; Melson, Revolution and Genocide, 218–28. 74. Melson, Revolution and Genocide, 86. 75. Ibid., 220–29. 76. Ibid., 225–26, 231, 237–38. 77. Hilberg, The Destruction, 1128. 78. Ibid. 79. David Stannard, “Uniqueness as Denial: The Politics of Genocide Scholarship,” in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?, 303. 80. Ibid., 309. 81. Sergio DellaPergola, “World Jewish Population, 2012,” in American Jewish Year Book 2012: The Annual Record of the North American Jewish Communities, ed. Arnold Dashefsky and Ira M. Sheskin (London: Springer, 2013), 257–59. 82. Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi [Ottoman Archives], Osmanlı Arşivi, Yıldız tasnifi, Ermeni meselesi [Ottoman Archives, Yıldız Collection, the Armenian Question], ed. Ertuğrul Zekâi Ökte (Tarihi Araştırmalar ve Dokümantasyon Merkezleri, İstanbul Araştırma Merkezi [Historical Research Foundation, Istanbul Research Center], 1989), 29; Henry Elisha Allen, The Turkish Transformation: A Study in Social and Religious Development (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1968), 78. 83. Although some authors claim that the Caucasus in general or Circassia in particular are Muslim or Turkic homelands, the Georgians were present in the region before the Arab and Seljuk Turkic Muslim conquests. “Georgia, Patriarchan Orthodox Church of,” in The Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, ed. John Anthony McGuckin (New York: Wiley, 2011), 268–70; Amiad Jaimoukha, “Circassians,” in Encyclopedia of the World’s Minorities, ed. Carl Skutsch (London: Routledge, 2013), 314–15. 84. Dr Racho Donef, 1914: The Hellenic Genocide in the Danish Archives (2004), retrieved from http:// www.atour.com/history/GG/20040128a.html.

384 | Hannibal Travis 85. Ibid. 86. Gaunt, The Assyrian Genocide of 1915. 87. Christian Gerlach, Extremely Violent Societies: An Alternative to the Concept of Genocide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 100–101. 88. Ibid. 89. Ibid., 101–11, 360–61. 90. Stephen T. Katz, “The Uniqueness of the Holocaust: The Historical Dimension,” in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?, 71–73. See also US Department of State, Approximate Number of Armenians in the World, November 1922, declassified January 8, 1958, retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:US_State_Department_document_on_Armenian_Refugess_in_1921.jpg; Maj. Gen. James Harbord, Conditions in the Near East: Report of the American Military Mission to Armenia (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1920), 7–8, retrieved from http://armenianhouse.org/harbord/conditions-near-east. htm. 91. Taner Akçam, From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2004), 147; “Turks Slaughter Greeks, Sell Women to Slavery,” Los Angeles Times, June 9, 1918. 92. Arthur L. Frothingham, et al., Handbook of War Facts and Peace Problems (New York: Committee on Organized Education, National Security League, 1919), retrieved from http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/ comment/WarFacts/wfacts7.htm#11.4; Edwin James, “Turks Proclaim Banishment Edict to 1,000,000 Greeks,” New York Times, December 2, 1922. The Greek ambassador estimated to the Danish that 4.5 million Greeks lived in Turkey, which would mean that half to three-quarters of them had died. DK/RA UM/Udenrigsministeriet, Akter 1909 et seq, 3 G, trans. Michael Willadsen (October 3, 1916), retrieved from http://www.armenocide.net/armenocide/ArmGenDE.nsf/$$AllDocs/1916-10-31-DK-001. Fridtjof Nansen, the self-proclaimed architect of the salvation of the remaining Greeks by migration to Greece, estimated their number at 1.5 million. Fridtjof Nansen, Armenia and the Near East (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1928), 21–22. If there had originally been two million Ottoman Greeks, three-quarters would have survived by deportation to Greece. If there had originally been 4.5 million, as the Greek ambassador and other sources claimed, then only about one-third to a half would have survived. By one estimate, only one million of the Greek refugees survived the years of their being “destitute” and living in “squalor” after arriving in Greece without “food, shelter, clothing, [or] employment.” “The Refugees in Greece,” The Manchester Guardian, January 15, 1923, in Sofia Kontogeorge-Kostos, ed., Before the Silence: Archival News Reports of the Christian Holocaust That Begs to Be Remembered (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2011), 313, 315. “Infant mortality is terribly high,” it was reported (ibid.). 93. “Urging Turkey to Safeguard Its Christian Heritage,” Congressional Record 157 (2011): H8873, H8874. 94. Gingeras, Sorrowful Shores, 125, 168. 95. Melson, Revolution and Genocide, 150–51. 96. Uğur Ümit Üngör, “Seeing Like a Nation-State: Young Turk Social Engineering in Eastern Turkey, 1913–1950,” in Late Ottoman Genocides: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turk Population and Extermination Policies, ed. Dominik Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer (London: Routledge, 2009), 16–18. 97. Matthias Bjørnlund, “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a Case of Violent Turkification,” in Schaller and Zimmerer, Late Ottoman Genocides, 44. According to the Danish archives, the Turkification of Greek businesses began with a boycott and became violent halfway through 1914: “After open hints that it would be advisable for them to leave, menaces that they would be done to death were resorted to, and finally the threats began to take shape in the murder of villagers returning from their fields and the waylaying of townsmen. A reign of terror was instituted and the panic stricken Greeks fled as fast as they could….” Ibid., 39, quoting UM 2-0355, 196, 1914. 98. Ibid., 36–37; Melson, Revolution and Genocide, 207–26, 237–40. 99. Rifat Bali, “The Politics of Turkification during the Single Party Period,” in Turkey beyond Nationalism: Towards Post-Nationalist Identities, ed. Hans-Lukas Kieser (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 45–46.

Genocide by Deportation into Poverty | 385 100. “Urging Turkey,” 8875–76. 101. Joseph Yacoub, “The Assyrian Community in Turkey,” in Contrasts and Solutions in the Middle East, ed. Ole Høiris and Sefa Martin Yürükel (Oxford: The Alden Press, 1997), 324. 102. The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–16: Documents Presented to the Viscount of Fallodon Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs by Viscount Bryce (London: H.M.S.O., 1916), Document 73, Trebizond: Extracts from an Interview with Comm. G. Gorrini, Late Italian Consul-General at Trebizond, Published in the Journal Il Messaggero of Rome, 25th August, 1915, 290. 103. Quoted in Israel W. Charny, Rouben Paul Adalian, and Steven L. Jacobs, “‘Holocaust’: The Word and Its Usage,” in Charny et al., Encyclopedia of Genocide, 42. 104. William Walter Rockwell, “The Total of Armenian and Syrian Dead,” in Current History: A Monthly Magazine of The New York Times 5, no. 1 (November 1916): 339. 105. Charny et al., “‘Holocaust,’” 42. 106. Quoted in Congressional Record—House, Part 16, H6091, Statement of Rep. Bilirakis. See also Johannes Lepsius, Deutschland und Armenien: Sammlung Diplomatischer Aktenstücke, 1914–1918 (Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1919), lxxix (“Erledigung der armenischen Frage durch die Vernichtung der armenischen Rasse….”). 107. Congressional Record—Senate, Vol. 151, Pt. 6, S7543, Statement of Sen Levin. 108. Johannes Lepsius, Der Todesgang des armenischen Volkes (Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1919), xxvii, quoted in Hans-Lukas Kieser, “Johannes Lepsius: Theologian, Humanitarian Activist and Historian of Völkermord: An Approach to German Biography (858–1926),” in Logos im Dialogos: Auf der Suche nach der Orthodoxie, Gedenkschrift für Hermann Goltz, ed. Anna Briskina, Armenuhi Drost-Abgarjan, and Axel Meißner (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2011), 225. See also S. Zurlinden, Der Weltkrieg, Vol. II (Zürich: Art. Institut Orell Füssli, 1918), 640–49. The same word was used in German prior to World War I to refer to German imperialism in Poland. Alexa Stiller, “Semantics of Extermination: The Use of the New Term of Genocide in the Nuremberg Trials and the Genesis of a Master Narrative,” in Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals: Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography, ed. Kim Christian Priemel and Alexa Stiller (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), 127. 109. Gerlach, Extremely Violent Societies, 255–63; Gingeras, Sorrowful Shores, 3. 110. Hannibal Travis, Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2010), 198–209, 220, 249–51, 268, 285–86. See also Morgenthau, Secrets of the Bosporus, 242 (recounting an event at which German geopolitical strategist Paul Rohrbach urged the Ottomans to “seize these [Armenian] people in the lands where they had lived for ages and transport them violently to this dreary, hot desert” so that “Armenia should be freed of all Russian influence”). 111. Travis, Genocide in the Middle East, 198–209, 220, 249–51, 268, 285–86. See also Yonan, Ein Vergessener Holocaust, 277–79; DE/PA-AA/R1409, Radowitz to Bethmann Hollweg, October 9, 1916, retrieved from http://www.armenocide.de/armenocide/armgende.nsf/fcdf51bb2368582cc1256d00003c4572/1e5 1acbf58d1c96cc12568f30059b2cb!OpenDocument. 112. Quoted in Travis, Genocide in the Middle East, 220. 113. Quoted in ibid., 248–49. 114. DE/PA-AA/R14089, Publication: DuA Dok. 209 (gk.), Wolff-Metternich to Bethmann Hollweg, December 7, 1915, retrieved from http://www.armenocide.de/armenocide/armgende.nsf/3a4b0a224f485 c26c1256ad8001005f2/f860f1a7cd668e3bc1256934006c94e8!OpenDocument. This is Google’s translation of the document. 115. Ibid. 116. Ibid. This exchange followed one in which the Turks admitted to past deportations in committing to no “further” ones. “Due to news that the Turkish government intended recently to deport the Armenians in Constantinople, today I have [made] representations to Halil Bey and had pointed out to him again at the risk of doing serious damage of an economic nature. Halil Bey said that the Cabinet had already

386 | Hannibal Travis decided to refrain from all further deportation of the Armenians, especially of deportation of the Armenians of Constantinople” (emphasis added). In the original, the statement said: “Halil Bey erklärte, der Ministerrat habe bereits beschlossen, von allen weiteren Armenierverschickungen, insbesondere auch von Verschickung der Armenier Konstantinopels abzuchen.” DE/PA-AA/BoKon/171, Neurath to File, November 8, 1915, retrieved from http://www.armenocide.de/armenocide/armgende.nsf/24599fab353 8b532c1257794007b610b/5a2f6d3f327586bec12568f30059b23d!OpenDocument. The translation is adapted from Google’s translation function. US ambassador Henry Morgenthau devoted a whole chapter of one of his books to the determination of Germany not to halt the massacres. Henry Morgenthau, The Murder of a Nation (New York: Armenian Benevolent Soc., 1974), 93–114. 117. In the original, the quote is: “Der Feldzug Halil Beys nach Nordpersien hatte Massakrierung seiner armenischen und syrischen Bataillone und Vertreibung der armenischen, syrischen und persischen Bevölkerung aus Nordpersien zur Folge und hinterließ eine große Erbitterung gegen die Türken.” Lepsius, Deutschland und Armenien, 308. 118. Hilmar Kaiser, “Historical Introduction,” in A German Officer during the Armenian Genocide: A Biography of Max von Scheubner-Richter, ed. Paul Leverkuehn, trans. Alasdair Lean (London: Gomidas Institute, 2008), xci. 119. Tessa Hofmann, “German Eyewitness Reports of the Genocide of the Armenians, 1915–16,” in A Crime of Silence: The Permanent People’s Tribunal on the Armenian Genocide, ed. Gérard Libaridian (London: Zed Books, 1985), 77. 120. Dr Martin Niepage, The Horrors of Aleppo: Seen by a German Eyewitness (London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., 1916), retrieved from http://archive.org/details/horrorsofaleppos00niep. 121. Vahakhn Dadrian, “The Historical and Legal Interconnections between the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust: From Impunity to Retributive Justice,” Yale Journal of International Law 23 (1998), 503–59, 534. 122. US National Archives, RG 59,867.00/7981/2, Morgenthau to Secretary of State Robert Lansing, “Private and Confidential,” November 18, 1915, quoted in Dadrian, “The Historical and Legal Interconnections,” 509. 123. “Morgenthau Calls for Check on Turks; Says Their Devilish Scheme for Annihilation of Other Races Must Not Go On,” The New York Times, September 5, 1922. 124. Dadrian, “The Historical and Legal Interconnections,” 509–10. 125. Quoted in Heath Lowry, The Story behind Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1999), viii. See also Jones, Genocide, 162. Dennis Papazian notes in this connection that the “Syrians” means the non-Arab Assyrians, and that “the Christian Assyrians were almost completely wiped out by the Young Turk dictatorship, and few of them live presently in their ancestral homeland.” Papazian, “‘Misplaced Credulity’: Contemporary Turkish Attempts to Refute the Armenian Genocide,” Armenian Review 45, no. 1–2 (1992; rev. 2001), 177–78, retrieved from http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/papazian/ misplace.html#bN_43_. 126. Morgenthau, The Murder of a Nation, 19–21. 127. Quoted in Constantine G. Hatzidimitriou, American Accounts Documenting the Destruction of Smyrna by the Kemalist Turkish Forces: September 1922 (Athens: Caratzas, 2003), 110. 128. George Horton, The Blight of Asia: An Account of the Systematic Extermination of Christian Populations by Mohammedans and of the Culpability of Certain Great Powers; with the True Story of the Burning of Smyrna (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1926), 136. 129. Viscount James Bryce, “Preface,” in Joseph Naayem, Shall This Nation Die? (New York: Chaldean Rescue, 1921), xi. 130. “Turkish Rule in Armenia,” Hansard’s Debates (Lords) (December 17, 1919), 403. 131. Ibid., 405. He added that the Assyrians had lost half their population even though historically they were “perfectly innocent and quiet in their mountain recesses,” so that they “have a right to ask not only

Genocide by Deportation into Poverty | 387 for perfect security in the future but also that compensation should be made by the Turkish Government to them for their sufferings.” Ibid., 404–5. 132. Ibid., 294-95. 133. G. W. Prothero, ed., Peace Handbooks: Turkey in Asia (II), no. 61–66 (Great Britain: Foreign Office Historical Section, 1920), 26. The book clarified that it was referring to the “Nestorians, Syro-Chaldeans, or Assyrians.” Ibid., 5. 134. Quoted in Vartkes Yeghiayan, ed., British Foreign Office Dossiers on Turkish War Criminals (LaVerne, CA: American Armenian International College, 1991), 251. 135. “Turkish Rule in Armenia,” 281. 136. Ibid., 284. 137. Nansen, Armenia and the Near East, 296. 138. Ibid., 298. 139. “Turks Slaughter Christian Greeks,” The Lincoln Daily Star, October 19, 1917. 140. “The Refugees in Greece,” The Manchester Guardian, January 15, 1923, in Kontogeorge-Kostos, Before the Silence, 313, 315. 141. Herbert Adams Gibbons, “Near East Relief Prevented from Helping Greeks,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 13, 1922, in Kontogeorge-Kostos, Before the Silence, 175, 177. 142. Ibid., 177. 143. Ibid., 178. 144. Ibid. 145. “Moslems to Take Place of Greeks in Samsun Region,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 28, 1922, in Kontogeorge-Kostos, Before the Silence, 181. 146. Edwin James, “Kemal Won’t Insure Against Massacres,” New York Times, September 11, 1922, in Kontogeorge-Kostos, Before the Silence, 183. 147. James Barton, ed., Turkish Atrocities: Statements of American Missionaries on the Destruction of Christian Communities in Ottoman Turkey, 1915–1917 (Ann Arbor, MI: Gomidas Institute, 1998), 174–78. 148. The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Document 32, Urmia after Its Evacuation by the Turks and Kurds: Letter Dated Urmia 20th May, 1915, from Mrs. J. P. Cochran to Friends in the United States…, 155. 149. Ibid., 155-56. 150. Ibid., 164-67. 151. Ibid., 175. 152. Quoted in Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors, 153. 153. Ibid., 154. 154. Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 152. 155. David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 3rd edn (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 210. 156. Ibid. 157. Gabriele Yonan, Lest We Perish: A Forgotten Holocaust: The Extermination of the Christian Assyrians in Turkey and Persia (unpublished manuscript, 1996), 230–31. See also Lepsius, Der Todesgang, 66–117; Lepsius, Marteling der Armeniërs in Turkije (Haarlem, The Netherlands: De Erven Loosjes, 1918), 97–144; The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Annex D, Statistical Analysis of the Racial Elements in the Ottoman Vilayets of Erzeroum, Van, Bitlis, Mamouret-ul-Aziz, Diyarbekir, and Sivas, 661;Travis, Genocide in the Middle East, 273 (citing FO 424/106, Report on Reforms in Van, FO 424/106, 1879, in British Documents on Ottoman Armenians, Vol. 1 [1856–1880], ed. Bilâl N. Şimşir [Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, 1980], at 645–46).

388 | Hannibal Travis 158. Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 547. 159. Haldun Gülalp, Citizenship and Ethnic Conflict: Challenging the Nation-State (London: Routledge, 1995), 79. 160. McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 210; Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey, 216. 161. Şener Aktürk, Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 126–27; Soner Cagaptay, Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who Is a Turk? (London: Routledge, 2013), 16. 162. Aktürk, Regimes of Ethnicity, 127. 163. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, entered into force 1951. 164. Ara Sarafian, “The Conversion and Absorption of Women and Children as a Component of the Armenian Genocide,” in In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century, ed. Omer Bartov and Phyllis Mack (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 210. Although sterilization may not have been used, the language of subsection II(d) regarding prevention of births is not limited to such a method. Theft of women and girls from their husbands and communities prevents births to such women in a context that II(d) describes as “within the group.” 165. Lemkin noted that Austen H. Layard, a British diplomat and explorer, described the fate of Assyrians as follows: “When the slaughter of the people of Ashita (9,000) became known in the valley of Liza, the inhabitants of the villages (1,000) took refuge on a lofty platform of rock, where they hoped either to escape notice or to defend themselves against any number of assailants. Bedr Khan Bey (the officer of the Sultan, who had charge of the massacre) surrounded the place and watched until hunger and thirst, in hot sultry weather, had done their work. After three days a regular capitulation was signed and sworn on the Koran; their arms were delivered up; the Kurds were admitted on the platform. Then did the slaughter begin. To save the trouble of killing them, they were pitched into the Zab (river) below. Out of about one thousand only one escaped from the massacre. The face of the rock below is still covered with scattered bones of the dead, bleached skulls, long locks of women’s hair, and torn portions of garments they had worn.” Michael Bazyler, ed., Raphael Lemkin’s Dossier on the Armenian Genocide (Glendale, CA: Center for Armenian Remembrance, 2008), 20. 166. Ibid., 21 (quoting a report in The Times of London that “I hear piteous tales of the desolation that reigns throughout Kurdistan—villages deserted; towns abandoned; trade at a standstill; harvest ready for the sickle, but none to gather it in; husbands mourning their dishonored wives; parents their murdered children; and this is not the work of a power where policy of selfish aggression no man can defend, but the ghastly acts of Turkey’s irregular soldiers on Turkey’s most peaceable inhabitants; acts, the perpetration of which are well known, and yet they are allowed to go unpunished.”). 167. Ibid., 57. 168. Ibid., 56–57 (quoting Naayem, Shall This Nation Die? 171–73). 169. Ibid., 79–81. Emphasis added. 170. Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Harper Perennial, 2003), 50; Raphael Lemkin, Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin, ed. Donna-Lee Frieze (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2013), 118–20. 171. Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation—Analysis of Government—Proposals for Redress (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), xi–xii, retrieved from http://www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/AxisRule1944-1.htm. 172. Attorney General v. Eichmann, Criminal Case No. 40/61, Judgment (District Court of Jerusalem, December 11, 1961), para. 58, retrieved from http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/e/eichmann.adolf/ transcripts/ftp.cgi?people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Judgment/Judgment-011. 173. Ibid., para. 69, retrieved from http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/ ftp.cgi?people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Judgment/Judgment-013.

Genocide by Deportation into Poverty | 389 174. Ibid., para. 70–71. 175. Ibid., para. 76. 176. Ibid., para. 120, retrieved from http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/ ftp.cgi?people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/Judgment/Judgment-037. See also ibid., para. 155, retrieved from http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/e/eichmann.adolf/transcripts/ftp.cgi?people/e/eichmann. adolf/transcripts/Judgment/Judgment-049. 177. Draft Convention of the Crime of Genocide, UN Doc. No. E/447 (June 26, 1947), 25. 178. Roger Barrett and William Jackson, eds., Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Vol. 1 (Nuremberg, Germany: Office of Chief of Counsel, International Military Tribunal, January 20, 1946), retrieved from http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/chap_12.asp; Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Faith of European Jewry, 1932– 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 171, 378. 179. Mordechai Altshuler, “Escape and Evacuation of Soviet Jews at the Time of the Nazi Invasion,” in The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941–1945, ed. Lucjan Dobroszycki and Jeffrey S. Gurockp (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 85. 180. Norbert Ehrenfreund, The Nuremberg Legacy: How the Nazi War Crimes Trials Changed the Course of History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 194. 181. “Iraq,” in Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2008: Vols. I and II, ed. Jeffrey T. Bergner (2009), 1977, retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=NqIkQz68_fgC&pg=PA1977. 182. Al Anfal, Special Verdict Pertaining to Case No 1/C Second/2006, Iraqi High Tribunal, Second Criminal Court/Court of Felonies (June 24, 2007), 22–24; Al Anfal, Special Verdict Pertaining to Case No 1/C Second/2006, Iraqi High Tribunal, Appellate Chamber (September 4, 2007), 11–14, 26; “Ali Hassan al-Majid (Chemical Ali),” in A Biographical Encyclopedia of Contemporary Genocide, ed. Paul R. Bartrop (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 11–12. 183. “Saddam Kin to Hang for Genocide,” Gulf Times, June 25, 2007, retrieved from https:// web.archive.org/web/20071102194751/http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article. asp?cu_no=2&item_no=157207&version=1&template_id=57&parent_id=56. 184. Michael J. Doyle, “The Case of Saddam Hussein’s Terror against the Kurds and the International Response,” in State Terrorism and Human Rights: International Responses since the End of the Cold War, ed. Gillian Duncan, Orla Lynch, Gilbert Ramsay, and Alison M. S. Watson (London: Routledge, 2011), 73–101; Clyde Habermen, “Kurds Can’t Go Home Again, Because the Homes Are Gone,” New York Times, September 18, 1988, retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/18/world/kurds-can-t-gohome-again-because-the-homes-are-gone.html. 185. UN Security Council, Resolution 688, UN Doc. No. S/RES/688 (April 5, 1991); Associated Press, “Allied Troops Enter Dohuk,” Greene County Observer-Reporter (Pennsylvania), May 25, 1991; Human Rights Watch, Endless Torment: The 1991 Uprising in Iraq and Its Aftermath (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992), 9, retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=zWVRzLncwIoC&pg=PA19. 186. Associated Press, “Allied Troops Enter Dohuk.” 187. Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign against the Kurds, ed. George Black (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993), 3–15, 42–58, 62, 75, 83, 110–19, 130–36, 139, 140–58, 161–65, 178–206, 242, 280–89, 324–25, 338, 356, 369, retrieved from http://books.google.com/ books?isbn=1564321088. 188. Ibid., 15. 189. Ibid., 12. See also ibid., 38. 190. Ibid., 12. See also ibid., 161. 191. Ibid., 4, 12. See also ibid., 5, 58, 132, 200–201. 192. See generally Travis, Genocide in the Middle East.

390 | Hannibal Travis 193. Cambodian Genocide Justice Act, Pub. L. 103–236, title V, April 30, 1994, 108 Stat. 486 (22 U.S.C. 2656 note); Associated Press, “Cambodian Famine ‘Genocidal Tragedy,”’ Miami News, October 25, 1979. 194. Robert Cribb, “Political Genocides in Postcolonial Asia,” in Bloxham and Moses, The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, 463, citing Bruce Sharp, “Counting Hell: The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia” (2005), retrieved from http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm. 195. Ibid. 196. Howard J. De Nike, John Quigley, and Kenneth J. Robinson, Genocide in Cambodia: Documents from the Trial of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 47, 69, 147, 311, 333, 350, 463, 484, 519–21. But see ibid., 424 (one to two million died). 197. Sharp, “Counting Hell,” citing Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 458–61. 198. Ibid., citing Judith Banister and E. Paige Johnson, “After the Nightmare: The Population of Cambodia,” in Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia, ed. Ben Kiernan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1993), 65–139; Associated Press, “Thailand Relocates 400,000,” Ottawa Citizen, November 22, 1979; Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime, 373. 199. Wendy Cadge, Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 21. 200. Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime, 296. 201. Ben Kiernan, “Roots of Genocide: New Evidence on the US Bombardment of Cambodia,” Cultural Survival Quarterly (Fall 1990; rev. 2010), retrieved from http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/ csq/article/roots-genocide-new-evidence-us-bombardment-cambodia. 202. Edward Wong, “Saddam Charged with Genocide of Kurds,” The International Herald Tribune, April 5, 2006. It was the first conviction not made in absentia, anyway. 203. Prosecutor v. Krstić, Case No. IT-98-33T, Trial Chamber, Judgment (August 2, 2001), 80–84. 204. Ibid., 589. 205. Ibid., 633. 206. Prosecutor v. Blagojevic and Jokic, Case No. IT-02-60-T, Trial Chamber, Judgment (January 17, 2005), 666. 207. Ibid., 675. 208. B. J. Cutler, “Prosecution Is Secondary Goal of Proposed War-Crimes Tribunal,” Deseret News (Utah), February 23, 1993, retrieved from http://www.deseretnews.com/article/277008/PROSECUTION-ISSECONDARY-GOAL-OF-PROPOSED-WAR-CRIMES-TRIBUNAL.html. 209. Travis, Genocide in the Middle East, 68; Reuters, “Christopher Confirms US to Examine Air Attacks on Bosnian Serbs,” The Daily Herald, January 28, 1993; Elaine Sciolino, “Conflict in the Balkans; Allies Announce Strategy to Curb Fighting in Bosnia; US Offers Planes, Not Men,” New York Times, May 23, 1993, retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/23/world/conflict-balkansallies-announce-strategy-curb-fighting-bosnia-us-offers-planes.html; UN Doc. No. E/CN.4/1992/S2/L.2 (November 30, 1992); see also Anthony Lewis, “Abroad at Home; The Clinton Doctrine?” New York Times, January 22, 1993, retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/22/opinion/ abroad-at-home-the-clinton-doctrine.html; “Why America Chose to Confront Serbs,” Daily News (Kentucky), May 14, 1993. 210. UN Doc. No. E/CN.4/1992/S-2/L.2 (November 30, 1992). The Commission adopted a similar draft resolution on February 23, 1993, and prior to that stated that ethnic cleansing in Bosnia approached genocide. Human Rights Commission, Resolution 1993/7, UN Doc. E/CN.4/RES/1993/7 (February 23, 1993); “NATO Should Undertake Military Role in Bosnia,” The State (South Carolina), December 12, 1992. 211. Travis, Genocide in the Middle East, 68 (citing UN Doc. No. A/RES/47/121 (December 18, 1992).

Genocide by Deportation into Poverty | 391 212. Associated Press, “UN Panel Agrees to Review Yugoslavian Rights Problems,” Kentucky New Era, August 11, 1992. 213. Helsinki Watch, War Crimes in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Vol. 1 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992), 32, retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=nltdtAo38K0C&pg=PA32. 214. Ibid. 215. Ibid., 95–96. 216. Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, Srebrenica: A “Safe” Haven, (2002), Appendix I, 88, retrieved from http://www.srebrenica-project.com/Documents/NOD/Appendix%20%20Intelligence. pdf. 217. UN Secretary-General, Annual Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization 1995, UN Doc. No. A/50/1, retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/19970805230525/http://www. un.org/Docs/SG/SG-Rpt/ch4e-4.htm (“The Bosnian Serb army detained [United Nations] troops from the Netherlands and by 14 July had evicted thousands of Muslim refugees from Srebrenica, while detaining Muslim men, whose fate is still unknown…. The UNHCR component is $172 million to cover the cost of humanitarian aid for an estimated total of 2,109,500 beneficiaries in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Slovenia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia [Serbia and Montenegro].”). 218. Prosecutor v. Krstić, Case No. IT-98-33T, Trial Chamber, Judgment (August 2, 2001), paras. 594–95. 219. Ibid., para. 1. 220. Travis, Genocide in the Middle East, 68. 221. Travis, “The Assyrian Genocide,” 132; Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Cyprus (Historical Overview)” (2013), retrieved from http://www.mfa.gov.tr/cyprus-_historical-overview_.en.mfa. Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit argued that this was a genocide because a Turkish woman was raped, Turkish Cypriots fled in fear, the “areas around the Turkish forces are being mined, and the Turkish Cypriot villages are still under siege.” Ibid. Turkey argues that two hundred to three hundred Turkish Cypriots went missing in 1963–64, and dozens of Turkish Cypriot men and one Turkish Cypriot teenage girl died violently at Greek Cypriot hands in 1974. Ibid. 222. Travis, “The Assyrian Genocide,” 132; Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Cyprus (Historical Overview).” 223. Joanna Macrae, “Defining the Boundaries: International Security and Humanitarian Engagement in the Post-Cold War World,” in The Humanitarian Decade: Challenges for Humanitarian Assistance in the Last Decade and into the Future, Vol. 2, ed. UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Geneva: The United Nations, 2004), 109. 224. Travis, Genocide in the Middle East, 82–83; Thomas Lippman, “U.S., NATO Expand Attacks.” Washington Post, March 27, 1999. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/ balkans/stories/kosovo032799.htm. See also Madeline Albright, “Testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Washington, DC, 15 Apr 1999,” US Department of State Dispatch, April 1999, retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1584/is_3_10/ai_54772685/. 225. “What Do We Do Now?,” Newsweek, May 16, 1999, retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/ what-do-we-do-now-166976. 226. Ibid. 227. Tim Judah, Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 2. 228. Prosecutor v. Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T, Trial Chamber I, Judgment (September 2, 1998), 3, retrieved from http://www.un.org/ictr/english/judgements/akayesu.html. 229. Ibid. 230. Ibid., 6.2. 231. Travis, “On the Original Understanding,” 32.

392 | Hannibal Travis 232. Luc Reydams and Jan Wouters, “The Politics of Establishing International Criminal Tribunals,” in International Prosecutors, ed. Luc Reydams, Jan Wouters, and Cedric Ryngaert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 37; “Defamation Campaign in Rwanda,” L’Osservatore Romano, June 2, 1999, 8; RFI, “UN Report to Show Rwanda Massacred Hutus in DR Congo,” August 27, 2010, retrieved from http://www.english.rfi.fr/africa/20100827-un-report-shows-rwanda-massacred-hutus-drcongo-says-le-monde. Regarding the DRC in 1996–99, see also Joe Bavier, “Congo War-Driven Crisis Kills 45,000 a Month—Study,” Reuters, January 22, 2007, retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/ article/us-congo-democratic-death-idUSL2280201220080122; Howard French, “How Rwanda’s Paul Kagame Exploits US Guilt,” April 19, 2014, retrieved from http://www.howardwfrench.com/2014/04/ how-rwandas-paul-kagame-exploits-u-s-guilt/; Amy Goodman, “The Invisible War,” Truthdig, January 23, 2008, retrieved from http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080123_the_invisible_war/; International Rescue Committee, “IRC Study Points to Horrific Death Toll in Eastern Congo: 2.5 Million” (2014), retrieved from http://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-republic-congo/irc-study-points-horrificdeath-toll-eastern-congo-25-million; International Rescue Committee, “Mortality in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: An Ongoing Crisis,” (2006), ii, retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/ bsp/hi/pdfs/22_1_08congomortality.pdf; Lydia Polgreen, “Congo’s Death Rate Unchanged since War Ended,” New York Times, January 23, 2008, retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/ world/africa/23congo.html?ref=world; Les Roberts et al., “Mortality in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: Results from Eleven Mortality Surveys” (2001), retrieved from http://repositories.lib.utexas. edu/bitstream/handle/2152/4652/3741.pdf?sequence=1; Barbara Crossette, “War Adds 1.7 Million Deaths in Eastern Congo, Study Finds,” New York Times, June 9, 2000, retrieved from www.nytimes. com/learning/students/pop/articles/060900un-congo.html. Regarding Rwanda in 1993–94, see also Steven Edwards, “Rwandan Victims Not Just Tutsis, Study Suggests: ‘There Was Much More to the “Tragedy” than Genocide,’ Says the Lead Author of the Report,” Vancouver Sun, April 8, 2004. See also Steven Edwards, “Genocide’s ‘Bad Guy’ in Doubt,” National Post, April 7, 2004; Steven Edwards, “Kagame Implicated in Genocide,” National Post, March 11, 2004. 233. Human Rights Watch, “Arming Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the Rwandan War” (1994), retrieved from http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/1994/01/01/arming-rwanda; Human Rights Watch, World Report 1992: Events of 1991 (New York: Human Rights Watch, December, 1991), 100, retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=hZMn3HsYouMC&pg=PA100#v=onepage&q& f=false. Thus, half of the Rwandan Tutsi population may have left the country before the genocide. Samuel Totten, “The Plight and Fate of Females during and Following the 1994 Rwandan Genocide,” in Plight and Fate of Women during and Following Genocide, paperback edn, ed. Samuel Totten (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2012), 124. 234. “Fear of Tutsis generated righteous rage, reinforced by ambition, greed, failure of moral nerve … a desire to be ‘a man’ or receive approval from one’s peers, patriotism, and loyalty to one’s kinfolk.” Mann, The Dark Side, 472. See also Osiel, “The Banality of Good,” 1797, n. 216. 235. Prosecutor v Theoneste Bagosora et al., Case No. ICTR-98-41-T, Trial Chamber I, Judgment (December 18, 2008), paras. 2102–10. 236. Republic of Rwanda, “History” (2009), retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20090407023908/ http://www.gov.rw/page.php?id_rubrique=9; UN News Service, “Rwanda: UN Agency Encourages Rwandan Refugees to Return After ‘Go-And-See’ Visits,” All Africa, December 28, 2005, retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/200512290224.html. 237. UN Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision, Comprehensive Tables (Geneva: UN Publications, 2009), 408, retrieved from http://books.google.com/ books?id=5Sp3V1HT-N0C&pg=PA408. 238. Ibid. 239. UN Doc. No. S/1994/640 (Secretary-General); UN Doc. No. S/RES/925 (June 22, 1994) (Security Council); US Department of State, “The Rwandan Genocide” (2013), retrieved from https://web.archive. org/web/20130412231613/http://www.state.gov/m/a/ips/c44620.htm. 240. Karen Smith, Genocide and the Europeans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 221.

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Genocide by Deportation into Poverty | 401 Sharp, Bruce. “Counting Hell: The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia.” 2005. Retrieved from http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm. Şimşir, Bilâl N., ed. British Documents on Ottoman Armenians, Vol. 1 (1856–1880). Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, 1980. Smith, Karen. Genocide and the Europeans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Stannard, David. “Uniqueness as Denial: The Politics of Genocide Scholarship.” In Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, 3rd edn, edited by Alan. S. Rosenbaum, 295–340. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2009. Stiller, Alexa. “Semantics of Extermination: The Use of the New Term of Genocide in the Nuremberg Trials and the Genesis of a Master Narrative.” In Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals: Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography, edited by Kim Christian Priemel and ‎Alexa Stiller, 104–33. New York: Berghahn Books, 2012. Stone, Dan. Histories of the Holocaust. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Suny, Ronald Grigor, et al. “Contents.” In A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman Naimark, vii–viii. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Tamcke, Martin. “The Collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the ‘Seyfo’ against the Syrians.” In The Slow Disappearance of the Syriacs from Turkey and of the Grounds of the Mor Gabriel Monastery, edited by P. H. Omtzigt, Markus K. Tozman, and A. Tyndall, 15–25. Munster: LIT Verlag Munster, 2012. Theriault, Henry. “Rethinking Dehumanization in Genocide.” In The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian, 27–40. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008. Totten, Samuel. “The Plight and Fate of Females during and Following the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.” In Plight and Fate of Women during and Following Genocide, edited by Samuel Totten, 107–35. Paperback edn. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2012. Tozman, Markus. “Cadastral Registration of Lands and Preservation Orders in Turkey’s South-East: Subtle Forms of Discrimination?” In The Slow Disappearance of the Syriacs from Turkey and of the Grounds of the Mor Gabriel Monastery, edited by P. H. Omtzigt, Markus K. Tozman, and A. Tyndall, 139–56. Munster: LIT Verlag Munster, 2012. Travis, Hannibal. “The Assyrian Genocide: A Tale of Oblivion and Denial,” In Forgotten Genocides: Oblivion, Denial, and Memory, edited by René Lemarchand, 123–36. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. ———. Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2010. ———. “On the Original Understanding of the Crime of Genocide.” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 7, no. 1 (2012): 30–55. Üngör, Uğur Ümit. “Geographies of Nationalism and Violence: Rethinking Young Turk ‘Social Engineering.’” European Journal of Turkish Studies, no. 7 (2008). Retrieved from ejts.revues.org/2583. ———. The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia 1913–50. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. ———. “Recalling the Appalling: Mass Violence in Turkey in the Twentieth Century.” In Memories of Mass Violence, edited by Nanci Adler, Selma Leydesdorff, and Leyla Neyzi, 175–98. London: Routledge, 2008. ———. “Seeing Like a Nation-State: Young Turk Social Engineering in Eastern Turkey, 1913–1950.” In Late Ottoman Genocides: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turk Population and Extermination Policies, edited by Dominik Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer, 15–39. London: Routledge, 2009. ———. “When Persecution Bleeds into Mass Murder: The Processive Nature of Genocide.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 1, no. 2 (2006): 173–96. UN News Service. “Rwanda: UN Agency Encourages Rwandan Refugees to Return After ‘Go-And-See’ Visits.” All Africa, December 28, 2005. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/200512290224. html.

402 | Hannibal Travis UN Population Division. World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision, Comprehensive Tables. Geneva: UN Publications, 2009. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=5Sp3V1HT-N0C&pg=PA408. UN Secretary-General. Annual Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization 1995. UN Doc. No. A/50/1. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/19970805230525/http://www. un.org/Docs/SG/SG-Rpt/ch4e-4.htm. UN Security Council. Resolution 688. UN Doc. No. S/RES/688 (April 5, 1991). US Department of State. Approximate Number of Armenians in the World, November 1922, declassified January 8, 1958. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_State_Department_document_on_Armenian_Refugess_in_1921.jpg US Department of State. “The Rwandan Genocide.” 2013. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/ web/20130412231613/http://www.state.gov/m/a/ips/c44620.htm. US National Archives. RG 59,867.00/7981/2, Morgenthau to Secretary of State Robert Lansing. “Private and Confidential.” November 18, 1915. US National Archives. RG 59,867.4016/373, Jackson to Morgenthau, March 4, 1918. US National Archives. RG 59,867.4016/80, Merrill to Morgenthau, June 14, 1915. Wong, Edward. “Saddam Charged with Genocide of Kurds.” The International Herald Tribune, April 5, 2006. Yacoub, Joseph. “The Assyrian Community in Turkey.” In Contrasts and Solutions in the Middle East, edited by Ole Høiris and Sefa Martin Yürükel, 323–40. Oxford: The Alden Press, 1997. Yahil, Leni. The Holocaust: The Faith of European Jewry, 1932–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Yeghiayan, Vartkes, ed. British Foreign Office Dossiers on Turkish War Criminals. LaVerne, CA: American Armenian International College, 1991. Yonan, Gabriele. “Holy War Made in Germany: New Light on the Holocaust against the Christian Assyrians during World War I.” Paper presented to the Institute of the Max Planck Society for Promoting Science and Education, Berlin, Germany, July 2, 2000. Retrieved from http://www.nineveh.com/ Holy%20War%20Made%20in%20Germany.html. ———. Lest We Perish: A Forgotten Holocaust: The Extermination of the Christian Assyrians in Turkey and Persia. Unpublished manuscript, 1996. ———. Ein Vergessener Holocaust: Die Vernichtung der christlichen Assyrer in der Turkei. Gottingen: Gesellschaft für Bedröhte Volker, 2000. Zurlinden, S. Der Weltkrieg, Vol. II. Zürich: Art. Institut Orell Füssli, 1918.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL DIMENSION OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE Suren Manukyan

One of the peculiarities of the Armenian Genocide was the broad participation of the Turkish population in the destruction of Armenians.1 The main organizers/planners and desk murderers/bureaucracy played a crucial role in decision-making, organizing, and establishing a system of genocidal violence, but it was impossible to implement genocide without wide mass participation. At the bottom of the killing hierarchy were ordinary people. Such mass killing becomes possible only when a societal consensus of a hierarchy of values is successfully achieved with regard to the extermination. Thus, the members of such special troops may come from all levels of society.2 Rank-and-file soldiers, volunteers in paramilitary forces like Teshkilat-ı Mahsusa, gendarmes, criminals released from prisons, doctors, peasants, students, Kurds, muhajirs (refugees from the Balkans and descendants of refugees from the North Caucasus), even women and children—that is, nearly all segments of the population—had a hand in the process of the physical eradication of the Armenians. British Rear-Admiral Richard Webb, the Deputy High Commissioner of Istanbul during the Allied occupation of the Ottoman capital, wrote in his letter to the Foreign Office on April 13, 1919:

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To punish all persons guilty of Armenian atrocities would necessitate wholesale execution of the Turks, and I therefore suggest retribution both on a national scale by dismembering the late Turkish Empire, as well as individually by the trial of high officials, such as those on my lists, whose fate will serve as an example.3 Some Turkish politicians also shared this sentiment. Ali Kemal, future Minister of Education and Internal Affairs, wrote in Sabah daily on January 28, 1919: “… To imagine the scale and conditions of the crime, we should talk not about 5–10, but about hundreds of thousands of perpetrators….”4 The chairman of the Ottoman Parliament, Minister of Defense and Foreign Affairs during World War I, Halil Menteşe, confessed in his memoirs, “There are a few Turks in Anatolia who had no connection with the acts of deportation.”5 Involvement in the killing process was so comprehensive, therefore, that it raises several questions that are essential for a full understanding of such mass participation. What explained the participation of ordinary civilians in the Armenian Genocide? What drove individuals to become mass murderers? How did the perpetrator elite, the Young Turk leadership, successfully organize the involvement of such a tremendous number of people in their extermination campaign? For a long time after the Armenian Genocide, the majority of memoirs and books described the perpetrators as insane barbarians spreading destruction, monsters thirsty for Armenian blood, and demons in human form. They were perceived as extraordinarily evil, committing a metaphysical crime.6 Of course it was easy and tempting to explain the brutality by the inherently psychopathic nature of the perpetrators, or specific idiosyncrasies. However, that led to distancing them as killers from everyday life. This misunderstanding of the perpetrators appeared also in the years immediately following the Holocaust. Scholars and academic works, as well as ordinary people, tended to associate the unique violence with pathological personalities.7 Social psychologist James E. Waller argued that, “for most of the mental health professionals assigned to the Nuremberg trials, the question was not if they would find psychopathology among the defendants, but simply how much psychological disturbance they would find. The notion that any of the defendants would be identified as seemingly normal and ordinary people was simply not considered. It was considered beyond the realm of rational possibility.”8 This misconception was debunked by political theorist Hannah Arendt, who reported on the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem for the New Yorker. In her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt called Eichmann the embodiment of the “banality of evil” and described him as an ordinary and common personality. Eichmann was not a madman. Moreover, Eichmann was certified by psychiatrists as “normal.” Arendt argued that the most terrifying thing about Eichmann was not how unusual or how sinister he was, but the understanding of his extreme ordinariness.9

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By and large, perpetrators of the Holocaust, as well as the Armenian Genocide, were hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, who carried out millions of executions. The large number of participants does not allow us to connect the implementation of genocide with the characteristic features of killers, to some common personality peculiarities among them, or to a common educational and social background. At the same time, I deem it would be very superficial to connect the behavior of human beings only with a biological predisposition. Of course Darwin’s theory of “natural selection,” with “behavior based mainly on instinct,” and his thesis of the influence of the “animal essence” of human nature as a step to understand commitment of human violence is very useful,10 but no other species (with the exception of chimpanzees) shows the capacity for premeditated killing of its own species on such a great scale.11 Being more “social being” than “biological unit,” the human reasons his activity mainly as a member of society and group. For this reason, we should seek the answers to the above-mentioned questions on the basis of social psychology.

The Danger of the Group Genocide is a group action. Perpetrators operate as members of groups and communities, both large and small. That is why it is necessary to review the problem of perpetration from the angle of group/crowd psychology. French sociologist Gustave Le Bon identified some special characteristics of crowds: “impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgment and of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of the sentiments, and others besides—which are almost always observed in beings belonging to inferior forms of evolution….”12 In a crowd, people’s individual behavior is blurred in the collective mind, “which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation.”13 “We see then,” Le Bon wrote, “that the disappearance of the conscious personality, the predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning of feelings and ideas in an identical direction by means of suggestion and contagion, the tendency to immediately transform the suggested ideas into acts; these, we see, are the principal characteristics of the individual forming part of a crowd. He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will.” Moreover, Le Bon insists that “by the mere fact that he forms part of an organized crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct.”14 The actions of members of a group become more primitive, more emotional and unconscious, and, at last, more antisocial. We should therefore focus on perpetrator groups and crowds for understanding the construction of cruelty during genocide, as being part of a group undoubtedly affects individual behavior.15 During the Armenian Genocide, the conscription of masses into the killing process took place through parallel and overlapping processes

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of social indoctrination and rationalization based on existing sentiment and stereotypes in people’s collective minds, such as the cultural perception of Armenians as aliens and the dehumanization of Christians.

Social Indoctrination A genocidal mentality of the Muslim population of the Ottoman Empire was developed by the architects of the genocide. Being premeditated and “determined upon following extensive and full deliberations,”16 the Armenian Genocide had a carefully planned and subsequently developed project of socialization of the people into genocidal roles. The Ottoman rulers were very good at social engineering during the Armenian Genocide. Social indoctrination created an image of the Armenians as “inner enemies” and drove the Turkish and Kurdish population of the empire to become murderers of the Armenians. The well-known process of searching for internal enemies against whom to mobilize the population intensifies during the decline of empires.17 After the coup of 1908, the Young Turk party failed to take effective steps to prevent the process of decay and fading of the Ottoman Empire. The situation was escalated by ongoing expansion of the stronger, developed, and modernized West. Territorial losses as a result of defeat in the Balkan and Tripolitania wars deepened the atmosphere of frustration. A target was needed against which to channel the discontent and disillusion of the people. Christians were presented as the main culprits of failure. In a society with an overwhelming rate of illiteracy and existing religious hatred against Armenians, this policy worked. Anti-Armenian propaganda was spread through a network of local Young Turk clubs and mosques, which produced the same sort of discourse. Several stereotypes against Armenians emerged continually by repeating the thesis of Armenians as an “inner threat.” In a speech on April 18, 1909, Member of Parliament from Kozan, Hambardzum Mouradian, explained the cause of the 1909 Adana massacres by saying, “the Armenians are called enemies of the people, enemies of the religion [bunlar millet düşmanı, din düşmanı diyorlardı]. Nobody explained to them that we have never been and are not their enemies.”18 Of course, these anti-Armenian sentiments did not appear accidentally and immediately. They had been vital to the Ottoman Empire for centuries and had galvanized people in the nineteenth century. After the Adana massacres of 1909, however, with the proclamation of future reforms in the Armenian provinces, and in the years leading to the beginning of World War I, this atmosphere of deep hostility against the Armenians became clearly defined and more visible. Hence, extermination of the Armenians came to be seen as the inevitable and only solution.

Armenians as Exploiters During the nineteenth century, when Ottoman trade expanded very rapidly, an entrepreneurial middle class of Christians developed in the empire. As a result of

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the increased wealth and self-confidence of the Christian middle class, a network of institutions—schools, gentlemen’s clubs, cafés, charitable organizations, and sports clubs—was created. By the 1860s, the very visible increase in wealth and status of the Christian communities gave rise to a negative reaction among Muslims.19 In such conditions, the Turkish elite frequently stressed the economic weight of the Armenian population. Being a suppressed minority, Armenians had a strong influence in some sectors of the Ottoman economy. As a consequence of the exclusion of nonMuslims from the Ottoman military and largely from political careers in the civil service (with some exceptions, as interpreters), Armenians and Greeks were compelled to find and occupy economic niches in finance, trade, and later in industries, similar to Jews in medieval Europe. Another reason was that some restrictions existed in Islam regarding financial matters, which allowed non-Muslims to take strong positions in banking. Only trade in livestock was concentrated in the hands of the Muslims (80%). The maximum proportion of trade controlled by Turkish traders was in carpets—38.9%; construction materials—27.1%; grain and flour—20.9%, and some others. Greek capital held a dominant position in the economic life of the empire. Greeks owned almost 50% of businesses in both the manufacturing and crafts sectors, as well as in domestic trade. They controlled more than 40% of all domestic financial transactions. The next level belonged to Armenian businessmen, traders, and financiers, who owned about 25% of production and trade. Following them were Jews and Levantines.20 Armenian weight was also considerable in agriculture and crafts. The economic success of the Armenians made them the objects of envy and hostility. Like Jews in Germany, Christians were constructed in Turkish minds as economic parasites, ransacking Ottoman land and wealth. The image created by the propaganda portrayed Armenians as exploiters of Muslims. The mutesarif of Adana, Ahmed Bey, is said to have expressed the common sentiment of the Turkish elite by mentioning, after the deportation of prominent landlords the Kenderjian brothers, Minas and Hovsep, that “two hundred Muslims can work, while a Christian reaps the fruits of their labors.”21

Armenians as Competitors Armenians were not only identified as an economic threat, but at the same time as competitors in the political and cultural fields. Since the 1870s, some Armenians had become politically active. Their contacts with European ideas and movements— mainly through schools established by European and American missionaries and travel to European capitals—impressed them with the vigor and possibilities of nineteenth-century developments. Armenians began to demand greater autonomy and political rights within the empire.22 The alliance of the Armenian Dashnak party with the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) in 1907 was portrayed in the Western press as a campaign of Ottoman unity. But soon afterwards, one of the authors of this alliance and one of the architects of the Armenian Genocide wrote to a friend that he regarded the alliance with the “mortal enemy” as tactical and provisional.23

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Armenians perceived reinforcement of the constitution as a tool to alleviate their social conditions in the Ottoman Empire and expand their rights and opportunities.24 They were so enthusiastic in this action that the constitution was often declared an invention of the Christians. The Muslims deemed the possible reforms expected by the constitutional revolution of 1908 unacceptable, especially attempts to raise the social status of the Christians. The result was merely jealousy and deep hatred by the Turkish populace. In a report of January 19, 1909, the Russian Consul General in Erzurum mentioned to Zinoviev, the Russian ambassador in Constantinople, the following: The enthusiasm of the Armenians for the proclaimed freedoms has stimulated increasing hatred among Muslims. Even among the most progressive Young Turks, who had recently openly proclaimed their appreciation to Armenians for being initiators in the liberation movement in Turkey, the distrust of Armenians is growing by leaps and bounds.25 A subcommittee of the CUP established secret surveillance on Armenian activists and ordered its agents in the province to not hesitate to use strong measures if the need arose.26 One of the leaders of the Hunchak Party, Stepanos Sapah-Giulian, wrote in his memoirs about the mayoral election in Merzifun after the re-establishment of the constitution. An Armenian candidate won, but his victory was contested. Even though after investigation the election was confirmed, the vali of Sıvas invalidated it. The vali had done this on instructions from the Central Committee of Salonika. The reason had been proclaimed that “posts of this kind should not be given to Armenians for the time being, since the Muslim population might find that somewhat irritating.”27 The aspiration to prevent competitiveness of the Armenians was visible in every sphere. Parliamentary deputy Vahan Papazian wrote in his memoirs about secret circulars sent in October 1911 to all CUP regional clubs, which demanded to limit by all means Armenian progress in the national, educational, and economic fields, and to keep an eye on the activities and events of political parties.28 In report no. 264 from September 29, 1910, to counselor of the Russian embassy in Constantinople, Svechin, from Russian Consul General Shtritter, we read: Recently a clash about a land-issue took place between Armenians and Mohammedans in the village Kepryukoe of Passinkaza, and one of the Armenians was wounded. In the days of the old regime a lot of Armenian lands passed to the temporary use of the Muslims: but now, when in the changing conditions of state life, Armenian owners are trying to recover their possessions clashes occurred, which ended for the most part not in favor of the Armenians. In the cited case, the same thing happened:

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the Armenians, although being the victims, were arrested, and the Turk who injured Armenians, was ostensibly arrested and immediately released….29 Even in the sphere of sport and physical education in the Ottoman Empire, attempts were made to limit the Armenians’ competitiveness. Sport clubs were created by the CUP “to fight against the success of minority clubs,”30 which were ahead of the Turks. A powerful explanation of the situation is provided by Salihzeki, the kaymakam of Develi (Everek), who showed the general attitude clearly. In the summer of 1915, when a delegation of Armenian notables came to him and asked him to relent in his persecution, he responded thus: You Armenians are progressive people, you are industrious and productive. I wish we Turks could be like you. The trouble is that these conditions are inimical with our national interests. How can we acquiesce to the fact that the Turk, the master of this land, has become your servant? The Armenians live in comfortable homes, but the Turks are confined to huts and sheds. The Armenians dress well, eat well, while the Turks have to contend with rags and dry bread. Now that the opportunity has presented itself, we are determined to annihilate you. Your sympathies for the Allied Powers make this even more expedient. Your annihilation will not be carried out quickly and swiftly but will be accompanied by torment and torture.31

Armenians as “Russian/Western Agents” and as “Traitors” To instill commitment in its people, a genocidal state constructs its victims as the enemy, and frequently the internal enemy is associated with foreign enemies. The thesis of provocation becomes justification for annihilation.32 After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 and the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Turks began to treat Armenians as Russian agents and proxies of the West, because the Treaty of Berlin (§ 61) imposed the obligation for administrative reforms in the “Armenian provinces” on the Ottoman government under the observation of the Great Powers. The Ottoman rulers feared that their power was in peril because of Armenians’ alleged disloyalty. These notions got stronger after the plan for reform was launched in the Armenian vilayets in 1914 by the Great Powers. The paranoia became extremely virulent after the outbreak of World War I and intensified further with every Turkish military failure (especially in January 1915 when Enver scapegoated the Armenians after the disastrous defeat at Sarıkamış, blaming them for military collaboration with the Russians). After the arrest of Armenian intellectuals in early April 1915, US ambassador Henry Morgenthau tried to clarify the situation with Talât and received the answer that “[t]he Armenians at Van had already shown their abilities as revolutionists … these leaders in Constantinople were corresponding with the Russians; and he [Talât]

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had every reason to fear that they would start an insurrection against the Central Government.”33 The thesis of Armenian betrayal was actively used in a media campaign. Articles labeled Armenians as the Russians’ “accomplices” and blamed them for crimes that had been committed against the Muslim population in the Caucasus, and also in the Balkans during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. This stereotype of “inner enemy” and “Armenian betrayal” was used to explain to ordinary people the threat embodied by the Armenians and to facilitate recruitment of crowds to participate in massacres to prevent a conspiracy by the Armenians “to join with their brothers of Russia in order to massacre Muslims.”34 In this environment, a few acts of resistance were used as proof of disloyalty and evidence of preparation for revolution. In reality, however, the loyalty of the majority of the Armenian population was obvious.35 Morgenthau wrote: “That the Armenians all over Turkey sympathized with the Entente was no secret,”36 but he explained that Armenians had strong reasons for such an attitude, as “after massacring hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the course of thirty years, outraging their women and girls, and robbing and maltreating them in every conceivable way, the Turks still apparently believed that they had the right to expect from them the most enthusiastic ‘loyalty.’”37 Even in these conditions, Armenian leaders, both political and clergy, tried to prevent provocations, as well as encouraging young men to fulfill their Ottoman army obligations. Thousands of Armenian soldiers showed bravery on the fronts of World War I in the lines of the Ottoman Army. The majority of Armenians remained unpoliticized patriots of their Ottoman homeland. What Armenian resistance there was appears to have been localized, desperate, and reactive in the face of liquidation.38 Moreover, despite the atmosphere of virulent hostility towards Armenians, and permanent clashes between Muslim conscripts and inhabitants in Zeytun, local Armenian women organized mobile kitchens to cook soup and bake bread for the conscripts, using provisions from the last of their savings.39 A few Ottoman officials accepted this condition. Aleppo governor-general Celal Bey wrote at the end of World War I that there was no need for the deportation of the Zeytun people to Konya, as there were only a small number of military deserters, and only minor incidents of unrest.40 But as the Young Turks intended to create a politically and culturally unified state with one religion (Islam) and one language (Turkish), the actual conduct of the Armenians in the war was practically irrelevant. Paranoia about possible Armenian uprisings and propaganda regarding Armenian unreliability continued. In his memoirs, Cemal (Djemal) justified the necessity of merciless punishment for “several traitors who, unfortunately are now in sheep’s skins.”41 The thesis of Armenian disloyalty was critically useful also for justification of the Young Turks’ actions in the eyes of their allies. The articulation of resistance and cooperation with Russians would transform the massacre of innocent people into the settlement of a strategic task.

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Rationalization of Cruelty Social indoctrination and the creation of the image of an enemy was certainly a very important and necessary step for inciting hatred, but it was not enough to move people to genocidal activity. Killing is not easy; human beings are not well adapted to killing other human beings. The architects of genocide had to provide them with a strong, convincing rationale for committing genocidal acts. In rationalizing cruelty, leaders act as pure psychologists who manipulate people by finding the points that trigger their passions and readiness to kill. As Weitz wrote, “They made genocide a popular event….”42 One of the manipulative tricks is providing the sense of being part of a great, magnificent action, a sense of significance and involvement in a historical event. At the same time, the possible personal economic gains encourage participation of large numbers of the population in the process of murder.

Appeal to a Utopian Idea One of the forms for rationalization of cruelty is the manifestation of a utopian idea. People were initiated to participate in mass murder by being provided with rationalization to kill in the name of something grandiose and astounding. The ideological framework known as “pan-Turkic ideology” was developed for the Ottoman government by Ziya Gökalp and Yusuf Akçura. The killing of Christians and erasing of obstacles from the pan-Turkic way was part of a great strategy that called for the creation of a super-empire, which would unite all Turks and Turkic peoples from Anatolia through Central Asia (pan-Turanism or pan-Turkism).43 In his epic Kizilelma, Ziya Gökalp had the female protagonist, the “ideal” maiden Ay Hanım, say the following: The people is like a garden, we are supposed to be its gardeners! First the bad shoots are to be cut and then the scion is to be grafted.44 Armenians were declared “disobedient elements,” an impediment to the implementation of these plans, as the Armenians’ homeland split an imagined pan-Turkish state—Turkish-speaking people of Asia Minor and the Middle East—from those who lived in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Erasing the Armenian obstacle from the heart of mythical Turan did not necessarily mean pure killing. At the first stage, it had entailed policies of cultural and linguistic “Turkification.”45 After the failure of these attempts, physical extermination was chosen as a way of solving the problem; as a hindrance to the great project, the Armenians would be exterminated. The war created the possibilities and supported the methods for this.

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“Salvation of the Fatherland” The planners of genocide also exploited the pure feelings of Ottoman patriotism and love for the country or piety for Islam. They declared that the homeland was in danger and the duty of every true Muslim patriot was to participate in the “Salvation of the Fatherland.” This meant “to clean up” the state from the alien, hostile elements, such as Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians. It was a kind of social Darwinist conception of a zero-sum game among peoples, with the fatal conclusion that the survival of their state and “race” required the greater homogenization of Anatolia.46 After the Salonika meetings and the humiliation of military defeats in the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 and northern Africa (1909–13),47 the homogenization (“purification”) of the empire was seen as a chance for a “national rebirth,” or salvation of the Fatherland. In January–February of 1915, Dr Behaeddin Şakir urged members of the Central Committee of the CUP that the security of the Eastern Anatolian provinces and the Turkish army on the Caucasian front would only be possible with the eviction of all Armenians from Western Armenia.48 The head of the Special Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ihsan Bey, argued that at the time when he was kaymakam of Kilisa, Abdullahad Nuri Bey, seconded from Constantinople to Aleppo, said the purpose of deportation was to destroy [the Armenians], adding that he was associated with Talât Bey and personally received his orders for the extermination, and that he [Talât] also tried to convince him that this was for the salvation of the country.49 Attempts to reduce the demographic weight of Armenians had a long history throughout the existence of the empire. Ottoman rulers systematically falsified their own censuses and rearranged district borders to show Western Powers that the Armenian population was a tiny minority and that the Armenian Question was an artificial fiction.50 Periodic massacres, the settlement of muhajirs in Armenian dwellings, as well as forcible Turkification were directed to the same goal. At the same time, the transformation of Western Armenia and Asia Minor (Anatolia in Turkish terms) into a Turkish homeland was ongoing. This process was enhanced by the fact that some of the leaders of the CUP, as well as many of the organizers of the Armenian Genocide, were not ethnically Turks. Arsen Avagyan has brought out the Circassian origins of the Teshkilat-ı Mahsusa.51 Moreover, many of the CUP leaders who emigrated from the Balkans were in search of a new homeland. They chose Anatolia for that role,52 and cleansing of the Western Armenians fit their needs. Bitterness over experiences with Christians in the Balkans or the Caucasus may have colored their attitudes towards the Armenians. For example, in Zeytun, Circassians and Chechens, who had emigrated from the Caucasus over fifty years earlier, eagerly participated in the killing process. They took revenge on their Zeytun neighbors, whom they associated with other Christians who had expelled them.53At the same time, they competed with the indigenous population for land resources and property, even for such relative trifles as educational facilities. Üngör mentioned school benches, blackboards, book cabinets, and even paper and

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pens, which were allocated to the yet-to-arrive settlers by local branches of the Commission for Abandoned Properties.54 All these actions were covered by the slogan, “Salvation of the Fatherland.” In his memoirs, Diarbekir butcher Mehmed Reshid, justifying the need for a decision on the deportation of the Armenians, tried to deny the charges against him, explaining his actions by service to his Fatherland.55

Economic Gains While the appeals to the creation of Great Turan and the salvation of the Fatherland were rationales mainly for the top perpetrators (decision-makers and local organizers), the invitation to grab economic gains was very inviting for all strata of the Muslim population of the empire. Political scientiest Adam Jones has stressed greed as one of the essential psychological elements that motivate genocidaires.56 Armenian property and belongings were stolen and redistributed among the Muslim population of the empire. Taking control of Armenian property and total plunder of this magnitude formed one of the components in the process of the rationalization of annihilation of the Armenian population. Certainly the principal component of looting was the chance to enrich oneself, but the main organizers of the genocide also tried to embed the sense of a “Great Idea” in the pillaging. The concept of the “creation of a national (Turkish) economy” was promoted by Gökalp and Akçura. Akçura believed that “if the Turks failed to produce among themselves a bourgeois class … the chances of survival of a Turkish society composed only of peasants and officials will be very slim.”57 The process of the transfer of ownership of the Ottoman economy to Turks by the restructuring of the national economy in the interests of (Muslim) small producers was carried out through violent methods. It was done via the boycott of Armenian and Greek stores, the obligation for Armenian tailors and shoemakers to take on Turkish apprentices, and the actual seizure of Armenian and Greek businesses. From early 1913, the Ottoman population was required to buy goods only from Turkish merchants, as Christian products were declared impure. It was accompanied by the refusal of bank loans and administrative pressure on Armenian exporters.58 The CUP also recommended not paying debts owed to Armenians and to stop cultivating Armenian land. For example, in Aintab, it was proclaimed that “before long, there will not be a single Armenian in Aintab.”59 During the Armenian Genocide, a new, emerging Turkish bourgeoisie started to accumulate capital through the direct expropriation of Armenian property. The decree of “Administrative instructions regarding movable and immovable property abandoned by Armenians deported as a result of the war and the unusual political circumstances,” issued in May 1915 by the Minister of the Interior, allowed Turkish officials to get their hands on Armenian possessions, not only for the state, but often for themselves personally.60 While they mostly took over rich Armenian homes,

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ordinary people also acquired assets by looting the houses and moveable property of their Armenian neighbors. After the departure of caravans of deportees, Armenian quarters became huge bazaars. Armenian goods (furniture, linen, personal effects, tools and implements of all kinds, the contents of their shops and storehouses) were sold off at very low prices.61 Fâiz al-Ghusayn wrote: The authorities appointed committees for the sale of these goods, which were disposed of at the lowest price, as might be the case with the effects of those who die a natural death, but with this difference, that the money realized went to the Treasury of the Turkish Government, instead of to the heirs of the deceased. You might see a carpet, worth thirty pounds, sold for five, a man’s costume, worth four pounds, sold for two medjidies, and so on with the rest of the articles, this being especially the case with musical instruments, such as pianos, etc., which had no value at all. All money and valuables were collected by the Commandant of Gendarmerie and the Vali, Reshid Bey, the latter taking them with him when he went to Constantinople, and delivering them to Talât Bey….62 To imagine the scale of the theft, it is enough to list some examples. Hulusi Bey’s squadron, which harassed deported caravans on the way to Kangal, filled three wagons with jewels and other precious objects. Part of this loot was delivered to local authorities.63 The governor of Trebizond transferred forty-two barges loaded with goods just before the Russian occupation of that city.64

Cultural Roots Daniel Goldhagen, in his controversial book Hitler’s Willing Executioners, argues that the Nazi regime accomplished the Holocaust without great effort because Germans were ready and very willing to perpetrate evil against Jews. According to Goldhagen, “ordinary Germans” were animated by anti-Semitism, but it was a particular type of anti-Semitism leading them to the conclusion that Jews ought to die: “Simply put, the perpetrators, having consulted their own convictions and morality and having judged the mass annihilation of Jews to be right, did not want to say ‘no.’”65 Despite having some reservations about Goldhagen’s thesis, I believe we can extrapolate from this that average Turks were involved in the killing process without any moral scruples or reluctance because of a longstanding history of negative and even rancorous prejudice against Armenians. If the opportunity and licence were given to people to accomplish what they had always wanted to do, they would be prone to killing and rape, as they believed that the extermination of Armenians was a right and normal thing. There was no simple hatred towards Armenians, as hatred was a product of social indoctrination and rationalization by stages, but it was

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clear that the Turks felt scorn and indignation towards the Armenians. This disdain became deadly virulent when “yesterday’s slaves” tried to compete with “the race of masters,” using the constitution and the gains it created during the decline of the empire to their advantage. There was a range of pre-existing stereotypes. Three “historical” perceptions of Armenians as outsiders dominated the Muslims’ mindset for a long time—Armenians as infidels, as subordinates, and as potential victims.

Armenians as Infidels Anti-Christian sentiments were strong in Ottoman society. They were often used for organizing massacres and riots. During the Adana massacres in 1909, for example, Muslim clerics issued a fatwa confirming that Islam accepted the killing of Christians and urged the crowd to participate in it.66 During the Tripolitanian War of 1911–12, between Italy and Turkey, hostility towards the empire’s Christian population increased. Armenian Deputy Vahan Papazian noted that popular sentiment was reflected also in the Ottoman Parliament. The attitude of Turks towards Christians became one of pure hatred, as if it were the Armenians who were fighting the Turks in Tripolitania.67 Ottoman rulers tried to exploit Muslim antipathy towards Christians during the war. Islam, like other monotheistic religions, has the capacity to define a target group as a radically evil, unrepentant enemy of God, and consequently has the potential to provide a singularly powerful and effective legitimation for genocide. Constant mass murder can become a contributing factor to the imagined realization of an ideal world of true fraternity and felicity. Mass murder ceases to be a crime and becomes instead a sanctified defense of truth, goodness, and civilization.68 It is generally accepted that the planners of the Armenian Genocide were neither inspired by Islam nor motivated by religious intolerance.69 But this is by no means decisive. In practice, they activated social forces by the policies they pursued, including the proclamation of jihad at the beginning of World War I, to mobilize religious fanaticism among the population of the empire. Furthermore, the motivation of the CUP leaders was shaped not only by their political philosophy, but also at a deep and unconscious level by the intangible influences of conditioning in a cultural milieu.70 This became an effective instrument for genocide. After the proclamation of jihad on November 14, 1914, the killing of Armenians was seen to bear legitimacy in religious terms. In many areas, clerics led the columns of Muslims and blessed them for punishing the unbelievers. This activated the traditional springs of religious fanaticism. From April 29 to May 12, 1915, parliamentary deputy Pirincizâde Feyzi visited all the villages in Cezire, exhorting the Kurdish tribes to perform their “religious duty.” Feyzi incited these populations against the “infidels” with the help of religious references and with the support of the hojas (Muslim teachers), rather than Turkic nationalistic discourse. One slogan was repeated everywhere: “God, make their children orphans, make widows of their wives … and give their

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property to Muslims.” In addition to this prayer, legitimization of plunder, murder, and abduction took the following form: “It is licit for Muslims to take the infidels’ property, life and women.”71 We find additional evidence in a report of the Russian embassy: In Chichme the life of forty prominent citizens was spared, and they were allowed to take refuge in a church. However, a week later one of the sheikhs, denouncing moderation shown to these forty Armenians, suggested they convert to the Mohammedan faith, but the Armenians refused. The sheikh ordered them to be killed one by one on the threshold of the church. He made the servant of the church and one Armenian to be present at the murder, and then ordered them to drag the corpses to the river, tied by the feet with rope. The sheikh explained this measure by the reluctance to touch the dog-giaours so as not to defile himself.72

Armenians as Subordinates The fundamental realities of Ottoman society were the domination by one group, the Turks, and the subjugation of the other, the Armenians (along with the Assyrians, Greeks, and other non-Muslim minorities). The Ottoman system, as in many other empires, particularly Islamic empires, compounded this system of inequality by legal precepts of Islam and subordinated non-Muslim subjects to second-class status.73 The millet system recognized the rights of non-Muslims to practice their religion, but Christian dhimmis were discriminated against in numerous ways. For example, at different times they were not allowed to bear weapons or ride horses, and their word did not carry as much weight in court as a Muslim’s. Even a special term, raya— members of a flock—was used to describe the Christians in official papers.74 Armenian houses were systematically over-valued for tax purposes, and Turkish houses under-valued. Armenian lands were usurped. Communal depredations and diverse forms of violence towards the Armenian peasantry created a situation of permanent oppression for the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire.75 “To give a fair instance of the different rates of taxation for Christians and Mohammedans in towns it will suffice to point out that in Erzeroum, where there are 8,000 Mohammedan houses, the Moslems pay 395,000 piastres, whereas the Christians, whose houses number but 2,000, pay 430,000 piastres.”76 Dillon also wrote about extortion practiced by the agents of the government, the zaptiehs. Sometimes they required three or four piastres over the tax for themselves and after negotiation they agreed on £1. After a week they came back and again required the same taxes, laughingly saying that the receipts which peasants showed were a few verses from a Turkish book. “Then they demand the surrender of the young women and girls of the family to glut their brutal appetites, and refusal is punished with a series of tortures over which decency and humanity throw a veil of silence….”77

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This system was beyond contest or even discussion of change. From a psychological point of view, the most dangerous thing was the fact that the lack of rights for other ethnic groups was taken as a normal situation, a very natural phenomenon, the way it should be, and nothing else. Such beliefs were not discussed, not in dispute, and when someone challenged them, it became a source of surprise and anger, usually followed by aggression against the subjugated group.78 In 1908, relations between Armenians and Turks were officially changed by the constitution, but in everyday life this change added a new source of tension to an already uneasy relationship.

Armenians as Potential Victims (Impunity and Tradition of Massacres) The Ottoman Empire had a tradition of settling political and social issues through brutal methods, even going as far as massacre. This method was used with the Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Assyrians, Yezidis, and Armenians,79 as well as other minorities of the empire. This tradition was strengthened because of the central role assigned to the military in Turkish society since the creation of the Ottoman state and throughout the empire’s history.80 The Young Turks continued this tradition. The tradition of Armenian killings throughout the history of the Ottoman Empire escalated in scale and dynamics because of impunity. Organizers and implementers of Armenian massacres always remained unpunished. Moreover, many of them became involved in the next round of brutalities. One interesting case supporting this thesis is the events took place after the 1909 Adana massacres, when forty-two Turks were executed.81 Although they were not the main people responsible for the massacres, but secondary defendants, Turkish public opinion perceived the judgment with enmity as it was unprecedented. Impunity often resulted in bragging. On August 3, 1915, Morgenthau wrote in his diary that Talât told friends with pride, “I have accomplished more toward solving the Armenian problem in three months than Abdul Hamid accomplished in thirty years!”82 As Dadrian argues, impunity and the impossibility of punishment became main factors in the realization that defenselessness “creates all the conditions of perilous vulnerability, which, in turn, emboldens potential perpetrators.”83

Dehumanization and Construction of Cruelty: Making the Process of Killing Easier Age-old stereotypes are accompanied by dehumanization of victims. Prof. Gregory Stanton has described “dehumanization” as one of the stages of genocide. “One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder.”84 After dehumanization, Armenians were not perceived as human beings. They were called vermin in the body of Ottoman Empire. One of the threatening letters sent to the Armenian Patriarch in November 1913 contained the following lines: “The

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Turkish sword to date has cut down millions of gavurs [infidels], nor has it lost its intention to cut down millions more hereafter. Know this, that the Turks have com­ mitted themselves, and have vowed to subdue and to clean up the Armen­ian gavurs who have become tubercular microbes for us.”85 In an article published after the war, an Armenian agent of the Turkish secret police hinted that the author of these letters was Hüseyin Azmi, at the time the Director General of the Istanbul police.86 Morgenthau mentions that “[t]he common term applied by the Turk to the Christian is ‘dog,’ and in his estimation this is no mere rhetorical figure; he actually looks upon his European neighbors as far less worthy of consideration than his own domestic animals.”87 Russian official Levitskiy reported, “… the Muslims’ hatred for them [Armenians] doesn’t end and at any rate, in addition to swearing ‘giaour,’ its manifestation, especially in the villages, is found in their words, that they don’t care ‘white or black dog’—Greeks or Armenians—the same Christians.”88 CUP physician, Diarbekir butcher vali Mehmed Reshid stated, “Armenian traitors had found a niche for themselves in the bosom of the fatherland: they were dangerous microbes.”89 This usage of medical terms as justification for destroying the Armenian community was widespread. The concept of disinfection and surgical amputation as remedies for disease in the body politic was a logical part of the process of dehumanization.90

Conclusion There is a widespread notion in the Armenian historical memory about who was responsible for the Armenian Genocide. The images of the “three Pashas” (Talât, Enver, and Cemal) depicted in every textbook on the subject create a strong narrative of the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide. But perpetration of such a horrendous crime as genocide is a more complicated and many-faceted event. One point is clear: to understand the fundamental reality of mass murder, we need to shift our focus from abstractions (such as “ethnic conflict” or nation-building) and impersonal structures (such as an authoritative political system or the Young Turks) to real actors, to individuals who became implementers of a diabolic plan. The perpetration of genocide is an activity requiring a smoothly functioning mechanism of initiation, organization, logistics, communication, and carrying out of murders. And in the killing hierarchy, together with “planners” and “desk murderers,” the central role is given to “direct perpetrators” at the most basic local level of society. The Armenian Genocide was ultimately a state project. But its implementation was borne not only by state agencies, such as the army and gendarmerie, but also by ordinary Muslims of Asia Minor and Western Armenia. They were not natural-born killers, but were socialized to mass murder through a variety of mechanisms: the tremendous state propaganda, the process of strong indoctrination (presentation of Armenians as exploiters, competitors, and betrayers), rationalization (creating the rationales for involvement in the violence—development of a pan-Turkic entity, participation in salvation of the homeland, and involvement in pillage), based on existing

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“historical” prejudice against Armenians (Armenians as infidels, slaves, and voiceless victims), and their dehumanization (giving them a half-human or non-human identity). These factors, alongside objective conditions such as World War I, frustration at military defeats, and paranoia in Ottoman society, created a catastrophic atmosphere of violence and involved the Muslim population of Western Armenia in the enthusiastic perpetration of genocide. Suren Manukyan is a historian specializing in the Armenian Genocide and related issues. He is Deputy Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan and lecturer at Yerevan State University. He has been a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution and Human Rights at Rutgers University, where he conducted research as a Fulbright Scholar on the Sociology of the Armenian Genocide. He is a member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and book-review editor for the International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies. Notes 1. This statement is probably true for the other genocides implemented by the Turkish government at the beginning of the twentieth century. In this study, I will focus on the Armenian Genocide. 2. Mihran P. Dabag, “The Decisive Generation: Self-Authorization and Delegations in Deciding a Genocide,” in Genocide: Approaches, Case Studies, and Responses, ed. Graham C. Kinloch and Raj P. Mohan (New York: Algora Publishing, 2005), 134. 3. British Foreign Office Archives 371/4173/53351 (folio 192–93), cited in V. N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide. Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995), 306. Emphasis added-SM. 4. G. Günel, İttihat Terakki’ den Günümüze Yek Tarz-ı Siyaset: Türkleştirme [The CUP in the Present Political Style: Turkification] (Istanbul: Belge Yayınları, 2006), 127, cited in Meline Anumyan, Djanachum yev Datapatum. Yeridturkeri Datavarut`yunnere (1919–1921 tt. yev 1926 t.) [Recognition and Condemnation. The Trials of Young Turks (1919–1921 and 1926)] (Yerevan: Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, 2013), 52–53. Translation from Armenian by S. Manukyan. 5. Osmanlı Mebusan Meclisi Reisi Halil Menteşe’nin Anıları (Istanbul: Hürriyet Vakfı Yayınları, 1986), 239, cited in Anumyan, Djanachum yev Datapatum, 28–29. 6. See for example The Armenian Genocide by Ottoman Turkey. Testimonies of Survivors. Collection of documents (Yerevan: Zangak, 2013); Verjine Svazlian, The Armenian Genocide. Testimonies of the Eyewitness Survivors (Yerevan: Gitoutyun, 2011). 7. One of the reasons for such a conclusion was Allied propaganda, which portrayed the Nazi leaders as a group of diabolical, sadistic, and demonically deranged lunatics. James E. Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, 2nd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 61. 8. Ibid., 62. 9. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 76. 10. For studies on violence and killings based on xenophobia among primates, see, for example, Jane Goodall, The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1986). 11. See more on the influence of the Darwinian paradigm on this topic and the findings of evolutionary psychology in Waller, Becoming Evil, 140–61.

420 | Suren Manukyan 12. Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002), 10. 13. Ibid., 4. 14. Ibid., 8. 15. Waller, Becoming Evil, 39. 16. Takvim-i Vekâyi (the official gazette of the Ottoman Parliament whose supplements [ilâve] served as the judicial organ of the Turkish Military Tribunal investigating the crimes perpetrated against the Armenians during the war), No. 3540, 8, cited in Vahakn N. Dadrian “The Determinants of the Armenian Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 1, no. 1 (1999): 68–69. 17. See, for example, Taner Akçam, From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2004), ch. 2, “A Theoretical Approach to Understanding Turkish National Identity,” 39–58. 18. Meclisi Mebusan Zabıt Geridesi, cilt 3, , Ankara, TBMM Basımevi, 1982, s. 112 (Minutes of sittings of Turkish Parliament, volume 3, Ankara, TBMM Basimevi, 1982, 112) https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/tutanaklar/TUTANAK/MECMEB/mmbd01ic01c003/mmbd01ic01c003ink078.pdf ). Even the cooperation agreement signed on September 16, 1909 between Ittihad and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation did not dispel the stereotype of the Armenian danger. Cited in Arsen Avagyan, Genotsid Armian. Mechanizmi Priniatiia i Ispolneniia Reshchenii [Armenian Genocide, Mechanisms of Making and Implementation of Decisions] (in Russian) (Yerevan: Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, 2013), 36. 19. Erik J. Zürcher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), 68. 20. Hovhannes Injikyan, Burzhuaziya Osmanskoy Imperii [Bourgeoisie of the Ottoman Empire] (Yerevan: National Academy of Sciences of Armenian SSR, 1977). 21. BNu/Fonds A. Andonian, P.J.1/3, file 4, Ayntab, f° 5v°, cited in Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 608. 22. Eric D. Weitz, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 3. 23. Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 148. 24. The Constitution of 1876 (Kanûn-u Esâsî) was reintroduced in 1908. It was the first constitution of the Ottoman Empire and had been in effect for only two years, from 1876 to 1878. 25. AVPRI Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi imperii [Foreign Policy Archive for the Russian Empire] (Moscow), Embassy in Constantinople, box 2677, p. 17, cited in Genotsid Armian v Osmanskoi Imperii: Sbornik Dokumentov i Materialov [The Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Collected Documents and Materials], 2nd edn, ed. Mkrtich Nersisyan (Yerevan: Izdatel’stvo Hayastan, 1982), 188. 26. Ibid. 27. Stepanos Sapah-Giulian, Pokr Hayki Hishadagner. Ams A. 10-Mayis-1 Okosdos [Memories of Armenia Minor, Part 1, 10 May–1 August 1911] (Chicago, 1917), 123, 140, cited in Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 127. 28. Vahan Papazian, Im Housheru [My Memoirs] (Beirut: Hamazkayin, 1952), Vol. II, 161. 29. AVPRI Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi imperii [Foreign Policy Archive for the Russian Empire] (Moscow), Embassy in Constantinople, file 2678, p. 15, cited in Genotsid Armian v Osmanskoi Imperii, 202–3. 30. “Altay” Sport Club was created on January 16, 1914 for CUP members, and one of the main organizers of the Armenian Genocide, Nazim, headed another sport club, “Fenerbahche,” from 1916. See more in Hayk Demoyan, Haykakan Sportu yev Marmnnakrt`ut`yunu Osmanyan Kaysrut`yunum [Armenian Sport and Gymnastics in the Ottoman Empire] (Yerevan: Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, 2009). 31. Noubar Library Archive, Paris, file no. 6 (Kayseri), report signed by five survivors of Kayseri, December 25, 1918, 10, cited in Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Agency of ‘Triggering Mechanisms’ as a Factor in the Organization of the Genocide against the Armenians of Kayseri District,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 1, no. 2 (September 2006): 121.

The Socio-psychological Dimension of the Armenian Genocide | 421 32. Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 148. 33. Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1918), 326–27. 34. BNu/Fonds Andonian, P.J.1/3, file 59, Erzerum, report by Vahan Mirakents, “Inchpes jarduetsan Khnostsiq” [How the Inhabitants of Khnus Were Massacred], Constantinople 1919, p. 1, cited in Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 303. 35. See for example, evidence from the Foreign Office of Germany, the wartime ally of Turkey, in The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916, edited by Wolfgang Gust (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013), 56-59. 36. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 295. 37. Ibid., 295. 38. Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: Volume 1: The Meaning of Genocide (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008), 73; Ulrich Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire 1914–1918 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 202–3. 39. Cited in Aram Arkun, “Zeytun and the Commencement of the Armenian Genocide,” in A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimark (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 221. 40. Celâl Bey, “Ermeni Vakâyi-i ve Esbâb-ı ve Tesîrâtı,” 2, Vakit 12 Kanun-i Evvel [December] 1918, 1, cited in Arkun, “Zeytun and the Commencement of the Armenian Genocide,” 227. 41. Djemal Pasha, Memoirs of a Turkish Statesman, 1913–1919 (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1922), 167. 42. Weitz, A Century of Genocide, 6. 43. Norman M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 25–28. 44. Cited in Mihran Dabag, “Modern Societies and Collective Violence: The Framework of Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies,” in Kinloch and Mohan, Genocide: Approaches, Case Studies, and Responses, 50. 45. Vahakn N. Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide: Key Elements of Turko-Armenian Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1999), 97–98. 46. Ronald Grigor Suny, “Writing Genocide: The Fate of the Ottoman Armenians,” in Suny, Göçek, and Naimark, A Question of Genocide, 34–35. 47. During the Salonika meetings of the CUP, the decision for extermination of the Armenians was made, as the project of linguistic and cultural assimilation had been unsuccessful. See Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Secret Young Turk Ittihadist Conference and the Decision for the World War I Genocide of the Armenians,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 7, no. 2 (1993): 173–201. 48. Arif Cemil, I Dünya Savaşı’nda Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa (Istanbul: Arba Yayınları, 1997), 246, cited in Avagyan, Genotsid Armian, 8 49. Indictment of CUP leaders, 10 Rejeb, 1337 [April 12, 1919] TsGIA (Central State Historical Archive of ArmSSR), ф. 200, оп. 1, д. 237, л. 51–64, cited in Genotsid Armian v Osmanskoi Imperii, 561. 50. For some examples of mishandling of Armenian population statistics by Ottoman authorities, see Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide, 171–86. Among other sources, Prof. Dadrian cites memoirs of Huseyin Kazim Kadri, a Turkish official during the Abdul Hamit and Young Turk regimes, who explicitly stated that there was deliberate dishonesty in compiling official Armenian population figures (p. 173). Ottoman statistics on the Armenian population are also examined and criticized by Levon Marashlian, Politics and Demography: Armenians, Turks and Kurds in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, MA: Zoryan Institute for Contemporary Armenian Research & Documentation, 1990) and Meir Zamir, “Population Statistics of the Ottoman Empire in 1914 and 1919,” Middle Eastern Studies 17 (1981): 86–87. 51. Since its creation, the Special Organization had three leaders and all of them were originally Circassians: Suleiman Askari (from inception to April 14, 1915), Ali Bashhampa (May 24, 1915–October 31, 1918), and Hyusamettin Erturk (December 5, 1918), cited in Avagyan, Genotsid Armian, 98.

422 | Suren Manukyan 52. On the growing interest in Anatolia immediately after the constitutional revolution, see Zürcher, The Young Turk Legacy, 120–21. 53. Aramian, “Shahegan deghegakir,” 853, cited in Arkun, “Zeytun and the Commencement of the Armenian Genocide,” 238. 54. BOA, DH.ŞFR 54/331, İAMM to Diyarbakır, July 7, 1915, cited in Uğur Ümit Üngör, “‘Turkey for the Turks’: Demographic Engineering in Eastern Anatolia, 1914–1945,” in Suny, Göçek, and Naimark, A Question of Genocide, 299. 55. Dr. Reşid’in Bey’in Hatıraları,Sürgünden İhtihara (Istanbul: Yayına Hazırlayan Ahmet Mehmet efendioğlu, ARBA, 1993), 43–70, cited in Avagyan, Genotsid Armian, 32. 56. The other components are narcissism, fear, and humiliation. Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2011), 384–96. 57. Türk Yurdu, no. 140, August 12, 1333/August 25, 1916, 2521 ff. The English translation has been taken from Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964), 426, cited in Fikret Adanir, “Non-Muslims in the Ottoman Army and the Ottoman Defeat in the Balkan War of 1912–1913,” in Suny, Göçek, and Naimark, A Question of Genocide, 124. 58. M. Şukru Hanioglu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 69; Vahan Papazian, Im Housheru [My Memoirs] (Beirut: Hamazkayin, 1952), Vol. II, 198. 59. BNu/Fonds A. Andonian, P.J.1/3, file 4, Ayntab, “The Deportation of Armenians in Ayntab,” f°1r°-v°, cited in Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 605. 60. Dickran Kouymjian, “Confiscation of Armenian Property and the Destruction of Armenian Historical Monuments as a Manifestation of the Genocidal Process,” In Anatomy of Genocide: State-Sponsored Mass Killing in the Twentieth Century, edited by Alexandre Kimenyi and Otis L. Scott, 307-19 (Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001). 61. There is interesting information from a witness from Angora, Manug Manugian, about checkpoints at the different entrances to the city in order to keep outsiders from coming to take part in the auctions of Armenian property, so that local Turkish notables could obtain it at low prices themselves. BNu/Fonds A. Andonian, P.J.1/3, file 7, Angora, report by Manug Manugian, December 28, 1918, f° 12; APC/APJ, PCI Bureau, Թ 426, cited in Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 500. 62. Fâiz al-Ghusayn, Martyred Armenia (London: C. A. Pearson, Ltd., 1917), 32–33. 63. APC/APJ, PCI Bureau, Մ 317, cited in Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 461. 64. Examination of Niyazi, at the sixth session of the trial of Trebizond, April 7, 1919: Nor Giank, no. 168, April 8, 1919; La Renaissance, no. 109, April 8, 1919, cited in Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 479. 65. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Vintage, 1997), 14. Emphasis in the original. 66. Ferriman Duckett, The Young Turks and the Truth about the Holocaust at Adana in Asia Minor, during April, 1909 (Yerevan: The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute , 2009), 16-17; A.Adossidès, Hayer ev erittuker. Kilikiayi kotoratsnere, [Armenians and Young Turks. Massacres in Cilicia] (Yerevan: Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, 2012), 16. 67. Papazian, Im husheru, Vol. II, 155. 68. Richard L. Rubenstein, “Jihad and Genocide: The Case of the Armenians,” in Confronting Genocide: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, ed. Steven Leonard Jacobs (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), 119. 69. According to V. Dadrian, “The Ittihad adherence to the ruling nation principle is particularly noteworthy because the Ittihad were not followers of the tenets of Islam. While the Ittihad continued to run the State largely as a theocracy, its leaders were personally atheists and agnostics.” (V. N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide. Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995), 5. Henry Morgenthau, describing Talât - the main architect of the Armenian Genocide, stated, “I can personally testify that he cared nothing for Mohammedanism for, like most of the leaders of his party, he scoffed at all religions. “I hate all priests, rabbis, and hodjas,” he once

The Socio-psychological Dimension of the Armenian Genocide | 423 told me—hodja being the nearest equivalent the Mohammedans have for a minister of religion.” (Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1918), 20. 70. Leo Kuper, “Theological Warrants for Genocide: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity,” in Jacobs, Confronting Genocide, 25. 71. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 360 . 72. AVPR, Posolstvo v Konstantinopole, D. 3184, cited in Genotsid Armian v Osmanskoi Imperii, 95. 73. Rouben Paul Adalian, “The Armenian Genocide”, in Centuries of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, edited by Samuel Totten,  William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charny (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 60–62. 74. See for example Shahkeh Yaylaian Setian, Humanity in the Midst of Inhumanity (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corporation, 2011), 91; Robert F. Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 249; Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 40–43; Bat Yeʼor, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001), 372. 75. Fatma Müge Göçek, “Reading Genocide: Turkish Historiography on 1915.” In A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Muge Gocek, Norman M. Naimark (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 58-60. A lot of documents of the issue can be found in Correspondence Relating to the Asiatic Provinces of Turkey, 1892-93. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty May 1896. Turkey, No. 3 (l896) (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1896); Genotsid Armian v Osmanskoi Imperii: Sbornik Dokumentov i Materialov [The Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Collected Documents and Materials], 2nd edn, ed. Mkrtich Nersisyan (Yerevan: Izdatel’stvo Hayastan, 1982). 76. E. J. Dillon, “The Condition of Armenia,” Contemporary Review 68 (August 1895), reprinted in Arman J. Kirakossian, ed., The Armenian Massacres 1894–1896: US Media Testimony (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004), 241. 77. Dillon, “The Condition of Armenia,” 242. 78. R. Adalian, Remembering and Understanding the Armenian Genocide (Yerevan: Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, 2008), 10. 79. The Massacres of Chios Described in Contemporary Diplomatic Reports, ed. by Philip P. Argenti (London: John Lane the Bodley Head Ltd, 1932); W. A. Morison, The Revolt of the Serbs against the Turks: (18041813) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); James J. Reid, “Batak 1876: A Massacre and Its Significance,” Journal of Genocide Research 2, no. 3 (2000): 375-409; Anahit Khosroeva, “The Assyrian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire and Adjacent Territories.” In The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, edited by Richard Hovannisian, 267-74 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, December 2007). 80. On the creation of the militant “Ghazi State,” see P. Wittek, The Rise of the Ottoman Empire (London: The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1938). For debate about the “Ghazi state theory,” see R. Safrastyan, Osmanyan kaysrutyan tsekhaspanutyan tsragri tsagumnabanutyuny [The Genesis of the Program of Genocide (1876–1920)] (Yerevan: Lusakn, 2009), 103–13. 81. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 111. 82. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 342. 83. Dadrian, ‘‘The Agency of ‘Triggering Mechanisms,’’’ 115. 84. Gregory Stanton, “The Eight Stages of Genocide,” retrieved from http://www.genocidewatch.org/ aboutgenocide/8stagesofgenocide.html. 85. Haigaz K. Kazarian, “How Turkey Prepared the Ground for Massacre,” Armenian Review 18, no. 4 (Winter 1965): 31–32, cited in Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, 216. 86. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, 216. 87. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, 276.

424 | Suren Manukyan 88. AVPRI Arkhiv v neshneipolitiki Rossiiskoi imperii [Foreign Policy Archive for the Russian Empire] (Moscow), Embassy in Constantinople, д. 3184, п. 146, cited in Genotsid Armian v Osmanskoi Imperii, 119. 89. Quoted in Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Role of Turkish Physicians in the World War I Genocide of Ottoman Armenians,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1, no. 2 (1986): 175 90. Ibid., 177.

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Archives British Foreign Office Archives. Kew, Richmond, Surrey, United Kingdom.

Index

A Abdulhamid II, Sultan, 5, 28, 29, 30, 38, 57, 84, 106, 110, 111, 113, 262, 277, 302, 327, 332, 417 Abraham Shimun, Mar, 108, 109 Adana, 22, 40, 60, 63, 86, 87, 100n26, 118, 121, 189, 234, 261, 283, 288, 406, 407, 415, 417 Adapazar, 5 Adrianople, 2, 42, 266 Ahmet (Sheikh), 35 Aintab, 86, 138, 148, 149, 413 Aivali. See Ayvali/Ayvalık Akçura, Yusuf, 411, 413 Alashgird, 26 Albanians, 42, 95, 337, 362, 376 Aleppo, 60, 87, 106, 122, 123, 138, 140, 150, 151, 153, 206, 231, 311, 316, 357, 364, 410, 412 Alexandretta, 1, 49, 121 Allen, Annie T (American missionary), 195-200, 206 alphabet, Ottoman, replaced by Latin script, 6 Amasia, 279, 280, 281; Amasia, Treaty of, 274 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 112, 115 Anglicans, 112, 165, 368. See also Archbishop of Canterbury Anglo-Hellenic League, 11, 323-25, 330-43 Angora. See Ankara Ankara, 47, 54, 55, 56, 62, 122, 167, 168, 171, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 203, 207, 208, 234, 235, 240, 312, 422n61 Anthony, Gertrude, 201-3 anti-Semitism, 356, 379n20, 414 Antioch, 86-87

Arabkir, 203, 205 Arabs, 6, 140, 150, 152, 153, 162, 163, 164, 166, 170, 173, 174, 177, 180n27, 233, 261, 288, 306, 316, 356, 362, 364, 373, 378, 380n28 Archbishop of Canterbury, 112, 164-65, 366 Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). See Dashnaks Ataturk. See Kemal, Mustafa Athens, 23, 36, 217, 221, 241, 278, 295n66, 307, 331, 339; Athens, Treaty of, 283, 340 Australia, 7, 10, 49, 136, 158-86, 264 Aydin, 22, 333 Ayvali/Ayvalık, 98, 279, 333 B Badger, George, 108, 112 Bafra, 55, 201, 203, 204, 281, 309 Baghdad, 106, 109, 158, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 174, 176, 265, 313 Baghdad Railway, 152, 279 Balkan Wars (1912-1913), 9, 33, 38, 4143, 45, 63, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 21718, 277, 278, 281, 283, 287, 296n80, 303, 304, 325, 326, 327, 330, 338, 339, 344n8, 406, 412; refugees from (muhajirs), 9, 41, 42, 44, 94-96, 278, 287, 289, 304-5, 327, 334, 337, 339-40, 345n25, 357, 361, 403 Baqubah, 158, 165 Bashkala, 163 Basra, 168, 169 Bedr Khan, 93, 108, 371, 388n165 Benyamin Shimun, Mar, 115, 116, 127n44 Berlin, Congress of (1878), 31, 33, 409

428 | index Berlin, Treaty of (1878), 4, 5, 25, 29, 32, 262, 409 Bird Bishop, Isabella L. (English traveller), 26 Bitlis, 2, 47, 50, 83, 84, 85, 86, 92, 94, 100n10, 100n17, 106, 118, 122, 123, 129n91, 204, 311, 370 Bohtan, 108, 110, 123, 129 Bosnia-Herzegovina (19th century), 31, 38, 39, 42, 63, 303, 304, 362 Bosnia-Herzegovina (1990s), 374-76 boycott, 2, 38, 40-41, 43, 88, 96, 140, 278, 305, 306, 315, 323, 334, 335, 338, 340, 341, 343, 348n92, 384n97, 413 Bristol, Admiral Mark, 10, 188, 190, 193, 194, 195, 196, 198, 200, 201, 205-8, 212n79, 212n82, 312 Britain, 24, 30, 31, 32, 47, 88, 109, 111, 114, 116, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 188, 264, 295, 310, 312, 330, 331; Anglo-Assyrian relations (1932-33), 170-75; Anglo-Iraqi relations (1927-32), 168-69, 177 British Blue Book on the Treatment of the Armenians, 8, 14n25, 123 Brusa, 55, 98, 195, 196, 234 Bulgaria (Ottoman), 31, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 94, 95, 97, 161, 162, 254, 276, 295n59, 302, 303, 304, 325, 336, 339, 365, 417; Bulgarian Jews in WWII, 360 C Cambodian Genocide, 374 Canada, 7, 158, 164, 174, 191, 192 Catholics, 111, 122, 166, 255, 363 Celal Bey (vali of Erzerum, governor of Aleppo), 84, 410 Cemal Azmi (vali of Trebizond), 279 Cemal Pasha, Ahmed, 42, 58, 115, 230, 356, 358, 410, 418 Çeşme, 44, 219 Chaldeans, 40, 64n1, 105, 108, 112, 113, 114, 121, 122, 124, 129n91, 136, 139, 152, 158, 164, 165, 264, 317n1, 361. See also Assyrians Chester, Colby M (American admiral), 313 Chios, 56, 63, 96, 97, 254, 268, 337

Chrysostom Kalafatis, Archbishop, 239-40 Church of England, 116 cihad. See holy war Cilicia, 1, 2, 50, 86, 99n1, 149, 188, 189, 234 Circassians, 32, 152, 222, 315, 356, 362, 360n28, 412, 421n51 Clark, Alice K, 189-94 Cold, Edith, 188-94 Committee of Union and Progress/CUP, 12, 36-40, 42-49, 51, 54, 59, 82-87, 90-93, 95-99, 103n83, 110, 113-15, 236, 262, 283, 286, 288, 302, 327, 328, 329, 334, 335, 337, 338, 341, 342, 359, 407-9, 412-15, 418, 421n47 Constantine I, King, 53, 55, 239, 284, 300, 304, 306, 307, 308, 310, 311, 312, 314, 326, 340, 341 Constantinople, 1, 2, 3, 5, 21, 22, 23, 25, 29, 40, 42, 43, 44, 48, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56, 58, 63, 83, 85, 86, 88, 89, 92, 93, 95, 98, 106, 111, 116, 121, 166, 167, 168, 188, 193, 194, 195, 196, 201, 205, 206, 207, 208, 223, 231, 232, 233, 237, 243, 244, 260, 266, 274, 275, 278, 281, 289, 295n.66, 303, 307, 309, 311, 312, 326, 330, 334, 337, 340, 357, 358, 359, 362, 364, 365, 386 n.116, 408, 409, 412, 414 Crete, 32, 33, 39, 40-41, 42, 63, 89, 109, 217, 276, 277, 282, 294n49, 295n66, 302, 303, 306, 348n92 CUP. See Committee of Union and Progress/CUP Curzon, Lord (British foreign secretary), 165-66 D Dardanelles, 44, 217 Darfur, 354, 355, 377 Dashnaks, 44-46, 82-86, 91, 92, 93, 94, 99n1 Davis, Leslie (US consul at Harput), 123, 200 dehumanization, 303, 406, 417-8, 419

index

demographic engineering, 95-97, 115, 124, 412. See also homogenization, Young Turks’ ethnic policy of Derdjan, 2 Der-Zor, 231, 289, 357 Diarbekir/Diyarbekir, 5, 36, 83, 92, 100n10, 106, 109, 110, 118, 121, 122, 123, 152, 162, 164, 166, 205, 287, 413, 418 Diaspora, Greek, 7, 11, 324, 326, 333, 343 Dilman, 119, 370 Djemal Pasha. See Cemal Pasha Dulles, Allen, 206, 312 Dunn, Lieutenant Robert, 195, 196, 198 E Eby, Mr and Mrs (Canadian missionaries), 191-93 Egin, 2, 5, 6, 50 Elias, Norbert, 64 Elliott, Dr Mabel, 204, 209, 241 England. See Britain Enver Pasha, 2, 42, 47, 48, 97, 115, 292n22, 302, 308, 309, 339, 409, 418 envy, 12, 33-38, 63, 223, 283, 407 equality (between Muslims and nonMuslims), 20, 23, 24, 25, 28, 34, 35, 39, 42, 43, 57, 58, 63, 82, 84, 85, 86, 98, 114, 234, 276, 282, 283, 302, 328, 341, 358, 416 Epirus, 27, 32, 33, 97, 331 Erzerum, 2, 3, 26, 27, 50, 71n150, 83, 84, 86, 90, 91, 92, 94, 100n10, 106, 190, 233, 234, 235, 370 Eshai Shimun, Mar, 170-72, 174 Euphrates, 139, 147, 148, 263 Everek, 409 exchange of populations. See population exchange F Faltaits, Kostas, 214-26 Ferid Pasha (Interior Minister, Grand Vizier), 91-92, 280 Fitzmaurice, Gerald Henry (Chief Dragoman at the British embassy), 29

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France, 7, 28, 30, 31, 32, 47, 54, 55, 88, 90, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 120, 138, 151, 152, 153, 160, 162, 163, 167, 173, 174, 176, 177, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194, 206, 226n7, 239, 255, 293n44, 295n58, 306, 307, 310, 312, 328, 330, 332, 360, 361, 368, 381n51 functionalist theory of genocide, 356-59 G Gallipoli, 10, 42, 49, 284 genocide, 59-62, 257-59, 354-402, 405 Genocide Convention. See United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide Genocides, Ottoman, 1-4, 7, 8-9, 10, 64, 135, 137, 302, 309, 317, 356; causes, 56-59 George I, King (of Greece), 304 Germany, role in the persecutions, 2, 42, 44, 111, 260, 261, 262, 271n29, 284, 300, 305-6, 309, 358, 364, 365, 381n51; secret alliance with Turkey, 45, 47, 305, 365 Gillespie, Julian, 208 Gladstone, William E (British prime minister), 109, 241, 338 Gökalp, Ziya, 35, 42, 96, 328, 335, 345n39, 357-59, 411, 413 Goldhagen, Daniel, 379n20, 414 Greco-Turkish War, 54-55, 214, 215, 217, 218, 233-45, 280, 288, 301, 310, 314 H Hadjin/Hajin, 37, 87, 188-95 Hakkari, 94, 106, 108, 109, 111, 112, 116, 118, 127n44, 158, 167, 171, 308, 361, 371 Halide Edib, 196, 206, 244 Hamadan, 158, 166 Hamidian massacres (1894ff), 29, 30, 35, 36, 57, 63, 68n87, 109-10, 126n15, 260, 261, 277, 283, 302, 305 Hamidiye cavalry, 29, 46, 84, 85, 110, 305 Harbord, Gen James, 10, 187

430 | index Harput (Kharpert, Mamuret-el-Aziz), 86, 92, 94, 100n10, 106, 123, 162, 195, 199, 200, 201, 202, 204, 205, 312 Hatt-ı Hümayun (1856), 27, 28, 34, 276, 282 Hatt-ı Sharif of Gulhane (1839), 27, 28, 276, 277 Hawkes, William, 200 Hitler, Adolph, 59, 356, 360, 372, 414 Holmes, Caroline (American relief worker), 205-6 Holocaust, 64, 143, 145, 255, 259, 262, 282, 290, 325, 356, 360-61, 374, 375, 377, 379n20, 404, 405, 414 Hopkins, Stanley, 201 Hosford, Donald, 201 holy war, 2, 108, 113-15, 118, 139-40, 356, 358, 380n44, 381n51, 415 homogenization, Young Turks’ ethnic policy of, 39, 95, 106, 114, 172, 316, 328-30, 332-35, 342, 364, 412. See also demographic engineering Hussein, Saddam, 373

319n27, 355, 356, 360, 361, 362, 363, 372, 378, 379n19, 407, 414 Jezire, 121, 163 jihad. See holy war

I India, 264. Indians in Iraq, 180n27 intentionalist theory of genocide, 356 International Association of Genocide Scholars, 4, 317, 317n2 International Criminal Court (ICC), 262, 354, 355 Iran. See Persia Iraq, 7, 106, 116, 139, 158, 159, 165-77, 254, 262, 264, 373, 378 Italians/Italy, 42, 54, 55, 62, 88, 111, 162, 165, 239, 307, 310, 312, 360, 363, 415 Izmir. See Smyrna

K Kastamonu, 280 Kavak, 153, 203 Kemal, Ali (future Minister of Education and Internal Affairs), 324 Kemal, Mustafa/Mustapha (Ataturk), 6, 51, 54, 55, 188, 194, 195-98, 207, 208, 219, 233, 234, 235, 238, 244, 245, 280, 310, 311, 312, 314, 366 Kemal, Namik, 302 Kemali, Galip (Turkish ambassador to Athens), 339 Kharpert. See Harput Khinis, 84 Khoi, 119, 120, 369 Khrimyan, Mkrtich (Armenian patriarch), 25 Kimball, Elsie, 209 Knapp, J. Herbert, 205 Konia/Konya, 47, 122, 196, 197, 198, 278, 279, 410 Kosovo, 376 Kuleli incident, 35 Kurds, 11, 12, 23-26, 29-30, 32, 45, 47, 50, 51, 57, 59, 82-84, 86, 89, 91, 92-94, 108, 109, 110, 111, 116-21, 124, 139, 158, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 171, 173, 174, 177, 180n27, 187, 189, 205, 253, 264, 289, 290, 309, 356, 359, 362, 363, 366-72, 373, 378, 388n165, 388n166, 403, 406, 415 Kuşçubaşı Eşref, 308

J Jacobites, 110, 158, 317n1 Jaffa, 74n198, 140 Jemal Pasha. See Cemal Pasha Jews, 14n25, 21, 22, 59, 64, 65n8, 74n198, 85, 140, 143, 151, 166, 180n27, 221, 253, 255, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264, 268, 275, 282, 288, 290, 291n3, 302, 304, 306, 310, 311, 314, 315,

L labor battalions, 3, 46, 48, 50, 52, 56, 97,98, 203, 278-79, 288, 308-9, 319n39 Lausanne, Treaty of, 50, 56, 165-68, 177, 293n45, 314 League of Nations, 55, 159, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170-76, 177, 256, 366 Lemkin, Raphael, 8, 11, 14n22, 14n25, 253-73, 371, 372, 388n165

index

Lepsius, Johannes, 2, 114, 288, 363 Lovejoy, Esther, 207-8 Lowther, Sir Gerard (British Ambassador), 83, 114 M Macedonia, 38, 39, 42, 56, 63, 94, 95, 97, 219, 263, 287, 304, 337, 339, 340, 366, 376 Malatia, 24, 187, 205 Mamouret-el-Aziz. See Harput Mandeans, 158 Marash, 188-90, 204 Marden, Etta, 200 Mardin, 121, 122, 158, 166, 371 Maronites, 63, 158 Marsovan, 35, 36, 198, 203, 408 Megali Idea, 33, 54, 56, 59, 295n66, 300, 307, 311, 324, 325-27, 330. See also nationalism, Greek Melkites, 158 Milosevic, Slobodan, 62 missionaries, Christian, 10, 23, 28, 60, 108, 111-13, 114, 118, 119, 120, 161, 163, 187, 188, 189, 191, 193, 194, 195, 200, 204, 206, 241, 367, 368, 381n51, 407. See also American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Montenegro, 38, 41, 42, 303 Mordtmann, Dr, 115 Morgenthau, Henry, 3, 5, 48, 52, 59, 60, 106, 123, 237, 288, 289, 295n62, 305, 308, 320n52, 363, 365, 367, 378, 381n51, 386n116, 409, 410, 417, 418, 422n69 Mosul, 63, 84, 86, 94, 108, 109, 116, 158, 163, 164, 165-68, 169, 170, 171, 176, 177, 313, 363, 364, 373 Mudanya, armistice of, 56, 246n34 muhajirs. See Balkan Wars, refugees from Murdoch, Bessy Bannerman, 205 Muş. See Mush Mush, 2, 50, 84, 85, 91, 92, 94, 100n17 N Namik Kemal, 302, 303 Nansen, Fridtjof, 55, 56, 366, 367, 384n92

| 431

Naayem, Rev Joseph, 121, 136, 139-40, 142, 146, 150-53, 372 nationalism, Armenian, 6, 26, 29; Greek, 23, 267, 295n66, 323, 325-27, 332, 342. See also Megali Idea; Turkish, 6, 11, 35, 38-41, 42-43, 45, 57, 113, 266, 271n29, 303, 316, 324, 327-30, 333, 334, 342 Nazım Bey, Dr, 95, 96, 114, 236, 287, 338, 339, 420n30 Nazis, 12, 64, 143, 145, 258, 270n16, 315, 360, 426, 372, 378, 379n20, 414, 419n7 Near East Relief, 8, 14n26, 187, 188, 198, 199, 201, 204, 206, 309, 311, 312, 363, 366, 367 Nestorians, 3, 26, 47, 64n1, 105, 108, 110, 111, 112, 113, 118, 119, 122, 123, 158, 161, 162, 165, 166, 180n27, 288, 308, 317n1, 361, 366, 371. See also Assyrians Nicomedia, 221-25 Niepage, Dr Martin, 60, 316 non-Muslims, differences from Muslims, 20-22 Noorallah, 108-9 Noureddin Pasha, 199, 240 O oil, 116, 118, 164, 167, 168, 177, 208, 313 P Pafra. See Bafra pan-Islamism, 38, 111, 115, 330, 341, 364, 371 pan-Turanism, 38, 114, 411. See also pan-Turkism pan-Turkism, 113, 114, 328, 334, 342, 364, 378, 411. See also pan-Turanism Perkins, Justin, 112 Persia, 26, 47, 51, 93, 94, 106, 112, 115-25, 139, 158, 161-66, 168, 180n27, 229, 265, 274, 308, 356, 361-64, 366, 368, 369 Phelps, Theda (American relief worker), 199, 203, 204, 206, 207 Phocaea/Phocea, 98, 232, 333, 340 Pontos/Pontus, 3, 52, 55, 56, 140, 141, 199, 204, 208, 233, 278, 279-81, 285, 287, 288, 308, 309, 310, 311, 314

432 | index population exchange, 44, 56, 61, 62, 73n184, 284, 286, 295n59, 301, 304, 311, 314, 329, 337, 339, 375 Poulos Shimun, Mar, 163 Presbyterians, 120, 161, 162, 163, 367 Protestants, 111, 122 Q Qasr-e-Shirin, Treaty of, 274 R Ras-ul-Ain, 290 reforms, Armenian, 4-5, 25, 30, 32, 45-46, 358, 406, 409 Reshid Bey, Mehmed (governor of Diarbekir), 121, 287, 358, 362, 413, 414, 418 Riza, Ahmed, 36 Rodosto, 97 Rouil Shimon, Mar, 24 Russia, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 45, 46, 47, 48, 55, 58, 62, 83, 88, 93, 94, 99, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 125, 129n93, 140, 141, 155, 160, 161, 162, 234, 255, 256, 262, 271n19, 276, 278, 285, 308, 309, 312, 315, 337, 361, 362, 367, 368, 369, 376, 381n51, 385n110, 408, 409-10, 414, 416, 418 Rwandan Genocide, 262, 376-77, 378 S Salamas, 111, 112, 119, 120, 162, 370 Salonica/Salonika/Thessaloniki, 39, 82, 114, 217, 284, 295n66, 302, 304, 316, 328, 331, 336, 337, 339, 343, 345n24, 408, 412 Samos, 56, 88, 89, 295n66 Samsun, 5, 37, 52, 54, 55, 98, 121, 153, 193, 196, 200-3, 207, 280, 310 Sanders, Liman von, 45, 213 Sasun, 2, 30, 50, 100n17, 109 Sepastia. See Sivas Serbia/Servia, 38, 41, 42, 62, 302, 304, 306, 336, 337, 375, 376 Sèvres, Treaty of, 54, 164, 234 Shakir, Dr Behaeddin, 115, 412

Sharia, 275 Shipley (British consul), 83 Simele Massacre (of Assyrians), 173ff Sinope, 52, 280, 309 Sivas, 86, 100n10, 155, 199, 203, 204, 206, 234, 235, 408 Special Organization, 46, 50, 96, 97, 98, 278, 279, 309, 334, 357, 359, 373, 403, 412, 421n51 Smyrna (Izmir), 10, 11, 22, 41, 54, 55, 73n181, 96, 98, 142, 188, 207-8, 212n79, 217, 219, 221, 226n7, 22749, 254, 278, 280, 281, 287, 292n33, 293n44, 301, 305, 307, 310-12, 314, 333, 334, 337, 338, 341, 362 Srebrenica, 73n181, 374, 375 Standard Oil, 208 Super, Miss (American nurse), 192-93 Syria, 1, 10, 106, 176, 177, 264, 264, 313 Syriac, 112, 162, 163 Syriacs/Syrians (Assyrians), 1, 3, 8, 40, 49, 94, 105, 106, 112, 113, 114, 117, 119, 121, 122, 123, 127n44, 139, 158, 167, 288, 289, 316, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370 T Tabriz, 119, 120, 158, 162, 166 Talas, 193, 194, 198 Talât Pasha, 5, 39, 42, 44, 58, 59, 60, 74n198, 96, 97, 114, 115, 123, 256, 278, 287, 306, 334, 341, 356, 358, 359, 361, 409, 412, 414, 417, 418, 422n69 Tanzimat, 4, 22, 27-28, 34, 35, 63, 100n10, 276, 282, 294n49, 328. See also reforms Tekinalp, Munis, 96, 303, 315, 316 Tel Aviv, 140 Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa. See Special Organization Thessaloniki. See Salonica Thessaly, 32 Thompson, Ethel, 201-2, 204, 207 Thrace, 9, 42, 51, 54, 56, 82, 95, 96, 97, 98, 233, 277, 278, 280, 281, 284, 286, 287, 288, 295n59, 302, 303, 304-5, 314, 337, 340, 362 Topal Osman, 55, 202, 203, 281, 296n80, 310

index

| 433

Treaty of Amasia. See Amasia, Treaty of Treaty of Lausanne. See Lausanne, Treaty of Treaty of Qasr-e-Shirin. See Qasr-e-Shirin, Treaty of Treaty of Sèvres. See Sèvres, Treaty of Trebizond/Trabzon/Trapizon, 55, 141, 233, 266, 274, 276, 279, 280, 281, 285, 295n66, 357, 363, 414 Tripoli, 63, 155 Tripolitanian War (1911-12), 406, 415 Turkish Historical Institute (Türk Tarih Kurumu), 6

W Wandel, Carl Ellis (Danish representative), 95 Ward, Dr Mark H (American medical missionary), 201, 205, 206, 207, 311 Westenenk, Louis Constant (European reforms commissioner), 9, 91 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 45, 300, 306 Wilson, Woodrow, 54, 295n58, 313, 365 Wolff-Metternich, Paul (German ambassador), 309, 310 Wood, Edith, 205

U United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, 61, 62, 253, 256, 257, 259, 261, 262, 354, 356, 371, 372, 375, 376 United States, offer to take Armenians to America, 60; pro-Turkish, open door policy, 193-94, 200-1, 206-8, 313 Urfa, 110, 118, 121, 122, 136, 139, 150, 151, 152, 153, 205, 206 Urmia, 26, 106, 111, 112, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 129n93, 158, 161-65, 367, 368, 369, 370, 372

Y Yowell, Forrest D (American relief worker), 201, 205, 206, 207, 311 Young Turks, 1-5, 9, 11, 19, 36, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 48, 50, 51, 53, 58, 59, 60, 69n90, 95, 105, 106, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123, 139, 200, 245, 253, 266, 277, 278, 282, 284, 286, 287, 288, 290, 295n59, 300, 302, 303, 304, 305, 307, 308, 310, 311, 315, 316, 324, 327-30, 333, 335, 338, 339, 342, 359, 365, 366, 375, 378, 404, 406, 408, 410, 417, 418. See also Committee of Union and Progress

V Van, 26, 47, 48, 49, 50, 84, 85, 86, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 100n10, 106, 116, 118, 122, 129n91, 356, 358, 359, 369, 370-71, 409 Venizelos, Eleutherios, 41, 44, 53-55, 220, 284, 308, 310, 311, 312, 324-27, 330, 332, 340 Versailles, Peace Conference of, 327

Z Zeitun/Zeytun, 50, 357, 410, 411, 412