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came down from the mountains; after murdering
and plundering some Armenian villages, they returned to the mountains. The
conditions were such that Turks and Kurds around Armenian villages were
armed; each day the government armed them more, but Armenians didn't have
the right to keep weapons in order to defend themselves against aggressive
Kurds and Turks. None of the Armenians, both man and woman, old and young,
in fields, in streets, in houses or even in churches, had security of life.
There were no trials or punishments if Turks or Kurds encroached on the
life, property and chastity of Armenians. When an Armenian complained to the
court that such and such Turk or Muslim had raped his daughter, the first
reaction of the court was to arrest the Armenian himself and send him to
prison. The courtiers uniformed the plundering Kurds to establish them as
officials and made them gendarmes of Armenians, in order to encourage the
Kurds to kill, plunder and encroach on Armenians. These groups, which were
established by the order of Sultan Abdul Hamid, were called "troops of Hamid"
(Afvajeh Hamidiyeh) and they were rare and incomparable in their cruelty and
crimes. The obvious result of this measure was that the Kurds were armed to
the extreme, their felonies and crimes were made legal, Armenian lands were
taken over and finally, the Armenian population in the region was decreased.
Attacking Hamidian troops or defending oneself against them, was counted as
revolt and resistance against the government, and was followed by heavy
punishments for Armenians.
It was the year 1894. Mass murders had not started yet, but some scattered
and successive massacres of Armenians, made life frightening and every day
was passed in fear of armed robbery, rape, and slaughters. The European
governments notified the Sultan several times, but they were in reality just
paying lip service; the Sultan deceitfully promised reforms every time.
Reforms had been promised for 40 years but they never came.
At last in 1894, the limited and scattered massacres turned into mass
murders that spread all over the empire. Suddenly the number of murdered
reached a rare level, and the massacring of Armenians generalized and spread
contagiously from place to place. First the matter started because the
Armenians of the mountainous region of Sasoun, located in Bitlis province,
stood up against criminal encroachments of Kurds. At the same time, the
Turkish army joined in the attacks on Armenians, first burning some Armenian
villages and then murdering thousands, cooperating with Kurds. The European
powers with, England at the head, intervened in order to stop the massacres
and the Sultan promised some reforms to European governments by the
particular trickery which he had. But the slaughters not only weren't
stopped but also gained more intensity and speed.
In the slaughters of Armenians during the years 1894-1896, which harvested
the Armenian inhabitants one after another, in Western Armenia and Anatolia
(eastern parts of Turkey), Trabzon, Erzinchan, Bitlis, Van, Marash, Urfa,
Bayburt, Sasoun, Mush, Diyarbakir, Erzrum, Cilicia (Adana), Angora (Ankara)
... , over 300,000 Armenians were butchered disastrously. For an example of
their crimes, take the 28th of December 1895 in Urfa. Over 2500 Armenian
men, women and children, fearing for their lives, had sought refuge in the
altar of a church; undeterred Ottoman gendarmes set the church afire and its
inhabitants were burnt alive.
On the 26th of August 1896, some of the Armenian youth, in order to draw the
attention of the public figures of Europe to the events which were happening
in the empire, took over the central bank in Constantinople (Istanbul), the
capital of Ottoman, and asked that the Armenian massacres be stopped and
that the promised reforms be carried out. But three days after the end of
the venture, the violence of Ottoman Turks exploded and tens of thousands of
Armenians were butchered and cut to pieces in the streets of Constantinople.
These were vengeances which had been designed beforehand and led by Sultan
Abdul Hamid himself.
After these massacres, no other mass murders occurred until 1908; in this
year suddenly mass murder and plundering of Armenians was committed, this
time in Constantinople, in front of the very eyes of foreign delegations,
diplomats and big powers of Europe. This massacre gained a strong reaction
in Europe and injured the credit and respectability of the Sultan seriously;
he was given titles such as, The Red Sultan, The Red Animal, The Monster of
ildiz,... . All the polticians and intellectuals of Europe, both left and
right, liberal and conservative, condemned the massacres of Armenians in
Turkey severely.
At last, in the same year, 1908, Sultan Abdul Hamid was faced with a coup
d'etat by Turkish revolutionists, who were called Young Turks. the result
was that his sultanate took on a ceremonial aspect and the next year, 1909,
he was deposed by the Young Turks completely. |
